Roses philosophy

The series’ philosophical bases and main ideas
It turns on defining and refining personhood and several of its facets – human nature, nature versus nurture, the learnedness of behavior (especially compassion and empathy), conscience and reason, etc. – as well as learning and developing (particularly a moral and ethical code), socialization, and on and on… unlike the franchise, time travel isn’t a very large consideration in all of this. Fate is, though to a lesser extent.

My philosophical bases
My own philosophical perspectives pull from Catholic theology as well as the works of Aristotle, Descartes, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Kant, for the most part. I was, in part, a philosophy student in uni. I really enjoy debating and considering ethics!
I think heavily about the role of love in nature as well; I wonder a lot about love as the basis for all things and practice an almost radical optimism in that way. For example, is self-preservation an act of love, if only skewed love of the self, as opposed to hate for another? How do we define love? What is the role of ego in love?

Main ideas in the series

• The role(s) of…
  • Socialization and learning, especially as related to time taken and experience undergone, in the development of personhood, an identity, and a conscience – as well as “mental age” (or, at what point someone becomes a person with their own thought and is able to differentiate from what they learned or were brought up with)
  • Free will and its relation to learned values and behaviors being imitated versus genuinely done – "no fate but what we make"
  • Nature versus nurture, especially as related to
  • Emotional development
  • Moral-ethical development
  • Self-preservation
  • Ego, esteem, and the complicated relationship in viewing the self for better or for worse, or both at once
• Humanity
• The question of how human a machine can be, mindful that the machine’s most nascent form and programming itself was made by humans to act on other humans
• Artificial intelligence and robotics, especially robot-human interactions and relationships and the possibility of personhood of an artificial intelligence
• “If a machine can learn the value of human life, maybe we can, too”
• Key movements
• Existentialism
• Phenomenology
• Ontology, generally
• Obviously, as well, those addressed in the T2 movie itself

Things I think about

• The T-1000 clearly showed emotion as the events of T2 went on; it showed sadism especially towards the end. Did the T-1000 feel hatred and aggression because of its mission programming? Did it choose to act along this path or was it “steered” to it by its programming?

Key propositions and theories

• Regarding socialization and development
• Experience and engagement as education, especially in the rapid development of the brain during crucial periods
• The need for the ability to make non-costly mistakes, imitate others, take chances and embrace risks, interact with the world in order to learn about it
• Identity
• Agency and communion

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