Personhood in Science Fiction: Religious and Philosophical Considerations

Introduction                                                                                                               

·         Defining "science fiction"

·         Organization and method

·         Brain versus mind, thinking versus understanding

·         Consciousness

·         Soul

·         Chapter previews

Chapter 1        Defining personhood in a posthuman world                         

·         An introduction to Westworld

·         Outward personhood

·         Inward personhood: religious and spiritual evolutions

Chapter 2        Dehumanization of the "non-human" being                         

·         Dehumanizing of the Other

·         Empathy as uniquely human

·         Does a "person" require a "soul"?

·         Dehumanization as legitimation for extinction: the Borg

Chapter 3        Embodied and non-bodied selves                                                                             

·         The bicameral mind

·         Minds in bodies, ghosts in shells

·         Bodies without souls 

·         Mind without body

·         Computer brain, human brain

Chapter 4        Ethics of AI                                                                                       

·         In whose image?

·         Ethics of creation

·         Purpose of AI

·         Asimov's "Reason"

·         AI without ethics

Chapter 5        Artificial consciousness and synthetic souls                          

·         The android soul

·         Developing the soul

·         Memories and emotion

·         Souls, androids, and cyborgs

·         Redux: Does a "person" require a "soul"?

Chapter 6        The alien-other: monsters, mutants, and othered bodies                   

·         The racialized alien-other

·         Aliens and immigrants

·         Threats of extinction

·         Mutation

·         Eugenics as solution to "defective" humanity

·         The disabled Other

Chapter 7        Free Will?                                                       

·         Personhood, free will, and moral responsibility

·         Free Will: "Time to write my own fucking story"

·         Predestination: "God has a plan."

·         Determinism: "Does all of this have to happen again?"

·         The player piano