Science Fiction and Philosophy E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 897

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Featuring numerous updates and enhancements, Science Fiction and Philosophy, 2nd Edition, presents a collection of readings that utilize concepts developed from science fiction to explore a variety of classic and contemporary philosophical issues.

• Uses science fiction to address a series of classic and contemporary philosophical issues, including many raised by recent scientific developments
• Explores questions relating to transhumanism, brain enhancement, time travel, the nature of the self, and the ethics of artificial intelligence
• Features numerous updates to the popular and highly acclaimed first edition, including new chapters addressing the cutting-edge topic of the technological singularity

• Draws on a broad range of science fiction’s more familiar novels, films, and TV series, including I, Robot, The Hunger Games, The Matrix, Star Trek, Blade Runner, and Brave New World
• Provides a gateway into classic philosophical puzzles and topics informed by the latest technology

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Introduction

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

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

Part III: Mind: Natural, Artificial, Hybrid, Alien and “Superintelligent”

Part IV: Ethical and Political Issues

Part V: Space and Time

Conclusion

References

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

1 Reinstalling Eden: Happiness on a Hard Drive

2 Are You in a Computer Simulation?

3 Plato’s Cave. Excerpt from

The Republic

4 Some Cartesian thought Experiments. Excerpt from

The Meditations on First Philosophy

Of the Things of which we May Doubt

5

The Matrix

as Metaphysics

I. Brains in Vats

II. Envatment Reconsidered

III. The Metaphysical Hypothesis

IV. The Matrix Hypothesis as a Metaphysical Hypothesis

V. Life in the Matrix

VI. Objections

VII. Other Skeptical Hypotheses

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

6 Where Am I?

7 Personal Identity

1. The Problems of Personal Identity

2. Understanding the Persistence Question

3. Accounts of Our Identity through Time

4. Psychological-Continuity Views

5. Fission

6. The Too-Many-Thinkers Problem

7. Brute-Physical Views

8. Wider Themes

Bibliography

8 Divided Minds and the Nature of Persons

The Ego Theory and the Bundle Theory

What We Believe Ourselves to Be

How We Are Not What We Believe

How the Split-Brain Cases Support the Bundle Theory

9 Who Am I? What Am I?

10 Free Will and Determinism in the World of

Minority Report

Hard Determinism and the Threat to Free Will

The Soft Determinist Gambit

On Behalf of Freedom

The Verdict on Precrime

11 Excerpt from “The Book of Life: A Thought Experiment”

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

12 Robot Dreams

13 A Brain Speaks

14 Cyborgs Unplugged

Rats in Space

Implant and Mergers

A Day in the Life

Dovetailing

15 Superintelligence and Singularity

The Intuitive Linear View Versus the Historical Exponential View

The Six Epochs

The Singularity Is Near

16 The Singularity: A Philosophical Analysis

1. Introduction

2. The Argument for a Singularity

3. The Intelligence Explosion Without Intelligence

4. Obstacles to the Singularity

5. Negotiating the Singularity

6. Internal Constraints: Constraining Values

7. External Constraints: The Leakproof Singularity

8. Integration into a Post-Singularity World

9. Uploading and Consciousness

10. Uploading and Personal Identity

11. Conclusions

Bibliography

17 Alien Minds

Alien Superintelligence

Would Superintelligent Aliens Be Conscious?

How Might Superintelligent Aliens Think?

Conclusion

References

Part IV: Ethical and Political Issues

18 The Man on the Moon

Holy Wars

Unholy Wars

The Man on the Moon

Genetic Engineering

Toward the Posthuman

New Crusades

19

Mindscan

: Transcending and Enhancing the Human Brain

The Transhumanist Position

The Nature of Persons

Robert Sawyer’s

Mindscan

and the Reduplication Problem

A Response to the Reduplication Problem

Two Issues that Modified Patternism Needs to Address

Conclusion

References

20 The Doomsday Argument

21 The Last Question

22 Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics” and Machine Metaethics

Introduction

“The Bicentennial Man”

Machine Metaethics

Characteristic(s) Necessary To Have Moral Standing

Why the Three Laws are Unsatisfactory even if Machines Don’t have Moral Standing

Conclusion

References

23 The Control Problem. Excerpts from

Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies

Two Agency Problems

Capability Control Methods

Motivation Selection Methods

Synopsis

References

Part V: Space and Time

24 A Sound of Thunder

25 Time

The Flow of Time

The Space-Time Theory

Arguments against the Space-Time Theory: Change, Motion, Causes

26 The Paradoxes of Time Travel

27 The Quantum Physics of Time Travel

28 Miracles and Wonders

Humeans on Miracles

Three Modern Miracle Mongers

Three of my Favorite Sci-Fi Things: Time Travel, Other Dimensions, and Simulations

Simulation Epistemology and Metaphysics

An Argument for Miracles

References

Appendix: Philosophers Recommend Science Fiction

Novels and Short Stories

Movies and Television

Index

End User License Agreement

List of Tables

Chapter 23

Table 23.1 Different kinds of tripwires

Table 23.2 Control methods

List of Illustrations

Introduction

Figure I.1 Plato’s Cave

Chapter 15

Figure 15.1

Linear versus exponential

: linear growth is steady; exponential growth becomes explosive.

Figure 15.2

The Six Epochs of Evolution

: Evolution works through indirection: it creates a capability and then uses that capability to evolve the next stage.

Figure 15.3

Countdown to Singularity

: Biological evolution and human technology both show continual acceleration, indicated by the shorter time to the next event (two billion years from the origin of life to cells; fourteen years from the PC to the World Wide Web).

Figure 15.4

Linear view of evolution

: This version of the preceding figure uses the same data but with a linear scale for time before present instead of a logarithmic one. This shows the acceleration more dramatically, but details are not visible. From a linear perspective, most key events have just happened “recently.”

Figure 15.5

Fifteen views of evolution

: Major paradigm shifts in the history of the world, as seen by fifteen different lists of key events. There is a clear trend of smooth acceleration through biological and then technological evolution.

Figure 15.6 Canonical milestones based on clusters of events from thirteen lists.

Figure 15.7

A mathematical singularity

: As

x

approaches zero (from right to left), 1/

x

(or

y

) approaches infinity.

Chapter 19

Figure 19.1

Figure 19.2

Chapter 25

Figure 25.1 The movement of a train defined by reference to time

Figure 25.2 The moving of the present moment

Figure 25.3 High-school physics graph of a particle moving through time

Figure 25.4 Space-time diagram

Figure 25.5 Where is the “real here”?

Figure 25.6 “Now” for me and for Guy Fawkes

Figure 25.7 Moving back and forth in space

Figure 25.8 Moving back and forth in time, temporal axis vertical

Figure 25.9 Moving back and forth in time, temporal axis horizontal

Chapter 27

Figure 27.1 GRANDFATHER PARADOX, in which a time traveler prevents his or her own birth, is a stock objection to time travel.

Figure 27.2 SPACE AND TIME are combined into one four-dimensional entity, space-time. Here we show two space dimensions and time. A worldline connects all events in our life in space-time; since we have some size, a person’s worldline is more like a worm extending from birth to death than a line. The worldlines of light rays emanating in all space directions from an event trace out a cone in space-time, called a lightcone. The worldline of any object, such as the navel of this figure, cannot stray outside a lightcone emanating from any point in its past.

Figure 27.3 CLOSED TIMELIKE CURVE can be formed if space-time loops around. Entering such a curve tomorrow and moving forward in time, we can end up at today.

Figure 27.4 NEUTRON DECAY can occur at any time, though some times are more likely than others. For each instant in which the neutron might decay, there is a universe in which it decays at that instant, according to Everett’s multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Figure 27.5 MULTIVERSE PICTURE OF REALITY unravels the time-travel paradoxes. Sonia plans to enter the time machine tomorrow and travel back to today but resolves that if she emerges from the time machine today, she will not enter tomorrow. She is able to carry out this plan, without paradox. In a B-universe she does not emerge today and so enters the time machine tomorrow. She then emerges today, but in an A-universe, and meets her copy – who does not enter the time machine.

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

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Praise for the First Edition

“… a successful marriage of art with analytic philosophy.”

Mind & Machines, Fall 2010

“Susan Schneider is the Sarah Connor of philosophy as she ponders the role of science fiction and thought experiments to help understand uploading, time travel, superintelligence, the singularity, consciousness … and physicalism. Hasta La Vista baby.

” Richard Marshall, 3Quarks Daily

“Science Fiction and Philosophy brings two areas together and into a dialogue … science fiction reminds philosophy that all reason and no play makes thought a very dull thing indeed.

” Discover Magazine, November 2010

“Looking over the pages one can see Schneider’s attention to detail … Schneider has obviously made her choices for their accessibility and we should applaud her for this.

” Metapsychology

“I’ve always said that science fiction is a lousy name for this field; it’s really philosophical fiction: phi-fi not sci-fi! This book proves that with its penetrating analysis of the genre’s treatment of deep questions of reality, personhood, and ethics.”

Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award-winning author of Hominids

Science Fiction and Philosophy

From Time Travel to Superintelligence

SECOND EDITION

Edited by

Susan Schneider

This second edition first published 2016Editorial material and organization © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Edition history: Blackwell Publishing Ltd (1e, 2009)

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Schneider, Susan, 1968– editor.Title: Science fiction and philosophy : from time travel to superintelligence/  edited by Susan Schneider.Description: Second edition. | Hoboken : Wiley, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.Identifiers: LCCN 2015038424 (print) | LCCN 2015039864 (ebook) | ISBN  9781118922613 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781118922620 (pdf) | ISBN 9781118922606 (epub)Subjects: LCSH: Science fiction–Philosophy. | Philosophy–Introductions. |  Philosophy in literature.Classification: LCC PN3433.6 .S377 2016 (print) | LCC PN3433.6 (ebook) | DDC 809.3/8762–dc23LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015038424

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover image: © magictorch / Getty Images

For Dave – stellar shipmate throughout life’s journeys and fellow lover of science fiction

IntroductionThought Experiments: Science Fiction as a Window into Philosophical Puzzles

Susan Schneider

Let us open the door to age-old questions about our very nature, the nature of the universe, and whether there are limits to what we, as humans, can understand. But as old as these issues are, let us do something relatively new – let us borrow from the world of science fiction thought experiments to fire the philosophical imagination. Good science fiction rarely disappoints; good philosophy more rarely still.

Thought experiments are imagination’s fancies; they are windows into the fundamental nature of things. A philosophical thought experiment is a hypothetical situation in the “laboratory of the mind” that depicts something that often exceeds the bounds of current technology or even is incompatible with the laws of nature, but that is supposed to reveal something philosophically enlightening or fundamental about the topic in question. Thought experiments can demonstrate a point, entertain, illustrate a puzzle, lay bare a contradiction in thought, and move us to provide further clarification. Indeed, thought experiments have a distinguished intellectual history. Both the creation of relativity and the interpretation of quantum mechanics rely heavily upon thought experiments. Consider, for instance, Einstein’s elevator and Schrödinger’s cat. And philosophers, perhaps even more than physicists, make heavy use of thought experiments. René Descartes, for instance, asked us to imagine that the physical world around us was an elaborate illusion. He imagined that the world was merely a dream or, worse yet, a hoax orchestrated by an evil demon bent on deceiving us. He then asked: How can we really be certain that we are not deceived in either of these ways? (See Descartes’ piece, Chapter 4 in this volume.) Relatedly, Plato asked us to imagine prisoners who had been shackled in a cave for as long as they can remember. They face a wall. Behind them is a fire. Between the prisoners and the fire is a pathway, where men walk, carrying vessels, statues, and other objects (see Figure I.1).

Figure I.1 Plato’s Cave

As the men walk behind the prisoners, they and the objects they carry cast shadows on the cave wall. The prisoners are thus not able to see the actual men and objects; their world is merely a world of shadows. Knowing nothing of the real causes of the shadows, the prisoners would naturally mistake these shadows for the real nature of things. Plato then asked: Is this analogous to our own understanding of reality? That is, is the human condition such that our grasp of reality is only partial, catching only the slightest glimpse into the true nature of things, like the prisoners’ world of shadows?