Free Final Fantasy and Philosophy: The Ultimate Walkthrough by William Irwin, Michel S. Beaulieu

fully explained by physical or chemical mechanisms. Life, it was argued, could be explained only by appealing to the existence of an immaterial “vital principle” or “animal soul.” This argument was accepted, to some degree, even by famous advocates of mechanism such as René Descartes (1596-1650). In his Treatise of Man (c. 1637), he claimed that the physiological functions of man—circulation, digestion, nourishment, and growth—could all be adequately understood as mechanical processes. Yet elsewhere he held that cognitive capacities, such as thinking, judging, and deciding, were not the outcome of mechanical processes but were properties possessed only by human minds.
    The problem with arguments that appeal to vital principles, souls, and Lifestreams is that they have been so often defeated. Dr. Cid may seem convincing when he says that there is a vital, living Gaia that is above and beyond physical and chemical principles. But when concepts like this have been proposed and examined empirically, they usually have been found lacking. The ongoing success of mechanism and reductionism, and the ongoing failure to show that there is anything unique or distinctive about living processes, has made most modern scientists suspicious of theories that appeal to anything except reductionist and mechanistic concepts. This suggests that we have good reasons to be suspicious of theories that appeal to holistic concepts. The account of Gaia developed in The Spirits Within and Advent’s Children clearly relies on a dubious holistic concept of the Lifestream. So, General Hein is right to be skeptical of Dr. Cid’s theories, and Professor Hojo has some justification (methodological, if not moral) to be pursuing explanations that rely on mechanism and reductionism. But should our skepticism extend to theories that appeal to organicist concepts? Lovelock and Margulis’s account of Gaia proposes that living organisms interact to maintain environmental conditions favorable to life through a system of interlocking physical and chemical feedback mechanisms. Should we also be suspicious of the Gaia hypothesis?
    The fact that Lovelock and Margulis’s Gaia hypothesis is an organicist concept and not purely reductionist or mechanistic has made it enormously controversial in the scientific community. Some scientists dispute the efficacy of specific feedback mechanisms that make up the Gaia system. Others argue that the hypothesis is too sweeping and unspecific to be testable. Still others claim that large-scale homeostasis in ecological systems could not be an outcome of evolution by natural selection. Some, all, or none of these criticisms may turn out, in the long run, to be correct. But aside from these specific empirical criticisms of Gaia, it is worth making the following philosophical observation. In most scientific disciplines, from physics to genetics, hypotheses and explanations employ only reductionist and mechanistic concepts. Ecology and the environmental sciences are noteworthy exceptions. In these disciplines, one is much more likely to encounter hypotheses, such as the Gaia hypothesis, that invoke organicist concepts. 3
    In the closing, climactic scenes of The Spirits Within , General Hein is proved utterly wrong and Dr. Cid’s hypothesis that the planet has a living spirit called Gaia is vindicated. Aki, the young beautiful protégée of Dr. Cid, desperately tries to persuade Hein that the earth is not under attack by a phantom alien menace. Aki reveals that the mysterious Phantoms are the “confused, lost, and angry” spirits of an alien planet that became stranded when a meteor fragment from their world hit the Earth. The Phantoms are not an alien aggressor but “the living spirit of an alien’s home world.” Hein ignores Aki and (repeatedly) fires the Zeus Cannon, with devastating consequences. Will Lovelock and Margulis eventually be proved right, just like Dr. Cid is? The answer to this question is unclear. At