Personhood in Science Fiction: Religious and Philosophical Considerations

ISBN-13: 9783030300616 / Angielski / Twarda / 2019 / 245 str.

Juli L. Gittinger

Spis treści

Introduction                                                                                                               

·         Defining “science fiction”

·         Organization and method

·         Brain versus mind, thinking versus understanding

·         Consciousness

·         Soul

·         Chapter previews

 

Chapter 1        Defining personhood in a posthuman world                         

·         An introduction to Westworld

·         Personhood as social

·         Outward personhood

·         Inward personhood: religious and spiritual evolutions

 

Chapter 2        Dehumanization of the “non-human” being                         

·         Dehumanizing of the Other

·         Cylons, replicants, and clones

·         Empathy as uniquely human

·         Does a “person” require a “soul”?

·         Dehumanization as legitimation for extinction: the Borg

 

Chapter 3        Embodied and non-bodied selves                                                                             

·         The bicameral mind

·         Minds in bodies, ghosts in shells

·         Bodies without souls 

·         Mind without body

·         Computer brain, human brain

 

Chapter 4        Ethics of AI                                                                                       

·         Human-Robot relations

·         In whose image?

·         Ethics of creation

·         Purpose of AI

·         Asimov’s “Reason”

·         AI without ethics

 

Chapter 5        Artificial consciousness and synthetic souls                          

·         The android soul

·         Developing the soul

·         Memories and emotion

·         Souls, androids, and cyborgs

·         Redux: Does a “person” require a “soul”?

 

Chapter 6        The alien-other: monsters, mutants, and othered bodies                   

·         The racialized alien-other

·         Aliens and immigrants

·         Threats of extinction

·         Mutation

·         Eugenics as solution to “defective” humanity

·         The disabled Other

 

Chapter 7        Free Will?                                                       

·         Personhood, free will, and moral responsibility

·         Free Will: “Time to write my own fucking story”

·         Predestination: “God has a plan.”

·         Determinism: “Does all of this have to happen again?”

·         The player piano

O autorze

Juli L. Gittinger is a Lecturer of South Asian religions and Program Coordinator for Religion at Georgia College, USA.  Her areas of personal research interest include Hindu nationalism, religion in media, and religion/pop culture. 

Blurb

“In Personhood in Science Fiction, Juli L. Gittinger does more than merely survey or even analyse the treatment of persons human, alien, and android across some of the most popular sci-fi franchises of recent years. She engages with one of the most puzzling and ethically challenging questions there is, in conversation with everyone from philosophers to neuroscientists to theologians—and yes, of course, our most beloved science fiction authors. Although engaging with highly technical matters, Gittinger does so in a way that is impressively accessible. The result is a book that is of great significance for all the aforementioned fields and many others, and deserves to be read and discussed widely. Juli L. Gittinger skilfully leads readers on a quest for the souls of androids and aliens, and in the process helps us discover and explore our own.”
–James F. McGrath, Professor of Religion, Butler University, USA 

This book addresses the topic of personhood—who is a “person” or “human,” and what rights or dignities does that include—as it has been addressed through the lens of science fiction. Chapters include discussions of consciousness and the soul, artificial intelligence, dehumanization and othering, and free will. Classic and modern sci-fi texts are engaged, as well as film and television. This book argues that science fiction allows us to examine the profound question of personhood through its speculative and imaginative nature, highlighting issues that are already visible in our present world.