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Thursday, January 01, 2009

Philosophy From the Twilight Zone: "The Lonely"


Alicia and corry Rod Serling's Twilight Zone was an outstanding TV series
that ran from 1959-1964. The episode "The Lonely" aired in November, 1959. I
have seen it several times, thanks to the semi-annual Sci Fi channel TZ
marathons. There is one in progress as I write. One can extract quite a bit of
philosophical juice from "The Lonely" as from most of the other TZ episodes.
I'll begin with a synopsis.
Synopsis.James A. Corry is serving a 50 year term of solitary confinement
on an asteroid nine million miles from earth. Supplies are flown in every three
months. Captain Allenby, unlike the other two of the supply ship's crew
members, feels pity for Corry, and on one of his supply runs brings him a
female robot named 'Alicia' to alleviate his terrible loneliness. The robot is
to all outer appearances a human female. At first, Corry rejects her as a mere
robot, a machine, and thus "a lie." He feels he is being mocked. "Why didn't
they build you to look like a machine?" But gradually Corry comes to ascribe
personhood to Alicia. His loneliness vanishes. They play chess with a set he
has constructed out of nuts and bolts. She takes delight in a Knight move, and
Corry shares her delight. They beam at each other.
But then one day the supply ship returns with news that Corry's sentence
has been commuted as part of a general abolition of punishment by banishment to
asteroids. Allenby informs Corry that there is room on the ship only for him
and 15 lbs of his personal effects. Alicia must be left behind. Corry is deeply
distressed. "I'm not lonely any more. She's a woman!" Allenby replies, "She's a
robot!" Finally, after some arguing back and forth, Allenby draws his sidearm
and shoots Alicia in the face revealing her electronic innards. Corry's
illusion of Alicia's personhood if it is an illusion dissipates and
regretfully he boards the ship. The thirty minute episode ends with Serling's
powerful closing narration:
On a microscopic piece of sand that floats through space is a fragment
of a man's life. Left to rust is the place he lived in and the machines he
used. Without use, they will disintegrate from the wind and the sand and the
years that act upon them; all of Mr. Corry's machines including the one made
in his image, kept alive by love, but now obsolete in the Twilight Zone.
Philosophical Analysis. The episode raises a number of philosophical
questions. Here are some of them.
Q1: Does personhood depend on what something is made of? Corry is aware
that Alicia, 'out of the box,' is a robot, a human artifact, and this knowledge
inclines him to regard her at first as incapable of instantiating those
attributes we associate with personhood: sentience, the ability to feel and
express emotions, the ability to reason, and others. His thought is: She can't
be a person because she is not made of flesh and blood. But why should
personhood require any particular material constitution? Why couldn't
personhood be realized in different sorts of stuff? Not just any kind of
stuff, of course., but sufficiently well-rorganized stuff. (You can't make a
valve-lifter out of sawdust and spit, or a Phoenix monument out of ice, but the
valve-lifter function is realizable in a variety of different materials with
the right sorts of properties.) In human beings such as Corry personhood is
realized in a biologically human material substratum. But what is to stop
personhood from being reslized in some other sort of substratum, perhaps even a
nonliving substratum? Is being biologically alive a necessary condition of
personhood? (If I am not mistaken, John Searle would answer in the
affirmative.)
When Allenby shoots Alicia in the head, revealing the electronic gadgetry
inside, Corry's sense that Alicia is or was a person dissipates. But if someone
had blown open a whole in Corry's skull, revealing brain matter, no one would
take that as proof that Corry was not a person. Why is only one kind of
material constitution capable of supporting consciousness, self-consciousness,
and the rest of the attributes of personhood? Is personhood perhaps a
functional notion?
Q2: If a person can be built, does this show that a person is purely
material, or does the mind-body problem exist in this case as well? Suppose
that by the assembly of the right kind of material parts, one constructs a non-
biologically-human but nonetheless full-fledged person. I don't mean what
philosophers call a zombie, but a full-fledged person such as Alicia is
prorytrayed as being in the TZ episode we are discussing. Thus the supposition
is that this robotic person does in reality feel sensations and experience
emotions. (Don't worry about how we would know this to be the case. After all,
how do I know that my wife in reality feels sensations and experiences
emotions? Not that doubt it for a second.)
The robotic person has a mind and a body. How then does the mere fact that
the robotic person was constructed from material parts, indeed biologically
inanimate material parts, show that she is purely material? Dualism, and
perhaps even substance dualism, seems compatible with being constructed from
material parts. Or does a person's having a material origin show that dualism
is false?
Q3. Is mentality or personhood a matter of ascription? A matter of the
taking up of Dennett's "intentional stance?" As Corry interacts with Alicia, he
gradually comes to accept her as a person and a friend. After pushing her away
in one scene, he interprets her verbal report, "You hurt me," and her tears as
evidence of personhood. Could it be maintained that personhood is not a matter
of some 'inner' reality, but a matter of ascription from the point of view of
one who takes up the "intentional stance" with respect to an object of
interpretation? Could one say that Alicia is a person, but that her personhood
is not intrinsic but ascribed from without? But then you would have to say the
same thing about Corry. Is it coherent to think of Alicia and Corry alone on
their asteroid ascribing personhood to each other, thereby constituting each
other as persons? For more on Dennett's views and my critique of them, see my
Dennett category on the old blog.
Q4. Is personhood and the uniqueness essential to personhood engendered by
love? Alicia was made in man's image, and "kept alive by love" as Serling
intones in his closing comment. Alicia's value to Corry has something to do
with his perception of her as unique, as a Thou to his I, as an irreplaceable
individual, and not merely as an interchangeable instance of properties.
Personhood seems to include such notions as irreducible individuality, ipseity,
interiority. These are not empirical attributes. How are they given? How
constituted? Are they engendered by love? Josiah Royce had interesting things
to say on this topic. Do we first become persons in a loving I-Thou relation?
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