What does the silent planet tell us? The analysis of selected philosophical themes found in Stanisław Lem’s Solaris

Paweł Grabarczyk

doi:10.18778/1505-9057.59.04

Authors

Paweł Grabarczyk Associate Professor, IT University of Copenhagen, Digital Design Department, Rued Langgaards Vej 7, 2300 København, Denmark; University of Lodz, Faculty of Philosophy and History, Institute of Philosophy, Lindleya 3/5, 90-131 Lodz, Poland https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1268-7474

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/1505-9057.59.04

Keywords:

Stanisław Lem, Solaris, representations, computationalism, upload

Abstract

The paper analyses selected philosophical aspects of Stanisław Lem’s Solaris. I argue that there is an interesting similarity between the history of “Solarist studies” –the fictional scientific discipline depicted by Lem and cognitive science. I show that both disciplines go through similar stages as they try to describe their main subject (the planet Solaris and human consciousness respectively). In the further part of the paper, I focus on two problems identified in cognitive science that can be directly related to the themes found in Solaris: the problem of the detection of intelligence and the problem of the notion of mental representations.

I finish the paper by looking at the mysterious guests that stalk the main protagonists and show that they can be understood as heuristic models that are taken into account in the theories of mind uploading.

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Author Biography

Paweł Grabarczyk, Associate Professor, IT University of Copenhagen, Digital Design Department, Rued Langgaards Vej 7, 2300 København, Denmark; University of Lodz, Faculty of Philosophy and History, Institute of Philosophy, Lindleya 3/5, 90-131 Lodz, Poland

Paweł Grabarczyk – associate professor at the IT University of Copenhagen. He is an analytic philosopher and a game scholar. His interests revolve around philosophy of language and philosophy of mind where he often explores the boundaries between science-fiction and philosophy. In 2009 he co-edited a collection of essays devoted to Stanisław Lem’s philosophical ideas (Język, umysł i technologia. Eseje zainspirowane prozą Stanisława Lema). He is an editor-in-chief of “Replay. The Polish Journal of Game Studies” and the head of Centre for Philosophical Research. He is a recipient of the 1^stprize of the Polish Semiotic Association (in 2013). He is an author of several dozen articles and books, among these Directival Theory of Meaning: From Syntax and Pragmatics to Narrow Linguistic Content published in Springer’s Synthese Library and W poszukiwaniu teorii znaczenia published by Lodz University Press.

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