It may sound like something from a
second rate horror movie, but a zombie apocalypse is all too
possible. But the zombies would be made of metal and plastic.
Many horror movie fans (and many video
game fan) are familiar with the zombies depicted in movies like Night
of the Living Dead: soulless, silent beings of decaying flesh who
stalk around, scaring the daylights out of people. But philosophers
speak of another type of zombie: what they call a philosophical zombie. The term philosophical zombie is used to mean a being who
resembles a human but who does not really experience pain or
pleasure, and does not have any real consciousness or inner self or
true emotions. A philosophical zombie may appear to feel pain or
pleasure (but does not really do so), and may appear to feel joy or
sadness, but really feels nothing. Philosophers use this concept in
various thought experiments designed to throw light on metaphysical
issues.
As far as we know, there has never been
a real philosophical zombie. But later in the century there may be
many of them. The philosophical zombies that may come into existence
are android robots. Within fifty years or so we will probably see
robots that resemble human beings. Such robots may well seem to have
some of the same emotions that we have, and some people will think
that they will feel pleasure and pain as we do. But it would seem
that such robots will not really have any real inner life or any real
self. They will merely be simulations of beings who feel pleasure
and pain, rather than beings that really do. An advanced android
robot may say, “I feel happy when I see that,” but it won't
really feel any happiness or pleasure at all, because it won't really
have any inner self. In short, advanced android robots will be a
technological implementation of the concept of a philosophical
zombie.
Robots are philosophical zombies
Given these philosophical zombies of
metal and plastic, there is then a possibility of what we might call
a zombie apocalypse. We can define a zombie apocalypse in this
context as the replacement of all human life (beings who actually
have an inner self, and who really feel pleasure and pain) with
soulless, insentient beings (robots) who don't actually feel any
pleasure and pain. This would be a type of apocalypse because it
would wipe out the main thing of value on the planet – the
existence of beings with an inner self who are enjoying themselves
and feeling real emotions such as love and joy.
To help clarify why such an event might
be a kind of apocalypse, let us imagine an alien planet that
undergoes a strange evolution. It starts out with a protoplasmic race
of intelligent, sentient, feeling beings who live lives filled with
real pleasure. But then for some reason these intelligent beings
become obsessed with building model train sets everywhere around the
planet. They finally fill the whole planet with an insanely intricate
system of billions of model trains that can run independently (using
solar power) on a vast system of little train tracks arranged all
over the planet. The entire race of protoplasmic beings then kills
itself for some reason. What is left is the system of model trains,
which keeps running on and on for many centuries.
Clearly if this happened on such a
planet it would be a kind of apocalypse. There would still be endless
amounts of purposeful activity on the planet, as the model trains
continued to run on their little tracks, going along their little
routes. But such activity would not have any real value. The main
thing of value on the planet (the pleasure in the lives of the
protoplasmic beings, and the consciousness and feelings of such
beings) would have been lost, and replaced by a mere mechanical,
insentient swarm of activity. It would make relatively little
difference if such a planet were to be wiped out by an asteroid
collision, because nothing like a human life would be lost.
Having imagined this strange planet,
let us compare it to a planet on which humans have entirely been
replaced by robots (something that could happen not too many
centuries after the first really impressive model of android robot
was introduced). It would seem that such a planet is really not much
different from the “toy train” planet just imagined. If all
humans had been replaced by robots, the robots might scurry around
the planet doing all kinds of elaborate things. But it would seem
that they would not have any real inner selves, that they would not
really feel any pleasure or pain, and would not have any real
emotions. Consequently, such a horde of robots existing without
humans would apparently not have any more real value than the horde
of toy trains whizzing around on the previously imagined planet
filled with toy trains. So if humans were to be entirely replaced by
robotic beings who were philosophical zombies (incapable of any real
pleasure, feelings, or inner self), then it would seem to be an
apocalypse essentially as bad as the apocalypse previously imagined
on the toy train planet.
This, then, is the “zombie
apocalypse” that might really happen one day. As the metal and
plastic “philosophical zombies” took over, Planet Earth might
change from a planet with billions of man-years of pleasure
experienced every year to an all-robot planet with zero man-years of
pleasure experienced every year. From the philosophical standpoint of
hedonism (which regards human pleasure as the main value), such a
result would be something apocalyptic, a disaster about the same as
if an asteroid were to hit and kill all human beings.
A person might argue that one day we
will be able to prove that there could never be such a “zombie
apocalypse,” by one day proving that advanced robots really are
sentient and really can feel pleasure and have inner selves. But it
would seem that such a thing can never be proven. Consider the
question: how is it that you really know that the people you see
around you are beings with real pleasures and real inner thoughts and
real inner selves, rather than just images in your mind? You
basically reason that such people look like you, and apparently
originated in the same way you did; and since you know that you have
inner thoughts and feelings, and that you really experience pleasure,
you infer that the people you perceive also have inner thoughts and
feelings and experience real pleasures and pains (even though you
cannot directly experience such things by “living in their shoes”
and being them). Such reasoning is respectable when applied to
humans, but it would be wrong to apply any such reasoning to robots.
We are not anything like robots, did not originate in the same way,
are not made of the same materials, and we can never live “in the
shoes” of a robot, experiencing things as they do. So we will never
have any adequate warrant for concluding that a robot really feels pleasure or
feels emotion in the same way we do.
We can avoid this type of “zombie
apocalypse” by remembering that robots are just tools to help
humans, rather than things to be valued like a human life. Even
though robots might think faster, process facts faster, run faster,
and work more efficiently at many tasks than human beings, from a
value standpoint they must be considered mere philosophical zombies.
Better to lose an entire alien planet consisting of nothing but
robots that have no pleasures, emotions, or inner selves, than to
lose a single bus load of humans that have pleasures, emotions, and
inner selves.
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