X-men Origins (Wolverine)+ Personal Identity/ Moral Culpability

For this blog, I'm going to talk about X-men. What could X-men possibly have to do with philosophy? I'm not quite sure myself, but the authors of X-men and Philosophy certainly do. While the book seems to draw upon quite a bit of BS, I'm willing to trust it in order to get this blog post in the air.

In the movies, Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) loses his memory and has to deal with issues of personal identity. Who is he, if he is unable to remember his past? This has implications in ethics; if someone is unable to remember committing a crime, are they morally responsible for it? Or was it "someone else" that did it?

A couple of people I've referenced before, Locke and Hume, had opinions on personal identity and "selfhood." Locke thought that the self was based off of memory. In other words, if you can remember being that past self, you are morally responsible for what you did. This gets a little tricky when you think about mental diseases like Alzheimer's that might allow you to remember your childhood and yet nothing else. To borrow from Wikipedia:

"According to Locke, personal identity (the self) "depends on consciousness, not on substance" nor on the soul. We are the same person to the extent that we are conscious of our past and future thoughts and actions in the same way as we are conscious of our present thoughts and actions."

Hume, on the other hand, thought that the self doesn't really exist. Since Wikipedia kinda fails at explaining this (which is kinda odd) here's a Yahoo Answers link. Basically, Hume couldn't see any reason that an eternal self existed. If this is the case, however, it's really tough to get moral culpability up and running.

So can we hold Wolverine responsible for his actions before his amnesia? If we do, are we following through merely for appearance's sake (i.e. to make sure no one else shanks their enemies with metal claws, deterring them when they realize the punishment)? And is our "selfhood" only held together by memories, or is it something beyond that? Perhaps there's nothing to selfhood at all (damn Buddhists!)

Here's an amusing review of X-men Origins. That is all.

Hume and Empiricism In Naruto

I ran into a few more interesting lines from an anime, and I think they play into this blog nicely. At the very least, they might help facilitate a casual conversation about topics that have been in debate for hundreds of years. In this selection, two characters from "Naruto" talk about the nature of reality and human perception:

Itachi, the guy who's sitting down, tells his younger brother about the flawed view most people have of the world. They perceive things around them, and immediately assume that reality exists in the way that they have seen it. However, there are some issues with this; what about optical illusions, for one thing? For another, there are times when we assume some truth that we later find is false.

Descartes, a French philosopher, brought optical illusions up in his writings, but never really addressed them properly. The last part, about "living in their own little worlds" seems to draw a parallel to Descartes; he establishes "I think, therefore I am" but never goes onto claims about the reality of others without appealing to unsound reasoning. We can know that our reality is true for us, but can we speculate about the reality of others?

Following thinkers, such as John Locke and David Hume, proposed that these optical illusions occur because our senses don't convey reality as it is; rather, our idea of reality comes to us through our sense perceptions, which are flawed and incomplete. Even in this view, there is still the trouble of relating each individual's perceptions to everyone else's and making sure that they line up (i.e. is my conception of the color white the same as your conception of white? And how would we know if they were different?).

For example, colors apparently don't exist in the world; they are a result of our retinas reflecting light or something along those lines. To say that red exists in "reality" outside our senses isn't a fair statement.

Hume took this concept a bit further, proposing that any idea that claimed to explain anything beyond the immediate realm of human experience is nothing but "sophistry and illusion" and that we should "commit it then to the flames."

And here's the obligatory quote in its entirety:

"If we take in our hand any volume of divinity or school metaphysics let us ask this question, does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact or existence? No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can be nothing but sophistry and illusion."

-An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

(Ah, the classic debate between the original and Sparknotes.)

So what parallels are there between Hume and a trippy statement by an anime character? Well, Itachi's point was fairly in line with Hume; he thinks that sure knowledge regarding reality is impossible. We think that we know someone, or something, but it could all easily be an illusion, especially given the fact that our senses are inherently flawed and that our judgments rarely reflect absolute truth.

Well, that's it. Not that anime references often leave people in Humean doubt, but feel free to leave your impressions/questions/WTF comments.

The God Part of the Brain in Bleach (Anime)

So I thought I would jump around a bit, especially since this blog is entitled "Psychology and Philosophy in Film and Gaming" and I've mostly focused on philosophy so far. Having Psych majors/minors angry at me would be a horrible thing, right?

Modern psychological theories are reflected in media as well. In fact, it seems (to me) that current writers and directors are far more apt to use psychological ideas than purely philosophical. In the past (Matrix, Fight Club...) it might have been more popular to rip an idea off of Nietzsche or Plato for a cool concept.

According to some psychologists, there's a part of the brain linked to our belief in a higher being. It fuels our desire to search for a being that is stronger than us, to follow (i.e. God). The details are still a bit sketchy, from what I found, but there's a fairly popular book out on the subject, The "God" Part of the Brain (which, unfortunately, I haven't read). The link explains the concept a but more in depth, which isn't necessary to my purposes here but might be fairly interesting for you nonetheless. There are also some well written reviews on the book, which I thought I would throw in given our current assignment.

The tragic villain/hero that's so overpowered that they can't find anyone stronger than them is a pretty common occurrence in movies, anime and even some video games. Hearing about this "God part of the brain" made me think of some scenes from Bleach, a fairly popular anime in America and Japan. (As an interesting sidenote, the author of the series is constantly throwing things from psychology and philosophy into his work, now that he's become an established writer.) At any rate, several characters are portrayed as being so powerful that they can't find an equal, and this lack of companionship is a major issue in their character development and/or emo level.

So this leads to my question: is this dissatisfaction at not having a worthy rival (a common theme) linked to this God section of the brain? Some examples are in order, although I guess I should provide spoiler disclaimers.

These are all from the end of Bleach, so bear that in mind. Actually, they're mostly from the manga (which gets written before the anime airs), so even if you keep up with the show in America they're still spoilers.

Stark, one of the bad guys, was basically so strong that his mere presence killed most other beings off.

And here's the actual scene from the anime, starting around 7:11

Aizen (and this is the major spoiler for the entire series) was also ungodly strong, but to an even greater extent.

And the most obvious one is a line that Aizen, the main villain, said. It's worth checking out just because it is the strongest connection to this concept of a God part of the brain, plus the dramatic shading and coloring is awesome.

It's kinda cool to see these themes get picked up so quickly by an entertainment medium. What are your thoughts on this? Is it all a bunch of BS?