{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1688", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 1688, "subject": "Is Jonas a Man?", "messages": 4, "voices": 4, "first": "1999-06-16T02:22:17+00:00", "last": "1999-06-16T11:46:56+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "1999-06-16T02:22:17+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Is Jonas a Man?", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I wrote:\nI think the all-too-human tendency to anthropomorphize is evident both\nin Wolfe's writing about Jonas and our speculations about him.<<" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " To which corncrake, Alex, alga, and Mitchell have each responded with\nwhat amounts to variations on the same theme: that Wolfe sometimes writes\nabout non-humans, and in doing so portrays them as if they had human\ncharacteristics, especially those characteristics which have more to do with\npsyche than soma, and explores the ramifications of this humanization in his\nfiction. Quite true; but, unless the definition of \"anthropomorphize\" has\nbeen subverted in recent decades to mean something other than what it once\nmeant, I can only stand by my above statement, provincial or not. Wolfe's\n\"complex theology\" -- whatever that may be -- has no effect on the way the\nreal world functions. Animals, cartoon characters, gods and machines,\nwhatever fanciful human attributes they may be imbued with, do not in fact\npossess them.\n\n Hey, it's only a story!: I know that and have posted in that spirit. If\nyou want to label Wolfe's work as fantasy, then anything goes, and I\nwithdraw my reality quibbles.\n\n Some have gone even further, suggesting that Jonas, and other\nnon-humans, have what is commonly known as a \"soul\". My post contained no\ntheological reference, and, as I've said before, I don't want to get into a\ntheological debate, but it seems that some here insist upon viewing Wolfe's\nwork through the prism of religion. I cannot and will not deny that Wolfe's\nwork contains religious elements, and his Roman Catholicism is often\nmentioned, but how could postulating Jonas a soul possibly be reconciled\nwith the tenets of the R.C. Church? I don't think it can; or any other\nChristian church, for that matter. Just when did it happen? At the moment of\nconcep ..., er, rather, when he left the assembly line? On the draftsman's\ntable? When he put on a dead man's flesh? By his interactions with human\nbeings? When? Is he contaminated by \"original sin\"? Do androids go to\nheaven? Did Jesus die for Jonas, too? Short of a papal bull mandating such\nan unlikely belief, I just don't see any Catholic, practicing or otherwise,\naccepting the notion that machines have souls. And it would be a pretty safe\nbet that the Pope will never make such an edict. That dogma just won't hunt.\n\n I would think the religious-minded would have even more objections to\nthe idea of beings-not-of-God's-creation -- man-made -- having souls than I\nhave mentioned. That concept opens up a whole can of theological worms that\nthe R. C. Church could never swallow.\n\n In chapter XVIII of _Claw_ Sev says to Jonas: \"You are a machine.\" Wolfe\npulls the rug out from under the reader here. Sev's portrayal of Jonas up to\nthis point has lead the reader to believe \"him\" a \"man\", or, more correctly,\na \"human\". Jonas is not. Wolfe, and other writers, use this technique in\nwriting for a variety of purposes, but once the reader becomes aware that\nthings are not in fact as they seemed to be, it's time to reassess the\nsituation. To fail to do so _is_ to miss the point. Once the reader realizes\nthat Quetzal is not a man, it would be foolish to continue to regard him as\none. However intriguing a character Quetzal or Jonas may be, they are not\neven human, much less men. In the case of Mr. Million, the sequence is\nreversed. The reader knows early on that he is not a man, and only learns\nlater that he used to be a man. Mr. Million is sympathetically portrayed;\nMaitre is not. _Yet they are the same \"person\"_, one housed in metal, the\nother in flesh. Is one better than the other? Did Mr. Million lose his\nhumanity while a man in pursuit of immortality, then regain it after\naccomplishing (at least in part) his goal by pouring himself into a\ncomputer? Not in my view.\n\n Whatever the cause of the anxiety Jonas exhibits after talking to the\nKLS group in the antechamber, his personality undergoes another, and, I\nthink, more profound change after he gets zapped by the electrically-charged\nwhip. Electrical discharges are anathema to delicate electronic components.\nThe Claw partially heals the wounds on the flesh of his torso, but has no\neffect on his \"mental\" problems. Surprise, surprise! Of course it doesn't.\nIt only works on creatures of flesh and blood -- even animals -- but\ndoesn't do a thing for machines, for his \"CPU\", so to speak.\n\n Is this just another of those cases where the Claw fails to heal? I\ndon't think so. Just as in some sense the Christ-like Sev _is_ the White\nFountain, _is_ the New Sun, _is_ the Conciliator, so is he the Claw. It is\nonly when an otherwise worthless thorn is anointed with his blood after\npiercing his flesh that it becomes the holy relic it once was. Flesh and\nblood -- the wafer and the wine. \"In the beginning was the Logos\" ... \"and\nthe Logos was made flesh...\" Transubstantiation -- but not for Jonas. Many\nof the obstacles to communion with God concern the perils of the flesh,\nperils to which ironmen are not subject, hardly an equitable playing field\nfor humans.\n\n Wolfe puts a human face on Jonas -- both literally and figuratively --\nbut it is only a veneer. Jonas is not a man.\n\n\nRoy" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Peter Stephenson", "address": "pws at ibmth.df.unipi.it" }, "date": "1999-06-16T11:46:56+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Is Jonas a Man?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "\"Roy C. Lackey\" wrote:\nI wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "I think the all-too-human tendency to anthropomorphize is evident both\nin Wolfe's writing about Jonas and our speculations about him.<<" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Animals, cartoon characters, gods and machines,\nwhatever fanciful human attributes they may be imbued with, do not in fact\npossess them.\n\n Hey, it's only a story!: I know that and have posted in that spirit. If\nyou want to label Wolfe's work as fantasy, then anything goes, and I\nwithdraw my reality quibbles." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I still can't really agree with this for two reasons.\n\nIn the first place, it's not at all so clear that reality is like that.\nThere are plenty of people arguing for one extreme or another, i.e. either\nfor a religious fundamentalist form of strong dualism, or that by next\nFriday someone will have invented a machine which has all (and the strong\nAI people do seem to mean all) the characteristics of a human being (plus a\nwhole lot of others just to show how clever the inventor is). Plus there\nare plenty of possibilities in the middle depending on your attitude to\nemergent phenomena and what constitutes duality, humanity, `attitude',\n`what', `the' and every other word in the dictionary; it's not simply a\nquestion of science versus religion. In plain English, nobody knows. So I\ncan't accept that you can so easily point the finger at possible violations\nof this corner of reality in a work of science fiction. (And we'd better\nnot get started again on what constitutes realism in a work of fiction.)\n\nIn the second place Wolfe knows that perfectly well, and that there are\nreal questions which he can't answer but can put in different ways. Mr\nMillion is a good example; I think Wolfe is quite openly saying he doesn't\nknow when a machine becomes a human being --- and all this goes way beyond\northodox theology. The chems on the Whorl have such complex human-like\nbehaviour that simply to deny flat out that they can possess human\ncharacteristics seems to me to miss the whole point. The same goes for\nJonas. Such beings are there in the form of a question about human nature\nto which, as far as I can see, neither we nor Wolfe have the answer.\n\ncorncrake\n\nBrief bibliography (I shall be posting a test on this next week -- not):\n\nA. Asimov, The Bicentennial Man\nR. Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind; Shadows of the Mind\netc. etc." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Straight", "address": "straight at email.unc.edu" }, "date": "1999-06-16T09:30:53+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Is Jonas a Man?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, 16 Jun 1999, Peter Stephenson wrote:\nThere are plenty of people arguing for one extreme or another, i.e. either\nfor a religious fundamentalist form of strong dualism, or that by next\nFriday someone will have invented a machine which has all (and the strong\nAI people do seem to mean all) the characteristics of a human being (plus a\nwhole lot of others just to show how clever the inventor is). Plus there\nare plenty of possibilities in the middle depending on your attitude to\nemergent phenomena and what constitutes duality, humanity, `attitude',\n`what', `the' and every other word in the dictionary; " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "[...]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Brief bibliography (I shall be posting a test on this next week -- not):\n\nA. Asimov, The Bicentennial Man\nR. Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind; Shadows of the Mind" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "A few other good ones:\n\nHofstadter, Douglas R.\nThe mind's I : fantasies and reflections on self and soul / composed and\narranged by Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett.\n\nEgan, Greg : _Permutation City_ and _Diaspora_\n\n-Rostrum" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Alex David Groce", "address": "adgroce at eos.ncsu.edu" }, "date": "1999-06-16T10:11:58+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Is Jonas a Man?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "\tWith respect to the \"anthropomorphism\" debate here, I think that Mr.\nMillion is, indeed, our best look at Wolfe's attitude: highly ambiguous--Mr.\nMillion clearly has a strong relation to a man who once lived, and it is\nfoolish, in the context of the story, to consider him purely as \"a machine\"--a\nglorified calculator, if you will. Certainly the Roman Catholic church hasn't\npronounced that AIs have souls, or anything--but then, there haven't been any\ntest cases of robots wanting to become Jesuits, either. The Church, on a basis\nsimilar to the ones involved in AI, doesn't approve of human cloning or\nalternative reproductive methods either--but certainly still considers the\nproducts to have souls. Since the process by which we receive souls is a\nMystery, its not impossible to consider that God might grant them to\n\"machines.\" After all, a strong theme in Wolfe seems to be that NOTHING is\nreally _just_ man-made. This seems to be Wolfe's take--that it's not\nnecessarily true, but its also not impossible--if it looks like a duck, walks\nlike a duck, maybe you'd best at least consider it a duck to some extent, if\nyou still have reservations about the proof of duck-hood. Whether Jonas is a\n\"man\" or not in the full sense of the word, he's Severian's friend, and it\nwould certainly incline me towards the \"Severian is a jerk\" school if Severian\nceased to consider him such once he realizes he's a machine.\n\n\tTangentially, at the rate Hofstadter, Minsky, etc. are going, I don't\nthink we're going to have to think about this seriously anytime soon. When I\nstarted my undergraduate computer science degree, I was planning to go into AI\nresearch. I'm starting on my PhD at Carnegie Mellon this fall, and I intend to\nstay WAY away from the stuff (going into either formal methods or programming\nlanguages instead)--in my opinion there has been a lot of advance in\nbrute-force and \"clever\" approaches to limited, game-like systems and \"expert\"\ndomains, but the progress in realizing \"intelligence\", whatever it may be,\nseems to have been nil." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Jun 16, 9:30am, Michael Straight wrote:\nSubject: Re: (urth) Is Jonas a Man?\nOn Wed, 16 Jun 1999, Peter Stephenson wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "There are plenty of people arguing for one extreme or another, i.e. either\nfor a religious fundamentalist form of strong dualism, or that by next\nFriday someone will have invented a machine which has all (and the strong\nAI people do seem to mean all) the characteristics of a human being (plus a\nwhole lot of others just to show how clever the inventor is). Plus there\nare plenty of possibilities in the middle depending on your attitude to\nemergent phenomena and what constitutes duality, humanity, `attitude',\n`what', `the' and every other word in the dictionary; " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "[...]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Brief bibliography (I shall be posting a test on this next week -- not):\n\nA. Asimov, The Bicentennial Man\nR. Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind; Shadows of the Mind" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "A few other good ones:\n\nHofstadter, Douglas R.\nThe mind's I : fantasies and reflections on self and soul / composed and\narranged by Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett.\n\nEgan, Greg : _Permutation City_ and _Diaspora_\n\n-Rostrum" } ] } ] }