Action Theory Movies

Well, you've heard of "action films," how about "action theory films"?

First, I would recommend "Stranger Than Fiction."  Remember, I told you that the value of acting freely is the value of writing a sentence in the narrative of one's life.  Here Will Ferrell is a character in someone's novel...

Also, I'd recommend "Deja Vu," for interesting metaphysical reflections on changing the past, and so forth.  But to understand it, I think I'll have to see it again...

Have fun!

Comments

[Neil]

Solaris. The replicants are created out of the memories of people. This leads to debate over whether they are really valuable beings. The film hints at a compatibilist view, according to which being created like this is just an usual route to becoming a responsible being. It's kind of a dramatization of Al's zygote example.

[Kip Werking]

Stranger than Fiction was too cute, and unsubtle, for my taste (although my dad loved it). But it considers, again, something like the situation in Al's Zygote Argument.

I see John liked Deva Vu; I remember he liked Man on Fire too. I had no idea Tony Scott (who directed both, as well as Top Gun) made such good action theory movies.

Of course A Clockwork Orange had a fascinating discussion of free will (suggesting that engaging in certain types of "value engineering" can strip a person of their free will; but to strip someone of their free will they would have to already some in the first place, right?)

I also believe there is a Woody Allen movie (Annie Hall?), where a novelist confronts his character and the character says something to the effect "why are you angry at me, you made me the way I am!"---expressing, in succinct comic terms, the philosophical dilemma that fascinates many of us here at the Garden (Paul Russell mentioned this scene in his wonderful lecture at Inland 2006).

There is a very brief discussion of the free will problem in the philosophically rich Matrix movies (and Michael McKenna has written a fascinating article on the Matrix and freedom):

Neo: We have the same power.
Councillor Hamann: I suppose we do, but down here sometimes I think about all those people still plugged into the Matrix and when I look at these machines, I.. I can't help thinking that in a way, we are plugged into them.
Neo: But we control these machines, they don't control us.
Councillor Hamann: Of course not, how could they? The idea's pure nonsense, but... it does make one wonder just... what is control?
Neo: If we wanted, we could shut these machines down.
Councillor Hamann: Of course... that's it. You hit it! That's control, isn't it? If we wanted, we could smash them to bits. Although if we did, we'd have to consider what would happen to our lights, our heat, our air.

I don't think the Wachowski brothers intended this, but that excerpt touches upon the conditional analysis of can/power and the question of sham and "genuine" control (what John Fischer calls "Total Control"). The people have the power to turn the machines off, but they would only do that if they had some reason, and whether they have a reason is *not* in their control.

A superficial response might say: they would never want to shut the machines off for no good reason, so it is a happy coincidence that they do not have that (non-sensical) power. But this raises (for me, at least) a deeper worry: what these people want, desire, prefer, etc., flow from wants, desires, preferences, etc., that are all given, and not chosen. The happy coincidence reply is shallow (as Saul Smilansky would say), because it makes control seem like sham control: you have the control to turn the machines off if you want to, but whether you want to, ultimately, is not up to you---not up to you at all. Al Mele's Designer could have designed your zygote to eventually grow into someone who wants the machines on, or the machines off, indeed to do anything s/he wanted. All of this is out of your control, the control you have is shallow.

I can't think of any others off the top of my head. It is a shame that they don't make more movies about free will. I'd pay to see them.

[Joe]

At WSU I created a course called Philosophy in Film. Here are some films that I've used in that class to talk about issues related to action, free will, and moral responsibility. (I've used some of the films already mentioned – especially, the three Matrix movies and A Clockwork Orange. By the way, there is an interesting article about freedom, divine foreknowledge, and the Matrix by Schick in the Matrix book noted above.)

"M" (1931), directed by Fritz Lang (German with subtitles). Peter Lorre plays a child murderer, hunted down by a gang of crooks. They are tired of the police crackdown given the murder spree – and their inability to capture the villain. Lorre is held on trial by the crooks. He defends himself by – among other things – suggesting that he is compelled to do what he does and thus is not responsible for his actions. The "courtroom" scene is relatively short and brings up a lot of interesting issues.

Compulsion (Richard Fleischer, 1951). Fair, not great adaptation of the Leopold-Loeb case, with the names changed. Orsen Wells plays Jonathan Wilks (aka the Clarence Darrow role). A better film along these lines is Rope (Alfred Hitchcock, 1948) but you don't get Darrow or his argument. (In a recent paper, by the way, Kadri Vihvelin suggests that 'the Darrow Argument,' as she calls it, is also Galen Strawson's argument.)

Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis, 1993) and Run, Lola, Run (Tom Tykwer, 1998) offer two portraits of alternative possibilities of action, the former being more compatibilist (the ability to do otherwise in the same situation given different information) and the latter being more libertarian (the ability to do otherwise in the exact same situation). Groundhog Day also deals with related issues of fatalism and the meaning of life.

Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) and Lost Highway (David Lynch, 1996) deal with fatalism, as well. There is the wonderful scene in Vertigo where Kim Novack is looking at the concentric circles of a Red Wood Tree that has been cut down. She says, “Here I was born and here I died” or something to that effect. Lost Highway is, in many ways, a remake of Vertigo. Watching them together helps to better understand Lost Highway (which is nearly indecipherable) and also helps to see just how messed up the Jimmy Stewart character in Vertigo is. Talk about compulsive behavior! Thus, interesting issues about moral responsibility come up along with identity issues, of course.

Twelve Monkeys (Terry Gilliam, 1995) and Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly, 2001) offer contrasting accounts of time travel. I think that it is helpful to discuss the paradox of time travel along with the problems of fatalism and free will and determinism. In that context, these films are great. Fatalism plays a big role in each. In fact, there is a scene in Twelve Monkeys where Bruce Willis and Madeleine Stowe are in a movie theater and on the screen is the Red Wood Forest scene from Vertigo, noted above.

Europa, Europa (Agnieszka Holland, 1992) and Mother Night (Keith Gordon, 1996) are wonderful films and great for discussing authenticity and other Sartrean themes.

Minority Report (Stephen Spielberg, 2002) – another good, not great film – deals with the issue of moral responsibility for our future actions. A nice companion essay is Ish Haji's "Libertarian Openness, Blameworthiness, and Time" in Campbell, et. al. Freedom and Determinism (MIT, 2004).

[Tamler Sommers]

If you've been anywhere near me for the last six months, chances are you've had to sit through an insufferable hyberbole-filled speech about the HBO show The Wire. When I saw the DVDs of the first season in the Spring, I felt like I did about my first high school girlfriend: total devotion, wide-eyed uncynical puppy love, and a burning need to tell everyone about it. Then then critics saw season 4 and now I can't compete with the hypperbole.

In any case, I've been meaning for some time to post something about how The Best-TV-show-ever-with-no-close-second relates to issues of freedom and responsibility, but I haven't had time. The point I wanted to make was that great works of art in general (especially novels, films, and in this one glorious case a 66 hour long TV story), connects to our topic by credibly showing how our environment and motivations shape our actions. The more you know about how and why people behave the way they do, the less inclination (I believe) there is to judge them. It's a tout comprendre, tout pardonner type of thing; and great works of art help us to understand. Watson makes this point really well about Robert Harris, but I think it applies to all people and a whole range of behavior. This season, The Wire focuses on children explicitly to show how it is that inner city drug dealers and killers become the way they are. They don't start out as that way. The same goes for crooked politicians, ambitious policemen, unfaithful wives and husbands, everyone. The more we understand, the more we forgive.

I don't mean this is as an argument for skepticism, although I can see that it might appear that way. We still judge these characters, and we'd probably judge them even more if we knew their victims personally. But there arises, as Watson points out, a deep ambivalence about moral judgment the more we learn about how people became they way they are and what it is about the environment and their own inner motivations that makes them act the way they do. Tolstoy was a master at this, which is why it's hard to hate anyone in his novels. And the same goes for the characters in The Wire and any great work of art that attempts to understand rather to judge its characters.

By the way, the creator of the The Wire David Simon has compared his show to Greek tragedy, describing the fatalistic superstructures that make certain courses of action inevitable (but instead of Gods and prophesies, it's the beaurocracy, political structures, and the insane war on drugs.) That is a separate issue. What impresses me most his unbelievable ability to create real characters. With maybe one or two exceptions (out of hundreds) you can't bring yourself harbor that much resentment, because you know how and why they behave the way they do. At least I can't...

[Rob]

L'Argent (Robert Bresson, France, 1983)
The Son (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Belgium, 2002)
Palidromes (Todd Solondz, USA, 2004)
Irreversible (Gaspar Noe, France, 2002)
La Jetee (Chris Marker, France, 1962)
The Life of Jesus (Bruno Dumont, France, 1997)
Humanite (Bruno Dumont, France, 1999)
Hukkle (György Pálfi, Hungary, 2002)
Crimson Gold (Jafar Panahi, Iran, 2003)
The Seventh Contintent (Michael Haneke, Austria, 1989)
71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (Michael Haneke, Austria, 1994)
Benny's Video (Michael Haneke, Austria, 1992)

[Alan White]

"Sliding Doors" with Gwyenth Paltrow does a good job of illustrating "open future" libertarianism by contrasting two story lines separated only by one event-siutation diverging into two quite distinct futures: in one scenario she catches a train, and in the other she just misses it. Not quite an act of choice, but a narrative that fleshes out some issues of time and modality that would relate to choices with very different outcomes. "The Butterfly Effect"--which doesn't really illustrate the effect as defined by complexity theory--is in a similar vein, and more directly involves Ashton Kutcher's character making choices that produce similar-world-variant scenarios branching from moments of (apparently) one history.

[John Fischer]

I agree with Rob about Todd Solondz's 2004 film, "Palindromes". There is a great "soliloquoy" by the pedophile character (I forget his name--was it Todd?) on free will toward the end of the film. Does anyone have access to this?

[Rob]

The character -- an accused, not confirmed, pedophile -- who issues, near the end of the film, the soliloquoy on fatalism, is Mark Wiener, who earlier appeared in Solondz's second film "Welcome to the Dollhouse" as the nerdy and repellently careerist brother of its victimized protagonist Dawn Wiener (with whose funeral "Palindromes" begins).

Solondz, from the press kit to "Palindromes":

But can we change? Optimists tend to believe in the possibility, with the implication that things will change for the better. The idea that we cannot change suggests that we cannot improve, and no one wants to believe this, though some may take comfort in the corollary: we cannot become worse. The question is in what way is change possible? And in what way not? Are we in some sense "palindromic" by nature, impervious to change, no matter how much, paradoxically, we change? Some may find the idea that we never change a bleak and deterministic way of thinking. And yet the inability to change is in many ways freeing, freeing from, amongst other things, the imperative to change. And to accept one's inability to change can be a form of consolation: no one is immune; everyone must be who he is. There may be a sense of doom, but there is also the possibility of grace. It's all a bit of a conundrum. But art, however it may be defined - if it is, in fact, definable (and perhaps it is definable only insofar as it is defined by what it is not) - has no meaning if it is not transformative. Of course, at the same time, it has yet to make anyone a better person - or a lesser one. If someone argues otherwise, then it isn't art.

Source:
http://www.wellspring.com/movies/text.html?page=press_book&movie_id=62

[John Fischer]

Thanks, Rob. Sorry--I suppose even fictional characters are innocent until proven guilty. "Welcome to the Doll House" is also one of my favorite movies. Didn't Solondz also do "Happiness"--a very cool film.

[Eddy Nahmias]

Do any incompatibilists out there think it's accurate to say (as Solondz suggests above) that determinism would entail that we cannot change (improve or get worse) or that art could not be transformative or that we cannot change *ourselves*, etc.?

Do any compatibilists out there worry that it's these sorts of implications (images) of determinism that fuel incompatibilist fires? (Or at least, lead some non-philosophers to think determinism must preclude freedom?)

Stranger than Fiction was a fun movie. John, it reminded me of our discussion of free will as authorship vs. self-discovery.

[Rob]

I believe all of the films I suggested above variously insinuate the question of ultimacy in regard to free will (and, by extension, responsibility) by depicting human behavior either naturalistically (that is, as continuous with other parts of the world in which questions of freedom and accountability have no purchase) or as set within a causal nexus of circumstances over which (we are invited to appreciate with a poignancy peculiar to the medium) the persons concerned have no control, -- or some mingling of both modes of portrayal.

[Joe]

In response to Eddy's question: I don't think that determinism has anything to do with the possibility of change or creativity -- but most of the folks in my metaphysics seminar are incompatibilists for precisely this reason!

[Christopher Grau]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned David Sosa's excellent appearance in Waking Life. Granted, it isn't fictional, but his sequence offers a beatiful explanation of the free will problem and I've found it very useful for teaching intro courses.

For now it appears to be online at YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VxQuPBX1_U

Also, In the Bedroom, despite the misleadingly saucy title, offers up a pretty somber but thought-provoking treatment of the morality of retribution.

[Rob]

In response to Eddy, I think your question invites a variation of a familiar incompatibilist position: namely, whether or not determinism has anything to do with the possiblity of change or creativity, it bears on the question of the status of one's ownership of the change, creative production, or the processes which issued them. As in so many other connections explored here among Gardners, I fail to appreciate how the ultimacy concern can be suppressed or defused -- except, perhaps, by the sort of attention to the "documented... actual human moral past" promoted by Nietzsche in the Genealogy (and splendidly corroborated and developed in the work of William Ian Miller's "Humiliation," "Anatomy of Disgust," and "Eye for an Eye") because such attention seems to reveal the natural history of responsibility compatibilism; and dwelling upon how retributional and punitive practice has functioned without too much interference from the freedom-incompatibilist considerations to which I'm chronically prone is, personally speaking, the only way I've yet figured out how not to be unduly oppressed by those considerations.

[Anibal]

I´ve laughed a lot, with a little bit of claustrophobia(being trapped by the same moments forever) spiced with romance, with "Groundhog Day". It´s not too philosophical apparently, but indirectly reflects the unovoidable course of factual events, independtly that you act different. It makes me think what value could have to be free and to decide on your own whatever your desires dictate, if all that surround you is determinated.

[Anibal]

Ooops!, someone above (Joe) mentioned the film i´ve referred. I try with "Memento" (2001, Christopher Nolan) in which an amnesic recontructs his past tattoing his body and writting in posts or notes. In it personal identity and the role/function of memory collapse into responsibility, becuase if we cannot remember anything how we can be certain to be responsible of something that we canot know was an outcome of our actions. One special characteristic of the film is that run backwards.