Descartes In The Film I, Robot

In the movie I, Robot we are introduced to a long debated philosophical question: “What makes a human being human?”. Is the essence of mankind the fact that we are biologically unique among the myriad of different species on this planet? Is it the fact that we seem to have transcended our baser needs in order to try and make the world fit us as opposed to us fitting into the world around us? Is it perhaps that we have what people would call a “soul”? Or is it possibly that we were said to have either evolved from our animal counterparts, the primates, in order to be what we consider better? Whichever question that we would see as the reasoning behind what makes us human, this movie seems to try and follow to reach a conclusive ending in the …show more content…
People seem obsessed with the idea that there is a being with their name, face, and ideas that is a significant part of the universe.
I believe that the use of Descartes theory was the major philosophical player in the movie. The writers for the movie leaned on the fact that Sunny knew that he was a robot, but that he was also aware of the world around him and could also make judgements about what was right and wrong in his mind. Even though Sunny was a robot, his consciousness was something that would be considered human-like because he was completely conscious of his entire being and knew exactly what he was, even if he didn’t know where he fit in in the world around him.
Sunny was conscious of right and wrong. He was conscious of his own “mortality” in a manner of speaking. Even Dr. Lanning, his creator, said that there were “ghosts in the machines”, meaning that he believed that there were specific things in all of the robots’ programming that would make them eventually evolve naturally from the state that they were in. I believe that this movie was a wonderful example of the philosophical concept of the self because of who