Sci Fi & The Meaning Of Life

Shai Tubali sees how non-human minds mirror our condition back to us. [CONTAINS SPOILERS!]

- Shai Tubali

“Philosophy and science fiction are thematically interdependent… science fiction provides materials for philosophical thinking about what it means to be human and the nature of consciousness.”

(The Philosophy of Science Fiction Film, Stephen Sanders, Ed, p.1, 2007)

In Spike Jonze’s film Her (2013), Theodore falls in love with a sophisti-cated operating system that takes the voice of a woman. The so-called ‘Samantha’ starts their relationship as a hesitant consciousness with early signs of self-awareness, even jealous of his physical existence. Yet soon enough Theodore realizes, to his horror, that she has discovered the delights of limitlessness. Before he knows it, she is already romantically engaged in a virtual relationship with 641 other people! He, who barely manages attachment to one woman, beholds the one who previously was a mere extension of his own need expand beyond his comprehension. Curiously groping for the edges of her own possibility and universality, she constantly stretches them, soaring to vast expanses of consciousness, while he is left far behind in his human, all too human, world.

Many other great film-makers have been fascinated with the point of collision between the human mind and nonhuman minds, most notably the minds of robots and aliens. Classical representations of artificial intelligence appear in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, Spielberg’s A.I., Artificial Intelligence and Alex Garland’s Exmachina, while recent representations of aliens include Robert Zemeckis’s Contact, Neill Blomkamp’s District 9, Ridley Scott’s