A brief analysis of the philosophical thoughts involved in the plot of the "Vision" battle in "Wanda Vision"
Wanda Vision, one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) minor character mini-series, premiered on Disney's US online streaming platform on January 15, 2021. Set in the same alternate and shared world as the MCU franchise, the series revolves around the emotional entanglement of characters "The Vision" and "Scarlet Witch/Wanda Maximoff" , is a supplement and derivative of the plot of the "Avengers" series of films.
In the previous episode, in order to guard the peace, "Scarlet Witch/Wanda Maksimoff" personally destroyed the heart gem of his lover "Vision" and killed "Vision". Wanda couldn't bear the torment, and used his superpower to create a place called "Westview", and lived happily with "Vision"; on the other hand, the agents of the Tianjian Bureau were trying to intervene and stop them her plan. In the ninth episode, the Tianjian Bureau sent the intelligent robot "Vision" into Xijing Town. The program of "Vision" is set and there is only one, that is to kill "the true Vision", and the "Vision" of West View Town has naturally become the target of its attack. As a result, the "Vision" of Xijing Town and the "Vision" of the Tianjian Bureau launched a wonderful fight. In the midst of the intractability, the "Vision" of West King Town uses the robot's system loopholes to preempt and ultimately rely on the identity crisis of "the true Vision" to win the survival.
This article briefly discusses the related philosophical issues involved.
The identity paradox
During the fight, the "Vision" of Xijing Town clarified that the prefabricated program of the "Vision" of the Tianjian Bureau was to destroy the "True Vision" without attacking itself. That is to say, as long as he is made to recognize his identity as "True Vision", he can enter the self-destruction program, and thus the "Vision" of Xijing Town can escape. In order to make the opponent recognize that he is a "true vision", first of all, the "vision" of Xijingzhen denies that he is "the true vision", and proposes that he is "a conditional vision." Vision)", won the opportunity to compete with Tianjian Bureau's "Vision" game.
The two then had a conversation about the identity of "the true Vision". First, Westview's "Vision" presents the famous thought experiment on the paradox of identity: The Ship of Theseus. Theseus had a ship, over time, the original planks rotted, and the old ones were replaced with new ones, until all the original planks were replaced, so is it still the original ship of Theseus? ? Secondly, if the replaced boards are reassembled and no longer rotted, is it the original Ship of Theseus? That is, suppose an object's constituent elements are replaced, but is it still the same object? Or, make another thing out of the elements that make it up, are the two things the same?
To this, the "Vision" of the Tianjian Bureau replied that neither of them are real ships, but they are also real ships. In other words, Xijingzhen's "Vision" initially removed itself from the role of the target of the "Vision" of the Tianjian Bureau, or began to turn the "Vision" of the Tianjian Bureau into itself The first step to hitting an object.
The "Ship of Theseus" paradox is a classic question about the identity of things across time. It was first proposed in full by Plutarch in the 1st century AD. Theseus once sailed a ship of Theseus (a). The boat was assembled from wooden boards, and when any of them were found to be no longer suitable, they were replaced with boards of the same specification. Over time, all the planks are replaced to form the repair boat (b). How about ship a and ship b are identical? Long before Plutarch, Heraclitus' dictum, "No one can step into the same river twice," dealt with this issue. And Plutarch posed this problem to correct Heraclitus' dictum that "it is impossible for a man to step into the same river once." In addition, the ancient Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle both dealt with this issue.
Plato discussed the existence of things, the stillness, and the motion of three kinds of phases in "The Wise Men", thinking that each of the three is different from the others, but "all the same as themselves". Aristotle used the "Four Causes" to answer. It is believed that only formal causes ultimately determine objects. In this problem, the ship a and the ship b have the same identity because the design of the ship, that is, the form, does not change.
Modern Hobbes discusses this issue in depth in On Objects, extending the original question. If a new ship is built with old parts taken from the ship of Theseus, will the two ships be Still the same? In the end he came to a view similar to that of Aristotle: "Identity cannot be regarded as belonging to content, it should be possessed by form".
Unlike the above-mentioned viewpoints that emphasize physical standards, form and essence, Locke was the first to advocate a psychological solution. Especially with regard to the identity of the personality, Locke believed that human memory is the standard to ensure identity, and the continuity of the mind has nothing to do with the continuity of certain organs of the body. "Only memory is clearly aware of its own identity beyond time." The series exemplifies Locke's claim. The successful escape of Xijingzhen's "Vision" was precisely because the memory of the "Vision" of the Tianjian Bureau was activated, so that the "Vision" of the Tianjian Bureau completed the cognition of self-identity.
2. Memory and people
Then, the "Vision" of the Tianjian Bureau and the "Vision" of Xijing Town had a further dialogue on the identity issue. The "Vision" of the Tianjian Bureau raised three questions: one is that he does not have the Mind Gem and the "Vision" of Xijing Town has this gem; the other is that the "Vision" of Xijing Town has recognized that he is the The identity of "Vision" makes its identity true, and the third means that he has no memory, while the "Vision" of Xijing Town has the memory of "True Vision".
In response to the above three points, Xijingzhen's "Vision" responded: First of all, regarding the question of the exclusive use of the spiritual gem, he pointed out that no part of his body was original, so as to respond to the difference in "material" between the two; Secondly, regarding the self-identity affirmation, he pointed out that his belief was shattered after the appearance of the opponent (in fact, it was hinted many times in the play that "Vision" had already paid attention to the issue of his own identity); finally, as for memory He continued the metaphor of the "Ship of Theseus", saying that because sailing always wears out, memory is only damaged, just like the rotten planks of the ship of Theseus. As a carbon-based and adult, memories cannot be easily destroyed, and there must be data archives, but are simply set to be invisible to oneself. The reason why the suppressed memory is active is that "a simple weapon is easier to control". The "Vision" of the Tianjian Bureau finally woke up and became a chess piece.
In the end, the "Vision" of Xijing Town activated the memory of the "Vision" of the Tianjian Bureau. When the fragments of the impression came back to his mind, the "Vision" of the Tianjian Bureau obtained the "Vision" similar to that of Xijing Town. approximation of the human eye. He affirms his identity as "True Vision" and initiates a self-destruction program.
Regarding memory, Bergson has also had a wonderful analysis, and finally reconciled the above differences. Memory "expresses exactly the point of interaction between mind and matter" is the key to the unification of mind and body. He believes that memory is a mental impression, and the object of perception is the material, existing external things, and the combination of the two in cognition is the consistency of the subjective and the objective.
Bergson distinguishes between two kinds of memory, mechanical memory and pure memory. Mechanical memory is a recurring memory image that is closely related to the body, and has become a habit of the body's organs, often only remembering the result and forgetting the process. Pure memory realizes conscious and partial preservation of consciousness through the function of the brain, retaining only those images related to the body and its future actions. Through the memory function of the brain, conscious activity and physical activity are consistent. But these two kinds of memory are not completely different, but only different degrees of the same memory activity. This shows that inner and outer are not antagonistic, and there is no insurmountable boundary between consciousness and object. Thus Bergson finally reconciles the mind-body dualism and negates the agnosticism of the thing-in-itself.
According to this, the "Vision" of Tianjian Bureau in the drama does not think that he has a memory but picks up some fragments of the past after being strongly stimulated. It can be seen that all the experiences of Wanda and "Vision" have become some kind of mechanical memory. Deeply imprinted in the "phantom" body without invoking brain functions and conscious awareness.
3. Technical reflection
The victory of Xijingzhen's "Vision" over the Tianjian Bureau's "Vision" is not only a victory of logic, but also a victory of "human", and it is more worthy of our philosophical perspective to examine the boundary between artificial intelligence and human, analyze The limits of artificial intelligence and assessing its future.
The research and development of computer and artificial intelligence generally continues the tradition of modern rationalism. According to Richard Rorty's induction, this tradition is rooted in essentialist soil. And closely related to essentialism is representationalism. Representationalism is a mirror-image philosophy that takes knowledge as the sole measure of affirming reality and upholds science as the rational means of knowledge.
Therefore, the artificial intelligence developed in this context still has the following limitations: First, decomposable rules and steps are preset for machines to imitate, and in the real growth and learning process of human beings, there are many unsolvable problems that may be as a blob of overall understanding; second, machine learning is only a simulation of human neural activity, and is a "supervised learning" mode that requires supervision and manual correction; finally, we expect machines to recognize an accident when it encounters it, in When encountering ambiguity, we enter the context to blur it, but we forget to consider whether we have actually made this distinction? What is at work if the fine-grained distinction is not made, but it still leads to appropriate and reasonable behavior?
Anti-essentialism is a fairly common tendency in philosophy since modern times. Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Derrida and others expressed very similar views in different terms in different philosophical directions. Rorty concluded, "Each of the three of them, in their later studies, got rid of the Kantian view of philosophy as fundamental. " The effort to make human beings "what they are". But how to realize the transformation and application of such ideas in the field of artificial intelligence? It still doesn't seem easy today.
If we are still looking forward to the future of artificial intelligence, then it must be this kind of artificial intelligence that is closer to humans. It is not only structured by algorithms, but also has a human-like thinking ability to act, judge and adjust itself.
references:
[1] Xue Piao. New Theory on the Standard of "Personality Identity" in the West [J]. Social Science Dynamics. 2017
[2] Liu Yetao. Wei Liangyu. The Logical and Philosophical Interpretation of "The Ship of Theseus" [J]. Journal of Humanities. 2018
[3] Zhang Qingxiong. Modern Western Philosophy [M]. Commercial Press. 2017
[4] Liu Fangtong. New Modern Western Philosophy [M]. People's Publishing House. 2000
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