The Philosophy of Ted Chiang

Description

Ted Chiang is one of the most insightful science fiction writers of our time. His writing has garnered high praise, including four Nebula awards, four Hugo awards and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. His short story, “Story of Your Life,” was the basis of the 2016 film Arrival. This volume, which includes a foreword by Chiang and twenty-one short essays by philosophers, analyzes the philosophical significance of Chiang’s popular science fiction. These essays discuss how Chiang’s stories engage with age-old and contemporary philosophical questions pertaining to free will, God, technology, existentialism, beauty, procreation, contradictions, time, human intelligence, alien intelligence, and artificial intelligence. This volume probes terrain that should be of interest to experts in philosophy, while still being accessible to a general audience interested in science fiction. These essays, like Ted Chiang’s writing, demonstrate how excellent science fiction can help us to think about the world and our place in it. Foreword Acknowledgments Contents Notes on Contributors Part I: Free Will Chapter 1: Why the Market Value of Free Will is $99.99 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Determinism 1.3 Do-What-You-Want Free Will 1.4 Not-Pre-Determined Free Will 1.5 When Should We Want Free Will? 1.6 What We’d Be Discovering, If We Discovered That We Don’t Have Free Will 1.7 How Bad Would It Be? Chapter 2: Many-worlds and Free Will 2.1 The Science 2.2 Free Will? 2.3 Econ 101010101010101 2.4 What Does It All Mean? Reference Part II: God Chapter 3: Death, God, and Meaning in Ted Chiang’s Stories 3.1 “Omphalos”: Meaning and God 3.2 “Exhalation”: Living in the Face of Death 3.3 Conclusion References Chapter 4: The Presence of Evil and the Absence of God 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Hiddenness and Evil 4.3 Responses to the Argument from Hiddenness 4.4 A New Response References Chapter 5: Mysterious Ways: Making Sense of God’s Actions in Hell Is the Absence of God References Part III: Technology Chapter 6: The Value of Fact and Feeling 6.1 Well-Being and Self-Deception 6.2 What Can We Do? References Chapter 7: We Can Remember It for You Better: Ted Chiang on Technology and Human Knowledge 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Epistemic Evaluations 7.3 Breakdowns and Interference 7.4 Facts Without Understanding References Part IV: Existentialism Chapter 8: How to Live With Freedom 8.1 Freedom 8.2 Anxiety and Authenticity 8.3 Living Authentically Everyday References Chapter 9: Existential Responsibility in Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Chiang 9.1 Introduction 9.2 Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence, “Story of Your Life,” and Choosing Your Life 9.3 Becoming a Self: Self-Responsibility in Kierkegaard and Chiang 9.4 Conclusion References Part V: Beauty Chapter 10: Just Looking: Check Out the Computational Topography on Her! 10.1 Is Beauty Visual Cocaine? 10.2 Just Looking? 10.3 What Good Is Beauty? 10.4 Fetishizing Fairness Chapter 11: Should You Like What You See? Ethics, Aesthetics, and the Appreciation of Human Beauty 11.1 Liking What You See 11.2 “Beauty Is What Blinds You.” 11.3 Calliagnosia 11.4 Aesthetics and Attention 11.5 The Choice References Part VI: Procreation Ethics Chapter 12: The Ethics of Making a Short Life 12.1 Introduction 12.2 Anti-natalism 12.3 Objections to Anti-natalism and a Proposal 12.4 Ethics of Louise’s Decision 12.5 Our Likeness to Louise 12.6 Ethics of Short Lives References Part VII: Contradictions Chapter 13: Knowledge, Symbols, and Understanding 13.1 I. 13.2 II. 13.3 III. 13.4 IV. References Chapter 14: Choosing What’s Fictionally True 14.1 Introduction 14.2 A Reading of the Story Where Renée Proves 1=2 14.3 What Is Lost in a Reading Where Renée Doesn’t In Fact Prove 1=2 14.4 Conclusion References Part VIII: Time Chapter 15: Time Machines and Predictors are Possible but Unlikely 15.1 Why Time Machines Are Possible 15.2 Why Predictors Are Possible 15.3 Why Time Machines and Predictors Are Unlikely References Chapter 16: The Temporality of Our Emotions and Time in Ted Chiang’s Stories 16.1 Are Emotions Reasonable? 16.2 Are Events Permanent? 16.3 Are Changes in Emotions Rational? 16.4 Tentative Conclusions References Part IX: Human and Alien Intelligence Chapter 17: Language, Thought, Experience, and Chiang’s “Story of Your Life” 17.1 Introduction 17.2 Linguistic Relativity: From Intuitions to Empirically Testable Claim 17.3 Contemporary Empirical Research on Linguistic Relativity 17.4 Conclusion: Empirical and Philosophical Assessment of Linguistic Relativity Chapter 18: Jeopardy! and the Stories of Our Lives 18.1 Insomnia 18.2 The Word 18.3 Contingency 18.4 Pragmatism References Chapter 19: What Is It to Understand Enlightenment? 19.1 What Is Enlightenment? 19.2 What Does Understanding Tell Us About Enlightenment? 19.3 Conclusion: Is Greco Enlightened? References Part X: Artificial Intelligence Chapter 20: Raising an AI Teenager 20.1 Can We Scale Up to Artificial General Intelligence? 20.2 Will AGI Lead to Superintelligence? 20.3 Should We Be Very Afraid? 20.4 Conclusion References Chapter 21: Save the Digients! On the Moral Status of AI 21.1 Who Are the Digients? 21.2 Why Does Moral Status Matter? 21.3 Are Digients More Like Animals, Children with Special Needs, or Corporations? 21.4 Conclusion: The Moral Rights of AI References Index