White Zombie: Anatomy of a Horror Film, Essay Example

Thesis statement

Zombies are popular because of their apparent behavioral, functional, and at times, physical similarities to human beings with the exception of having conscious mental states. These similarities have opened up the doors for philosophy that ponders whether zombies can possibly exist, which perhaps spurred the interest moviegoers have in zombies.

Introduction

Zombies are hypothetical beings that are behaviorally, functionally or perhaps even physically equivalent to human beings, but they differ from humans in not having conscious (or, at least, qualitatively conscious) mental states. The term Zombie has a varied meaning and definition from different parts of the world. There are three categories which one can classify the term zombie. First, there are Zombies depicted in movies that shows as a dead person but has been reanimated, also called as Hollywood Zombies. Then there are those ones that are portrayed as cultural and are mainly featured in folklore narrations that are known as Haitian zombies and there are the modern Zombies or philosophical Zombies. According to Nigel, Zombies have the same ability as human beings in processing information and a similar capacity to form cognitive representations but they are not conscious because they lack sensations.

Philosophical zombies are used in the study of consciousness and to describe the state of ones being. They have distinguishing features for instance; they lack conscious experience, but are behaviorally and often physically identical to normal humans. They are mainly used in the philosophical journals and publications by philosophers. The argument over philosophical zombies is always based on the basis of functionalism, where it is largely believed that mental status of an individual is characterized by his or her functional status usually referred to as connectionist or symbolic, and the computational state. The view that the mind can be explained entirely in terms of ordinary science, either in its current form or after expected future advance, also known as physicalism, is shared by those hoping to a scientific account of the mind. (Zombie,u.d)

It is philosophical zombies that I’m most interested in here, since they raise very fascinating ideas. The sort I’m most apprehensive with is zombies that are physically and behaviorally identical to a conscious human, but lack any conscious experience. Most people live in uncertainty whether zombies can exist in real world. But many think that they are reasonably possible at the very least- i.e. that the idea of zombies is internally unswerving, and that there is at least a “possible world” where zombies exist. This sound possibility is sometimes used to come up with strong conclusions about consciousness. The common position is that the logical possibility of zombies is one way of showing that there is no logical attachment between physical facts and facts about consciousness, while there is such an entailment in most other aspects. The logical possibility of zombies is controversial to some (e.g. Dennett (1995), as conceivability intuitions are disreputably elusive while some scientists have been wondering if anything significant really results from what is merely conceivable. I think that most arguments that use zombies can actually be rephrased in a zombie-free way, so that these arguments can be set aside if one prefers; but zombies at slightest offer a brilliant and provoking illustrations.

There are two associated issues that come up in the philosophical and psychological writing. There is a functional zombie, which is an unconscious system physically different from but similarly functional as an ordinary human being. Some use the logical likelihood of such a functional zombie to argue against reductive functionalist theories of consciousness that believes consciousness equates to functioning. Some have supplemented by arguing that functional zombies might even exist in the real world, suggesting that any form of functionalism or artificial intelligence is predestined. Others have denied that functional zombies could actually exist, so that artificial intelligence is not exposed to risk

Another related issue is that of the zombie within, which has recently been included in some play in psychology and neuroscience. It has turned out that a lot of humanity can be achieved involuntarily. For instance, the cataleptic observation, memory, and learning. Some, like Milner and Goodale argues that there are major neural fields dedicated to unconscious processing of visual inputs that leads directly to motor action. This has resulted in the suggestion that each of the human being has a “zombie within” that unconsciously produces many of our motor responses, without our realizing it. The first article in the philosophical literature about zombies was by Robert Kirk’s “Zombies vs. Materialists” ,1974. After Kirk’s article, there was barely any precise argument of zombies in the philosophical literature for some time although there were a lot of functional zombies.  But for one reason or another, zombies have risen from the grave in the past few years; and they turn out to be bizarrely well-represented on the website to be precise.

In the article titled Zombie-killer by Nigel Thomas ( 1996), he argues that zombies are of importance in that they philosophers in establishing the mental status of human beings of which deals with the concept of functionalism of human beings. He further argues out the different opinion as shared by various philosophers. For instance, the work by Chalmers (1996) in which he proposes to establish a parallel model environment for the Zombies to co-exist alongside human beings in a twin arrangement would result in varied results. According to Nigel Thomas, the zombies can not feel the awful redness of heat but they can as well wince and retract from the heat. He has outlined the various positions held with regards to the zombies’ being. Some of the reasons that are his basis are the issue of strict equivalence, falsity, truth and meaningless.

In the story of Dracula, he is menacing Harker’s devoted fiancée, Wilhelmina “Mina” Murray, with her cheerful friend, Lucy Westenra. Lucy receives three proposals for marriage in one day; one is from a refuge psychiatrist, Dr. John Seward; the other one is from an American, Quincey Morris; and the Honorable Arthur Holmwood later on Lord Godalming). Lucy accepts the proposal of the Honorable Arthur Holmwood while turning down Seward and Morris, but all remain friends. There is a remarkable encounter between Dracula and Seward’s patient Renfield, a mentally unstable man who means to eat insects, spiders, birds, and other creatures in ascending order of size so as to suck up their “life force”. Renfield acts as a motion sensor, detecting Dracula’s nearness and supplying clues accordingly.

Lucy starts to weaken skeptically. All her suitors worry, and Seward calls in his old teacher, Professor Abraham Van Helsing from Amsterdam. Van Helsing instantly diagnoses the cause of Lucy’s condition but declines to divulge it, knowing that Seward’s faith in him will be traumatized if he starts to speak of vampires. Van Helsing tries several blood transfusions, but they are clearly losing ground. On a night when Van Helsing must return to Amsterdam, Lucy and her mother are attacked by a wolf. Mrs. Westenra, who has a heart condition, dies of fear, and Lucy apparently dies soon after. Lucy is buried, but soon afterward the newspapers report children being haunted in the night by a beautiful lady. Van Helsing, knowing that this means Lucy has become a vampire and confides in Lord Godalming, Seward, and Morris. The suitors and Van Helsing track her down, and after a troubling quarrel between her vampiric self and Arthur, they stake her heart, behead her, and fill the mouth with garlic. Around the same time, Jonathan Harker, who had been recovering in Budapest arrives home. After Dracula learns of Van Helsing and the others’ conspiracy against him, he avenges by visiting—and biting— Mina at least three times. Dracula also feeds Mina his blood, creating a spiritual bond between them to have power over her. The only way to preclude this is to kill Dracula first. Mina slowly succumbs to the blood of the vampire that flows through her veins, switching back and forth from a situation of awareness to a condition of semi-trance through which she is telepathically linked with Dracula. It is through this connection that they start to use to figure out Dracula’s activities. It is only possible to detect Dracula’s environment when Mina is put under hypnosis by Van Helsing. (Dracula, Stoker) This ability   weakened as the group makes their way to Dracula’s fortress.

Dracula flees back to his castle in Transylvania, followed by Van Helsing’s group, who are able to track him down just before twilight and obliterate him by shearing (Dracula, Stoker, 2002) through the throat with a Knife and stabbing him in the heart with a Bowie knife. Dracula crumbles to dust, his curse is lifted and Mina is freed from the marks. Quincey Morris is killed in the final battle, stabbed by Gypsies who had been assigned with returning Dracula to his castle; the survivors return to England. (Dracula, Stoker)

The idea of zombies as narrated in different settings depends entirely on the person who is reading the work. One can either choose to believe in the scientists’ point of argument on the relevance of zombies. If the functionally equivalent of the zombies to consider humans are a real theoretical chance, then functionalism will not be true, because it will be like admitting that the two functionally discernible beings could be mentally different where one is conscious and the other is not. Therefore there must be more to mentality than cognitive functionality. Consciousness has remained very intriguing. The flip side of the mystery of the zombies is the unsubstantiated confidence of most cognitive scientists that intrinsic intentionality should not concern them: either they think there is no such thing or they assume that there is no problem in understanding how brain states or functional states of machines could be inherent meaningful .In fact it is hard to comprehend how any physical or functional state could be intrinsically about anything, but it is also quite clear that our thoughts are about things. (Zombie Killer, Thomas)

Works Cited

David. C, Knowledge, possibility and Consciousness , 1996

Dennett. C, philosophical obstacles to a science of consciousness?, 1995

Thomas Nigel. Zombie Killer. A. Cambridge 1996

http://www.theassc.org/files/assc/zombie-k.pdf . retrieved on August 23, 2009

White Zombie: anatomy of a horror film, http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=o-.retrieved on August 23, 2009.

Stoker Bram. Dracula, Berkley Boulevard Books, 2002.

White Zombie: Anatomy of a horror Film: Retrieved on 23^st august 2009, from:
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=o-TKtRV7jRQC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=scholarly+articles+on+zombies&ots=HKrlAC490f&sig=sUPqRKfxC-H6riHVGXZneafjAfs#v=onepage&q=&f=false