Upcoming Watchmen Thought...
Feb. 17th, 2009 04:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vitruvian23Okay, what with the movie coming out soon, there's something that always bothered me from the graphic novel, but I've never seen anybody else express, not even in that Watchmen and Philosophy book that came out a while back.... excuse me if this is a little spoilery.
Okay... so Dr. Manhattan, who is Dr. Jon Osterman after reconstructing his own body from the accident that obliterated his physical body, at one point says, "A live body and a dead body contain the same number of particles. Structurally, there's no discernible difference. Life and death are unquantifiable abstracts. Why should I be concerned?"
So, he's expressing essentially a purely materialistic view of life, human and otherwise. One could quibble over the science here, even in terms of materialism... after all, a live body and a dead body will certainly shortly show some structural differences, one from ongoing metabolism and aging, the other from decomposition, and I'm sure most biologists would say that the essential difference between life and death lies not ithe bodily structure, but in the *processes* that are going on within that structure.
So, there are certainly quantifiable differences between life and death, such as whether your cells are metabolizing oxygen and food or not, is your heart beating, are the synapses in your brain firing, all that. Not least of course, it's quite observable whether, for example, somebody's even alive to argue about this issue with the good Doctor, or is dead and unable to speak... or able to press a button to bombard him with tachyons, or not, for another scenario.
But isn't there a more central contradiction here? Dr. Manhattan seems to be assuming that there is nothing to life beyond what he can observe of the atoms and molecules around him. Yet Dr. Manhattan himself only exists because when Dr. Jon Osterman had his body, including all those atoms and molecules, obliterated, his consciousness somehow persisted and was able, over time, to reconstruct his body and start interacting with the world again, this time with all sorts of amazing powers over the whole of material creation. We have no reason to believe that Osterman was unique among all human beings in having such a consciousness. Therefore, isn't Manhattan himself living proof that there's more to people than their material bodies? Isn't he in fact a demonstration of something rather like Cartesian dualism?
Of course, I suppose the belief that would logically follow in something rather like an immortal soul would not necessarily, in itself, change his rather cavalier attitude towards life and death. He might figure, if he was able to become such a self-made man after his 'death', why can't others do the same?
Okay... so Dr. Manhattan, who is Dr. Jon Osterman after reconstructing his own body from the accident that obliterated his physical body, at one point says, "A live body and a dead body contain the same number of particles. Structurally, there's no discernible difference. Life and death are unquantifiable abstracts. Why should I be concerned?"
So, he's expressing essentially a purely materialistic view of life, human and otherwise. One could quibble over the science here, even in terms of materialism... after all, a live body and a dead body will certainly shortly show some structural differences, one from ongoing metabolism and aging, the other from decomposition, and I'm sure most biologists would say that the essential difference between life and death lies not ithe bodily structure, but in the *processes* that are going on within that structure.
So, there are certainly quantifiable differences between life and death, such as whether your cells are metabolizing oxygen and food or not, is your heart beating, are the synapses in your brain firing, all that. Not least of course, it's quite observable whether, for example, somebody's even alive to argue about this issue with the good Doctor, or is dead and unable to speak... or able to press a button to bombard him with tachyons, or not, for another scenario.
But isn't there a more central contradiction here? Dr. Manhattan seems to be assuming that there is nothing to life beyond what he can observe of the atoms and molecules around him. Yet Dr. Manhattan himself only exists because when Dr. Jon Osterman had his body, including all those atoms and molecules, obliterated, his consciousness somehow persisted and was able, over time, to reconstruct his body and start interacting with the world again, this time with all sorts of amazing powers over the whole of material creation. We have no reason to believe that Osterman was unique among all human beings in having such a consciousness. Therefore, isn't Manhattan himself living proof that there's more to people than their material bodies? Isn't he in fact a demonstration of something rather like Cartesian dualism?
Of course, I suppose the belief that would logically follow in something rather like an immortal soul would not necessarily, in itself, change his rather cavalier attitude towards life and death. He might figure, if he was able to become such a self-made man after his 'death', why can't others do the same?
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no subject
Date: 2009-02-17 10:10 pm (UTC)"We have no reason to believe that Osterman was unique among all human beings in having such a consciousness."
"He might figure, if he was able to become such a self-made man after his 'death', why can't others do the same?"
The lesson inherent in Dr. Manhattan may be that the paradox of Laplace's Demon (http://dresdencodak.com/cartoons/dc_060.html) is that omniscience, in the greater scheme of things, really doesn't add up to knowing all that much. Cuteness aside, I think that what Dr. Manhattan is saying in that quote is precisely that there is/must be a Cartesian dualism and that the mind can exist despite or in spite of the death of the body.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-18 09:07 pm (UTC)I can see Moore and Gibbon's reasons for putting lines like that in there. Dr. Manhattan represents one way that power can alienate people from real human concerns, just as Veidt and Rorschach represent ways that power can corrupt. More and Gibbons want to associate Dr. Manhattan's style of alienation from value with the power of the atom bomb in history and with the impersonal view of the world given by mechanistic physics. Thus the conceit is introduced that Manhattan can see atoms. But like his semi-atemporal perspective, the idea that Manhattan sees atoms doesn't quite make sense. You just have to suspend disbelief there.
On your main point, Osterman's resurrection as Dr. Manhattan implies that really crass materialism isn't true. But this doesn't imply that full blown Cartesian dualism with an immortal soul is true. Perhaps immaterial existence is only temporary or only for the very strong willed. Immaterial existence may not be conscious as we understand it either. The reformed Dr Manhattan certainly doesn't have experiences like ours. When he was more diffuse, perhaps all that existed was a will to pull himself back together.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-09 06:34 pm (UTC)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6M_6qOz-yw