The End of Battlestar Galactica?

Sadly, it’s true. Only one more episode to go. But in this post I don’t intend to indulge in wild speculation about how things’ll turn out in the series finale. No, I want to talk about the end of Battlestar Galactica in a different sense, where “end” is about purpose rather than closure. This notion of end translates the word telos from the Greek, and you can’t complain about being confronted with a bit of Greek when we’re talking about BSG!

What is the aim of the reimagined BSG? What is it shooting for? What is the point of its complicated narrative? Before I give you my proposed answer to this question, let me make it perfectly clear that I don’t mean to suggest BSG is a fable with a single moral. Not at all. This is a messy story. Still, I’d like to argue that there is an aim that often gives shape and direction to the narrative. So what is it?

Consider two moments from the final few episodes of Season 4.5. (Do I need to tell you that spoilers are ahead? It’s obvious, right?) Please forgive me for reconstructing these scenes from memory.

Starbuck demands some time alone with Sam, who’s been shot in the head. She’s talking to him, but thinks he can’t hear her. After reminding him that she once told him she’d put a bullet in his head if she found out he was a Cylon, she tells him that doesn’t matter any more. Whether he’s human or Cylon, she wants him back. Why? Because whatever else he is, he’s her Sam.

Adama asks Starbuck whether Baltar was telling the truth when he revealed to a crowd that she found her own dead body on Earth. She admits it, and goes on to say that she doesn’t know what she is. “I know what you are,” says Adama, “You’re my daughter.”

Think about the distance we've traveled to get to a place where Starbuck and Adama can express this kind of sentiment.

In the original series, the Cylons are metallic robots from outer space who want to kill all humans. They're the enemy, pure and simple, rather like the orcs in Tolkien's LOTR. And the story is us against them, good guys and bad guys. No blurring of the lines.

Through an ongoing series of revelations, the new series disturbs and disrupts this simplistic kind of story--and the moral outlook on which it rests.

Humans created the Cylons. They aren't aliens, but rather our progeny.

Some Cylons look like human beings. They're not metal, but flesh and blood.

Cylons turn out to be religious and political creatures, much like humans are.

Cylons and humans fall in love with one another and there's even a Cylon-human child, Hera.

Some of the characters we thought were humans all along (as did they!) turn out to be Cylons.

Earth, the legendary thirteenth colony of humans, turns out to be a world once populated by Cylons.

Cylons lose the ability to resurrect, and it was always this ability that made them and their way of life so radically different from humanity.

The Galactica itself has become both human and Cylon, both in its crew and in its physical constitution.

I'm fairly certain we could add to this list. But I hope the pattern can be discerned. Although it matters who you are, it doesn't matter what you are. And the lines between us and them are not at all clear. Nobody is just a good guy or just a bad guy. This is one of the many ways that Battlestar Galactica offers us a narrative universe that's more like "the real world" than most of what we see on television, whether it's sf or not.

Philosophical SF Writers: Robert J. Sawyer

The Hugo and Nebula award winning author Robert J. Sawyer has often remarked that the most ambitious science fiction stories are "philosophical fiction." It's fitting, then, that I inaugurate this new category of post by saying just a bit about Sawyer's writing--before I give you something to think about!

Many of Sawyer's books (although I confess I haven't read them all) are driven by a provocative thought experiment, often just the sort of thing that you'd find widely discussed in the philosophical literature. What would it be like if... everyone in the world were to catch a glimpse of the future? Or if we were to discover scientific evidence of a soul leaving the body at death? Or if we were able to return our aging bodies to their youthful condition? Or if we were to encounter an alien who believed in God? If you want to know what Sawyer thinks it'd be like if such things were to happen, read Flashforward, The Terminal Experiment, Rollback, and Calculating God, respectively. You can count on his books to engage your mind not only with plot and character but with ideas. As somebody once said, the true protagonist of a good science fiction story is an idea rather than a person!

I want to think about the central thought experiment in one Sawyer yarn (Mindscan) in a bit more depth. Suppose that you're in your forties and you've just discovered you have a terminal illness that'll kill you sometime in the next few months. Now suppose that you are presented with an extraordinary opportunity: your consciousness--personality, memories, and all--can be copied and downloaded into a synthetic body that will live on indefinitely. The biological you would live out whatever time you have left, too--out of the way and on the moon! What kind of objections might be raised against doing this? Would you do it? Why or why not? Do you think the result of this procedure would be you? Or a mere copy of you? What's the difference? Does it matter? Here's another chance to think about personal identity in a sf context....

UPDATE: You really ought to check out Sawyer's talk about the relevance of sf. It's called "A Galaxy Far, Far Away" My Ass! and it's been given the Youtube treatment in three parts: 1, 2, 3.

UPDATE 2: Rob has kindly linked to my little blog here. Thanks!

No one cares about the man in the box

Christopher Nolan's The Prestige (2006 ) is both a wonderful film and the source of a provocative set of thought experiments about personal identity. I'd like to talk about a few of the movie's philosophical implications of the film and ask some questions, but I should first warn you that spoilers lie ahead.

David Bowie delivers a delightfully quirky performance as the scientist and inventor Nikola Tesla (1856-1943). Surely in both character and actor we have here the nearest thing to science fiction that real life humanity has to offer!

Tesla builds a fantastic machine for the magician Robert Angier (played by Hugh Jackman), who is desperate to duplicate the astonishing feat of his arch-rival Alfred Borden (Christian Bale). Somehow Borden is able to convince an audience that he has transported himself across the stage in a mere instant. Angier (wrongly!) thinks that one of Tesla's machines is responsible, so he wants one for himself.

But the machine he receives doesn't merely duplicate Borden's trick. It duplicates Angier himself! After the Tesla lightning plays over his body, Angier is apparently unaffected--except that a second Angier appears some distance away. Now that's magic!

Suppose we're wondering just what this machine does. Consider the following possibilities:

(1) The machine creates an exact duplicate of Angier some distance away from the orginal Angier, who is otherwise unaffected by the machine and simply remains where he was. Call this case Duplication.

(2) The machine transports Angier some distance away from his original position and then creates an exact duplicate of him in that position. Call this Transport and Duplication.

(3) The machine replaces Angier with two exact duplicates of himself, one in his original position and the other some distance away. Call this one Fission.

I'd argue that the film favors (1), since it jives quite nicely with the earlier version of the trick wherein Angier must hide under the stage while his body double receives the accolades of the audience. And it's also an extension of the film's opening trick with the bird, too, in which the original bird is killed and then replaced by an exactly similar one. But that's not really my point here. Instead, I want to suggest that although these initially appear to be three distinct options, the differences among them become blurred upon reflection.

Angier says, "It took courage to climb into that machine every night... Not knowing if I'd be the Prestige.... Or the man in the box." But what is it that he doesn't know? Each of the two men thinks that he is "the real Angier." Yet they cannot both be Angier, notwithstanding Tesla's earlier remark that "they are all your hat, Mr. Angier." You see, identity is a transitive relation, so if Angier 1 is the original Angier and Angier 2 is the original Angier, then Angier 1 is Angier 2. And obviously that isn't the case, since there are two of them, and one lives and one dies. (In the first use of the machine, the Angier who remains shoots the Angier who travels, while in later uses it's the Angier who remains who is dropped into the box and drowns.)

So, if they cannot both be identical to the Angier who steps into the lightning, how do we answer Angier's question? Are we asking about the causal connection between the original Angier's body and the bodies of Angier 1 and Angier 2? Or are we asking about psychological continuity rather than bodily continuity? What's the difference between a machine that transports people and a machine that destroys and then duplicates people? (This question will be familiar to Star Trek fans....) In the end, does it matter whether the machine works in way (1), (2), or (3)? Is there really a difference?

Note that this problem isn't merely a result of the obvious fact that we don't understand how an incomprehensible fictional machine works. The deeper problem is that we don't understand exactly what it is to be a person and to be the same person when such odd things are going on. But do we understand such matters in ordinary cases? Perhaps not. And there are odd cases in real life as well as in sf.

Who Watches the Philosophers? Philosophy for Free: Video Edition

If I'm going to post about sf you can find for free on the web, it only seems fair occasionally to direct you to some exciting philosophy you can check out, too.

Shelly Kagan is a professor of philosophy at Yale and his entire class on Death can be found at Academic Earth. This is great stuff, and often connects to the kind of philosophical issues we encounter in good sf. It's really worth your time.

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an annual conference that brings in cutting edge speakers (not just philosophers!) on lots of fascinating topics. Hundreds of videos are housed on their site, including Scott McCloud on comics, Aimee Mullins talking about her 12 pair of prosthetic legs, philosopher and transhumanist Nick Bostrom on humanity's problems, Daniel Dennett on consciousness, Ray Kurzweil on how technology will transform us, and much, much more.

How Many Dolls in the Dollhouse?

Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy, Angel, and Firefly (for anyone who’s been living under a rock), has just launched his new show, Dollhouse. Here’s the description from FOX’s website (where you can catch the first two episodes of the show):

ECHO (Dushku) is an "Active," a member of a highly illegal and underground group of individuals who have had their personalities wiped clean so they can be imprinted with any number of new personas. Hired by the wealthy, powerful and connected, the Actives don't just perform their hired roles, they wholly become -- with mind, personality and physiology -- whomever the client wants or needs them to be. Whether imprinted to be a lover, an assassin, a corporate negotiator or a best friend, the Actives know no other life than the specific engagements they are in at that time. Confined between missions to a secret facility known as the "Dollhouse," Echo and the other Actives including SIERRA (Dichen Lachman), are assigned engagements by ADELLE DEWITT (Olivia Williams), one of the Dollhouse leaders. After each scenario, Echo, always under the watchful eye of her handler, BOYD LANGTON (Harry Lennix), returns to the mysterious Dollhouse where her thoughts, feelings, experiences and knowledge are erased by TOPHER BRINK (Fran Kranz), the Dollhouse's genius programmer.

As Adelle says in the second episode, an Active is a tabula rosa (a blank slate), not even really a person, adds Langton. Between missions, that is. But when an Active is on a mission, he or she seems very much a person, specially created to do a job. The catch is that each of these is a very short-lived person.

So, although we only see a handful of human beings serving as Actives in the Dollhouse, it seems to me that the place is "home" to a whole lot of persons who live only a day or so. The Dollhouse seems to pressure desperate people to serve as "hosts" or "body donors" for their organization, effectively giving up five years of their lives, and then they create a series of persons to do their dirty work only to terminate each of those persons when the work is complete. Seems like a pretty nasty outfit to me.

Of course, that assumes that we accept some kind of psychological contintuity account of personal identity. On such accounts, if there's absolutely no psychological connections between the serious hostage negotiator of the first episode and the gutsy outdoorswoman of the second episode, then they're different persons from one another--and from Echo, the in-between, low-functioning person who's mostly interested in massages and swimming.

One of my main questions when I first heard about this show was how Whedon was going to make us care about Echo if there's really no continuity between the various persons who animate this body. Turns out that premise starts to erode as early as the second episode, where we start to hear about "composite events," in which Actives retain memories from previous missions. Seems like the doll is slowly going to become a real girl....

Robots Will Take Over the World!

Many sf stories show us a future in which robots and other sorts of intelligent machines show their true colors--and their colors are evil! The HAL 9000 is classic, of course. And think of The Terminator, or The Matrix, or the original 1970's version of Battlestar Galactica. Of course, as these narratives unfold further, matters get more complicated. Arnold is a good guy in T2 and T3. Not all the sentient programs in the Matrix are bad. And the Cylons in the new BSG? Well, that's a really complicated story, isn't it?

Still, the idea of evil killer robots has a lasting appeal, so it's no surprise that some people have lots of fun playing with this idea. What's your favorite evil robot story?

Stickmen vs. Dinosaurs

Check out chaospet and Dinosaur Comics. Each site houses a long-running web comic that's often funny or philosophical or sf-ish or all three. As an example, here's each site's treatment of egoism...