The Philosopher at the End of the Universe : Philosophy Explained Through Science Fiction Films

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining and Rewarding
Review: A great primer for philosophical thought that does not put one to sleep. In fact, this was such a good read, it kept me up late into for several evenings. Professor Rowlands also happens to be one funny man. Very well done.

Rating:
Summary: A New Genre: Sci-Phi
Review: Let me begin by saying that I met the author, Mark Rowlands, on several occasions while he was teaching at University College, Cork, in Ireland. Let me also say that I was extremely jealous when I first came across this book in a bookshop in Cambridge, England. For years I have shown my students clips from science-fiction films such as "The Matrix" (re: Descartes's first Meditation) and "The Terminator" (re: machines without sensation -- Descartes again) and "Total Recall" (re: Descartes's first Meditation again, and Locke's memory theory of identity) when teaching my Modern Philosophy course. But Rowlands beat the rest of us to it and wrote a book in this vein -- an introduction to philosophy by way of popular science-fiction films.

This Winter Term (2005), for the second year in a row, I will be assigning this book for my Modern Philosophy course. (Last time I had to order the books from England; this time they are available in the US). In 2004 my students enjoyed the book tremendously and it proved very useful, especially the sections on Descartes (chapters 2 and 3 on skepticism about the external world and the mind-body problem -- "The Matrix" and "The Terminator"), Locke (chapter 4 on personal identity -- "Total Recall" and "The Sixth Day") and Hume (chapter 5 on free will -- "Minority Report").

The author, Rowlands, is known best for his work in the philosophy of mind and applied ethics (especially the ethical status of animals). I believe that the earlier parts of the book, dealing with philosophy of mind, metaphysics and epistemology, are easily the best. The final parts of the book dealing with ethics -- chapter 6 on "Hollow Man" (why should we be ethical?), chapter 7 on "Independence Day" and "Aliens" (should the scope of ethics extend to aliens?) and chapter 8 on "Star Wars" (good vs. evil) -- are not quite up to standard. Somewhere in between are the parts dealing with the meaning of life -- chapter 1 on "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein" and chapter 9 on "Blade Runner".

The book is written primarily for undergraduates. It normally does a nice job of presenting philosophical ideas and problems in an appealing and direct fashion. You can tell that the author is part of the generation that is in tune with popular culture, but has a D.Phil from Oxford and can write about supervenience or Doug Lenat's CYC project.

This makes it all sound far too serious and educational, however. The most important thing about this book is that it is very, very funny. It's funny about philosophy, and it's funny about films too. Exhibit A: ""Minority Report"... also has Tom Cruise in it, not a man you normally associate with complex philosophical issues. I mean, scientology? Give me a break." (p. 121) Rowlands is nothing if not irreverent, and you will laugh out loud while reading this, I guarantee.

So far, I have found only a few factual errors (references are to the English Ebury Press 2003 paperback edition). Heidegger's "Being and Time" was published in 1927, not 1926 (p. 7). Wittgenstein's "Tractatus Logico-philosophicus" was completed in 1918 and published in 1921, not published in 1916 (p. 53). And the Tom Cruise/Cameron Crowe movie is "Vanilla Sky", not "Vanilla Skies" (p. 121). The only philosophical error I have found is that he refers to Occasionalism as "parallelism" (p. 72) (parallelism is a different thesis and can be espoused by a mind-body identity theorist such as Spinoza). But that is just something discussed in a footnote.

I am not always entirely happy with Rowlands' resolutions of various matters in the final sections of his chapters. But it would be unfair to beat him over the head about this. I also find some of the humor to be too laddish for my taste. It's not particularly funny the first time to say how much you love beer and imagined sex with Sarah Michelle Gellar, and it's painful the n-th time. But these are minor criticims of a very refreshing read, on the whole.