I chose the movie, A.I. (Artificial Intelligence). In this movie, polar ice caps have melted and the resulting raise of the ocean waters has drowned all the coastal cities of the world. The human race, which was withdrawn to the interior of the continents, keeps advancing and reached to the point of creating realistic robots, called mechas to serve them. In this movie, the main character is David who is an artificial kid. He is the first one to have real feelings, especially everlasting love for his mother, Monica. Monica adopts David as a substitute for her real son. David lives happily with Monica. However, when their real son returns home after a cure, David’s life changes dramatically.
Monica decides to hide David instead of sending him to by destroyed. David is eventually abandoned by Monica in the forest with his teddy robot. Then, David is being captured by an anti-mecha Flesh Fair where abandoned mechas are destroyed in front of cheering crowds. David is nearly killed but the crowd is sways by his realistic nature and his pleading and David escapes with Joe which is also an abandoned robot. Then he sets out for the journey in search of “blue fairy” that he read in the story of Pinocchio who will turn him into real human child and bring him back to Monica.
Then later, he finds the blue fairy and asks to make him real human repeatedly. And he become frozen with sea water which makes his internal power source to drain away. Then millions years later, human-kind is extinct and mechas get more human-like, and more advanced. Then mechas find David and recognizes that he knew living humans, making them special and unique. David is revived and walks to the frozen Blue fairy statue, which cracks and collapses as he touches it. Then at David’s insistence, they recreate Monica from DNA in the lock of her hair which had been saved by Teddy. Even though she can live only a single day, David spends the happiest day of his life with Monica.
In this movie, there is a philosophical question about materialism, dualism and moral at the same time. If there is no spirit of non-material thing but just matter, then there is no need for us to care about morality. Then, question such as is it moral to kill David who is artificial robot child with emotion might appear. Even though David was artificial child, he developed to have emotion of love and hatred over Martin, original son of Monica.
To this question, materialism might say yes or wouldn’t really answer this question, because materialists believe that it’s superstition that makes man vicious, unhappy, and immoral. They believe that humans depend on supernatural to get these feelings which is just nothing. Therefore as materialists believe that we’re just made up of matter, and as there is nothing after the death, there is no reason why it would be immoral to kill David.
However, dualist would say differently. They would say no. Dualist believes that there is physical stuff and spiritual stuff. Physical things have size and mass while spiritual things are in time, but they take up no space. They think the emotion as one of non-material stuff which makes human unique from other organism. Therefore even though David is made of material, as long as he has emotion, dualist would be reluctant to kill. It will be against their standard of morality to kill David.
The opinion of my interviewee was quite between dualist and materialist. Her opinion was that as long as David was not human, but just with the emotion, it’s accepted as moral act to kill him. The interviewee is Christian, therefore, held the belief that human is the only creation of God which could be immoral to kill without reason. This aspect might be kind of dualist because she believes in the existence of God and spiritual world.
In my opinion, it’s immoral to kill David. Even though, he was made out of materials, he still has emotions, which are one of the symbols of human. Also we have to consider that human created him, for the benefit of human. However, if we kill David, then we will feel somehow self-guilty. The fact that we are filled with “self-guiltiness” means we have done something immoral, which means killing David is immoral. Therefore, killing David who is an artificial boy with emotion is immoral.
댓글 없음:
댓글 쓰기