The new big screen adaptation of Ghost in the Shell did a great job of entertaining me…and also of touching on an important discussion about people; what makes us human?
I loved the visual style of this movie; they laid out the world in striking, colourful and creative ways. Many interesting nods to previous cinema were in there too. One big one for me was the appearance of the Pan Am logo in various city wide shots. Are they implying this story occurs in the same universe as Blade Runner? Is it just a respectful nod to that great movie…which happens to touch on related themes? Dunno – whichever it is, I love it.
Avoiding spoilers, essentially we start with the main character’s brain being transplanted into a droid body. If Robocop looked like Scarlett Johansson, you get the idea of where we are going. And very quickly a familiar point is raised.
“Major, you are more than just a robot. Even though you have an artificial body, you are more than circuits. There’s a human brain behind those eyes and we can examine the thoughts that go on in it. But more than that, you have a soul; there is a ghost in this shell.”
It’s interesting that the movie raises this so clearly because, there are those in our world today who assert that there is no soul; we are nothing but matter in motion. I have a brain, and I am my brain…nothing more. If this claim is correct, then I have no soul, I am just matter. Darwinian evolution demands this conclusion. The human soul is just a nice story cooked up by the world religions and the Greek philosophers…nothing more.
Enter Leibnitz Law of Indiscernibility of Identicals. This sounds complicated…but stay with me cos it’s not. The law says this:
For anything X and anything Y
if X is equal to Y then
for all properties p
p is true of X only if p is true of Y
How does this law help me work out if I’m a brain, or if I also have a mind or soul as well?
Well, if I can prove that there’s one thing true of X that’s NOT true of Y, then I’ve shown that X is not equal to Y. X is not the same property as Y. In other words, if there’s something we know about my mental properties that we also know are NOT true of my physical brain properties, then I’ve shown that MY BRAIN is not the same property as MY MIND. I am more than just a brain. I have a mind…or a soul as well.
Actually – it turns out that there are many ways of demonstrating that my mental properties are different from my brain properties. Here’s one way.
Imagine you are a scientist studying the function of the live human brain and you touch a region of tissue, causing the patient’s brain to exhibit a particular physical property. Neurons fire; chemistry is affected; you measure and record this change on your instrument.
And because you have a good bedside manner, you ask the patient how they are doing. And they say, “That was weird. When you did that, I immediately saw an image of my grandmother in a red dress; I could smell her perfume and everything.” I suggest that what you’ve got here is evidence of two separate things; a mental state and a physical state. The mental state is the image and smell of the grandmother; the physical state is the change in brain chemistry.[1]
Think about this. There’s nothing we can say about that image that will make it physical; we can hunt through every inch of brain tissue, and not find any evidence of a red dress anywhere. It’s not physical; but it is real because your patient experienced it.
What does this suggest? I propose that there’s a cause and effect relationship between a person’s mind, or soul, and their brain. One affects the other. Yet they are distinct. There are things true of my brain that are not true of my mind; they are both properties of a human person. I have a brain and I also have a mind.
Not convinced? Well think of it this way. Our scientist has got to ask his patient what is going on in his mind; he cannot measure what the imagined image or smells were; he can’t tell how red the image of the dress is; unless he engages his patient in a conversation about it. Yet he absolutely can measure what is going on in his patient’s brain. Mind and brain are separate yet related properties. One is material, the other is immaterial.
It seems to me that Ghost in the Shell is pointing in the right direction here as it explores what makes up a human being. There’s more to people than the material; there is the immaterial as well. I have a soul which is separate though related…and this opens up all manner of possibilities for my future…
[1] J P Moreland, In Defence of the Soul, (BIOLA University, 2014).
