The God from the Machine: Searching for the Ultimate Secret of Life

                For all of humankind’s progress in developing a scientific understanding of life, our efforts seem surprisingly limited when we consider the questions we haven’t yet answered.  Even concerning humans ourselves, we still have not cracked the code of the most integral aspect of who we are – our own conscious experiences.  We may have an excellent physiological understanding of how our bodies work, and even a growing understanding of how our brains work to allow us to function as intelligent beings, but the mechanism that allows us to truly experience and feel the world around us, as opposed to being like, say, a machine that imitates true awareness and emotions while really being nothing more than an inanimate object, is still a mystery.  The film Ex Machina tackles this mystery head on by seeking to answer how a conscious being might be identified from a machine imitating one.  If this is ultimately possible, then it would be the first step in identifying where consciousness arises from.  However, as the film suggests, no one test can give a clear cut answer. 

            Ex Machina presents itself as a modern Frankenstein tale.  A brilliant and complex scientist isolates himself from society and focuses on the singular task of creating a living being from scratch.  But, unlike in Frankenstein, the scientist, Nathan, has created an artificial intelligence and housed it in the body of a mechanical woman, Ava.  Also, unlike Frankenstein, a novel which raises questions about the consequences of creating intelligent life (Shelley), the film asks if creating intelligent life is even possible in the first place.  Nathan selects an employee from his company, Caleb, to come to his remote Alaskan compound to help him evaluate if Ava truly has consciousness or just an imitation of it.  He tells Caleb that he will be using the Turing Test with her, a theoretical test in which artificial intelligence is successfully achieved if a person observing its speech cannot tell that it is really a machine. Caleb will take the test a step farther, by seeing if he can determine her to be not only intelligent, but also conscious (Ex Machina).   

            This premise sets up for an intricate exploration of different ways that one might be able to determine whether something has consciousness or not.  One of the most intriguing things about Ava is thatNathan designs her brain using “wetware”.  Essentially, instead of her control center being made from wires and computer chips, it is composed of a sort of gel that imitates our more fluid and complex brains.  If we assume that our consciousness arises somehow from the matter in our brains, then it would seem that something with a similar structure may be able to produce it as well for an artificial intelligence.  Also, Ava does pass Nathan’s test, in a way.  She is so convincing to Caleb that he agrees to help her escape from the compound before Nathan shuts her down.  At this point Nathan reveals that his real test all along was to see if Ava could do just that, to use Caleb to find a way to escape.  This suggests consciousness in a several ways.  First, she exhibits strong motivation to preserve her wellbeing.  Second, her escape requires complex problem solving skills.  And third, Caleb truly believes that she’s a conscious being, which is essentially a passing of the Turing Test.  However, the twist at the end is that not only does she kill Nathan once she’s given the opportunity to escape, but she also leaves Caleb locked in a room in the compound where he seemingly could be trapped until he dies (Ex Machina).  This calls into question whether Ava has any sense of morals or real understanding of the suffering of others, things that should come natural if she is conscious.

            Ultimately, the film leaves the question of whether Ava has consciousness up for speculation.  You can watch the movie over and over, analyzing each of her actions and minutest behaviors, but there’s not meant to be a satisfactory answer.  This in part is good screenwriting, as it leaves much for thought and discussion, but it also makes the suggestion that determining consciousness is not as simple any single test.  This is where the film succeeds philosophically, because there is no possible way we can know if something has consciousness, at least with our current scientific understanding.  In fact, even if Ava had seemed completely human-like, it would still be impossible to determine if it wasn’t just her synthetic brain perfectly adopting and imitating the characteristics of a conscious human.  This is because we don’t know the physical basis for where consciousness stems from.  We assume that it is produced somehow by the connections in our brain, but still when we observe the brain, it appears no more than a physical lump of neurons, whereas our consciousnesses we know only as things that seem to transcend physical explanation, much like a “soul”.  Until we bridge this gap, which we are nowhere near doing, consciousness will be no more than an elusive concept and we cannot know if any artificial intelligence truly has it. 

            Many of the secrets of life are still completely unknown to humans, and we will likely spend all of our existence figuring them out.  In fact, the one most integral to who we are as living beings is also one of the most mysterious.  The term “deus ex machina” is latin for “god from the machine” and is commonly used to describe a plot device in which a sudden, unexpected event is used to conveniently resolve a complex situation.  The film Ex Machina suggests that there is no dues-ex-machina-like convenient solution to the problem of consciousness. Instead it implies that it is a highly complex conundrum which cannot currently be resolved with any single test.  Until we can develop a physical understanding of consciousness it will seem to us no more than a god-like entity arising from the machines of our brains.                                                       

Works Cited

Ex Machina. Dir. Alex Garland. Universal Studios, 2015. DVD.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. London: Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, and Jones, 1818. The Project Gutenberg. Web. 2015. 

Bridging the Gap: Reflections on PHIL 307i

            When deciding what courses to take for this past semester, my choice to take “PHIL 307i: Philosophy of Science, Nature, and Technology” was a no-brainer.  For one thing, it would satisfy both a core curriculum requirement for humanities and a requirement for my environmental studies minor.  But, beyond that, it was a course that seemed would be uniquely rewarding for my educational experience.  Part of the reason I decided to go into the field of science, majoring in biological sciences and specializing in ecology, was to help out with the goal of better understanding the world around us.  To me, science and philosophy are both essential pillars of this task.  The only difference is that one uses empirical evidence to make predictions about the nature of things in the world, while the other works where empirical evidence cannot be used to fully solve a problem.  For this reason, though I’m a science major, my goal has been to get an effective background in philosophy as well.  This course in particular not only offered an opportunity to learn about some particular areas of philosophy, but also focused its attention on philosophy related to the disciplines that will directly be in my line of work, science and the study of nature.  My thought was that this course would help bridge the gap for me between science and philosophy by providing a philosophical perspective on science, and I’m happy to say that it did this for the most part, although not always in the ways I would have expected.                  

            The structure of the course, although different from any I had taken before, was particularly helpful in facilitating my learning process.  This structure primarily involved lectures, class discussions, and regular blog entries exploring the themes discussed in class.  The blog entries I found more enjoyable that the formal papers I’m used to writing for most classes like this, and these allowed me to regularly reflect on the topics we had been learning about, without the work being too rigorous.  There was also a fair amount of reading that was assigned, which was the most challenging part of the course for me, as it was difficult to find time to both keep up with the reading and work on the next blog entry.  However, I was generally still able to pick out the most important parts of the readings for use in my blog entries, so this was not a huge issue.     

            The content of the course was also not quite what I expected.  A philosophy of science class, I assumed, would focus on scientific method and theory, ethics of scientific practices, and other things specifically related to science.  Although these things were part of the content presented, the course seemed instead to use science and technology as devices to aid in a larger exploration of the nature of reality and life.  I particularly enjoyed the exploration of the nature of change and creation in the universe that was discussed throughout the course.  The debate over the degree to which the universe can experience real change was an issue I had not really thought of directly before.  Reading about Parmenides’ position that “being is one” and Spinoza’s view on God or Nature, both of which outline a deterministic universe where the only things that can exist are what already exists in some form within the singular entity of the universe (Mcdermott 62; Nadler), helped build my own view on the issue.  I also greatly enjoyed our study of two excellent works of fiction, the novel Frankenstein and the film Ex Machina.  These both explored the repercussions of humans creating life, as well as the question of what it even means for something to be “alive” (Ex Machina; Shelley).  The only topic I found a bit less engaging was our study of magic and occult philosophy.  The philosophers discussed here, including Giordano Bruno, Alistair Crowley, and Randal Auxier, offered an insightful perspective on reality and life, however this topic deviated a little too much from the scientific side of things for me, and seemed to take up much of the middle portion of the semester.  Despite this and the other reasons why the content of the course wasn’t quite what I expected, the course still proved to be very insightful to me.  Rather than looking specifically at the nature of science, it was enlightening in that it helped build a framework for a philosophical perspective on the things I will actually be studying in my career: life and the world around us.  This, as I said, is just as important as the scientific perspective. 

            Overall, PHIL 307i was a very good course and a positive experience.  Though I would have liked to spend more time studying the philosophical works discussed in class in more depth, and this certainly would have helped my grade, I also think I performed well in the course.  Most importantly though, the course helped form for me what I was initially hoping for, a bridge between the worlds of science and philosophy, which will give me an important perspective going forward as I begin my career as a biologist.                               

Works Cited

Ex Machina. Dir. Alex Garland. Universal Studios, 2015. DVD.

McDermott, John J. A Cultural Introduction to Philosophy. New York: Knopf, 1985. Print.

Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster. Web. 6 Nov. 2015.

Nadler, Steven. "Baruch Spinoza." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. N.p., 2013. Web. Nov.-Dec. 2015.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. London: Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, and Jones, 1818. The Project Gutenberg. Web. 2015.

            

The Paradox of Creation

            In the beginning there were myths and stories, of how the world was molded by some all-powerful beings.  Out of these myths came formal religions that taught strict interpretations of how it all began.  Finally, as the world entered into the age of science and rational thought, highly technical and evidence-based theories predicted how the universe might have began from a single point.  Though the answers we’ve come up with may vary greatly, what’s for certain is that humans have always felt the need to answer this particular existential question: How did everything begin?  It’s so easy to imagine the story of the universe like a book or a movie.  There has to be a particular beginning, as well as an underlying purpose or narrative.  But real answers may require us to think beyond our normal conceptions of what a story can be to figure out the story of the universe.     

            Let’s consider. Science has been extremely valuable in explaining the laws of nature and our place in the universe.  It’s based on rational thought and empirical evidence, so it’s typically the ideal way of going about figuring out why things are the way they are.  The conventional and mostly undisputed belief among scientists these days is that the universe as we know it began with a sudden expansion known as the big bang.  This makes sense because the universe has been observed to be expanding, so logically at some time this began from a single point.  But this doesn’t really answer the question.  If the universe began with an expansion that produced all matter, energy, space, and time, then what existed before this event that allowed it to take place?  If there existed complete nothingness, then this creates a paradox, because how can something be produced from absolutely nothing?  And if there was some existing framework that allowed the big bang to take place, then the universe didn’t really begin with the big bang.  In other words, science, at least for now, is limited in understanding how the universe began.      

            To get closer to the answer we seek, we must turn to the realm of philosophy, which, though less reliant on empirical evidence, still depends on rationality and logic.  One philosopher that offers an important perspective on the matter is 17^th century thinker Baruch Spinoza.  Spinoza offered a revolutionary view of what to him was God.  He proposed that God was not so much a human-like being, but rather the totality of everything in existence.  Everything that exists exists within God, and, importantly, nothing can exist outside of God (because how could something exist that’s not already included in “everything in existence”?).  If we simply think of Spinoza’s God as the idea of “nature”, then this seems like an obvious observation.  But what this idea also implies is that what exists in nature, will always be what exists in nature; nothing new can come in and nothing can leave (Nadler).  Much like Greek philosopher Parmenides’ doctrine the “being is one” (Mcdermott 62), the universe is a set structure with no real change, other than the movement of things within it.  This also, of course, leads to the conclusion that the universe is completely deterministic, as everything is already set out in a way that, by the laws of cause and effect, will continue without propensity for new possibilities to arise.  Our concept of “free will” is then simply an illusion (Nadler).  To me, this all seems perfectly logical.

            So now we can apply these rules to some beginning of the universe scenarios.  Whether it was a big bang or the hand of God or anything else of that nature that “created” the universe as we know it is in fact irrelevant.  First, if we consider the idea that absolutely nothing existed before this creation event, then this could not occur, because this would require some real change – from nothing to something.  Second, perhaps time did not exist before the creation event, and the event simply set time in motion.  This again would not make sense, because the universe could not go from a completely static state to one where movement occurs within it – that again would be a real change.  So we’re left with one clear option: that our universe that exists now has always existed in the same way, and there was no beginning.  This isn’t to say that the big bang didn’t occur, as it seems to have in all rationality, but before it there must have been a sort of structure already in place that could cause it.  And, even if time didn’t exist at that point in the same sense that it does now, the universe had to be non-static in some way, in which one thing could lead to another.  The other option, as some of modern physics seems to suggest, is that “time” itself is an illusion, functioning more like another dimension of space, and the universe is completely static, in which case a beginning of the universe would not make any sense at all. 

            These conclusions may not be exactly what Spinoza would have predicted, however his principles do lend to my personal deduction that the universe could not have had a true beginning.  But who am I to make this grand proposition? Even as I sit here explaining this theory, the major paradox of why the universe even exists at all, rather than not existing, seems to make just as little sense as a universe beginning from nothing.  Ultimately, I’m limited by my all too simplistic human brain, and though I may use logic and rationality to predict what truths seem most likely, I know I can never fully understand the mysteries that have intrigued people for thousands of years.                          

                

Works Cited

McDermott, John J. A Cultural Introduction to Philosophy. New York: Knopf, 1985. Print.

Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster. Web. 6 Nov. 2015.

Nadler, Steven. "Baruch Spinoza." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. N.p., 2013. Web. Nov.-Dec. 2015.