Cartesian Identity in Ghost in the Shell
A philosophical essay on identity through Descartes' Meditations and Ghost in the Shell
God does exist and he is a deceiver: that God is technology. How then, can one prove their own existence and the objectivity of their mind and external world? This anxiety is central within the 1995 science fiction film Ghost in the Shell directed by Mamoru Oshii and in Descartes’ Meditations. The film explores the questions of consciousness, existence, and what it means to be human. This essay will, using a Cartesian perspective, display how identity and technology affects ones existence within Ghost in the Shell. This will be developed through the analysis of the characters of the garbage truck driver, The Major, and The Puppet master, and the themes and scenes surrounding them.
Ghost in the Shell takes place in a near-future Japan where cybernetic augmentation has become common place. Cyborgs roam the street and even the brain itself has become augmented, as cyber-brains allow the user to connect to the internet and other networks using just their brains. Full body replacement cyborgs, as in an organic brain within a robotic body exist but are limited to special governmental uses; the main character The Major is one of these. The opening scene of the film is of The Major’s body being created, which serves as a metaphorical birth into her technologically induced existentialism. Within the film souls are colloquially referred to as “ghosts”. The story of Ghost in the Shell follows The Major and the Japanese special police unit Section 9 and their investigation into the hacker known as The Puppet Master. The Puppet Master is a fugitive known for his technique of “ghost-hacking” cyber-brains to modify their perceptions and minds. It is revealed that The Puppet Master is an artificial intelligence created by a division of the Japanese government (Section 6) to get their way in dealings. The Puppet Master escapes Section 6’s control and flees towards The Major and Section 9 to pursue its main goal. As espionage and action ensue, The Puppet Master is thrown into a position to achieve that main goal: to merge into one being with The Major. As Section 6’s snipers prepare to eliminate the two, they begin the process of fusion and stare into the night sky and then cut to black. The camera returns upon The Major’s new body, yet not quite her, it is a new identity, a new existence for The Major and The Puppet Master.[1]
The Puppet Master plays the role of the Malicious Demon, the deceptor from Descartes’ Mediations who “at once omnipotent and supremely cunning, who has been using all the energy he possesses to deceive me. I will suppose that sky, air, earth, colors, shapes, sounds, and all external things are but illusions of my dreams.[2]” With his ability to deceive individual’s perceptions through ghost-hacking their cyber-brains, he casts uncertainty upon authenticity of anything external or internal in the world.
The Puppet Master’s power of deception is first shown through the victim of the garbage truck driver. On a garbage run, he uses payphones as a medium to ghost-hack his wife to understand why she wants a divorce. He reminisces upon his love for his family and attempts to show a photograph to his partner, but he declines. Once he realizes that Section 9 is tracking him, he enters a frenzy and claims he needs to warn “really nice guy l met in a bar” who gave him the hacking software. Section 9 and The Major arrest him and it is revealed that the garbage truck driver himself was being ghost-hacked by The Puppet Master and was fed simulated experiences to make him ghost-hack into the cyber-brain of a foreign minister’s translator. These simulated experiences included a whole life with a wife and daughter, and the subsequent divorce. In reality, he had been living alone as a bachelor for 10 years[3]. During the interrogation, one character says “All your memories about your wife, daughter and divorce are false. Like a dream.[4]”
This is fundamentally the same concern Descartes had in The Meditations, that there existed a being capable of deceiving him into believing he had a body, “two plus three make more or less than five” or that there is an external world at all. The Puppet Master implants simulated experiences which are likened to dreams, as Descartes states, “it becomes completely clear to me that there are no certain indicators which ever enable us to differentiate between being awake and being asleep[5].” It is impossible for these characters to know if their memories, experiences, beliefs, or intelligence: their identity are falsehoods, the products of deceit. For the garbage truck driver, his entire identity was but a Technological advancement has made Descartes’ hypothetical doubt about a deceptor a reality and thus an uncertainty towards one’s identity of perception of the external world is created and so the world is cast into total doubt.
Identity is defined as “the fact of being or what a person is”. Individuals are confined to their own identity as The Major states “I feel confined, only free to expand myself within boundaries.” Having witnessed The Puppet Master’s ability to created simulated experiences, she says “perhaps the real me died a long time ago and I’m a replicant made with a cyborg body and computer brain. Or maybe there never was a real ‘me' to begin with. … There's no person who's ever seen their own brain. I believe I exist based only on what my environment tells me.[6]” Due to her cybernetic augmentations The Major doubts her identity. She has no proof that she is still the human she used to or if she is a computer program created the same time as her artificial body. Her entire existence is based upon external factors and as all these things are malleable, she has no unmoving foundation to base her identity upon.
The Major defines her identity as: “Just as there are many parts needed to make a human a human there's a remarkable number of things needed to make an individual what they are. A face to distinguish yourself from others. A voice you aren't aware of yourself. The hand you see when you awaken. The memories of childhood, the feelings for the future. That's not all. There's the expanse of the data net my cyber-brain can access. All of that goes into making me what l am. Giving rise to a consciousness that I call ‘me.’ And simultaneously confining ‘me’ within set limits.[7]” Her identity is the gestalt of the many attributes that make up her, both physical and intellectual traits. In defining herself through both the physical and the mental, The Major is invoking dualism, the theory that the mind and body are two distinct phenomena. The mind is a thinking and non-extended thing while the body is extended and non-thinking, the two phenomena form a unity between body and mind which is the human[8]. In Ghost in the Shell the separation between mind and body is clear. Through their cyber-brains it is possible to separate consciousness from the body and upload the mind into the internet. The mind is not confined to a single body as the transfer of mind and brain into a new artificial body can occur, as seen with The Major. Affirming dualism, the mind can exist independently of a body and exists as a “ghost” within a mere “shell”. As such, The Major’s identity, her existence cannot be defined by the physical for that would it when her mind leaves her body, it would cease to be her.
The Major asks “And what if a computer brain could generate a ghost and harbor a soul? On what basis then do I believe in myself?[9]” In addition to being a deceptor, The Puppet Master is a subject, whose existence and consciousness is of central importance to the thematic narrative of the film. As an artificial intelligence born from the sea of information of the internet, The Puppet Master has no body and represents the extreme of the mind-body dualism: the complete separation of mind from body. He was born and exists without the need to inhabit a body, he exists, as Descartes says as a mind without a body as a purely thinking thing[10]. The Puppet Master is not a life-form in the traditional sense, non-organic he exists as electrical signals inside of the internet.
The Major holds her identity in the hands of these dubious and malleable things (memories, experience, physical body), how is it then possible to form an identity and a clear and distinct image of your own existence? In the Second Meditation, Descartes takes a piece of wax and explains all the physical characteristics which we used to perceive it; the smell of the wax, the tactile sensation, the sound it makes upon being hit. He then holds it over the fire and all these characteristics are removed[11]. The wax no longer resembles what had just been described as the wax, it holds none of the same characteristics; “it is clear that nothing [remains], other than something extended, flexible, and changeable[12]”. And yet, we recognize that it is still the same wax as before. Therefore, we conclude that none of those characteristics which had been used to describe it prior were what made the wax what it is, that there is something underneath these perceptions that we judge to be the wax, regardless of form. We use our intellect to judge, beyond perception, the wax itself. Using the wax as a metaphor for The Major, using the same logic, The Major’s identity can be found. For she is not those things that make up her identity. She is not her body, her memories, or experiences, as when those things are removed, as seen with the garbage truck driver or when accessing the internet through cyber-brains, she is still herself and something more innate. Regardless of any deception, she is her ghost, or soul. Although her mind and body are malleable, she exists. The very fact that The Major is capable of doubting her existence is proof that she exists, for something is the subject of this doubt or deception and that something is her. Her identity is then upheld by her existence. Although the things which she purports makes up her identity are malleable, it does not change the fact that she is the subject who experiences, is deceived, “doubts, understands, affirms, denies, is willing, is unwilling, and also imagines and perceives[13]” and that these attributes form her existence and identity, beyond memories and body, she is this thinking thing, and this forms her identity. As The Puppet Master says “All things change in a dynamic environment. Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you[14]” The Major’s belief that she is those malleable and changing things and her inability to accept that they change is what confines her within her uneasy identity.
The film begins and ends with metaphorical birth scenes. In the beginning of the film, The Major’s body is created in a factory and with it came her existential worries; at the end of the film, she is born again through the fusion of her with The Puppet Master. This merging represents the actualization of The Puppet Master’s consciousness as well The Major’s acceptance of her identity as a thinking thing. The transferring and fusion of consciousness affirms the idea that the mind is a distinct phenomenon from the body that can exist and move freely with a physical form, as well as the access to the vast sea of information and networks that The Puppet Master had. The Major gains information and experiences that were not her own while losing her own particularities and through so she still retains that she is the subject of these changes. Having learned not to fear change she accepts that her identity is something more innate and deeper, she is not her physical body, her memories, or experiences: she is the wax itself, something flexible and dynamic, who at this time is extended and which thinks and therefore is.
In conclusion, Ghost in the Shell explores the affect technology can have on our perception of ourselves and the world through a Cartesian perspective. It details the difficulty one can have in coming to terms with their own existence and dealing with the fact that there are things out of our control, and how one might find themselves in spite of that. First, through the analysis of the garbage truck driver’s simulated experience which parallels the Deceptor in the Meditations this essay examined the extent to which technology interferes with our ability to decipher reality, then this foundation was used to examine the connections to dualism and how it is possible to form an identity when one’s world is open to deception. Finally, through the analysis of The Major’s and The Puppet Master’s characters, the question of how an individual can form an identity and know their existence when technology is capable of such deception is explored through the metaphor of the wax from the Second Meditation.
[1] Ghost in the Shell, directed by Mamoru Oshii (Production I.G, 1995).
[2] René Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditations on The First Philosophy (Ontario: Broadview Press, 2020),104.
[3]Ghost in the Shell, 13:15 to 27:48.
[4] Ghost in the Shell, 26:09 to 26:15.
[5] Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, 102.
[6]Ghost in the Shell, 42:08 to 42:40.
[7] Ghost in the Shell, 31:4 to 32-15.
[8] Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, 143-144.
[9]Ghost in the Shell, 42:40 to 42:47.
[10] Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, 142.
[11]Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, 110.
[12] Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, 110.
[13]Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, 109.
[14] Ghost in the Shell, 1:12:10 to 1:12:16.