Transformers and Philosophy Page 17

  One important difference, as we noted above, is that behaviors alone do not entail mental states with content about those behaviors. Rocks, wind-up toys, and remote-control vehicles respond predictably to a variety of stimuli, but no one would claim that my remote-control replica of Knight Rider has a mind.

  Another difference is that one of the virtues of love is that it is given freely. Forced love is not love at all. If we program a computer to exhibit loving behavior, then it only behaves how it is commanded to behave by its program. We would no more praise a computer programmed to love any more than we would blame one programmed to destroy. We would praise or blame the programmers. Therefore, programmed behavior alone is not enough to make a robot that loves.

  Second, imagine that an extremely well respected neuroscientist tells you she has discovered a way to implant a soul into a robot. She admits it’s difficult to say exactly what a ‘soul’ is, but assures you it can be done. What’s more, though the technology is comprehensible to only a select few, she can find and attach a soul to the computational mechanisms of any computer. Would a soul make a robot a being that loves?

  It isn’t obvious that it would. What might a soul add? And whatever it might add, would it be the precise element that makes a machine the kind of thing capable of love? And even if a soul could add the right thing, it’s not clear that a soul is the only thing that could add it. So, a soul alone just won’t do.

  Most people would presumably agree that, whatever a thing is that loves, it must be a person. To be a person requires at least two properties: intentionality and the power of self-reflection. The “power of self-reflection” is the ability to “know that I know,” for instance that I’m hungry or sad or cold. Computers and animals know when there is a problem with their ‘operating systems’, but it is generally agreed that they don’t know that they know there is a problem, that is, they cannot reflect on the problem. “Intentionality” is the ability to “intend,” or to act on a variety of reasons despite circumstances or emotions. Computers react solely on the basis of inputs. Their outputs, even their random outputs, are governed by mechanical processes. Persons, on the other hand, can choose to act on a variety of inputs, and no single input can determine what a person will do (unless there is some malfunction).

  Some have argued that imbuing a creature with a soul makes it a person. But that means that a soul must at least have (or grant) intentionality and the power of self-reflection. But what would it mean for a soul to have these characteristics? Does it make more sense for a soul to have these things than a body or brain or processor? If what makes a person a person is intentionality and reflection, then introducing the idea of a soul just seems redundant. Therefore, again, a soul won’t help our machine unless it explains how bodies or processors can have intentionality and self-reflection. And the prospects aren’t good.

  Third, imagine that we come to understand the human brain so well that we can actually ‘hard-wire’ it into a computer’s processing mechanisms. You may have heard philosophical tales of brains in vats, receiving inputs from a computer that causes conscious experiences in the brain. In these cases, though someone feels he is living a life much like yours or mine, he is really the plaything of a mad scientist. Imagine this scenario in reverse. Rather than a computer sending inputs to a brain, imagine a brain sending inputs to a machine, so that whatever conscious state the brain is in, the machine will recognize it and act accordingly. Would a human brain turn a robot into a being that loves?

  Again, it’s not obvious that it would. Though a human brain is necessary for a thing to be a person who loves, it is not sufficient. We can imagine a human brain-machine combo that produces a creature without intentionality or self-reflection. And we can also imagine a creature without a human brain that does have these features. Recall, for example, the android Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation, and of course our ever-emoting Transformers. And even if we were able to transplant a normal, functioning human brain into a machine, making a robot who loves, we are still not sure what it is about the human brain that makes a creature capable of love. Perhaps it’s simply a gap in our current technology, but we are far from understanding what makes humans capable of love, much less machines! And the answer to this puzzle just might be the same for both.

  Does Love Make the World, or Universe, Go Around?

  Remember, we’re all one with the universe.

  —BEACHCOMBER, in “The Secret of Omega Supreme”

  The ancient Greek philosopher Empedocles (492–424 B.C.E.) envisioned Strife and Love as polar cosmic principles at work in the universe. Strife is the source of all that’s destructive, separate, chaotic, and evil, while Love is the source of all that’s generative, unified, harmonious, and good. The universe is held in tension between the forces of Strife and Love, with either one dominant at various times. Here, love is not just something that affects human, Autobot, or Decepticon relationships. Love literally “makes the world go around” as a cosmological principle!

  Many people can think that love and hate take on lives of their own, so to speak, leading people to peace, harmony, and respect, or war, chaos, and violence. In fact, there’s a bit of this thinking that underlies all Transformers stories, where the Autobots embody the loving principles and the Decepticons embody principles of hate. Consider that the Transformers’ universe would likely be destroyed if the Decepticons gained power with the All Spark, whereas several Transformers stories hint that there would be peace and harmony if the Autobots could harness its power. In Transformers #76, Grimlock notes: “See, good and evil . . . it’s just the way of things. For every yin a yang, for every light a dark, everything balancing . . .”

  One Transformers fan echoes this Empedoclean conception of love in a blog posting where he gives his own spin on the origin of the Transformers:

  They were once the Heralds of a being known only as The One, whose existence stretches back to the birth of the Universe. For a time, the twin Heralds of The One sought only knowledge and insight into the myriad wonders of this new Universe. But soon, as they both achieved full sentience, they became polar opposites. One seeking to understand the cosmic harmony of the galaxies, the other seeking only to destroy them.

  They became Creation and Destruction Incarnate

  The Avatars of Order and Chaos

  The Bringers of Light and Darkness

  They are Primus and Unicron.

  And their war has raged for eons, across the almost limitless planes of reality and throughout countless parallel dimensions. Their conflict was eternal and unending . . .1

  But the Empedoclean view has been attacked as being too vague or inaccurate concerning the nature of love, and this is probably true in Transformers stories as well. The cosmic power of the All Spark in the hands of the Autobots would likely bring peace, harmony, and love. However, love seems to be something other than an underlying principle or source of harmony, peace, goodness, or any other positive properties in the Transformers’ universe or our own.

  Erotic Love

  And what exactly does your do-hickey do?

  —OPTIMUS PRIME in “The Master Builders”

  Most of us associate love with emotions of desiring someone or something with a great deal of passion. This association has a long history in Western philosophy that begins with the ancient Greeks who had one conception of love, understood as eros. In Greek mythology, Eros was a god who seemed to have a great power over mortals, causing them to do crazy things like lie, steal, and murder, commonly for some kind of sexual payoff. Hesiod (eighth century B.C.E.) characterizes Eros as the enemy of reason in his Theogony, and this erotic conception of love continued to be influential in the Golden Age of Greek philosophers who envisioned human beings as having (1) a rational, controlled, prudent part of their personality (or soul) that must keep this (2) erotic, irrational, animalistic part of their personality in check. The irrational part of one’s personality that is shared with animals often has to do with sex. After
all, humans are rational animals with basic needs. Eros came to be associated with sexual desire, and that’s why, today, ‘erotic’ desire is closely linked with sex and sexual relationships.

  There are glimpses of this kind of love in Transformers stories. For example, one of the first female Autobots, Acree, is introduced in the 1980s and is described as having “an attachment to” the male Autobot, Springer, that is laced with double entendre. (In fact, her animated parts are curvy enough to get human men to fantasize what flesh on metal would sound like!) We already mentioned Ironhide and Chromia’s loving embrace, which has obvious sexual overtones. And an Autobot named Ariel is described as being the girlfriend of a dock-working Autobot named Orion Pax (who later becomes Optimus Prime), and their romantic relationship conjures up racy oil squeaking and gears grinding.

  Platonic Love

  Noble Autobots make me wanna puke!

  —APEFACE, in “The Rebirth”

  In contrast to the irrational and animalistic eros, the Greeks had another conception of love that they called philia, which can be understood as an appreciation of another’s beauty or goodness. This philial form of love is present in Plato’s (427–347 B.C.E.) writings—especially in his Symposium—where he explains our experience of love as making contact with the abstract ‘Form’ of Beauty Itself.

  Plato believed that reality could be broken up into two basic realms: the changeable, ‘visible’ world of our sense experiences, and the unchangeable, ‘intelligible’ world of ideas and concepts, or ‘Forms’. There is one, eternal and unchanging Form in the intelligible realm for each kind of object, event, thing, or action that one experiences in the visible realm. A Form is like the ideal essence, core, or fundamental ‘nature’ of something. So, for example, all of the different cars, trucks, trees, people, and cats—as well as the more or less good actions and beautiful things—that we experience around us in our visible, sensible world have a corresponding ideal Form found in another realm of reality that can only be known or “accessed,” ultimately, through our minds.

  Further, the highly complex things around us—as well as the various trans-formed things—are composed of less complex parts that have corresponding Forms.

  Take, for instance, the illustration of the two-dimensional Transformer in Figure 10.1. Here, we can see that the various parts that make up the Transformer can be broken down into basic shapes, like circles, squares, triangles, and the like. The same would go for three dimensional things, in terms of breaking them down into their most basic elemental parts. Plato would say that we can disassemble complex things into their most basic elements in the visible world around us, and those ‘basics’ have corresponding Forms in the intelligible world.

  FIGURE 10.1. A Two-Dimensional Transformer and Its Parts

  For Plato, the Forms are what humans should be striving to know, as these ideal universals fulfill the twofold purpose of (a) making the things in the visible realm be known as what they are as well as (b) making the things in the visible realm actually be what they are. Plato expressed this by saying that things in the visible world “participate” in the Forms. So, if you want to be able to recognize and understand objects and events around you in the visible realm of sense experience—as well as be able to explain how it is that these objects and events have come to be—then Plato suggests that you get to know the Forms. After all, to be able to know and understand the essence or fundamental nature of something is good, as it will help you avoid bad reasoning or making decisions based upon too little information that could lead to unwanted consequences in your life.

  The idea behind Plato’s conception of philia is that one will be led from the changeable and imperfectly beautiful (and not-so-beautiful) things of this world to the unchanging and perfect universal Form of Beauty. And unlike any erotic experience, this philial form of love will be satisfying to the mind, rather than the body. In erotic encounters, our bodies make contact with beautiful objects in the visible realm, and physical pleasure ensues. In philial encounters, our minds make contact with the Form of Beauty in the intelligible realm, and mental pleasure ensues. True love, for Plato, is knowing and understanding the ideal Form of Beauty of which beautiful things in the visible world participate. In fact, this kind of satisfaction can be found in the word ‘philosophy’, a combination of the Greek words for ‘love’ (philo) and ‘wisdom’ (sophia). So, ‘philosophy’ literally means the love of, and also the pursuit of, wisdom; we pursue the things that we love. As contrasted with erotic love, in which sexual or bodily desires are met, philial love is concerned with a desire for the Beauty that underlies persons, places, and things for Beauty’s sake. We find remnants of this idea today in the term Platonic relationship, where two people have a relationship that does not involve sex, but involves more lofty, intellectual-type pursuits.

  Now, Plato conceived of love as a contact with an “ideal” or “perfect” Beauty, and there’s a sense in which people and Autobots are used as conduits or channels to an ideal or perfect beauty in the Transformers universe. In the original series, as well as the Beast Wars and Beast Machines series, the All Spark is viewed as an ideal, perfect, and wholly good and beautiful realm where the souls of Transformers—both the good-natured Autobots and the evil Decepticons—have originated, and to where these souls can return one day. (In fact, Plato had a similar understanding of “precarnation.”) The more positive, caring, loving relationships that Transformers can form, the more likely they will be to share in the ideal beauty of the All Spark. This seems to be at least part of Optimus Prime’s motivation for establishing a caring relationship with Sam Witwicky and for protecting the Earth from the Decepticons (see, for example, “The Return of Optimus Prime”).

  Loving Friendship

  He wasn’t just another gun-toting conscript to me, First Aid. He was my friend.

  —RATCHET in Transformers (#26)

  Speaking of Optimus Prime’s relationship with Sam Witwicky, one of the reasons why these characters fascinate us is because they do seem to have a friendship, despite the fact that one is a human while the other is a machine. Is love really a friendship, then? This is what Plato’s student, Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.), thought. For Aristotle, love entails an appreciation of the beautiful and good qualities of another person, as well as an interaction between lover and beloved. Thus, love is best understood as a friendship between two people in which mutual awareness of each other’s good is kept in mind.

  According to Aristotle, there are three types of friendship. Friendships of utility are those relationships where mutual benefit is to be gained from each other’s services, as in a business relationship. There is a certain sense in which even the Decepticons embody this kind of friendship, as they will establish relationships with one another where mutual benefit is to be had for each as a result of the relationship. So, for example, Megatron and Starscream agree to be ‘friendly’ enough in this sense so that they can work together to destroy Autobots. Also, Unicron (not a Transformer, but a world-devourer) and Megatron establish this form of friendship when they work together to destroy the Autobot Matrix of Leadership; Unicron benefits because devouring Cybertron becomes easier, and Megatron benefits because Cybertron fits him with a new body and new troops in exchange for his assistance.

  Friendships of pleasure are those relationships where pleasure is to be gained from engaging in mutually enjoyable experiences. There are plenty of examples where Autobots seem to be enjoying each other’s company, whether it’s engaging in some banter, playing a particular sport in the Galactic Olympics, or racing one another through the sky. There’s a funny, playful scene in “Fire in the Sky” where Jazz dumps snow on top of Spike and he says, “Oh, thanks Jazz, I get the drift.” Or, consider Ratchet’s claim in the quotation that heads this section. Interestingly, the Decepticons never seem to enjoy themselves the way Autobots do, probably indicating that their friendships stay at the level of utility, at best.

  Friendships of virtue are the best an
d most noble friendships, and are found between those who are most wise, virtuous, and good. In this kind of friendship, as Aristotle so poetically puts it, the “two bodies share one soul.” In friendships of virtue, the two lovers share a desire for one another’s good—a good that is concerned with the most true, noble, and virtuous in life. Consider the exchange between Optimus Prime and Scorponok when Scorponok is lying on his death bed after a long struggle with the Decepticons (“Transformers #75”) and Optimus Prime comforts Scorponok: “Prime . . . did . . . did I do good?” “Yes, old friend . . . you did good.”

  Also, in the Transformers: Armada series (2002–2004) Optimus Prime and his Mini-Con, Sparkplug, seem to have this kind of relationship of virtue, especially when it comes to thinking about one another’s good. They communicate thoughts, aspirations, and emotions in support of one another, and they share the common goal of defeating the Decepticons and obtaining the All Spark. Further, they risk their lives for each other, as when Sparkplug uses the Matrix and assists the other Mini-Cons in the dangerous mission to help resurrect Optimus Prime (Episode #40).

  We can contrast Optimus Prime’s kind of friendly loving for Sparkplug with the relationship between Megatron and Starscream. Megatron consistently insults and lies to Starscream. Consider Megatron in “Starscream’s Brigade”: “Starscream is a child! Even with an army of thousands he couldn’t lead them in a parade, let alone against us!” And Starscream is treacherous, ambitious, and wants to usurp Megatron’s position with his own lies and manipulating. That’s why in “Triple Takeover” Blitzwing says, “Starscream’s been trying to overthrow Megatron for years.” This is hardly a concern for the good of another and, in fact, they would each find relief if the other were not around. By contrast, Optimus Prime and Sparkplug compliment one another’s skills, assist one another, and even laugh with one another. They clearly have each other’s general welfare in mind.