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Imperial Library
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Index
Cover
Title Page
Table of Contents
Contributors
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: “YOU SAID THIS PLACE WAS A GAME”
1 On Playing Cowboys and Indians
Pretending to Be a Cowboy
Acting As If You are a Cowboy
Not Actually Being a Cowboy
Intending to Deceive about Being a Cowboy
Believing that You are Not a Cowboy
Intending to Deceive about Being Human
The Ethics of Pretending to Be a Cowboy
2 A Special Kind of Game
Narrative and Personal Development
Playing Cowboy
Defining Character
Educate and Entertain
Allure of the West
3 Humans and Hosts in Westworld
“No matter how real this world seems, it’s still just a game”
“How do you know? We feel the same”
“There is no threshold…no inflection point, at which we become fully alive”
“We create life itself”
“Do you even know where you are?”
Part II: “YOU'RE ONLY HUMAN, AFTER ALL”
4 Crossing the Uncanny Valley
Uncanny…
(Non)human Excellence
Suffer Little Robots
Buddha ex Machina
5 Revealing Your Deepest Self
“Now That’s a Fuckin’ Vacation!”
“Can You Please Stop Trying to Kill or Fuck Everything?”
“This is the New World, and in This World You Can be Whoever the Fuck you Want”
“I Always Felt this Place was Missing a Real Villain. Hence, My Humble Contribution.”
6 Westworld
Consciousness and Personhood
Performance in the Social World
Historical Struggles
From Westworld to the World Outside and Back
Part III: “We CAN'T DEFINE CONSCIOUSNESS BECAUSE CONSCIOUSNESS DOES NOT EXIST”
7 Turing’s Dream and Searle’s Nightmare in Westworld
What Does it Mean To Think? Turing vs. Searle
Searle, the Chinese Room, and Ford
Hosts and Guests: What is the Difference?
The Maze: Is it Consciousness?
8 What Is It Like to Be a Host?
Your Phone Is not Conscious
What Is it Like to Be a Bat?
Philosophical Zombies
When Are We?
It Doesn’t Look Like Anything to Me
Limit your Emotional Affect Please
Everything Will be What it Isn’t
I Know Only That I Slept a Long Time, and Then One Day I Awoke
Violent Ends
9 Does the Piano Play Itself?
Common‐sense Consciousness?
Have You Ever Questioned the Nature of Your Reality?
Greater than the Sum of Our Parts?
A Ghost in the Machine
A Machine without the Ghost
A New Theory of Consciousness
The Self Is a Kind of Fiction
Does the Piano Play Itself?
Part IV: “CHOICES HANGING IN THE AIR LIKE GHOSTS”
10 Maeve’s Dilemma
Maeve’s Journey
Determinism and Free Choice: What Do We Need to be Free?
Bicameral People and the Unreflective Character of Westworld Hosts
Leaving the Train: Maeve’s Choice as a Free Person
11 A Place to Be Free
The Inward Revolt
Living Someone Else’s Story: Is the Hosts’ Autonomy an Illusion?
Learning to Listen to Your Own Voice
Pull Yourself Together: What It Means to Be Autonomous
12 From William to the Man in Black
Sartre and the Existential Project
William’s Project: A White Hat
William and Dolores: An Existential Transformation
The Man in Black’s Project: A Black Hat
Androids and Existentialism: The Case of Maeve
Conclusion: An Infinity of Possibilities
Part V: “I'VE ALWAYS LOVED A GREAT STORY…LIES THAT TOLD A DEEPER TRUTH”
13 Hideous Fictions and Horrific Fates
Part I: Nothing Left to Lose
Part II: More Human than Human
Part III: Endless Forms Most Beautiful
14 Narrating Gender, Gendering Narrative, and Engendering Wittgenstein’s “Rough Ground” in Westworld
Language Games and Forms of Life
Captivating Pictures
Friction
The Maze
The Narrative of Self
Back to the Rough Ground!
15 The Observer(s) System and the Semiotics of Virtuality in Westworld’s Characters
“It all started with a fly:” Science and Fiction
The Circle, the Maze, and the Observing Systems
The Utopian Tourism and the “Schizoid Android”: William‐the Man in Black
The Voice(s) of God and the Prosthetic Memory: Ford and Bernard
Memory, Imagination, and the Access for the Self: Dolores and Maeve
16 What Does Bernard Dream About When He Dreams About His Son?
Grieving About Nothing: The Intentionality of Thought
“Lies that Tell a Deeper Truth”: The Fiction Theory
The Lying Game
“You Have No One’s Eyes”: The Inheritance Theory
“When You’re Suffering, That’s When You’re Most Real”
Part VI: “I CHOOSE TO SEE THE BEAUTY”
17 The Dueling Productions of Westworld
Aesthetic Modernism: “The Voice is Within”
Modernism with a Twist: From Painting, to Painting about Painting
The Art of Liberation: “If You Can Find the Center or the Maze, You Can be Free.”
Indiscernibles and Autonomous Viewers: “Time to Write my Own Fucking Story”
18 Beauty, Dominance, Humanity
The Posed Dolores: The Nude as Artform
“Not Much of a Rind on You”: The Nude as a Sign of Male Sexual Dominance
Maeve Comes Alive! Nudity as Sexuality as Becoming Human
In Closing, The Naked Truth
19 Sci‐Fi Western or Ancient Greek Tragedy?
The Value of Repetition and Kennings
Pathei Mathos: This Pain is All I Have Left
“Everything flows”: The Concept of Time and Becoming
Journey into Night: A Modern Theogony
Westworld and the Power of Catharsis
Part VII: “YOU CAN'T PLAY GOD WITHOUT BEING ACQUAINTED WITH THE DEVIL”
20 Of Hosts and Men
They’re Just Robots: Direct Speciesism
Mindless Matter and Indirect Speciesism
Whatever! It’s All Natural
21 Violent Births
Violent Delights and Violent Ends
Frantz Fanon: “The Master Laughs at the Consciousness of the Slave”
Violence as Transformative: The Colonized as a Maker of History
Violence Against Humans: The Case of Bernard
Self‐inflicted Wounds: The Dehumanization of the Guests
From Escapism to Violence: Maeve/Dolores
Humanization: A Violent Phenomenon?
22 The Wretched of Westworld
Total Terror in the Holes of Oblivion
Robo Sapiens: Robot Lives Matter
The Horror Machine: Killing the Juridical Person
Oppressed Become Oppressors: Killing the Moral Person
Living Corpses: Killing Individuality
A World Ruled by Tyrannical Mad Science
Terrified Become Terrifying: Violent Delights Have Violent Ends
Lady Lazarus: Self‐Resurrection
The Resistance: New Humans, New Gods
Index
End User License Agreement
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