Transformers and Philosophy Page 26
And then there is the virtue of courage. Courage is the proper response to fear and potential harm. Fear is a very useful survival mechanism but even if our artificial visitors lack an analog to human emotion, the part about potential harm will still be relevant to them. They will still have to make risk assessments balanced against the value of the ends they aim to achieve and the requirements of the other virtues. Being too risk averse—being cowardly—can lead to frequent failure to achieve their ends as well as to fully exhibit and properly apply the other virtues. Being too insensitive to risk—being rash—can lead to the same problems in different ways.
We have also seen that productive work is necessary both for survival and flourishing. Our previous focus had been on the role of productive work in producing and acquiring fuel for our bodies, weapons, defenses, clothing, shelter, and other useful tools that better our chances of survival and improve our quality of life. As valuable as productive work is for creating these things, it serves another useful function as well. It also, chosen wisely, provides us with a sense of purpose, a core personal identity with which to integrate and determine the hierarchy of all our other values. Hence, productiveness too is a virtue, and an important one at that.
Rational beings are also capable of communication and conscious, purposeful cooperation. For human beings, at least, being social and political beings is also part of what it means to be a rational being. We are born in a social environment. We derive enjoyment from being in the company of other human beings who share our ideas and interests. We acquire much of our knowledge from other human beings. We depend on exchanging the values we produce for the values others produce in order to survive and flourish. Social existence enables the division and specialization of labor responsible for the continual expansion of knowledge and economic progress that we benefit from today. We naturally form into groups to co-operate in the pursuit of shared ends. A solitary existence is dangerous and impoverished in comparison to a social existence; imagine having to live off of what you alone could produce without modern tools, having to protect yourself from predators and natural disasters without any help and with only what weapons you can make yourself, having to treat your own injuries and illnesses, and what will happen as a result of your being less able or unable to defend yourself and provide for yourself when injured or sick. Together we accomplish much more, and live much better lives, spiritually and materially, than we would alone. Most or all of these things will probably be true of alien artificial intelligences as well. With the Transformers, we see all of these aspects of a social and political nature; the Autobots and Decepticons are opposing political organizations with a leader and other members who each possess specialized knowledge and abilities that suit their role within their respective group.
There are a number of virtues made possible and required by human social existence to which an artificial intelligence civilization could well have analogs. Some of the virtues we have already discussed have readily recognizable social dimensions. Other important social virtues include benevolence and several more that can be subsumed under it: sensitivity, generosity, civility and tolerance. Benevolence means having a habitual disposition of goodwill towards others. Sensitivity involves being alert to the interests, feelings, concerns, needs and so forth of others, particularly our friends and family. Generosity is that virtue in which we give of ourselves to others out of a sense of fullness or overflowing, without any expectation of receiving anything definite in return. Civility involves being polite and courteous in myriad ways and the virtue of tolerance involves enduring ideas or practices with which we disagree. It’s easy to see how these virtues serve to grease the wheels of social relationships, so to speak, while their lack can cause friction and even grind cooperation to a halt. Civility and tolerance, in particular, are also necessary for the joint pursuit of truth because they facilitate open discussion and debate.
The Law of Association
At this point you may be thinking, “All right. I buy that there are good reasons for thinking that an alien race of artificial intelligences will probably have some sort of moral code that enables peaceful co-existence and mutually beneficial cooperation among themselves. But what reason do we have to think that they will have a moral code that will allow such a relationship between them and us?” Well, for one thing, given the understanding that the basis for morality lies in a being’s capacity for rationality, I can think of no coherent reason to treat only one’s own species, rather than all rational beings whatever their species, as moral agents worthy of respect as persons. More can be said about this but perhaps you will find an appeal to material self-interest to be more reassuring. Economic theory tells us that even an individual or group that is more efficient in every way than another individual or group can benefit economically from co-operation. The English economist David Ricardo originally expounded this law in 1817 in his theory of comparative advantage (or comparative cost). The great economist of the Austrian School, Ludwig von Mises, however, has argued that Ricardo’s law of comparative advantage is but a particular instance of a more general law as it is applied to the problem of international trade; Mises dubbed this the law of association.4
The Law of Association might not hold if the aliens in question were so superior to us in every way that we were no more significant to them than ants, but barring this they could derive some material advantage from trade with us. To illustrate the law, let’s use as an example the Autobot medic-mechanic Ratchet and a human I’ve just made up named John Smith. Both Ratchet and John are capable mechanics and also capable of building their own tools and parts. Suppose that Ratchet is a much better mechanic than John, however, and can earn $10,000 per hour as a mechanic but only $1,000 per hour making and selling the tools and parts a mechanic needs for his craft. Suppose also that John could earn $100 per hour as a mechanic or $500 per hour making and selling the tools and parts a mechanic needs for his craft. Ratchet is a hundred times more efficient than John as a mechanic and twice as efficient than he is as a maker of tools and parts. Perhaps they both plan to work twenty hours per week and divide their time equally between doing mechanic work and making tools and parts. Their total output would look like this:
RATCHET: 10 hours mechanic work X $10,000 per hour = $100,000
10 hours making tools and parts X $1,000 per hour = $10,000
Total output: $110, 000.
JOHN: 10 hours mechanic work X $100 per hour = $1,000
10 hours making tools and parts X $500 per hour = $5,000
Total output: $6,000
Between them Ratchet and John have produced $116,000 worth of output. Now let us examine what the situation would be if Ratchet focused exclusively on working as a mechanic while John focused exclusively on making tools and parts.
RATCHET: 20 hours mechanic work X $10,000 per hour = $200,000
Total output: $200, 000.
JOHN: 20 hours making tools and parts X $500 per hour = $10,000
Total output: $10,000
The total output that Ratchet and John can produce has risen to $210,000. Even more importantly, both Ratchet and John are individually better off. John, who was worse at both jobs, was able to nearly double his output; likewise Ratchet, who was better at both jobs. This analysis we have applied at the individual level involving only two actors can be applied by straightforward extension to groups, to international trade, and even to interstellar trade. This means that it’s possible, even likely, that humans and artificial life-forms can live in peace with one another and benefit from co-operation, competition, and trade.
All right, so trade is more beneficial than doing everything yourself. But what about war? Why not just invade us, enslave or destroy us, and plunder our resources? To continue the appeal to material self-interest: war is an incredibly costly undertaking. A war is bound to result in massive loss of life, quite possibly on both sides even if they are more advanced than we are. While we are physically weaker than the Transformers, for examp
le, we can and do make up for it, at least to a degree, with technology. Remember the exo-skeleton Daniel uses in the animated movie? And the sabot rounds used to good effect against Scorponok in the live-action movie? Even if we don’t stand a chance, military expenditure is costly. It diverts creativity, labor, capital, energy and other resources away from productive uses into dead-end assets. A war would result in destruction of human lives and capital and, to the extent that it does, our attackers will lose the benefits they otherwise would have gained through trade. If they commit xenocide, purposefully causing the extinction of our species, all they will have gained will be the resources of our planet and whatever remains of our creations to be salvaged. If they enslave us, then they take on the burden of clothing, feeding, sheltering and training us, of directing our labor, and of suppressing the inevitable rebellions. When you think seriously about it, and presumably advanced artificial intelligences will be able to think very well, is war really worth it? On the other hand, ignorance of economic principles is not the only reason people might choose violence and war over peace and trade, so let us now turn to a discussion of liberty and justice.
Liberty, Justice, and the Autobot Way
Justice (which is both a good and a virtue) and liberty are of central importance to political philosophy. To the extent that they are absent, a life of flourishing and a free and flourishing society are made impossible. As it is conceived in the classical liberal tradition, liberty is freedom from aggression; more precisely, liberty is freedom from the threat or use of initiatory physical force. The act of coercing someone with the threat or use of physical force—such as by violence, murder, fraud and naked theft—imposes the aggressor’s desires, interests, preferences, choices, actions, on the victim without his consent. To the extent that this occurs, the victim exists not for his own sake but for another’s: his desires, interests, preferences, choices, actions, are no longer truly his but are alien to him. More to the point, to the extent that this occurs his actions are not self-directed. A person being physically coerced by another is not able to make the choices and take the actions he judges necessary for the maintenance and furtherance of his life. And he is not being respected as a person.
In the Aristotelian tradition, remember, morality is a matter of choice. For an action to count as virtuous it must be done freely, by choice, both for the right reasons and because it is desired. Thus, it is not enough simply to possess the goods, and it is impossible to possess the virtues, one needs in life without self-directed action. In other words, an act of mine does not count as virtuous and therefore contributory toward my flourishing if you force it upon me, even if it otherwise would have contributed to my flourishing had I desired and freely chosen it for the right reasons. To the extent that one’s liberty is infringed upon, one is unable to flourish.
The importance of free choice is recognized several times in the 2007 live-action Transformers film. Consider this exchange involving Bumblebee, who during most of the movie had been unable to speak because of some damage inflicted by Megatron in the back story:
BUMBLEBEE: [fully repaired] Permission to speak, sir?
OPTIMUS PRIME: Permission granted, old friend.
SAM WITWICKY: You speak now?
BUMBLEBEE: I wish to stay with the boy.
OPTIMUS PRIME: If that is his choice.
SAM WITWICKY: Yes.
And here’s another, from an exchange between Optimus Prime and Megatron while they fought:
MEGATRON: Humans don’t deserve to live!
OPTIMUS PRIME: They deserve to choose for themselves!
MEGATRON: Then you will die with them! [throws Prime away and primes his cannon]
MEGATRON: JOIN THEM IN EXTINCTION!
What the liberals bring to the table, as a matter of political justice, is a greater recognition of this central importance of liberty and a more consistent protection of liberty in the form of an ethical, political, and legal principle: the right to liberty (and all of its corollaries and consequences). A right is a legitimately enforceable moral claim against the prior obligation of others not to threaten or use initiatory physical force against you. Not all the moral claims we have on the obligations of others are legitimately enforceable via the law or vigilantism. In the liberal tradition, only the moral claim to freedom from aggression can be consistently upheld as legitimately enforceable. The rights to life and property are two of its corollaries. A right to liberty is a right to a life of our own. And our right to liberty cannot be exercised if we are not allowed to keep and use the fruits of our labor as we see fit, provided we do not use our property to violate the equal rights of others to their own life, liberty, and property.
But so far we have not gotten deeply enough into the reasons, at the level of personal ethics, for why rational beings have rights and why we must respect them. I have said that our rights derive from a prior obligation of others. What gives us this obligation? Ultimately, what gives us this obligation not to aggress against others is our obligation to pursue a life of flourishing. To put it in a nutshell, since we are rational, political, and social beings, we ought to deal with other such beings through reason, discourse, persuasion, and co-operation (except when necessary to protect our own right to liberty, or the rights of others), rather than through violence and force. To do so is a matter of justice.
Consider the virtue of justice; it means accepting and granting the earned and deserved, and never seeking or granting the unearned and undeserved.5 What do other rational beings deserve from us? Again we can look to Aristotle for some illumination. Aristotle argues that justice is complete virtue practiced in relation to others and because of this it is the greatest of the virtues. In other words, what other rational beings deserve from us is for us to possess integrity, to be prudent, independent, honest, productive, brave, benevolent, sensitive, generous, civil, tolerant, and so forth. We owe virtue first and foremost to ourselves, and because we are political and social beings we owe virtue to others as well. Virtues are not rigid rules, however; they are abstract principles and traits of character whose proper application is highly dependent upon context. While the virtues are, in the abstract, universal principles, Aristotle reminds us that what virtue demands of us will depend on our talents and abilities, the cultural traditions we accept (so long as they do not contradict what our nature as a human being (or artificial intelligence) demands of us), our particular circumstances and the particular conditions at the time of action.
Finally, we may follow Aristotle in his wisdom in another way. He makes a useful distinction between what he calls general justice and particular (or special) justice. General justice is, for Aristotle, the complete virtue we have just been discussing. Particular justice pertains more to political matters, such as violence, theft, fraud, and the like. With some tweaking, this distinction can be adapted to the liberal conception of justice and rights. An Aristotelian liberal must disagree with Aristotle that it is just that the law be used to require all virtue and prohibit all vice. The only vices that we recognize as crimes are those that involve aggression—those that involve the violation of rights. We also recognize that even particular justice is informed by all of the other virtues as general justice is. So an Aristotelian liberal sees particular justice as pertaining to what I earlier called political justice, which involves protecting the right to liberty and rectifying violations of it. Aristotelian liberals see general justice as pertaining to obligations we have to others that are not legitimately enforceable. To keep the difference between the two types of justice clear, it will help to rename them: 1) We have political justice which pertains to rights and is legitimately enforceable. 2) And we have social justice which pertains to our other moral obligations to others and is not legitimately enforceable.
Will alien artificial intelligences possess such a moral code as I have described and recognize us as persons, granting us the promissory respect we deserve in the name of political and social justice? Will we do likewise for them? There a
re no guarantees, but there is reason to hope that they will display the wisdom and goodness of Optimus Prime, rather than the imprudence and evil of Megatron, displayed in the recent live-action film:
IRONHIDE: Why are we fighting to save the humans? They’re a primitive and violent race.
OPTIMUS PRIME: Were we so different? They’re a young species. They have much to learn. But I’ve seen goodness in them. Freedom is the right of all sentient beings. You all know there’s only one way to end this war: we must destroy the Cube. If all else fails, I will unite it with the spark in my chest.
RATCHET: That’s suicide! The Cube is raw power, it could destroy you both!
OPTIMUS PRIME: A necessary sacrifice to bring peace to this planet. We cannot let the humans pay for our mistakes. It’s been an honor serving with you all. Autobots, ROLL OUT!
What better way to end this chapter than with more words of wisdom from Optimus Prime?
With the All Spark gone, we cannot return life to our planet. And fate has yielded its reward: a new world to call home. We live among its people now, hiding in plain sight, but watching over them in secret, waiting, protecting. I have witnessed their capacity for courage, and though we are worlds apart, like us, there’s more to them than meets the eye. I am Optimus Prime, and I send this message to any surviving Autobots taking refuge among the stars. We are here. We are waiting.