4 Walking Contradictions

4 Walking Contradictions ROBERT A. DELFINO AND KYLE TAYLOR For is not philosophy the study of death? —SOCRATES Tears flow from his eyes as he attempts to aim the sniper rifle on her face. He wants to pull the trigger, but it’s hard to kill the woman you love—the wife who bore you a son. The fact that she’s now a walker only makes it slightly easier. Nagging questions remain. Is there a chance that she could be cured and become his wife again? Is she still the same person he married? Is she even a person at all—or, rather, a monster that he should destroy? These are the kinds of philosophical questions that must weigh on the mind of Morgan Jones. If we put ourselves in Morgan’s shoes, we realize that the question of whether walkers are persons is an important one, not only because it’s an interesting metaphysical question, but also because it has ethical implications. The answer to this question will help determine if shooting your zombified wife is tantamount to murder or merely akin to shooting an animal. After all, most people would agree that there’s a moral difference between intentionally shooting a person and intentionally shooting a grizzly bear. Philosophers such as Peter Singer have challenged this moral intuition, arguing that such discrimination amounts to speciesism (similar to racism). However, the view that, morally speaking, persons should be treated differently than non-persons has been and still is the dominant position in western philosophy. Throughout history, the most dominant view of what persons are is that they are intelligent, living beings. Included in this understanding of persons is the view that persons have the capacity to make free choices and thus they are morally responsible beings. “Individual substance of a rational nature” was the definition of person given by the ancient Roman philosopher Boethius.1 And it has long been held that intelligence is rooted in our soul, the spiritual, non-material side of human beings. “Man is said to be the image of God by reason of his intellectual nature,” argues St. Thomas Aquinas, for it is through our mind, not our bodies, that we can most imitate God.2 The philosopher Immanuel Kant, who believed in the immortality of the soul, argued that persons possess an intrinsic dignity that others should respect. Certainly, much of the dignity accorded persons in contemporary culture and law can be traced back to the view that humans are intelligent, spiritual beings. But fear not, those of you who are skeptical of souls and all things spiritual. Even most materialists would agree that in order for something to be a person it must be alive and intelligent. We have yet to meet anyone who would consider a corpse or a non-living object such as a piece of metal to be a person. Similarly, everyone agrees that bacteria are living beings, but no one to our knowledge has ever argued that they are persons. (Considering the trillions of bacteria living in your body, we really hope they are not persons!) What about walkers? Are they persons? Are they even alive? It’s not so clear, as the ominous title of the series, The Walking Dead, suggests. But philosophy can help us here. First, we need to determine the relationship between some important metaphysical categories, such as “life” and “death.” Second, we need to examine how walkers act in the TV series. For it is through studying the actions of a thing that you gain some insight into that thing’s nature. Matter of Life and Death Can something be both alive and dead? Does that make any sense? Is it metaphysically possible? Let’s begin with something easier. Consider American football. Can a team win and lose the same game? No. This is because winning and losing are mutually exclusive—that is, both cannot be true of the same team in the same game. Now let’s ask a metaphysical question. Can something with mutually exclusive properties exist? Consider a square-circle, which is a geometrical figure that is both a square and a circle at the same time. Is it possible to draw a square-circle on a flat piece of paper? No. Metaphysicians call things such as square-circles “impossible beings.” Something is an impossible being if its very nature contains a contradiction. And it’s the contradictory nature of a square-circle that prevents its existence in the real world—the world outside of our mind. It is possible to draw a circle on a piece of paper, and it is possible to draw a square on the same piece of paper. However, it’s impossible to draw on a flat piece of paper one figure that is both a square and a circle. It’s only in the mind that a person can “think” (loosely speaking) about a square-circle. Because life and death are mutually exclusive it makes no sense to claim that a walker is both alive and dead. That would be like claiming that the same geometrical figure is both a square and a circle, which is impossible. But there is another possibility. In football a team cannot win and lose the same football game precisely because winning and losing are mutually exclusive. However, a tie is possible in a regular-season football game if neither team scores in overtime. So while winning and losing are mutually exclusive, winning and losing are not jointly exhaustive in football. That is, there is another possibility not covered by winning and Copyright © 2012. Open Court. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. losing, namely, a tie. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 8/21/2016 11:52 AM via GUILFORD COLLEGE AN: 479352 ; Yuen, Wayne.; The Walking Dead and Philosophy : Zombie Apocalypse Now 26 Account: s6147312 But what about life and death—are they jointly exhaustive? Or is being a walker an alternative to being alive or dead? Robots, after all, can walk and one could plausibly argue that they are neither alive nor dead. Indeed, we generally don’t call things that were never alive, such as a piece of metal, “dead.” However, robots were never alive either—they are artifacts created by human beings. In contrast, every walker started off as a living human being before it became infected. Is it possible that the zombie infection transforms a human being into something that can move but something to which the categories “life” and “death” no longer apply—namely, the “quasi-living”? Perhaps . But for now we can conclude that there are only two options concerning zombies. On the one hand, zombies might be impossible beings because their nature is contradictory. Stories about zombies are the fruit of human imagination and authors of fiction are free to discuss fantastical beings—even beings that have contradictory natures. On the other hand, it might be the case that zombies are possible beings. The nature of a possible being does not contain a contradiction, and thus, in principle, they can exist in the real world, not merely in our minds. Let’s just look at walker behavior in The Walking Dead TV series, not in the comic book series or in other zombie films. Examining this behavior will help us determine whether zombies are possible or impossible beings because it’s through studying the actions of a thing that you gain some insight into that thing’s nature. Examining walker behavior will also help us determine if walkers are persons, an important question that we will consider next. Braaaiiinnnsss . Walkers don’t talk. They moan or growl, but they never engage in a conversation. If they did engage in conversation, we could argue that they’re intelligent. While their inability to speak can be explained by a lack of intelligence, alternative explanations are possible. For example, perhaps walkers cannot speak because of damaged vocal chords or some similar physical defect. What we must do, then, is consider the other actions walkers perform and ask the following question. Do any of these actions imply intelligence? Consider the scene where Morgan’s zombified wife Jenny turns the door knob of Fred and Cindy Drake’s house. Turning a door knob by itself is not a sign of intelligence. But Morgan tells us that she died in that house, accompanied by her husband and son. So perhaps Jenny is trying to open the door to find them. If Jenny is able to form abstract concepts wherein she recognizes that opening the door is a means to an end (finding her son) then we could argue that she’s intelligent. But perhaps Jenny’s merely hungry and looking for food. Animal Instinct is enough, in such a case, to explain her activity. After all, Jenny appears to give up fairly easily, which would be uncharacteristic of a mother searching for her son. Unfortunately, it’s hard to know what Jenny’s thinking, if anything, in this situation. But what’s clear is that in order for Jenny to have the goal of finding her son she must have retained some memories of her family despite becoming a walker. Other scenes, however, cast serious doubt on the view that walkers retain memories of their previous lives. For example, consider the episode “Wildfire” when Amy is turned into a walker, perhaps the most disturbing scene of Season One. As a sorrowful Andrea holds her sister, apologizing for the times she was not there for her, we desperately look for any sign that Amy remembers her sister.

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