The same can be said of intelligent machines, but when we move from the fictional world to reality, this takes a little more imagination on the part of technophobes. For a machine to be the object of blame or to hold it morally responsible, scholars like prominent “roboethicist” Rob Sparrow think that it’s necessary to punish it in some way. For many people, this is completely implausible. Personally, I feel that if the mad scientists create robots that are sufficiently “intelligent” to be appropriately described as being fully autonomous, then there’s little reason why we shouldn’t hold robots responsible. While it is currently hard to think how a machine would suffer, such an intelligent machine would presumably have the sort of electrical brain activity and cognitive states that would make it possible for the machine to be punished somehow, possibly by thwarting whatever it is that machines desire.
I Didn’t Do It
Drawing from Frankenstein’s rich text, we can see that attributing blame for the creation of monsters and monstrous machines is very complicated. We can’t really hold Frankenstein and his contemporaries or even just those that educate and fund them solely responsible. The impossibility of punishing present-day killer robots also means that unlike the more intelligent monsters, we can’t hold them solely responsible either. It sounds as if we can blame everyone and no one? That’s exactly the important point for us today: there is a risk that with so many blameworthy persons, the diffusion of responsibility might encourage further unethical behavior. This occurs when those in the chain of responsibility assume that someone else is going to intervene and so each feels less responsible and refrains from doing anything or does less than they otherwise would to halt the undesirable consequences of their actions and those of others. They may assume that others are more qualified to help and that their intervention is unneeded. It opens up the “I didn’t do it” or “I didn’t need to do it” response. If no one person has sole responsibility for the consequences of monsters, whether in the form of re-animated corpses or killer robots, we might see more of them and the harms that follow.
When you think about it, though, you might realize that responsibility doesn’t diffuse just because many people are responsible. If you and I decide to go murder Victor Frankenstein to get even with him for the harm he has done, we don’t get a half-life sentence each just because there were two of us. If a whole bunch of people decide to do something wrong, they are all responsible. So although we might feel that being part of an angry mob makes us less blameworthy, it doesn’t; it just makes us feel more difficult to identify and blame.
So who is responsible for the violence of Victor’s creation . . . ? Everyone who played a part in it! And when it comes to the killer creations we are making today, all of us are responsible, even if only responsible for doing nothing to try to stop it. . . .
IV
Dr. Frankenstein’s Monster Identification Field Guide
13
Sure It’s Aliiiive, but Does It Have a Sooooul?
KEITH HESS
THE MONSTER: God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance.
—Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
THE MONSTER: You gave me these emotions, but you didn’t tell me how to use them. Now two people are dead because of us. Why?
VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN: There was something at work in my soul which I do not understand.
THE MONSTER: And what of my soul? Do I have one? Or was that a part you left out?
—Frankenstein, 1994
God made us in his image. And Dr. Frankenstein made the monster in ours. Consider how his creation is like us. He has a human form. He gets tired, hungry, and thirsty. He feels pain and pleasure. He’s rational and uses language. He’s filled with love and rage, kindness and cruelty. He experiences sorrow, remorse, and despair. Yet he’s a hodgepodge of physical parts. Dr. Frankenstein pieced him together from various cadavers and bestowed life on his lifeless body. It’s curious that this hunk of matter can think, feel, believe, and desire.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein makes me wonder. I find myself asking questions like, “Is the monster human? Is he conscious or is he no more than an elaborate, biological machine? If he is conscious, how could we know? Does he count as a person?”
But I’ll focus on a different question. Let’s suppose that Dr. Frankenstein succeeded in creating (recreating? reviving?) a human being. So the monster is human. And, he was pieced together from physical stuff. Does that mean that the monster is solely and completely physical or is there something non-physical—immaterial—about him, like a soul?
Since I assume that the monster is a human being, I’ll also assume that he has a human nature or makeup just like us. So, on this assumption, what goes for our nature goes for the monster’s nature and vice versa. If the monster is made up solely of physical bits and pieces, then, since he’s a human just like us, we are made up solely of physical bits and pieces. Or if it turns out that there’s something nonphysical about us, the same goes for the monster.
The Soulless Monster
THE MONSTER: What kind of people is it in which I am comprised? Good people? Bad people?
VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN: Materials. Nothing more.
—Frankenstein, 1994
Physicalism is one philosophical theory that gives us an account of our makeup. According to physicalism, humans are just complex material objects with no immaterial parts or aspects. We (and the monster) are only made out of the same bits and pieces that stones, water, mortuaries, dirt, baseballs, severed limbs, houses, and trees are made of. It’s just that our bits and pieces are arranged in such a way that they enable consciousness (which is itself physical).
Physicalism comes in different sorts. On one version, everything that exists is physical, not just humans. Nothing that exists is nonphysical, which rules out the existence of God, angels, and demons (assuming they’re all nonphysical). Most importantly, it means that souls and nonphysical minds are the stuff of fiction. Modern-day physicalists include Jaegwon Kim and Patricia Churchland.
But you don’t need to be an atheist to think that humans are solely physical. Some hold to physicalism about human beings while also holding that some nonphysical things, like God, exist. Modern-day philosophers Peter van Inwagen and Nancey Murphy are physicalists of this sort. Keep in mind that both sorts of physicalists think that there is nothing nonphysical about human beings.
Not all physicalists deny that we have minds. Some do, like Patricia Churchland, who thinks that our notions like beliefs and desires aren’t about anything real. Instead of beliefs and desires, there are just brain states. Others, though, think we do have things like beliefs and desires, but they are nothing more than states of the brain. Regardless of how different physicalists deal with the mind, they’re united in this: a complete account of the stuff we’re made of won’t include anything non-physical, like a soul or an immaterial mind.
So for physicalists, Frankenstein’s monster is made up of nothing more than the parts that the doctor used to build him. He’s not made of anything nonphysical. For some physicalists, the monster has a mind (which is nothing more than states of the brain). But for others, the monster has no beliefs, desires, or emotions, but simply brain states.
The Ghost in the Monster
Dualism, is an idea opposing physicalism, and it comes in many varieties—but all dualists agree that human beings are more than just physical creatures. That is, they think that, while humans have a physical component, there is something nonphysical about them. Property dualists say that humans are physical, but have mental properties (I’ll say more about these properties later). David Chalmers is a well-known property dualist. People who take this view would say, on the assumption that the monster is a human being, that he has some properties that aren’t physical.
Substance dualists think that humans are made up of both body and soul. However, different substance dualists say different
things about our relation to our bodies and souls. Some say that we are souls and have (or interact with our) bodies. Others say we are made up of both bodies and souls. On the second view, we ourselves are not souls, but we have them as parts. Plato (427–347 B.C.E.) and René Descartes (1596–1650) were substance dualists. Contemporary substance dualists include Richard Swinburne and Alvin Plantinga. Regarding the monster, substance dualists would say either that he has or is a soul.
Monster Vision
So we have a fundamental disagreement between the physicalists and the dualists. Physicalists think that humans (and the monster) are made up of nothing more than physical parts and properties, while dualists say that there is something non-physical about us (and the monster). Who’s right? Are there any reasons to favor one view over the other?
Actually, there are. The first thing to recognize is that there are aspects of us—of our minds—that are nonphysical. Consider mental properties like being in pain. When the monster is in anguish over his hideous appearance, he is experiencing a sort of pain, and so, has the property being in pain. Other mental properties the monster might have at some point include having an itch, seeing red, desiring to get even with Dr. Frankenstein, believing that killing Elizabeth would be a good way to get even, having a feeling of remorse over the damage he causes the doctor. These are all non-physical mental events.
Different physicalists say different things about what mental properties are. Some deny that there are such things, some say that they’re just physical properties, some try to account for them in terms of external behavior, but it remains very difficult to account for the experience of colors, for example, as physical.
What’s hard (or possibly impossible) for the physicalist to explain is the subjective nature of these experiences. How can the experience of red be something physical? The smartest guys with the best equipment can examine your brain until they’re senile. But they’ll never find your experience of red. They might find the part of the brain that’s active whenever you see red, but that’s not the same as your experience.
Consider this example: Suppose that the eyes Dr. Frankenstein used for his monster lacked all the cone cells needed to detect color.1 So when the monster came to life, he could only see black and white. Imagine further, that while on Captain Walton’s ship (at the end of Shelley’s novel) the monster decides not to kill himself on a funeral pyre, but to do something worthwhile with his life. So he becomes a color-vision scientist. He dedicates himself to this science so much that he reaches the point of knowing all the physical facts there are to know about color vision. This includes knowledge of what happens when light strikes the eye, of the process of a signal being sent to the brain, of what specific portion of the brain is activated when a person has an experience of color, etc. At some point in his career, doctors realize that the monster is colorblind. So they take out his old eyes and give him eyes that can see color. The monster is amazed. He now has the experience of seeing reds, greens, and blues for the first time. He comes to know something new: the subjective experience, the “what it is like,” of color vision!
The point of this imagined scenario is this: before the transplant the monster knew and understood all of the physical causes of color experience, but he still did not know what it was actually like to experience color. So the facts that he learned after his transplant were nonphysical. What exactly were they? They were psychological facts: facts about his experience, about what it is like to see colors. If this imagined scenario is right, then physicalism is false: there are aspects of human experience—mental properties—that are not physical.
Having mental properties does not necessarily mean we have a soul. It merely means that there’s more to us than just the physical—but the soul idea is one that means our essential self can continue on without the body at all! Perhaps the property dualists are right that we’re physical objects that have mental properties. To conclude that we have a soul, we would need a further argument.
Monster Makeover
Philosopher Alvin Plantinga has argued for the conclusion that we’re not our bodies or our brains or even a part of our brains, but something nonphysical.2 (Just to be clear, he does think that we have physical bodies!) In presenting his argument, Plantinga makes certain assumptions. First, he thinks that we actually exist. Believe it or not, some philosophers think that you and I and even they themselves do not exist (then who’s giving their arguments and writing their articles?).
He also thinks that we are objects, rather than events (like baseball games) or properties (like the redness of an apple) or something else. Finally, though we cease to exist at some point, we are things that persist through time. There is a single subject of my experiences—me!—at every point in my existence, from my childhood to my adult self. As for the monster, the very monster that the doctor creates is the very monster who later hunts the doctor down (so it seems), even though the monster went through many changes during that time.
Here goes the argument: I can survive the destruction and replacement of my body and my brain, so I am not my body or brain or part of my brain. (Think of it. If you can exist when your original body does not, are you your original body? Can something exist separately from itself?) But if physicalism is true, what would we be except for our bodies or our brains or some part of our brains? If we’re not any of these things, we must not be physical.
Is there a reason to think humans can exist when their bodies don’t? Yes. Imagine that Frankenstein’s monster has gotten some news press over his advances in color vision and that he becomes a sort of cultural phenomenon. Time runs an article on him (I guess he’s lived quite a while since the good doctor made him). He’s interviewed by Oprah. He writes a bestseller on color vision. He gives a TED talk.
Naturally, he loves the attention, but realizes that his hideous figure isn’t doing much for his public image. This really hits home for him when TMZ televises a picture of him shirtless in Malibu. So he determines that he’ll replace his aging monster body for a younger, Ryan-Gosling-esque one. (Maybe with his new body there’s a starring role in a Nicholas-Sparks-inspired movie in his future!)
So the monster creates a machine that can rapidly destroy old body parts and replace them with new ones. He sets the machine to replace all of his body parts, one by one, within a second. He gets in the machine and remains fully conscious, perhaps even stewing in anger over the leaked beach photo during the entire process. He survives the whole ordeal, but his body doesn’t—piece by piece every part was replaced with a new one!
The same goes for the replacement of his brain. Imagine that the brain Dr. Frankenstein gave our monster was from an elderly person. The monster now discovers that his once top-notch brain is beginning to break down. So he decides to replace it with a new one. He sets up the machine and gets in. First, the machine transfers all of the information in his left hemisphere (Lefty) to the right hemisphere (Righty) and causes Lefty to go dormant. Then it destroys and replaces Lefty. Next the machine transfers all of the information from Righty to the new Lefty and destroys and replaces Righty. All the while, the monster crafts a not-so-friendly letter to TMZ.
All of this seems possible. Science might even advance to the point that such a machine is feasible. Or if it can’t, the replacement process is something that God (supposing he exists) could carry out.
The point is this: if this scenario is even possible, then the monster is not the same thing as his body or (part of) his brain—because all of his body has been destroyed but he still exists! This is because a thing can’t possibly exist apart from itself, but the monster can exist apart from his body and his brain. And we aren’t our bodies or (part of) our brains either since we could just as easily imagine ourselves in this scenario (except I’m too philanthropic to subject the good citizens of Malibu to my bare chest). But then what are we? If we’re not our bodies or (part of) our brains, it seems we’re something nonphysical. Perhaps we’re that thing that philosophers and theologian
s call the soul.
This argument isn’t going to impress those who think that we don’t continue through time or that we don’t exist. Neither will it impress those who think we are properties rather than objects. But the physicalists or the property dualists who think that we’re material objects who persist through time will have to respond to this argument. Maybe they’ll say that we can’t survive the replacement of our bodies or our brains. If this is right, then the monster didn’t survive the destruction of his body and brain. Instead, something new came into existence that was physically just like him and had his memories. But if Plantinga’s argument is right, then we ourselves are not physical beings, though we have physical bodies.
What about if he’s wrong? Well, . . . parts of our bodies, our cells, are dying and being replaced all the time. Similarly, the atoms in our bodies (and brains) are constantly being shifted around, breaking down, and being exchanged for different ones! So, if Plantinga is wrong and a new monster is created when his body is replaced, then we have to say the same thing about human beings! It looks like we are in it together! If we say, “Nope, when my cells and atoms (my body) are replaced, I still continue to exist” (evidencing the likelihood of my soul) then it seems we have to say the same about the monster.
The Disembodied Monster
Here’s another reason to think we’re not physical. There is good evidence to suppose that we can exist disembodied, or, without any body at all. That might seem weird (as if famous monster scientists and body replacements weren’t weird enough). It’s even weirder to think of the monster existing without his body, pieced together as he was from lifeless body parts. But weird or not, we should examine the evidence for what it’s worth. Hold on to your hats (and your bodies), because here we go.
In his book, Evidence of the Afterlife, Dr. Jeffrey Long summarizes his examination of reports of over 1,300 near-death experiences from all over the world and from people of all ages.3 He found that they share many common features. I’ll focus on one of those features: most near-death experiencers have an out-of-body experience in which they feel themselves leaving their bodies and often even see their bodies from an external point of view.
Frankenstein and Philosophy Page 15
