8/12/2019 Philosophy From the Twilight Zone
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Thursday, January 01, 2009Philosophy From the Twilight Zone:
"The Lonely"
Alicia and corry Rod Serling's Twilight Zone was an outstanding
TV serieshat ran from 1959-1964. The episode "The Lonely" aired in
November, 1959. Iave seen it several times, thanks to the
semi-annual Sci Fi channel TZarathons. There is one in progress as
I write. One can extract quite a bit ofhilosophical juice from "The
Lonely" as from most of the other TZ episodes.'ll begin with a
synopsis.
Synopsis.James A. Corry is serving a 50 year term of solitary
confinementn an asteroid nine million miles from earth. Supplies
are flown in every threeonths. Captain Allenby, unlike the other
two of the supply ship's crewembers, feels pity for Corry, and on
one of his supply runs brings him aemale robot named 'Alicia' to
alleviate his terrible loneliness. The robot iso all outer
appearances a human female. At first, Corry rejects her as a
mereobot, a machine, and thus "a lie." He feels he is being mocked.
"Why didn'they build you to look like a machine?" But gradually
Corry comes to ascribeersonhood to Alicia. His loneliness vanishes.
They play chess with a set heas constructed out of nuts and bolts.
She takes delight in a Knight move, andorry shares her delight.
They beam at each other.
But then one day the supply ship returns with news that Corry's
sentence
as been commuted as part of a general abolition of punishment by
banishment tosteroids. Allenby informs Corry that there is room on
the ship only for himnd 15 lbs of his personal effects. Alicia must
be left behind. Corry is deeplyistressed. "I'm not lonely any more.
She's a woman!" Allenby replies, "She's aobot!" Finally, after some
arguing back and forth, Allenby draws his sidearmnd shoots Alicia
in the face revealing her electronic innards. Corry'sllusion of
Alicia's personhood if it is an illusion dissipates andegretfully
he boards the ship. The thirty minute episode ends with
Serling'sowerful closing narration:
On a microscopic piece of sand that floats through space is a
fragmentf a man's life. Left to rust is the place he lived in and
the machines he
sed. Without use, they will disintegrate from the wind and the
sand and theears that act upon them; all of Mr. Corry's machines
including the one maden his image, kept alive by love, but now
obsolete in the Twilight Zone.
Philosophical Analysis. The episode raises a number of
philosophicaluestions. Here are some of them.
Q1: Does personhood depend on what something is made of? Corry
is awarehat Alicia, 'out of the box,' is a robot, a human artifact,
and this knowledgenclines him to regard her at first as incapable
of instantiating thosettributes we associate with personhood:
sentience, the ability to feel and
xpress emotions, the ability to reason, and others. His thought
is: She can'te a person because she is not made of flesh and blood.
But why shouldersonhood require any particular material
constitution? Why couldn'tersonhood be realized in different sorts
of stuff? Not just any kind oftuff, of course., but sufficiently
well-rorganized stuff. (You can't make aalve-lifter out of sawdust
and spit, or a Phoenix monument out of ice, but thealve-lifter
function is realizable in a variety of different materials withhe
right sorts of properties.) In human beings such as Corry
personhood isealized in a biologically human material substratum.
But what is to stopersonhood from being reslized in some other sort
of substratum, perhaps even aonliving substratum? Is being
biologically alive a necessary condition ofersonhood? (If I am not
mistaken, John Searle would answer in the
ffirmative.)
When Allenby shoots Alicia in the head, revealing the electronic
gadgetrynside, Corry's sense that Alicia is or was a person
dissipates. But if someonead blown open a whole in Corry's skull,
revealing brain matter, no one wouldake that as proof that Corry
was not a person. Why is only one kind ofaterial constitution
capable of supporting consciousness, self-consciousness,
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nd the rest of the attributes of personhood? Is personhood
perhaps aunctional notion?
Q2: If a person can be built, does this show that a person is
purelyaterial, or does the mind-body problem exist in this case as
well? Supposehat by the assembly of the right kind of material
parts, one constructs a non-iologically-human but nonetheless
full-fledged person. I don't mean whathilosophers call a zombie,
but a full-fledged person such as Alicia isrorytrayed as being in
the TZ episode we are discussing. Thus the suppositions that this
robotic person does in reality feel sensations and
experiencemotions. (Don't worry about how we would know this to be
the case. After all,ow do I know that my wife in reality feels
sensations and experiencesmotions? Not that doubt it for a
second.)
The robotic person has a mind and a body. How then does the mere
fact thathe robotic person was constructed from material parts,
indeed biologicallynanimate material parts, show that she is purely
material? Dualism, anderhaps even substance dualism, seems
compatible with being constructed fromaterial parts. Or does a
person's having a material origin show that dualisms false?
Q3. Is mentality or personhood a matter of ascription? A matter
of the
aking up of Dennett's "intentional stance?" As Corry interacts
with Alicia, heradually comes to accept her as a person and a
friend. After pushing her awayn one scene, he interprets her verbal
report, "You hurt me," and her tears asvidence of personhood. Could
it be maintained that personhood is not a matterf some 'inner'
reality, but a matter of ascription from the point of view ofne who
takes up the "intentional stance" with respect to an object
ofnterpretation? Could one say that Alicia is a person, but that
her personhoods not intrinsic but ascribed from without? But then
you would have to say theame thing about Corry. Is it coherent to
think of Alicia and Corry alone onheir asteroid ascribing
personhood to each other, thereby constituting eachther as persons?
For more on Dennett's views and my critique of them, see myennett
category on the old blog.
Q4. Is personhood and the uniqueness essential to personhood
engendered byove? Alicia was made in man's image, and "kept alive
by love" as Serlingntones in his closing comment. Alicia's value to
Corry has something to doith his perception of her as unique, as a
Thou to his I, as an irreplaceablendividual, and not merely as an
interchangeable instance of properties.ersonhood seems to include
such notions as irreducible individuality, ipseity,nteriority.
These are not empirical attributes. How are they given?
Howonstituted? Are they engendered by love? Josiah Royce had
interesting thingso say on this topic. Do we first become persons
in a loving I-Thou relation?
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