Metaphor 6 - A Robot Named Pierre (the Chicagoland Metaphor)

As a metaphor, or rather a thought experiment, I’m going to say that a team of scientists at the University of Chicago are going to perform what would in reality be a thoroughly wicked human experiment. I am, for the moment, not considering the wickedness of the experiment, other than to mention that it is wicked and I hope will never be attempted, but rather I present it as a thought experiment to highlight something we may never have considered about our lives here on earth.

The experiment is this. Imagine that the savants of the University of Chicago are able to obtain a pregnant woman who is ready to give up her child for science (there’s one wickedness right there). The child is taken out of the mother’s body and put in a scientific device or tank of some kind which allows it to continue life in an unborn state.

Simultaneously, in Paris, in a research annex of the University of Chicago, some French scientists have constructed a mechanical, robot-like body of some sort that has arms and legs, and hands, and a means of seeing and hearing, etc. etc. The robot body does not have a brain to run it, but rather, a series of telecommunication links (say by radio) between the various parts of the robot’s body and the University in Chicago.

Now imagine that before the baby is born, its optic nerve is disconnected from its own eyes and connected to the telecommunication link to the robot’s eyes in Paris. Then its auditory nerves are then disconnected from its own ears and linked to the robot’s ears in Paris. And it’s likewise for its arms and legs, and the other parts of its body.

When the infant in the tank finally becomes conscious and is "born," it begins to sense with the robot’s senses in Paris, and when it moves, it moves its robot body in Paris. Suppose then, that the wicked scientists let it grow up and live its whole life in the tank sensing with, and operating, its body in Paris, while the scientists monitor its incoming and outgoing communication links.

What misconceptions do you think the individual in the tank would grow up with?

Well, 1.) He would think he was a robot and not a human being.
2.) He would think he was a French robot.
3.) He would think that if a Mack truck (or whatever the French equivalent is) ran over his robotic body; that would be the end of him.
4.) He would think that he was alone inside his body’s head in Paris.

And he would be dead wrong about all four things. [Footnote 3-7]

Now what do we get out of this extended metaphor? Well, two things.

1.) We begin to arrive at a concrete idea of what might be meant by the words "spirit" or "soul". The fact that you have a body that is in a certain place at a certain time, and in a certain condition does not mean that your body is all there is to you. The fact that we can speak of something that’s not part of your physical body does not mean that it does not exist somewhere (even if away from where your physical body is) and have some kind of structure or components or function just as the parts of your physical body do. You have a "Chicagoland" that coincides with your "Parisian" existence.

When you try to observe your Chicagoland - your soul or spirit - its kind of like a flash light in a dark room trying to shine its light on itself - the thing that you’re trying to shine the light on is the thing doing the shining. Just because you can’t sense it and weigh it in a scale does not mean it doesn’t exist. [Footnote 3-6] In fact, in The Record, one of the titles ascribed to God is "the Father of Spirits". So in very real sense this "Chicagoland" that looks out of your body’s eyes, and hears with our body’s ears is just as much a creation of God as the physical world your eyes see and your ears hear.

2.) We can start to speculate that we might not be so alone inside our own heads after all. Suppose for a moment that one of the scientists in the above metaphor decided to start speaking to the individual who thought he was a French robot. The scientist could, we can suppose, speak directly to the individual inside his tank by tapping directly into the comm links for his ears or eyes.

And what would be the effect? Doubtless poor Pierre would get the shock of his life and possibly start to think he was going cybernetically crazy (especially if the scientist was speaking English!). But notice this: the means of communication was always there. In terms of the metaphor, that communication would have been "by the spirit" and occurred "in the soul." And the scientists, being there all along, and from infancy, would know everything the individual saw or heard or said or did.

The individual thought he was a French robot and alone inside his own private mechanical skull. He was none of that.

But let’s add another wrinkle to this metaphor by proposing another. Consider the early days of the telephone and the radio. People who first encountered those inventions, without a prior knowledge of how they worked, used to jump out of their skins at having these new fangled contraptions speak to them as if they had little tiny people in them! This is another way to consider Chicagoland and its operating link to a Parisian existence. You may think of the brain as an electro-chemical colloid that is capable of receiving, instead of radio waves, what might be called "soul" or "spirit" waves.

Now let’s take it a step further and propose that not just what Pierre saw and heard and said and did was being transmitted between Chicagoland and Paris, but also what he thought. Suppose the "soul" or "spirit" waves transmitted, not just communications about sense and movement, but also the thoughts of the individual? Well then, Pierre would really have never been alone in his head!

So now we have an operating metaphor for how it can be possible for us never to be alone inside our own heads. The question is then, why are we? If we really consider this metaphor, we will soon conclude that what’s actually stranger than the idea of receiving communications from a Chicagoland is that fact that we have never received a communication from a Chicagoland.

And why haven’t we noticed this before? It’s because everyone we know of is not receiving communications from Chicagoland either. The no-eyed man in the land of the blind does not know he is as blind as his fellows. Nor as deaf, nor as dead (though he may be very aware of how lonely he is).

But now we get to our next consideration. If the Supreme Being is perfect, then whatever lack of communication we may have from Him on our end cannot be attributed to Him. If there is a defect in our communications through Chicagoland, it is more likely the problem lies with us.

And by this time we may be collectively asking ourselves, "Was it something I said?"

It’s time for another metaphor.

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(3-7) Yes, I did see the movie The Matrix. It is an excellent realization of this metaphor, as is the movie eXistence, and The 13th Floor, and even Dark City. But the intent of these movies is Gnostic. Hollywood is on a Gnosticism binge right now. Something I will cover later.

(3-6) I remember once reading an unworthy religious tract that said that a scientist had once put a dying old man on a long flat scale to see if his weight changed at the moment after death. It did by a something like an ounce, and the tract writer said this proved the existence of the soul and gave its exact weight as an ounce. The tract writer was not a coroner, who could have told him that on death, the sphincters of the body relax and open, one consequence of which is that any gas in the colon is released. Most assuredly, one once is not the weight of a soul!