Free Guy’s philosophy: Are we all just part of a grand simulation?
Maybe René Descartes was onto something…
Do we have free will?
So if we are like Guy and living in a computer simulation, what becomes of ourfree will?
In the movie, Guy certainly feels like he has free will, but admits that his thoughts and behavior is down to his programming. And there certainly seems to be something right about this. If our minds were nothing but a computer program running on a server somewhere, then it’s hard to see how we could have any real control over what we think and do. Everything would be determined by our programming.
But now we can take this a step further and ask: what is the difference between a mind that runs according to a program in a computer, and one that runs according to biological laws in a brain?
Guy has no free will because his thoughts and actions are the result of electronic operations going on inside a computer that he has no control over. But, our thoughts and actions are the result of biological operations going on inside our brains, andwe have no control over those either. So, it seems, whether we are in a computer simulation or the real world matters not. Either way, we lack free will.
There might be some hope for both Guy and us, however. Perhaps Guy’s programming and our neurology merely sets certain parameters within which free action is still somehow possible, as some (known aslibertarians) think. Or perhaps free will consists in something other than being able to do otherwise than we do, as others (known ascompatibilists) think.
Can computer programs be conscious?
A traditional view that was held byDescartes, and is still held by some contemporary philosophers (such asRichard Swinburne), is that consciousness does not spring forth from the operations of our biological brains at all. The mind is on this view entirely distinct from the brain, but the two nevertheless interact. So conscious thoughts occur in a spiritual mind and are then beamed across to the physical brain.
But if like me, you find such a view implausible and think that consciousness arises from the operations of biological material, then it seems one must admit that agenuine conscious mindcould arise from the operations of non-biological materials too, like those a computer is made from. And if this is right, given the rapid increase in computing power that we are now seeing, and the development of artificial intelligence, the day when such a mind arises might not be far off.
The consequences of there being conscious computer minds are far-reaching. One such consequence is the question of the moral status of such minds, which is raised in Free Guy. If they can have desires and emotions, be happy or sad, and fall in love, all of which Guy does in the movie, then they certainly seem to warrant as much moral respect as human beings.
But then it would seem to be morally wrong to interfere with their lives, such as resetting their programming, which would be akin to murder. As such, it would seem that the legal frameworks that protect our rights would have to be extended to protect theirs too. How to do this is a complicated issue that philosophers and legal expertsare only just beginning to tackle.
Article byBenjamin Curtis, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Ethics,Nottingham Trent University
This article is republished fromThe Conversationunder a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.
Story byThe Conversation
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