How to Survive the Robot Apocalypse

How to Survive the Robot Apocalypse
1. Moral Totalitarianism
2. Thinking Otherwise

How to Survive the Robot Apocalypse

The system of ethics is both dependent upon and exclusive of the machine. It comprises that necessary part of moral thinking that morality wants no part of. And it is for this reason that it initially appears to us as a kind of external or alien threat. In fact, in the popular imagination, the machine—a generic name that is, following Derrida (2008), admittedly as problematic as the term “animal” (p. 23)—is often imagined as coming at us from another time and place. The “machinic other” is typically portrayed in the form of an invading army of robots descending on us from the outer reaches of space sometime in the not-too-distant future. This particular representation is not accidental or a mere artifact of contemporary popular culture. There is a good reason for it. As Žižek (1989/2008) explains “symptoms are meaningless traces, their meaning is not discovered, excavated from the hidden depths of the past, but constructed retroactively” from the future (p. 58). If the moral challenge of the machine is typically imagined in terms of this popular sci-fi formula, it is because it constitutes the constitutive exception of moral philosophy and can appear to us—assuming that it does appear to us—only as a kind of external threat proceeding from the future. In this, Deleuze (1994) was undeniably correct—philosophy is a kind of science fiction (p. xx). The question then, is how do or should we respond in the face of this apparent robot invasion? There are at least two alternatives situated on opposite ends of the philosophical spectrum, neither of which is entirely adequate.

Moral Totalitarianism

One method of response, what we might call “moral totalitarianism,” is to develop a more inclusive and complete moral system that can incorporate not just the machine but any and all symptomatic others. Take, for example, Luciano Floridi’s (2013) proposal for a new moral theory he calls “Information Ethics,” abbreviated IE. According to Floridi, efforts to evolve moral consideration have been woefully inadequate insofar as each new innovation cannot, it seems, succeed without making additional exclusions. Although he does not say it in this exact way, what concerns Floridi is the symptomatic remainder of ethics. Animal rights philosophy, he points out, correctly challenged the anthropocentric tradition. But it succeeded only by further excluding other living organisms, like plants and the environment. As a result, the innovations of bioethics and environmental ethics sought to repair this exclusivity by developing a moral theory that was more inclusive of these previously excluded others. But, Floridi (2013) continues, even the innovations of

bioethics and environmental ethics fail to achieve a level of complete universality and impartiality, because they are still biased against what is inanimate, lifeless, intangible, abstract, engineered, artificial, synthetic, hybrid, or merely possible. Even land ethics is biased against technology and artefacts, for example. From their perspective, only what is intuitively alive deserves to be considered as a proper centre of moral claims, no matter how minimal, so a whole universe escapes their attention. (p. 64)

IE is designed to respond to this exclusivity by developing,

an ecological ethics that replaces biocentrism with ontocentrism. IE suggests that there is something even more elemental than life, namely being—that is, the existence and flourishing of all entities and their global environment—and something more fundamental than suffering, namely entropy, [which] here refers to any kind of destruction or corruption of informational objects, that is, any form of impoverishment of being including nothingness, to phrase it more metaphysically. (Floridi, 2008, p. 47)

Following the moral innovations of bio- and environmental ethics, Floridi advocates expanding the scope of ethics by altering its focus and lowering the threshold for inclusion, or, to use Floridi’s terminology, the “level of abstraction” (LoA). What makes someone or something a moral subject, deserving of some level of ethical consideration, is that it exists as a coherent body of information. “Unlike other non-standard ethics,” Floridi (2013) argues that,

IE is more impartial and universal—or one may say less ethically biased— because it brings to ultimate completion the process of enlarging the concept of what may count as a centre of moral claims, which now includes every instance of information, no matter whether physically implemented or not. (p. 65)

The proposal certainly sounds promising. Like previous innovations and “liberation movements” (Singer, 1973) in ethics, IE is interested in expanding membership in the moral community so as to incorporate previously excluded others and eliminate the symptom of ethics. But, unlike these previous efforts, it is arguably more inclusive, incorporating other forms of otherness, like technologies, artifacts, and machines. But IE, for all its promise to provide what one might call “a moral theory of everything,” still makes exclusive decisions. As a system of ethics it too must have and cannot proceed without its symptom. And what is excluded from this seemingly complete and all-encompassing moral theory is “nothing.” [⁴] As if following the two laconic imperatives inscribed above the gate at Delphi, IE’s totalizing comprehension leaves only “nothing in excess.” But this “nothing” is not no-thing; it is IE’s particular symptom. Consequently, the problem with efforts at fabricating increasing greater levels of moral inclusivity, like that proposed by IE, is that they remain symptomatic.

Thinking Otherwise

The alternative to this moral totalitarianism proceeds and operates otherwise. And when it comes to thinking otherwise, especially as it relates to questions regarding ethics, there is perhaps no thinker better suited to the task than Emmanuel Levinas. Unlike a lot of what goes by the name of “moral philosophy,” Levinasian thought does not rely on metaphysical generalizations, abstract formulas, or simple pieties. Levinas (1969) is not only critical of the traditional tropes and traps of Western ontology but proposes an ethics of radical otherness that deliberately resists and interrupts the metaphysical gesture par excellence, that is, the reduction of difference to the same. This radically different approach to thinking difference differently is not a gimmick. It constitutes a fundamental reorientation that effectively changes the rules of the game and the standard operating presumptions.

Levinas, therefore, deliberately turns things around by reconfiguring the assumed order of precedence in situations regarding moral decision-making. For him, the ethical relationship, the moral obligation that I have to the Other, precedes and determines who or what comes, after the fact, to be considered a moral subject or “person.” [⁵] Ethics, therefore, is not predicated on an a priori determination of who or what is a legitimate moral subject. Instead, moral standing is something that is first decided on the basis of and as a product of a social encounter. According to Levinas, therefore, the Other always and already obligates me in advance of the customary decisions and debates concerning who or what is and is not considered a moral subject. This apparent inability or indecision is not necessarily a problem. In fact, it is a considerable advantage insofar as it opens ethics not only to the Other but to other forms of otherness. “If this is indeed the case,” as Matthew Calarco (2008) concludes,

that is, if it is the case that we do not know where the face begins and ends, where moral considerability begins and ends, then we are obligated to proceed from the possibility that anything might take on a face. And we are further obligated to hold this possibility permanently open. (p. 71)

Despite the promise this innovation has for arranging an ethics that is oriented otherwise, Levinas’s work is not, it seems, able to escape from the traditional anthropocentric privilege. Whatever the import of his unique contribution, Other in Levinas is still (for better or worse) unapologetically human. If, according to Levinas, previous forms of moral theorizing can be criticized for putting ontology before ethics, then Levinasian thought can be cited for its unquestioned philosophical anthropology. If Levinasian thought is to provide a way of thinking that is able to respond to and to take responsibility for these other forms of otherness, or to consider and respond to, as John Sallis (2010) describes it, “the question of another alterity” (p. 88), we will need to use and interpret Levinas’s own philosophical innovations in excess of and in opposition to him. We will need, as Derrida (1978) once wrote of Georges Bataille’s exceedingly careful engagement with the thought of Hegel, to follow Levinas to the end, “to the point of agreeing with him against himself ” (p. 260) and of wresting his discoveries from the limited interpretations that he provided. Such efforts at “radicalizing Levinas” (Atterton & Calarco, 2010) will take up and pursue Levinas’s moral innovations in excess of the rather restricted formulations that he and his advocates and critics have typically provided. “Although Levinas himself,” Calarco (2008) writes,

is for the most part unabashedly and dogmatically anthropocentric, the underlying logic of his thought permits no such anthropocentrism. . . . In fact, as I shall argue, Levinas’s ethical philosophy is, or at least should be, committed to a notion of universal ethical consideration, that is, an agnostic form of ethical consideration that has no a priori constraints or boundaries. (p. 55)

This radical reorientation—or other version of Levinas’s ethics of otherness—obviously opens the door to what some might consider absurd possibilities:

At this point, most reasonable readers will likely see the argument I have been making as having absurd consequences. While it might not be unreasonable to consider the possibility that ‘higher’ animals who are ‘like’ us, animals who have sophisticated cognitive and emotive functions, could have a moral claim on us, are we also to believe that ‘lower’ animals, insects, dirt, hair, fingernails, ecosystems and so on could have a claim on us? (Calarco, 2008, p. 71)

In responding to this charge, Calarco deploys that distinctly Žižekian strategy of “fully endorsing what one is accused of ” (Žižek, 2000, p. 2). “I would suggest,” Calarco (2008) argues,

affirming and embracing what the critic sees as an absurdity. All attempts to shift or enlarge the scope of moral consideration are initially met with the same reactionary rejoinder of absurdity from those who uphold common sense. But any thought worthy of the name, especially any thought of ethics, takes its point of departure in setting up a critical relation to common sense and the established doxa and, as such, demands that we ponder absurd, unheard-of thoughts. (p. 72)

Calarco’s reworking of Levinasian philosophy seems to provide for a more inclusive ethics that is able to take other forms of otherness into account. And it is, no doubt, a compelling proposal. What is interesting about his argument, however, is not the other forms of otherness that come to be incorporated through his innovative reworking of Levinas, but what gets left out in the process. For all its promise to think ethics otherwise, Calarco’s radicalization of Levinas still has its symptoms. According to the letter of Calarco’s text, the following entities should also be included as potentially significant: “‘lower’ animals, insects, dirt, hair, fingernails, and ecosystems.” What is obviously missing from this list is anything that is not “natural,” that is, any form of artifact. Consequently, what gets left out by or excluded from Calarco’s “universal consideration”—a mode of ethical concern that does not shrink from potential absurdities and the unthinkable—are tools, technologies, and machines. Although Calarco (2008) is clearly prepared, in the name of the other and other kinds of otherness, “to ponder absurd, unheard-of thoughts” (p. 72) the machine remains excluded and in excess of this effort, comprising a kind of absurdity beyond absurdity, the unthinkable of the unthought, or the other of all who are considered Other. The alterity of all kinds of other nonhuman things does, in fact, and counter to Levinas’s own interpretation of things, make an ethical impact. But this does not apply, it seems, to machines, which remain, for Levinas, Calarco, and others, the excluded other of moral philosophy’s own interest in otherness.