Can you be sure that you are not in a computer simulation ? Are we on the verge of an era where machines will become exponentially more intelligent than human beings ? Will it someday be possible to upload a mind into a computer, and if so, should that count as a form of survival of the original person ? Can robots think ? Should we rejoice at the probably soon-to-come enhanced humans, or “cyborgs” ? Is time-travel possible?    

These questions, which have been the playground of science-fiction (SF) for many decades, are also of great theoretical interest. Philosophers have indeed timelessly used thought experiments, often reminiscent of SF’s most imaginative scenarios, in order to frame paradoxes, test intuitions, and defend various viewpoints. This new edition of Susan Schneider’s Science Fiction and Philosophy, an anthology of (mostly recent) articles and short stories, proposes to see how these two domains can mutually enrich one another.

Part I-  Could I Be in a “Matrix” or Computer Simulation ?

 The first part of the volume is dedicated to time-old issue of the reality of the external world. Classical instances of the problem (Plato, Descartes) are presented. The remaining articles propose to connect these ancient skeptical quandaries with the more contemporary phenomenon of virtual reality. A short story by Eric Schwitzgebel and R. Scott Bakker introduces to the marvelous but terrifying implications of simulating reality at a world scale. In his paper, Nick Bostrom provides a probabilistic argument in order support the idea that we are perhaps living into a computer simulation. David Chalmers also discusses this hypothesis but argues that, even if we were in a Matrix-like world (something we cannot prove to be certainly false), the consequences would perhaps not be as detrimental as they could seem at first glance. According to him, supposing that we are in a simulation, there is a sense in which we can keep saying that we know things and that what surrounds us is real. If that is so, even the truth of the simulation hypothesis cannot give reason, against all prior appearances, to full-blown skepticism.

Part II-  What Am I ? Free Will and the Nature of Persons.

The second section of the anthology starts by investigating the nature of personal identity. In a thought-provoking short story, Daniel Dennett shows that there is nothing obvious as to know where you actuallyare. Several brain transplants and duplication puzzles reveal that identifying yourself with your body or you brain raise a great deal of (unexpected) difficulties. On a more academic tone, Eric Olson provides a useful overview of the contemporary debates surrounding personal identity in metaphysics. The main opposition, as it stands, is the one drawn between “psychological continuity views” (for which personal identity is explained by the holding of some psychological relation) and “brute-physical views” (for which it resides in the mere physical fact of being the same biological organism). In his article, Derek Parfit argues against the traditional idea that we would possess an Ego or Soul, irreducible to and separable from matter. As he shows, (actual) split-brain cases undermine this pervasive Cartesian view, and rather provide support to a “Bundle Theory of Self”, for which persons are merely successions of mental states and sensations. Lastly, Ray Kurzweil, a well-known futurist and engineer, proposes in his text a defense of “patternism” (an avatar of what philosophers of mind have called “functionalism”). According to this view, a person is simply a functional arrangement, potentially capable of being reproduced into different substrates. For patternists, it is plain that mind-uploading represents a genuine, even if now unrealizable, possibility. As a side note, it seems that the texts presented in the first half of this section should be read in different order than the one proposed by Schneider. Olson’s introduction should be considered first, while Dennett’s short story should probably be read last, so that the objections he frames against several theories of personal identity can be fully grasped.

The remainder of the second chapter bears on the problem of free will. Michael Huemer’s paper discusses the scenario of K. Dick’s/Spielberg’s Minority Report, a cyberpunk SF story in which the penal system uses the foreknowledge of mutant individuals (the “Precogs”) in order to arrest individuals before they actually commit the crimes foreseen by the Precogs. A fatal ethical dilemma is shown to affect this “Precrime system”: if people do somehow possess free will, the system is unfair, since they couldhave abstained from committing criminal actions in the future. But if individuals are not free, it conversely seems unjust to punish them, since they could not have done otherwise. From this paradox, Huemer explores in greater detail some problems related to free will and determinism. Finally, Alvin Goldman’s article raises the question whether we could defeat an entity infallible in his predictions about the future (the “Book of Life”). As a personal suggestion, we recommend the reader to take a look at some of the short stories contained in Greg Egan’s Axiomatic (1995). The Hundred-Light-Year-Diary and Leaning to Be Me, especially,are perfectly continuous with the articles presented in this section of Schneider’s book

Part III-  Mind : Natural, Artificial, Hybrid, and Superintelligent

The third part of the volume is essentially dedicated to problems surrounding Artificial Intelligence (AI). Isaac Asimov’s well-known short story, Robots Dream, raises the question as to know when we should start thinking that machines might be conscious (and hence, potentially dangerous). Two brilliant articles by Andy Clark follow. In A Brain Speaks, recent insights from cognitive science are convoked in order to elucidate the relationship between the brain and phenomenological consciousness. As it turns out, while it is obvious that consciousness and other mental phenomena depend essentially on the brain’s activity, this organ’s inner working and structure is as alien as it can be to what we call ourselves. Clark’s second text provocatively argues that, given the omnipresence of technology in our daily environment and its subtle interweaving with every aspect of our life, the difference between us (biological humans) and likely soon-to-come “cyborgs” (modified humans) will simply be a matter of degree, but not of nature.                

In the next article, Ray Kurzweil argues that we are living the prolegomena of the “Singularity”, an age of exponential technological progress in AI, nanotechnology, and robotics, which will lead to an “intelligence explosion”, each generation of AI being able to produce and improve the next one. Kurzweil predicts that this revolution will probably occur around the middle of the current century and proceeds on to detail its several preliminary steps. According to him, this (inevitable) state of affairs will bring human beings to transcend their innate biological limitations, to indefinitely increase their knowledge and longevity, and to drastically modify the shape of their existences. Taking seriously this idea, David Chalmers’ article extensively discusses the Singularity hypothesis. Far from being some technophile fantasy, that the eventuality of such a phenomenon happening in the near future is shown to be at least probable. If so, the question must be raised as to know how to prepare to this possible turn of events and how we could integrate a “post-Singularity world”. The remainder of Chalmers’ paper is dedicated to this question. Lastly, Susan Schneider argues in her article that alien intelligences, which we will perhaps encounter soon enough, are more likely to be AIs (or super AIs) rather than biological organisms. This is so because (1) the technologies permitting interstellar travel are supposedly not very distant in time to those allowing the production of intelligent AIs ; (2) the probable greater age of alien civilizations suggests that they will be closer to an AI era than we are ; and (3) the strong effectiveness of silicon-based substrates for information processing would surely lead intelligent aliens to favor those over their original and biological (carbon-based) make-up. Of course, the question remains as to know whether these alien AIs would be conscious. Schneider, here again, provides reasons and clues to think that this would be the case.

Part IV-  Ethical and Political Issues.

The fourth part of the book considers ethical and political issues through the lenses of SF. George J. Annas argues that the recent developments of genetic engineering bring forward many unprecedented threats. If used to create “superior” human beings, these technologies would and will certainly, according to him, lead to a massive genocide. This, as he urges, makes certain regulative and preventive measures all the more necessary: international collaboration and lawmaking should be encouraged, so that genetic engineering be kept within certain ethical bounds. In the next paper (which would probably have fitted better in the second section of the book), Susan Schneider discusses the transhumanists’ contention that persons are mere patterns of information. An important objection is framed against this view : if all there is to a person is some kind of neural configuration, then it seems theoretically possible to produce several duplicates of one same person. But since it is plausible that these individuals would nonetheless possess different streams of consciousness (after the duplication), they would end up being distinct persons after all. Schneider goes on to argue that patternism can only be saved at the condition of admitting that a person is not only a functional arrangement, but also has to be continuous in space and time. Modifying patternism in such manner, however, is not without consequences. It radically undermines the transhumanist’s claim according to which mind-uploading would count as a (desirable) form of survival.          

The two contributions which follow seem to fit rather imperfectly into this section. John Leslie’s commentary on Carter’s “Doomsday argument” is simply too short to be really illuminating. Similarly, Asimov’s short story, The Last Question, although pleasant to read, does not seem to convey any explicit “political or ethical” issue (if only perhaps a bold theology).  These texts could easily have been replaced by others belonging to different, and perhaps more relevant, sub-genres of SF, as for instance social, political, or even feminist SF. More in conformity with the proposed theme of this section, Susan Leigh Anderson’s paper discusses Asimov’s famous “Three Laws of Robotics”, as presented in The Bicentennial Man (1984). According to Anderson, Asimov actually made clear that these principles are immoral and fail to ground any viable “Machine Ethics”. An intelligent robot programmed to follow such laws would be no more than a slave, making it plain that erecting these principles as rules would be morally objectionable. But what then, would be sound ethical principles for programming intelligent robots ?  This is what the author discusses in the rest of the paper, before arguing that intelligent machines could play the role of ethical advisors or instructors. The last article of this section, by Nick Bostrom, envisions several ways  by which, should a super-intelligent AI be created, we could control it and prevent its causing harm to human beings. Several means of restricting the capacities, functioning, and motivations of such a super AI are discussed, along with their respective assets and downsides.

Part V-  Space and Time.

The final section of the book, despite its label, is actually heavily focused on the question of time travel. Ray Bradbury’s short story, A Sound of Thunder, illustrates dramatically how one single misstep of a time traveler in his journey to the past could dramatically change the entire future state of the universe. Theodore Sider, a leading specialist in metaphysics of time, proposes to discuss the analogies and differences existing between space and time, before arguing that time travel, as represented in many SF stories, is not (always) conceptually inconsistent. In a similar vein, David Lewis’ famous Paradoxes of Time Travel explores several well-known puzzles (causal loops, grandfather paradox, etc.) and holds that those are insufficient the defeat the metaphysical possibility of time travel. On a more scientific note, David Deutsch and Michael Lockwood defend that time-travel (in the past), contrarily to what classical physics generally assumed, is perhaps not impossible. According to them, it can actually be accounted for by a certain version of quantum mechanics, Everett’s “many-universes” interpretation. Under this theoretical framework, physical reality is actually a multifarious collection of universes. The authors show clearly how time travel paradoxes could be accounted for by this physical theory. The last article, by Richard Hanley, investigates jointly the question of miracles, computer simulations, and time travel. One main interest of his paper is to ask the question whether time travel could be seen as some sort of supernatural, or miraculous, phenomenon.

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Schneider’s anthology, as it stands, is a great introduction to many of the fundamental theoretical issues raised by SF. Each topic is covered with a panel of accessible texts. One will also appreciate the presence of several short stories and references to related works of SF in every section of the book. If the content of this new edition differs quite little from the first one (only a few texts a have been replaced), an interesting addition comes from its final appendix, made by Eric Schwitzgebel. One will find there a very useful and rather complete list of philosophically relevant works of SF, recommended by professional philosophers.     Now, it is true that the organization of the book could have been improved here and there. One might feel at a few occasions, and especially in the fourth section of the volume, that different choices of texts would have been possible, if not preferable. Several important themes, as for instance the representation of alternate histories, of radically different political or ethical systems, or even the depiction of animal or alien viewpoints in SF, would perhaps have deserved closer examination.  This, at any rate, removes little to the interest and merit of Schneider’s book. Along with the recent Philosophy and Science Fiction,edited by the Midwest Studies in Philosophy (and reviewed here), it is simply one the best introductions of its kind.

 

© 2016 Alexandre Declos

 

Alexandre Declos is in the Philosophy Ph.D program at the University of Ottawa and Université de Lorraine (Archives Henri Poincaré).