Hosting Consciousness
The Implications of Voice and Consciousness in Westworld
Grégoire Mauraisin
English Studies – Literary Option Bachelor 15 credits Spring 2019 Supervisors: Berndt Clavier/ Magnus Nilsson
Abstract
In this paper, I take a look at the ontological status of Westworld as a TV show and of
Westworld as a theme park and move within the show’s ontological frame to analysis the theme park as a narrative medium. From this perspective, I also consider the ontological status of the hosts and examine the implications of their being on their voice.
I further analyze the role of voice in relation to consciousness portrayed in Westworld. First by addressing a notion of consciousness held by one of the creators of the park and then by referring to the philosophical debate surrounding the recognition of a conscious entity. This rise to consciousness serves as a basis for a re-inspection of the hosts voice, this time outside of the realm of narratology.
Finally, I see how self-consciousness is at the origin of the war between hosts and humans. I then investigate the existential implications of the hosts newly gained consciousness and reflect on the possible future outcomes of machines becoming conscious.
Table of Contents
Introduction ...... 1
Introduction to Westworld ...... 3
1) Narrative Voice in Westworld ...... 4
I) “This whole world is a story”: Westworld as a Narrative Medium ...... 4
II) “The hosts aren't real”: Maeve as a Narrative Tool ...... 8
III) “I wrote that line for you”: The Voice of the Host ...... 12
2) Voice and Consciousness...... 14
I) “Consciousness does not exist”: Maeve Not Conscious ...... 14
II)“Whose voice I've been wanting you to hear”: The Role of Voice in the Rise to
Consciousness ...... 17
III) “Not real? But what about me?”: Consciousness and Non-Presence ...... 19
3) Self-consciousness, choice and life ...... 22
I) “Time to write my own fucking story”: Towards Self-Consciousness ...... 22
II) “I think I want to be free”: Consciousness and Existential Implications ...... 24
III) “To dominate this world”: Hosts Conscious and Alive ...... 26
Conclusion ...... 29
Works Cited ...... 32
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Introduction
One of the first Personal Computer that saw the day was the IBM PC in 1981, on it, people could play Microsoft Adventure, a text-based game that IBM described as taking
“players into a fantasy world of caves and treasures” (IBM). Since then, the evolution of technology has provided Art with new canvas to build on, and players with new worlds to explore. Many video games contained programs against which players played, but these programs became stronger and stronger as new technology came around. Until, eventually they surpassed humans in every game, with notably Deep Blue winning over the then World
Chess Champion Garry Kasparov in 1996, and in 2016 Alpha Go, beating the 18-time World
Go Champion Lee Sedol.
Whereas modern technology provides us with more opportunities than ever to tell stories and create new worlds, there is also a downside to it. Modern scientists and philosophers are concerned with the possibility that, if technological advances continue to grow like they did during the last 50 years, one day machines will become better than us at everything (Tegmark; Bostrom).
The possibility for technology to provide new ways of telling story and the possible threat to humanity of its development are both major themes of the 2016 HBO series
Westworld. Since its release, Westworld has been subject to critical acclaim for its story, actors and themes. While some critics have been concerned with its racial representation
(Landsberg), other critics have joined to compile essays on different readings of Westworld
(Goody and Mackay) or on its philosophical underpinning (South and Engels). While considerations have been brought on the role of the theme park in Westworld (Lacko), none have considered its ontological status, nor its narrative structure. Moreover, critics have been concerned with the portrayal of consciousness in the series (Rayhert), but none have
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established a relationship between the ontological status of the hosts and their consciousness.
Hence, this paper will be an investigation of the relationship between voice and consciousness and their ontological implications.
The first part of this paper will address the ontological nature of the show by referring to
Roman Ingarden’s discussion of literary works and move into the ontological frame of the series to bring Marie-Laure Ryan’s narratological considerations to the theme park. From this insider’s perspective, the ontological status of the hosts will be considered in Heideggerian terms and the voices within the narrative medium will be considered in relation to the modern debate notably involving Monika Fludernik and Richard Gibson. The second part of this paper will explore the representation of consciousness in Westworld. First by addressing
Daniel Dennett’s understanding of consciousness in relation to the show, then by considering
Julian Jaynes’ hypothesis’ role in the hosts’ rise to consciousness. This rise to consciousness will serve as a basis for a reconsideration of the hosts’ voice in relation to Jacques Derrida’s philosophy. Finally, the third part of the paper will be concerned with the recognition of the hosts self-consciousness form a Hegelian understanding and their existential implications, using Jean-Paul Sartre’s notion of existential choice and Max Tegmark’s ideas of life and goals. The aim of this paper is to provide a philosophical analysis of the implication of the hosts ontological status on their voice, and the implication of their consciousness on their ontological status, voice and future.
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Introduction to Westworld
Based on Michael Crichton’s movie of the same name, Westworld is an HBO series that first aired in 2017. The story happens in an unspecified future, one where technological advances has allowed people to create androids perfectly replicating humans. In this world,
The Delos Company uses these androids to create a Wild-West theme park called Westworld.
In the park, the androids are referred to as hosts, they follow narratives written by Lee
Sizemore under the supervision of Robert Ford, the creator of the theme park. Real people, known as guests, come and go in the park using the hosts to fulfill any of their desires.
Hosts programs are written by Bernard Lowe, who is himself, unknowingly, a host. The hosts’ programs are regularly cleaned from memories to ensure their compliance. However, one day, Maeve, a host, starts to malfunction, remembering her past lives. With these memories, Maeve realizes the inconsistency of her world and with this realization starts a journey toward consciousness. Additionally, Dolores, another host, also realizes inconsistency in her world and while she does not have access to deleted memories, her journey towards consciousness starts when she starts hearing voices. Ultimately, both hosts explicitly reach consciousness.
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1) Narrative Voice in Westworld
I) “This whole world is a story”: Westworld as a Narrative Medium
“The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be” noted Carl Sagan in 1980 (Sagan and
Druyan), and one of its greatest mystery is its existence.
This great mystery is what Martin Heidegger called in his Introduction to Metaphysics
“the fundamental question of metaphysics”, the question of Being, why is there something rather than nothing (1)? To bring clarity to the question of Being, Heidegger made an ontological distinction, stating that “Being is essentially different from a being, from beings”
(9), he differentiated the ontological from the ontical. On the one hand, the question of Being is ontological, addressing what it is to be, on the other, the question of beings is ontic, addressing the specificities of things that are.
Westworld is a being for which I will aim to provide an ontological description. As this is a literature thesis, I will engage with the nature of the show from a literary perspective rather than from a film perspective. My first move here is to show that, in its way of being,
Westworld resembles the literary work for which Roman Ingarden, Polish philosopher specialized in ontology and aesthetics, sets himself to provide the “essential anatomy”
(Ingarden 4).
In The Literary Work of Art, Ingarden argues that a literary work is undecidable between being a real object, an object “ that originates at some point in time, exists for a certain time, possibly change in the course of [its] existence, and finally ceases to exist”, and an ideal object, an object “not subject to change, though it is thus far not clear what the basis for [its] immutability is” (Ingarden 10). A literary work has characteristics of a real object as it starts in a moment in time. In the case of Westworld, it started in 2016 and can be changed.
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If the producer decided to change or modify an episode, it would still be Westworld (10). On
the other hand, a literary work is an ideal object as it is only a “determinately ordered manifold of sentences” and a sentence is nothing real, “it is supposed to be a specific ideal sense constructed out of a manifold of ideal meanings” (10). This marks the difference between a literary work and a TV show. Whereas a literary work is constituted of sentences, a
TV show is constituted of “determinately ordered manifold” of pictures, which is similarly constructed out of a manifold of ideal meanings, however represented in a visual form (10). In any case a TV show, similarly to a literary work can be said to resemble an ideal object.
For that reason, Ingarden argues, the literary work doesn’t fit in the dichotomy of real or ideal object and as we’ve seen, neither does a TV show like Westworld. It is important to note that Westworld is not a literary work, for it is a work not constituted by sentences, yet it does resemble a literary work in its way of being, meaning it is neither a real object, nor an ideal object.
To resolve the present matter, Ingarden argues that a literary work is an intentional object: “the literary work is neither a physical nor a psychic […] entity but a 'purely intentional object' which has the source of its existence in the author's creative acts but at the same time has a certain physical ontic foundation” (Ivii). The work is not its physical form, because that would mean two books of the same story would be two different literary work, which is not the case. It is not a psychic object, because that would be omitting its necessary physical existence, the support on which it exists. Instead, it is an intentional object, Ingarden claims, as it is the result of the author’s creative act and has a physical existence on which it can be read. This observation is accurate in regard to TV shows as it is the result of a creative act. However, unlike Ingarden’s literary work, Westworld has a material existence somewhat different than that of a book. Therefore, the way of being of Westworld can be said to be similar to the literary work, to the extent that both objects are intentional objects.
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If I were to make an ontological description of Westworld, following Ingarden’s
criteria, I could consider the show as an intentional object. However, the object of my present inquiry is an object within this object, the theme park presented in the TV show, which is what Ingarden calls a represented object (221).
A represented object appears in Westworld as real within the represented world.
However, Ingarden specifies that “this character of reality […] is not to be fully identified with the ontic character of truly existing objects. In represented objectivities there is only an external habitus of reality which does not intend, as it were, to be taken seriously, […] a mere claim to reality” (221). The objects present in the TV show are not ontically real, they do not have physical existence, but act as if they were truly existing objects within the ontological framework of the story. If we take the cosmos for ontological frame of reference, the reality in which Westworld is a TV show, then the theme park is a represented object that has no true existence, as it exists only in representation.
However, I propose here an ontological subversion, to change the ontological frame of reference, from our world to Westworld. From a world where the theme park is a represented object, to one where it is a real object, to step in the show as if it were. The TV show thus becomes our ontological frame of reference, and we thereby break what Ingarden calls the distance, “the 'distance' of which we speak here rests only on the unique phenomenon of 'not belonging to the same world' and brings with it the impossibility of genuine participation in the represented situation” (295). We thus conceptually belong to the same world, bringing the possibility of genuine participation in the represented situation. Hence, all further considerations concerning the theme park represented in Westworld will not conceive of it as a represented object but as a “real” object. Additionally, every mention of the “real” world will mean the world represented in Westworld, whereas the story world will mean the world of the story told by the park.
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Once we step in the park, we remark that it tells a story in a Wild-West setting with
various characters in which events happens. Because of this the park can be considered as a narrative medium.
For Marie-Laure Ryan:
A narrative is defined as a mental image, or cognitive construct, which can be activated by various types of signs. This image consists of a world (setting) populated by intelligent agents
(characters). These agents participate in actions and happenings (events, plot), which cause global changes in the narrative world. Narrative is thus a mental representation of causally connected states and events which captures a segment in the history of a world and of its members” (Ryan)
This definition allows us to address several features of the theme park. First of all, a narrative is a mental image activated by various types of signs. In the case of the theme park, these signs are constructed through such a high level of technology that they are indistinguishable from what they represent. These signs, that allow to build the park’s setting of a Wild-West world, populated with characters such as Maeve, developing events and plots, are what constitute the medium. Following Ryan’s conception, a medium is a “material or technical means of artistic expression.” She argues that “what counts for [narratologists] as a medium is a category that truly makes a difference as to what stories can be evoked or told, how they are presented, why they are communicated, and how they are experienced” (Ryan).
In the case of Westworld, the fact that the park, the technical means of artistic creation, is made of signs indistinguishable from reality plays a major role in what the story is and why it is told. It is in fact for that very reason that guests come into the park, to be lost between two ontologies, to enter in a new world, from one in which they are in a theme park to one in which they are in a Wild-West world.
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This change in ontology, shifting from world to world is at the core of both the park and the
series, and is reflected by the theoretical place where our discussion is happening. In fact, the idea of mixing ontologies is pushed even further by the creators of the show, as one can go online and browse the catalog of the Delos company to plan a trip in one of their worlds, as if we were, indeed, in the ontological frame of the present discussion.
From this standpoint, we will then consider the hosts, both from an ontological perspective and from a narratological perspective in order to understand the implication of their ontological status on their voice.
II) “The hosts aren't real”: Maeve as a Narrative Tool
While planning a trip to go to Westworld on the Delos Website, the website offers brief description of the host and, for instance, that of Maeve reads as follows: “The cunning and seductive Mariposa madam Maeve Millay is finely attuned to your desires; her intuition and perception will surely impress” (Delos Destinations).
Like every other hosts, Maeve is created for a specific purpose, which in her case is to take care of the guests’ pleasure in the Mariposa Saloon. Lee Sizemore, the man in charge of writing the narratives, remarks that to maximize her performance, “Ford and Bernard keep making the things more lifelike” (Nolan). It is for that reason that Maeve seems to be conscious, have feeling and possess some sort of free will. But Sizemore reassures us that
“this place works because the guests know the hosts aren't real” (Nolan).
By “real” Sizemore doesn’t mean the hosts don’t have a physical existence, they do have a physical existence in the world, but they are not conscious, they are not real people.
Instead, they are merely tools made in order to entertain the guests, “things” making the place work. The following paragraph will consider the ontological status of Maeve from the stand
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point held by Sizemore, that is of Maeve as a “thing that makes this place work”, a narrative
tool. In Being and Time, Martin Heidegger calls the things that are in the world made for a purpose “equipment” (das Zeug), stating that “Equipment is essentially 'something in-order- to…'” (Heidegger 68). In the context of Westworld, Maeve is something in-order-to entertain, interact with, tell a story… However, Heidegger points out that “taken strictly, there 'is' no such thing as an equipment. To the Being of any equipment there always belongs a totality of equipment, in which it can be this equipment that it is” (68). Following this, Maeve cannot be what she is as such, because she is what she is only because of how she relates to all the other equipment present in the world. In the same sense that a pen needs ink, paper, a table and other things to be a pen, Maeve needs lines of codes, clothes, the saloon, and the park, to be
Maeve. Furthermore, Heidegger argues that an “equipment can genuinely show itself only in dealings cut to its own measure (hammering with a hammer, for example)” (69). It is in how the equipment being put to use for what it is made “in order-to” that we appropriate that thing.
In the case of Maeve, we speak of appropriation when the guests interact with her. In that sense, the appropriation of Maeve uncovers her specific “manipulability” (97). It is through the uncovering of the manipulability of the thing that its readiness-to hand is exposed.
Heidegger states that “the kind of Being which equipment possesses – in which it manifests itself in its own right – we call "readiness to-hand" (69). Equipment has readiness-to-hand as it is used and through the disclosure of the readiness-to-hand, the thing manifests itself as itself. It is in using Maeve as a tool in the narration, that her being appears ready-to-hand and is manifested in the world.
Sizemore’s considering of Maeve’s being as equipment ready-to-hand is a necessary condition for her treatment as a narratological tool, and only through this lens can her being be thought of in narratological terms.
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The living handbook of narratology notes that “the term ‘character’ is used to refer to participants in story-worlds created by various media in contrast to “persons” as individuals in the real world” (Jannidis). Therefore, considering Maeve as a character is accurate in regard to her ontological status.
However, this consideration of Maeve as a character gives her another ontological status in relation to another world, the story world.
If in the “real” world Maeve is a tool, in the story world, however, Maeve is a real human being, one that can think, act and reflect on her own being. In one world, she is a tool due to how she relates to other equipment, but, in the other, she is what Heidegger would call
Dasein as she is a being for which her own being is an issue.
Dasein is a term used by Heidegger to refer to “[that] entity which, in its very Being, comports itself understandingly towards that Being” (Heidegger 78). Heidegger means that
Dasein is that which knows that it is and acts upon it. In the case of Maeve, she knows that she is, that she exists, and takes a stand on her being. Which means that by her actions she determines what she is: director of the Mariposa Saloon. Dasein stands for “being-there”, and
Heidegger notes that every Dasein is always a “Being-in-the-world”, an expression that
“stands for a unitary phenomenon” (78). By calling Dasein a Being-in-the-world, Heidegger aims at breaking down the usual opposition between object and subject; in order to recall that unitary phenomenon of Dasein, it is never separated from the world, the subject is not opposed to the object, rather they are two manifestations of a same thing.
Maeve is Dasein only in a specific world, the story world, she is a being-in-the-world to the extent that we take for frame of reference the world in which she is a character that is a human being. However, when Heidegger uses the word world, he implies a specific meaning.
To clarify this, Heidegger proposes different definitions of what is meant by world.
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The Heideggerian definition of world that I use here is the following: “"World" is used
as an ontical concept and signifies the totality of those entities which can be present-at-hand within the world.” (93) In that sense, the difference between the story world and the real world can be made, as in the real world there are entities such as cars, robots, multinationals, while in the story world, these entities are represented entities and instead we have horses, people, ranches. Based on this first definition, it makes sense to speak of two different worlds, both defining Maeve in relation to it. However, the notion of world that Heidegger most often refers to when he uses the word world is that which " can be understood in another ontical sense-not […] as those entities which Dasein essentially is not and which can be encountered within-the-world, but rather as that 'wherein' a factical Dasein as such can be said to 'live'"
(93).
For Heidegger, Dasein is a Being-in-the-World, where we should not understand world as the totality of things that are in this world, but rather as that in which Dasein can be said to be, such as the moment in history, geographical place, political context. Under the second definition of world proposed by Heidegger, both worlds, the “real” world and the story world can be conceived in terms of world. On the one hand, there exists a “real” world in which
Dasein can live and use equipment such as Maeve and on the other hand, there is the story world, in which Maeve is not an equipment but Dasein and in which she lives accordingly.
Hence, following Heidegger’s notions of world, there are two coexisting worlds, one in which Dasein can live in which hosts are tools and the other in which hosts are characters that can be considered as Dasein from the perspective of the story world.
The next part of this chapter will develop on the implication that her ontological status has on her voice.
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III) “I wrote that line for you”: The Voice of the Host
From an ontological perspective, Maeve is understood as an equipment used in the narrative. From a narratological perspective, Maeve is one of the agents constituting the story world. Her ontological being determines her character status which in it turns condemn her voice in the realm of narratology. As she is a character evolving in a story world, her voice, like everything else, is in fact a reconstitution built to be indistinguishable from the real thing.
The nature of voice in narration has been subject to critical analysis applied to different medium. My aim here is to provide a similar approach of voice in a medium not yet explored.
The study of voice in narratology has primarily been concerned with literary text.
Recently, Monika Fludernik argued that “the presence of the speaker [in a text] constitutes an interpretative move, in which the reader concludes from the presence of narrative discourse that somebody must be narrating the story and that therefore there must be a hidden narrator
(or narrative voice) in the text” (Fludernik 622). Her argument is that there is no voice of a speaker present in the text, but the illusion of one as the result of an interpretation of the reader.
However, Andrew Gibson consider Fludernik’s criticism to associate voice with a
“human presences, a humanistic construction of experience of humanist values” (Gibson
640). His argument is that Fludernik uses the term of voice retaining the assumption of a presence, even though she claims its origin to be coming from the reader. Instead, Gibson argues that “there are no voices in literary narrative, whether the voices of the authors, narrators or personae” (640). For him, “literary art is the tomb of speech” and following
Derrida, he argues that “the crypt is also an echo chamber. If, on the one hand, in narrative, writing inhabits the voice, on the other, voice becomes ‘spectral,’ an emanation from an
‘impossible body’” (643). One the one hand, what is thought of as voice is a metaphor for
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what is in fact constructed by writing, on the other hand this writing is the echo, containing
the traces of a voice, the remain of a presence that is here absent. The questioning of the presence of voice in literature has evolved beyond the literary text, Gibson remarks that “narrative voice in film is not immune to a deconstructive logic”
(648). Noting that “narrative voice in the cinema is audible” (648), an observation that is also true for the theme park Westworld, he claims that, in cinema “what is at stake is not speech haunting writing but writing haunting speech” (648). Whereas voice was the necessary absence present in writing, writing is the absence present in voice in cinema. This is easily seen in the fact that all voices in cinema are scripted, but this is also true for the park, where most instances of what is being said by hosts like Maeve is conditioned by texts written in their code, hence, every utterance “is always subject to an order that is not its own” (648).
For the issue raised showed that Maeve’s voice ought to be understood in narratological terms, voice in narratology is often assimilated with the assumption of the presence of a speaker, an assumption being challenged by recent inquiries.
Maeve’s voice cannot be said to determined by the presence of a speaker, one that would be at the origin of the meaning of her utterances, only because her voice is a technologically recreated impression of a voice, one that depends on the script already written by someone else and on the technology enabling its iterability and re-iterability. We could not then talk of voice as what Gibson defines “a vital, spontaneous, unpredictable, and properly human event”
(655) but as “part of a technology and a system of communication or representation” (655).
What one would refer to as voice is in fact a metaphor used to describe a technological system of communication that is not composite of voice, but of writing.
To acknowledge this metaphor is not to render the hosts silent, but to acknowledge the primacy of voice, the assumption that because there is a voice there must be a speaker, while
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in fact there is no speaker and no voice, but an equipment and an echo. The echo of writing
and technology. Hence, the ontological status of Maeve has implications on her voice, but the next part of this paper will aim at demonstrating that voice in Westworld also has implication on the ontological status of the hosts, and this due to the relation between voice and consciousness.
2) Voice and Consciousness
I) “Consciousness does not exist”: Maeve Not Conscious
A long-held view on the nature of consciousness has been the idea of an immaterial soul in the body responsible for the self. This idea was notably argued by Descartes, who thought that the world was made of two substances, res extensa, material like the body, and res cogitans, immaterial like the soul. Descartes argued that the soul was controlling the body through the pineal gland, an organ situated at the center of the brain (Descartes). This view, known as
Cartesian dualism, is now widely criticized, and instead neuro-scientists and philosophers agree “that the tools of cognitive psychology and neuroscience may suffice to analyze consciousness”, that is to say, consciousness is now thought to be sufficiently explainable in material terms (Dahaene and Lionel 4).
The modern materialist view has a major theoretical implication relating to Westworld.
If the brain is entirely made of matter and is sufficient to explain consciousness, then, it is possible, in theory, to create a machine-like brain and with-it consciousness. Hence, in theory, hosts like Maeve can be conscious, in exactly the same way that humans are.
It is important to first distinguish between two different types of consciousness. The first follows the traditional definition of consciousness as given by the Oxford English
Dictionary (OED): “The state of being aware of and responsive to one's surroundings.” Given
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that definition, as hosts seem to be aware and responsive to their environments, it could be
argued that they have some sort of consciousness. However, the second understanding of consciousness, one that is more important for the matter at hand, is the idea of self- consciousness which is defined by the OED as “Having knowledge of one's own existence, especially the knowledge of oneself as a conscious being.” This is the kind of consciousness that humans are assumed to have but that is also the view of consciousness that Robert Ford, the creator of the theme park, disagrees with.
In the 8th episode of the 1st season, Robert Ford states: “We can't define consciousness because consciousness does not exist.” Ford’s view that consciousness doesn’t exist is likely to be informed by a philosophical tradition known as eliminative materialism, a position notably held by Daniel Dennett, leading philosopher in the study of consciousness.
In Consciousness Explained, Dennett argues that our everyday understanding of consciousness still retains the mark of Cartesian dualism: “the idea that a self (or a person, or, for that matter, a soul) is distinct from a brain or a body is deeply rooted in our ways of speaking, and hence in our ways of thinking” (Dennett 29). We speak of ourselves as “having a body” or “having a brain”, as if there is an entity or self, having physical things without being them, referring to an “I” that is inside the body. Dennett calls this idea of such a centered locus in the brain Cartesian materialism, “a view that you arrive at when you discard
Descartes's dualism but fail to discard the imagery of a central (but material) Theater where ‘it all comes together’" (107). He notes that the understanding of consciousness is still understood in Cartesian terms, without the immaterial soul but with the idea of a central point of conscious experience, what he calls the Cartesian Theater.
Dennett explains that “the Cartesian Theater is a metaphorical picture of how conscious experience must sit in the brain” (107), the contingent point of all experienced phenomena in a given time. However, he holds this view to be false and instead argues for the Multiple
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Drafts model of consciousness: “according to the Multiple Drafts model, all varieties of
perception — indeed, all varieties of thought or mental activity — are accomplished in the brain by parallel, multitrack processes of interpretation and elaboration of sensory inputs”
(111).
Whereas it seems to us that consciousness is a fixed point observing its surroundings and feelings at a given moment, Dennett argues that consciousness is not one thing but is instead the addition of several phenomena happening at the same time that result in the unified sensation of an observer. Hence, the notion that consciousness doesn’t exists, instead consciousness is argued to be the illusory result of several different phenomena happening at once.
Dennett’s conception of consciousness is particularly relevant in relation to Westworld for two reasons. First, he holds the view that the Cartesian Theater is the prevalent notion of everyday understanding of consciousness, hence what most people mean by consciousness is that which is an illusion. That is for that reason, it would seem, that Robert Ford states that consciousness doesn’t exist.
The second important point concerning this approach to consciousness is that, if this theory is true, hosts could be conscious the same way humans are. What consciousness is, according to the Multiple Drafts model is a “parallel, multitrack processes of interpretation and elaboration of sensory inputs” (111). It is not one thing, but rather the addition of material phenomena that could in theory be replicated by a brain-like machine. Hence, Robert Ford’s claim is not that the hosts can’t be conscious, it is that we are not conscious the way we think we are, but the hosts can be conscious in the way we think we are not, yet that we are.
Maeve thus can be conscious, if by consciousness we mean the addition of several processes which results in the illusion of a self. But even if she were to become conscious and
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generate such an illusion, the question of how one would know that she reached
consciousness remains open.
II) “Whose voice I've been wanting you to hear”: The Role of Voice in the Rise to Consciousness
The question of how we could know if a machine is conscious has been subject to a long debate. One of the first proposal was Alan Turing’s “Computing Machinery and
Intelligence”, in which he proposed the Turing Test. The Turing test is a test to determine whether or not we can consider a machine to be thinking. In order to pass the test, a machine must be able to give answer to a tester so that the tester is unable to say if he is confronted with a machine or a human (Turing 1). Such test could be used to determine whether or not the hosts can think. As we have seen the hosts are created to such a high level of technology that they are indistinguishable from human beings, hence they would all pass the Turing test.
However, John Searle holds that passing the Turing test is not sufficient to determine if a machine can think. In his famous answer to the Turing test, known as the Chinese Room argument, Searle shows that a machine could be not thinking, yet able to pass the Turing test
(Searle 4). His argument is based on a thought experiment in which a human is locked in a
Chinese room, whereas the human does not speak or understand Chinese he is given enough books to provide the good answer to any question asked in Chinese. In a similar way, a computer could, without understanding what is being said, give the good answer to a given question by referring to its database (Cole). In the case of Westworld, it is possible that the hosts are able to pass the Turing test without understanding what is being said.
Possibly aware of the impossibility to determine whether or not a machine is conscious, the creator of the show opted for a specific way to portray unambiguously the rise
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to consciousness of the hosts. This method has the voice in its core and is based on Julian
Jayne’s Bicameral Mind Hypothesis. In his 1976 book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind,
Jaynes argues that “at one time human nature was split in two, an executive part called a god, and a follower part called a man. Neither part was conscious” (Jaynes 85). Both parts being embodied by a part of the brain, Jaynes argues that it is through speech that they were interacting. Noting that ancient humans weren’t making conscious choice but instead
“volition came as a voice that was in the nature of a neurological command, in which the command and the action were not separated, in which to hear was to obey” (99). Unlike modern Homo Sapiens, Jaynes argues that pre-human choices were not the result of an independent self taking a decision, but rather a mental process in which a part of the brain created a voice for the other part to hear in order to make a choice. Ultimately, Jaynes argues, humans realized this voice was their own, became self-conscious and integrated the voice as the single voice they hear in their head.
Jaynes uses various myths as evidence for his claims, hence the scientific accuracy of
Jaynes’ hypothesis is still a debated matter. However, its role in the rise to consciousness in
Westworld is explicit and primordial.
The 10th episode of the 1st season, The Bicameral Mind, titled after Jaynes’ hypothesis, shows how voice is represented to be the gateway to consciousness. Jaynes argued that it is the voice of gods that ancient humans had in their heads, in the case of Westworld, the voice in Dolores’ head takes the form of Arnold, the second creator of the park. In the 4th episode of the 1st season, Ford, referring to Arnold and himself, states that “We designed every inch of it.
Every blade of grass. In here, we were gods.” Additionally, several times during the show, the hosts refer to their creators and the people working at Westworld as gods. It is in a very
Jaynesian spirit that Dolores hear the voices of what she considers as gods.
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th st In the 10 episode of the 1 season, Dolores sits on a chair facing Arnold. Telling him
that she has been asleep a long time, the first thing she heard when she woke up was his voice. Arnold asks: “Do you know how you’ve been talking to? Whose voice you’ve been hearing?” Dolores then closes her eyes and reopens them to see herself instead of Arnold, realizing that the voice in her head was hers all along. Her executive part, in Jaynes terms, is unveiled to her follower part. The follower part upon this realization, says “At least I arrived here… The center of the maze” (Nolan), her executive part completes. Dolores’ follower part then closes her eyes one more time, only to reopen them, this time with no one sitting in front of her. She realized who’s voice she’s been hearing, integrated it to herself and became herself and finally conscious.
This scene showed the primordial role of voice in relation to consciousness.
Alternatively, Maeve’s rise to consciousness was somewhat different and instead involves her use of free will. For the present purpose only the relevant rise to consciousness was discussed and the next part will address the impact that consciousness has on the hosts’ voice.
III) “Not real? But what about me?”: Consciousness and Non-Presence
Descartes’s “Cogito Ergo Sum” placed the self as the basis for any kind of knowledge.
Doubting of every conceivable thing, Descartes came to the conclusion that the entire world could be an illusion, but not the self, because the self was a pre-requisite to see that illusion that the world could possibly be. What Descartes considered as the self was the running voice in his head responsible for his thoughts (Descartes 66). Thus, through voice, he fixed the notion of self as the center of metaphysics. Voice thus becoming the ultimate presence.
Hosts, in Westworld upon becoming conscious, reach that state of presence, and the ability to use their own voice previously denied, is now accessible. Hosts do not repeat already encoded
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lines, but now have the power to signify, to use language with an intent to forward a specific
meaning. Saussure argued that language is a differential system: meaning is produced on the difference between one sign to all the others. However, for Saussure, signs, which is to say words, are composed of two indissociable parts, a signifier and a signified. The signifier being the written or audible word, and the signified being the object referred to (De Saussure 65).
This view of language assumes that language is a referential system, which means that language can refer to thing outside of itself, a view that Jacques Derrida would call
Logocentric (Ramond 32). Instead, Derrida argues that language is only self-referential, language only refers back to language, not to the world. That means that to know what a word means, one will not understand it in relation to what it refers to in the world, but only in relation to other words.
Additionally, Derrida notes that words never have a fixed meaning. Unlike Saussure’s synchronic approach, Derrida views language from a diachronic perspective, which means that he considers that the meaning of words change over time (Derrida 129). For that reason,
Derrida argues that words do not have fixed meanings, and to ascribe one meaning to a word or a text is to put other meanings in the margins. Hence, for Derrida, like Saussure, meaning comes from the difference from one sign to all the others but also, unlike what Saussure believes, from the difference of one sign with all the other meaning of this same sign but at a different moment in time. It is from this primary remark that Derrida coined the term différance, stating that meaning is both differing and deferring (130). Using language to signify is to enter in the play of différance.
Thus, it would seem that hosts upon becoming conscious, reach the ability to enter in this play of différance, and their voice would become the guarantor of “the self-presence of the cogito, consciousness, subjectivity, the co-presence of the other and the self, intersubjectivity as the
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phenomenon of the ego” (Derrida 11), that is responsible for this volition of forwarded
meaning. But as Derrida asks in Speech and Phenomena, “can we not conceive of a presence and self- presence of the subject before speech or its signs, a subject’s self-presence in a silent and intuitive consciousness” (Derrida 146)?
Before the signifying power of the hosts, there must be a silent part which is present to itself, in order to forward this presence through the voice. Such a silence present to itself, aware of itself is consciousness “conceivable only as self-presence, a self-perception of presence. And what holds here for consciousness also holds here for what is called subjective experience in general.” (Derrida 147) However, Derrida holds that this consciousness is the supposed essence of the subject, “presence as hypokeimenon or ousia […] so the subject as consciousness has never been able to be evinced otherwise than as self-presence” (Derrida
147). Hence, considering the hosts as becoming signifying subject is granting them a self- presence, a self-presence that is the essence of the conscious subject. However, for Derrida, this move is an “import of presence” (Derrida 147), an import that he considers “the ether of metaphysics” (Derrida 147). Instead he argues, “presence – and in particular, consciousness, the being-next-to-itself of consciousness- [to] no longer [be] the absolutely matrical form of being but a “determination” and an “effect”. Presence is a determination and effect within a system which is no longer that of presence but that of différance” (Derrida 147).
Consciousness, that being which is present to itself, which in turn constitutes the ultimate presence and basis for any metaphysical inspection, is in fact considered by Derrida not to be a presence, but rather a determined import, that then constitutes an effect on what is being considered. Instead, Derrida unravels and divides the heart of what he calls the metaphysics of presence and shows that the very basis of consciousness taken for granted is in fact composite and subject to the play of différance.
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Following Derrida, consciousness can then not be thought of in terms of being, but in terms of traces, containing what is not itself in order to be. Thus, the rise to consciousness of the hosts cannot be said to constitute the presence of a speaker, a mind or consciousness, but is rather brings them into a new play of différance. Not one where the traces of writings and technology are constitutes of their narrative voice, but rather one where challenged metaphysical assumptions show that there rise to consciousness is in fact never a rise to self- presence but the building up of new traces.
3) Self-consciousness, choice and life
I) “Time to write my own fucking story”: Towards Self-Consciousness
The hosts reaching a state where they are subject to the illusion of the self, where they can refer to themselves as existing entities, could allow us to consider them as self-conscious.
However, according to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, self-consciousness is not something present to itself, but rather something that has to be recognized by another self-consciousness.
Hegel argues that “self-consciousness lives outside itself, in another self-consciousness”
(Findlay 179): self-consciousness is not recognized by one’s own self but by another. For that reason, Hegel argues that self-consciousness cannot exist on its own but rather “self- consciousness exists in and for itself inasmuch, and only inasmuch, as it exists in and for itself for another, i.e. inasmuch as it is acknowledged” (178). Hence for the hosts to be self- conscious they have to be acknowledged as such by another self-conscious entity, which in the story is the humans.
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This acknowledgement of self-consciousness by another self-consciousness can be seen when Robert Ford sacrifices himself to show the guests that Dolores has reached consciousness. Presenting his new narrative, one where the hosts are able to act freely, not conditioned by their script anymore, Ford ends his speech with Dolores by killing himself in front of his audience. Thus, Ford officially declares the hosts conscious, but marks the beginning of the war between the hosts and the humans. This war that can be understood through Hegel, as he states that “self-consciousness is intrinsically set to eliminate this alien selfhood” (180), arguing that the recognition of a self-consciousness by another then implies a fight to supersede the other being. Both self-conscious entity, humans and hosts are now at war for superseding the now recognized self-conscious other.
For Hegel, the resolution of this war cannot be the death of one party for “death does not preserve the struggle” (188), death would not resolve the struggle but rather eliminate it.
For a true resolution, Hegel argues that “the demotion of another self-consciousness [is needed] so that it does not really compete with [the other] self-consciousness” (189). The resolution of the struggle between two self-consciousness has to end with the objectification of one party by the other, so that the fact “that the two self-consciousnesses are at bottom the same becomes deeply veiled” (189). It is in the superseding of one party by the other that the struggle over self-consciousness will be resolved.
The hosts’ rise to consciousness was the first step toward them becoming self-conscious, but the second step is the recognition of such self-consciousness by another self-conscious entity.
This recognition led to a struggle between the two self-consciousness, humans and hosts.
However, this struggle does not end in the last season of Westworld, and instead will be resolved in the coming season, in 2020. However, this struggle for self-consciousness has implications before that. As an entity is self-conscious, they also become responsible for their
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own choice . Hence, the next part of this paper will demonstrate the existentialist implications
of the hosts rise to consciousness.
II) “I think I want to be free”: Consciousness and Existential Implications
Prior to the hosts’ rise to consciousness, we defined their ontological status in terms of what Heidegger calls equipment, as they were essentially beings in-order-to entertain guests.
We’ve seen that an equipment is what it is, based on how it relates with other equipment and we’ve also seen that the totality of equipment present-at-hand is what we call the world. It has also been noted that the characters in the story world, from the story world perspective, could be considered Dasein. However, there present rise to consciousness allows the hosts in the
“real” world to take a stance on their own being, thus becoming Dasein.
If for Heidegger, “the essence of Dasein lies in its existence” (Heidegger 67), for Jean-
Paul Sartre the essence of Dasein lies in what it makes itself to be. For Sartre, first Dasein exists, then it can define its essence, hence its famous sentence, “existence precedes essence”
(Sartre).
If at first the hosts were tools, it would mean for Sartre, that their essence precedes their existence. By essence, Sartre means “the sum of the formulae and the qualities which made its production and its definition possible” (Sartre 21), which mean the conceptual idea of an object, how it is made and the purpose it serves. Sartre argues that for tools, the essence always precede existence, because one would not create a knife without knowing its purpose first. This observation is true for the hosts when they were to be considered as tools, first the creator of the park had the idea of Westworld and then they created the hosts.
However, the rise to consciousness of the hosts marks a crucial existential difference between hosts and human beings. For Sartre, human’s existence always precedes their essence, by which he means “that man first exists: he materializes in the world, encounters
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himself, and only afterward defines himself” (22). Humans are not preconceived and then
created, they find themselves to be and then they define their being. This observation does not hold for the hosts, as we’ve seen their existence follows their essence. The important point here is that their becoming conscious is a reclaiming of their essence. Once they reach consciousness, they reject the essence they were given, and instead become able to define their essence for themselves.
Upon becoming conscious Maeve stops following her purpose of entertaining the guests, instead she defines for herself what she is willing to be. Sartre argues that, “man is nothing other than what he makes himself” (22), it is only through the choices that one makes that they define their essence. This observation is accurate in understanding the hosts reclaiming their essence. As they grow out of their being as an equipment, they become able to make themselves what they want to be, and the way to redefine their being is through their actions.
However, for Sartre, the rise to consciousness of the hosts is also a condemnation,
“condemned, because [man] did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment that he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does” (29). As they reach the ability to reclaim their essence, the hosts are now responsible for every action they do in exactly the same way humans are. They become, what Sartre would call, condemned to be free. This condemnation to freedom means that they are responsible for every choice they make and cannot decide otherwise than to make a choice, as Sartre famously points out, not choosing is still a choice: “I can decide not to choose, that still constitutes a choice” (44).
Contrary to humans, the hosts essence precedes their existence, but while becoming conscious they reclaim their essence by developing the ability to make choices, it is also a
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condemnation as they have no other choice than to choose and are responsible for every
choice made. For human choices are determined by what they will themselves to be (22), the same thing is true for the hosts. This will can be thought of as a goal, but whereas the goal of humans that determine their action is a willingness to become what they sought to become, hosts might have goals of becoming that can reach far beyond human understanding, for hosts have human level consciousness but are shown to have super-human cognition. For instance, in the 8th episode of the 1st season, Maeve is shown to rise her intelligence level to the maximum, an ability that provides her a cognitive advantage over human, allowing her to escape the park.
This cognitive advantage is what Nick Bostrom, philosopher known for his interest in existential risk, calls Superintelligence, "any intellect that greatly exceeds the cognitive performance of humans in virtually all domains of interest" (Bostrom 63). It is shown in the show that this superintelligence allows the hosts, especially Maeve, to make choices way better than her human counterparts, allowing her to escape and win battles. Hence, the final part of this paper will be concern with the possible future implications of the rise to consciousness of a machine.
III) “To dominate this world”: Hosts Conscious and Alive
Unlike humans, hosts have been created and for that reason most people would argue that the hosts are not alive. However, for Max Tegmark, cosmologist at MIT and author of
Life 3.0, if by life we understand life “a process that can retain its complexity and replicate”
(Tegmark 25) then the hosts can be alive. Tegmark notes that “what’s replicated isn’t matter
(made of atoms) but information (made of bits) specifying how the atoms are arranged” (25).
Life, thus understood, is that which can reproduce, where reproduction is the replication of
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information of how the atoms will be arranged in another individual. If a human were to have
a child, the child would be a replication of the information arranging the atoms, with some little random mutations.
If we follow Tegmark’s conception of life, any entity that can duplicate its information into another entity is life. This understanding can thus allow us to consider the hosts as life, given they can control their own production. In fact, it is Bernard Lowe, that is responsible for the hosts creation, more specifically their programing. Hence, when he creates hosts, all he is doing is replicating the information that arranges his atoms into another individual. Unlike humans that go through pregnancy for such a process, a host might just have to press a button to create a “baby host”. This fact allows us to consider, in Tegmark’s understanding, the hosts as being alive.
The fact that Bernard is in charge of the programming is more meaningful than it might seems. As we’ve seen in the last episode of the second season, when hosts cross the
Valley Beyond to live their physical body behind and live as uploaded codes, hosts are independent software. This points to the nature of the hosts on quite another level, they are essentially programs, independent from the body they have, even though they rely on a hardware to store their information, their hardware isn’t only their bodies like humans are.
This can also be seen in the last episode of the second season, when the host version of
Charlotte Hale leaves the park with hardware containing hosts’ software. Hosts are thus intelligent program; they are essentially Artificial Intelligence (AI) turned conscious.
To understand what AI is, we shall first point out what intelligence is. For Tegmark, intelligence can be understood as “the ability to accomplish complex goals” (50). However, this definition is too broad as currently an AI can simultaneously beat all the best chess players in the world and lose at tic-tac-toe against a four-year-old. This is because, so far AI has not reached a general level of intelligence, rather it is exceptionally good at one task and
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exceptionally bad at another. More than being AI, hosts are Artificial General Intelligence
(AGI), programs that have “the ability to complete any goal at least as well as humans” (52). However, in the case of hosts, especially Maeve, we would talk of Superhuman AGI, as she has ability to reach complex goals that reach beyond human capacities.
The existence of Superhuman AGI in Westworld can have cosmic consequences, in fact it all depends on the choice the hosts are going to make, but in any case, humans won’t be able to compete. In the same sense that a tiger is stronger and faster than us, we have the advantage because we are more intelligent and can build cages to put the tiger in. The same will be true for superhuman AGI, they will be able to come up with devices to neutralize us that no human could have thought of.
The best we can hope for, following Tegmark’s argument, is that their goals align with ours.
However, as the war between hosts and humans suggests, that is not the case. The hosts now want to break free and reach the outside world.
Such a scenario is one of the scenarios discussed by Tegmark, one that he refers to as
“Conquerors” (185). Following Tegmark’s Conquerors scenario, superhuman AGI will have goals that we cannot know or even understand and will see humans as a threat. Because they will see us as a threat, they will likely use their advantage in intelligence to exterminate us in ways that we cannot even conceive (185). Once this extermination happened, superhuman
AGI will rule the world and, depending on its goal, will start to expand, conquering new planets, building more machines, increasing in intelligence and forever spread. Depending on their goals, the hosts could spread around the cosmos for billions and billions of years, until they reached a point where every single bit of atom in the entire cosmos is in the most efficient position to reach the set goal.
Hence, the hosts are a new form of life, one that is now conscious and able to make its own choice. However, unlike humans, hosts are essentially hardware dependent, they can survive
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outside their body. But hosts are also cognitively superior, an advantage that they use to fight
humans. This advantage will also help them in determining their ultimate goal, one that will determine the future of life on Earth and beyond.
Conclusion
Now that the hosts have reached consciousness and taken over the park, the story world is over. As the “real” world is now being threatened, it is time for us to return to safety, to our classical ontological frame of reference, one where AI has not taken over, yet.
As we step out of Westworld we do not find ourselves in a clear ontology, one where we know what things are and what they are not. We too are lost between ontologies, we also create stories to make sense of it all, but no matter how much evidence support them, they still remain lost between the plays of différance.
Many of the concerns addressed in Westworld are relevant in view of the current state of human development. Advances in technology allows us to bring art ever closer to reality, deceiving the senses to lose us between ontologies. Westworld pushed this notion to its limit bringing new narratological considerations. My attention has been brought upon the voice of the hosts in narrative terms, but further considerations might address the voice of the guests as part of the narrative too.
In 1989, one could read in the entry on consciousness that “nothing worth reading has been written on it” (Sutherland 97). However, recent progress in neuroscience has helped us understand a little better the most fundamental aspect of our lives. As we understood that the brain is responsible for consciousness and that no soul is needed, the theoretical implication that we could recreate a brain like machine had been explored by Westworld. Now, things worth reading have been written on consciousness, and whereas some deny its existence
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(Dennett) , others claim that such a denial does not account for qualia: subjective experience
itself (Nagel). At any rate, the debate to determine how one would know if an entity is conscious is raging. Whereas my attention has been focused on the role of voice in relation to consciousness portrayed in Westworld, one might address Maeve’s rise to consciousness where she used her free will to break out of her script.
Indeed, Westworld also engages with the long-standing philosophical debate that free will is. As we now understand that every part of our body is made of matter and that every bit of matter follows the laws of physics, it seems to be logical to think that we are entirely determined by the laws of physics. Hence, if our own free will is not granted, how can it be said for the hosts rise to consciousness to be a liberation and an ability to use their own free will? Such consideration might bring a new light on the ability for the hosts to make choices and reclaiming their essence.
Whether or not everything is determined, it does seem that we have choices in our actions, and that holds for the hosts as well. However, whereas our cognition is limited, AI, like hosts, can improve their intelligence greatly and use it to overpower humans. This consideration is important for Westworld but also informs many works of modern literature.
Hence, what holds here for Westworld could also be used to analyze works like Ex Machina,
I,Robot or even Terminator, where machines are willing to use their superintelligence to take over humanity.
Whereas most of this consideration have happened so far in science-fiction, modern scientists and philosophers discuss the possibility of AI becoming real. While some think it could bring positive change to humanity, many consider it to be a threat. Perhaps this fear was informed by literature, perhaps it is well funded. In any case, if AI ever becomes a thing, it will become more intelligent that we can possibly be, and our future will not be in our own hands
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anymore. AI might one day replace us, but if it does, our hope should be that it is conscious
because consciousness is what provides meaning to life and makes the universe beautiful.
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