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Science Fiction and Philosophy: From Time Travel to Superintelligence, a nice collection of essays and papers exploring the cross-roads between philosophical debates and sci-fi.

“I’ve always said that ‘science fiction’ is a lousy name for that field; it’s really philosophical fiction: phi-fi not sci-fi! This book proves that with its penetrating analysis of the genre’s treatment of deep questions of reality, personhood, and ethics.” – writes Robert Sawyer. A

There are all kind of starry names in the book, from sci-fi gods like Isaac Asimov to philosophy gods gods like Plato and Rene Descartes (and philosophy princes like Daniel Dennett or David Chalmers), to just stars such as Ray Kurzweil. I found one piece, by Alvin Goldman, most striking; I didn’t know about this text before and read this short excerpt from his “Book of Life” with amusement. See in full below

The Book of Life: A Thought Experiment

By Alvin I. Goldman

While browsing through the library one day, I noticed an old dustry tome, quite large, entitled “Alvin I. Goldman.” I take it from the shelf and start reading. In great detail, it described my life as a little boy. It always gibes with my memory and sometimes even revives my memory of forgotten events. I realize that this purports to be a book of my life, and I resolve to test it. Turning to the section with today’s date on it, I find the following entry for 2:36 P.M. “He discovers me on the shelf. He takes me down and start reading me…” I look at the clock and see that it is 3:03. It is quite plausible, I say to myself, that I found the book half an hour ago. I turn now to the entry for 3:03. It reads: “He is reading me. He is reading me. He is reading me.” I continue looking at the book in this place, meanwhile thinking how remarkable the book is. The entry reads: “He continues reading me, meanwhile thinking how remarkable I am.”

I decided to defeat the book by looking at a future entry. I turn to an entry 18 minutes hence. It says: “He is reading this sentence.” Aha, I say to myself, all I need to do is refrain from reading this sentence 18 minutes from now. I check the clock. To ensure that I won’t read the sentence, I close the book. My mind wanders; the book has revived a buried memory and I reminisce about it. I decide to reread the book there and relive the experience. That’s safe, I tell myself, because it is an earlier part of the book I read that passage and become lost in reverie and rekindled emotion. Time passes. Suddenly I start. Oh yes, I intended to refute the book. But what was the time of the listed action?, I ask myself, it was 3:19, wasn’t it? But it’s 3:21 now, which means that I have already refuted the book. Let me check and make sure. I inspect the book at the entry for 3:17. Hmm, that seems to be the wrong place for there it says I am in a reverie. I ski a couple of pages and suddenly my eyes alight on the sentence: “He is reading this sentence.” But it’s an entry for 3;21, I notice! So I made a mistake. The action I had intended to refute was to occur at 3:21, not in 3:19. I look at the clock and it is still 3:21. I have not refuted the book after all.

Would Goldman ever be able to falsify the predications made in the “book of life”? If not, does it prove the world, and our lives, are determined?

/// END ///

I think, it’s a marvelous text, highlighting many of the dilemmas and paradoxes of ‘future studies’ practices. As such, it belongs to the domain traditionally labeled as ‘free will vs determinism’ in modern philosophy, but it also shows many interesting dimensions of the ‘journey into the possible futures’. From one side, it is striking how elusive the future is, indeed defying all the efforts to ‘capture it’, to predict and thus conquer. From the other side, it is actually shaped by the very labor to think about it, like in this famous anecdote when a person designs a dragon-trap, which at the end does capture a dragon, of exactly the shape defined by the dragon-trap. Design of the future shapes the futures.

A whole another dimension of the Goldman’s text is psychological – why he wants to define the future-telling book in the first place? And why while approaching such a serious business he does not gather together all his best capacities capabilities, and instead allows himself to be destructed by – actually, by the past, by the memory?

A very interesting passage indeed, and an object to meditate upon.