Cover
Title Page
Introduction
1. Part I: Could I Be in a “Matrix” or Computer Simulation?
2. Part II: What Am I? Free Will and the Nature of Persons
3. Part III: Mind: Natural, Artificial, Hybrid, Alien and “Superintelligent”
4. Part IV: Ethical and Political Issues
5. Part V: Space and Time
6. Conclusion
7. References
Part I: Could I Be in a “Matrix” or Computer Simulation?
1. 1 Reinstalling Eden: Happiness on a Hard Drive
2. 2 Are You in a Computer Simulation?
3. 3 Plato’s Cave. Excerpt from The Republic
4. 4 Some Cartesian thought Experiments. Excerpt from The Meditations on First Philosophy
  1. Of the Things of which we May Doubt
5. 5 The Matrix as Metaphysics
  1. I. Brains in Vats
  2. II. Envatment Reconsidered
  3. III. The Metaphysical Hypothesis
  4. IV. The Matrix Hypothesis as a Metaphysical Hypothesis
  5. V. Life in the Matrix
  6. VI. Objections
  7. VII. Other Skeptical Hypotheses
Part II: What Am I? Free Will and the Nature of Persons
1. 6 Where Am I?
2. 7 Personal Identity
  1. 1. The Problems of Personal Identity
  2. 2. Understanding the Persistence Question
  3. 3. Accounts of Our Identity through Time
  4. 4. Psychological-Continuity Views
  5. 5. Fission
  6. 6. The Too-Many-Thinkers Problem
  7. 7. Brute-Physical Views
  8. 8. Wider Themes
  9. Bibliography
3. 8 Divided Minds and the Nature of Persons
  1. The Ego Theory and the Bundle Theory
  2. What We Believe Ourselves to Be
  3. How We Are Not What We Believe
  4. How the Split-Brain Cases Support the Bundle Theory
4. 9 Who Am I? What Am I?
5. 10 Free Will and Determinism in the World of Minority Report
  1. Hard Determinism and the Threat to Free Will
  2. The Soft Determinist Gambit
  3. On Behalf of Freedom
  4. The Verdict on Precrime
6. 11 Excerpt from “The Book of Life: A Thought Experiment”
Part III: Mind: Natural, Artificial, Hybrid, and Superintelligent
1. 12 Robot Dreams
2. 13 A Brain Speaks
3. 14 Cyborgs Unplugged
  1. Rats in Space
  2. Implant and Mergers
  3. A Day in the Life
  4. Dovetailing
4. 15 Superintelligence and Singularity
  1. The Intuitive Linear View Versus the Historical Exponential View
  2. The Six Epochs
  3. The Singularity Is Near
5. 16 The Singularity: A Philosophical Analysis
  1. 1. Introduction
  2. 2. The Argument for a Singularity
  3. 3. The Intelligence Explosion Without Intelligence
  4. 4. Obstacles to the Singularity
  5. 5. Negotiating the Singularity
  6. 6. Internal Constraints: Constraining Values
  7. 7. External Constraints: The Leakproof Singularity
  8. 8. Integration into a Post-Singularity World
  9. 9. Uploading and Consciousness
  10. 10. Uploading and Personal Identity
  11. 11. Conclusions
  12. Bibliography
6. 17 Alien Minds
  1. Alien Superintelligence
  2. Would Superintelligent Aliens Be Conscious?
  3. How Might Superintelligent Aliens Think?
  4. Conclusion
  5. References
Part IV: Ethical and Political Issues
1. 18 The Man on the Moon
  1. Holy Wars
  2. Unholy Wars
  3. The Man on the Moon
  4. Genetic Engineering
  5. Toward the Posthuman
  6. New Crusades
2. 19 Mindscan: Transcending and Enhancing the Human Brain
  1. The Transhumanist Position
  2. The Nature of Persons
  3. Robert Sawyer’s Mindscan and the Reduplication Problem
  4. A Response to the Reduplication Problem
  5. Two Issues that Modified Patternism Needs to Address
  6. Conclusion
  7. References
3. 20 The Doomsday Argument
4. 21 The Last Question
5. 22 Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics” and Machine Metaethics
  1. Introduction
  2. “The Bicentennial Man”
  3. Machine Metaethics
  4. Characteristic(s) Necessary To Have Moral Standing
  5. Why the Three Laws are Unsatisfactory even if Machines Don’t have Moral Standing
  6. Conclusion
  7. References
6. 23 The Control Problem. Excerpts from Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies
  1. Two Agency Problems
  2. Capability Control Methods
  3. Motivation Selection Methods
  4. Synopsis
  5. References
Part V: Space and Time
1. 24 A Sound of Thunder
2. 25 Time
  1. The Flow of Time
  2. The Space-Time Theory
  3. Arguments against the Space-Time Theory: Change, Motion, Causes
3. 26 The Paradoxes of Time Travel
4. 27 The Quantum Physics of Time Travel
5. 28 Miracles and Wonders
  1. Humeans on Miracles
  2. Three Modern Miracle Mongers
  3. Three of my Favorite Sci-Fi Things: Time Travel, Other Dimensions, and Simulations
  4. Simulation Epistemology and Metaphysics
  5. An Argument for Miracles
  6. References
Appendix: Philosophers Recommend Science Fiction
1. Novels and Short Stories
2. Movies and Television
Index
End User License Agreement

List of Illustrations

Introduction
1. Figure I.1 Plato’s Cave
Chapter 15
1. Figure 15.1 Linear versus exponential: linear growth is steady; exponential growth becomes explosive.
2. Figure 15.2 The Six Epochs of Evolution: Evolution works through indirection: it creates a capability and then uses that capability to evolve the next stage.
3. Figure 15.3 Countdown to Singularity: Biological evolution and human technology both show continual acceleration, indicated by the shorter time to the next event (two billion years from the origin of life to cells; fourteen years from the PC to the World Wide Web).
4. Figure 15.4 Linear view of evolution: This version of the preceding figure uses the same data but with a linear scale for time before present instead of a logarithmic one. This shows the acceleration more dramatically, but details are not visible. From a linear perspective, most key events have just happened “recently.”
5. Figure 15.5 Fifteen views of evolution: Major paradigm shifts in the history of the world, as seen by fifteen different lists of key events. There is a clear trend of smooth acceleration through biological and then technological evolution.
6. Figure 15.6 Canonical milestones based on clusters of events from thirteen lists.
7. Figure 15.7 A mathematical singularity: As x approaches zero (from right to left), 1/x (or y) approaches infinity.
Chapter 19
1. Figure 19.1
2. Figure 19.2
Chapter 25
1. Figure 25.1 The movement of a train defined by reference to time
2. Figure 25.2 The moving of the present moment
3. Figure 25.3 High-school physics graph of a particle moving through time
4. Figure 25.4 Space-time diagram
5. Figure 25.5 Where is the “real here”?
6. Figure 25.6 “Now” for me and for Guy Fawkes
7. Figure 25.7 Moving back and forth in space
8. Figure 25.8 Moving back and forth in time, temporal axis vertical
9. Figure 25.9 Moving back and forth in time, temporal axis horizontal
Chapter 27
1. Figure 27.1 GRANDFATHER PARADOX, in which a time traveler prevents his or her own birth, is a stock objection to time travel.
2. Figure 27.2 SPACE AND TIME are combined into one four-dimensional entity, space-time. Here we show two space dimensions and time. A worldline connects all events in our life in space-time; since we have some size, a person’s worldline is more like a worm extending from birth to death than a line. The worldlines of light rays emanating in all space directions from an event trace out a cone in space-time, called a lightcone. The worldline of any object, such as the navel of this figure, cannot stray outside a lightcone emanating from any point in its past.
3. Figure 27.3 CLOSED TIMELIKE CURVE can be formed if space-time loops around. Entering such a curve tomorrow and moving forward in time, we can end up at today.
4. Figure 27.4 NEUTRON DECAY can occur at any time, though some times are more likely than others. For each instant in which the neutron might decay, there is a universe in which it decays at that instant, according to Everett’s multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics.
5. Figure 27.5 MULTIVERSE PICTURE OF REALITY unravels the time-travel paradoxes. Sonia plans to enter the time machine tomorrow and travel back to today but resolves that if she emerges from the time machine today, she will not enter tomorrow. She is able to carry out this plan, without paradox. In a B-universe she does not emerge today and so enters the time machine tomorrow. She then emerges today, but in an A-universe, and meets her copy – who does not enter the time machine.

Praise for the First Edition

“… a successful marriage of art with analytic philosophy.”

Mind & Machines, Fall 2010

“Susan Schneider is the Sarah Connor of philosophy as she ponders the role of science fiction and thought experiments to help understand uploading, time travel, superintelligence, the singularity, consciousness … and physicalism. Hasta La Vista baby.

” Richard Marshall, 3Quarks Daily

“Science Fiction and Philosophy brings two areas together and into a dialogue … science fiction reminds philosophy that all reason and no play makes thought a very dull thing indeed.

” Discover Magazine, November 2010

“Looking over the pages one can see Schneider’s attention to detail … Schneider has obviously made her choices for their accessibility and we should applaud her for this.

” Metapsychology

“I’ve always said that science fiction is a lousy name for this field; it’s really philosophical fiction: phi-fi not sci-fi! This book proves that with its penetrating analysis of the genre’s treatment of deep questions of reality, personhood, and ethics.”

Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award-winning author of Hominids

This second edition first published 2016
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Schneider, Susan, 1968– editor.
Title: Science fiction and philosophy : from time travel to superintelligence/ edited by Susan Schneider.
Description: Second edition. | Hoboken : Wiley, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015038424 (print) | LCCN 2015039864 (ebook) | ISBN 9781118922613 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781118922620 (pdf) | ISBN 9781118922606 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Science fiction–Philosophy. | Philosophy–Introductions. | Philosophy in literature.
Classification: LCC PN3433.6 .S377 2016 (print) | LCC PN3433.6 (ebook) | DDC 809.3/8762–dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015038424

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

From Time Travel to Superintelligence