Published by Ace on March 1, 2016
If you could turn the world’s psychopaths into non-psychopaths, but only by turning a much smaller number of people with a conscience into psychopaths, would you do it? What if doing so might prevent a global war? That’s the moral dilemma that animates Quantum Night.
I generally like Robert Sawyer’s novels, and I suspect that my political views are similar to his. But Quantum Night is, in part, a political science fiction novel that is sometimes too silly to take seriously. I won’t spoil the plot by discussing the political events that take place, but I will say that I just didn’t buy most of them, perhaps because Sawyer (ever a pimp for Canada) tries to give his nation a central role in the political world. Some of the novel’s political events are just eye-rolling (perhaps Sawyer has been watching Fox News and taking it seriously), but science fiction demands a suspension of disbelief so let’s put that aside.
The novel’s other, deeper aspect involves speculation about the quantum nature of consciousness. That speculation is at least interesting, but I wasn’t quite able to suspend my disbelief in either the premise or the way the characters behaved.
Quantum Night posits that there are three kinds of people in the world. One group consists of philosophical zombies. They have no inner voice to chat with and therefore aren’t “truly conscious.” They are easily led or misled. Instead of being guided by a conscience, they decide how to behave based on social cues. They account for Germany’s Hitler followers, Canada’s hockey hooligans, and disastrous election outcomes in the United States.
The second group are psychopaths. They carry on an interior monologue but they have no conscience. The third group are conscious with a conscience. They have an inner voice, engage in interior debates, and allow a mixture of empathy and reason to guide their actions. Since the ratio from the first group to the second and third is 4:2:1, philosophical zombies and psychopaths greatly outnumber conscious people with a conscience.
Of course, nearly everyone who reads the novel will think “I’m one of the conscious with a conscience” and many (delighted to know that they are special) will happily believe that there are twice as many psychopaths and four times as many zombies, but I just don’t think that’s true. Yeah, there are a lot of empty heads in the world, but to ascribe their trend-following behavior to a lack of consciousness rather than intellectual dullness doesn’t seem to me to be consistent with the real world. And having worked with and for a good number of bad people over the years, I have to think that Sawyer’s premise vastly overestimates the number of true psychopaths in the world, even giving the term a broad definition. Sawyer talks a bit about Robert Hare, who makes a good living by seeing psychopaths behind every bush, but even by Hare’s dubious standards, I don’t think psychopaths are as prevalent as the book suggests.
But let’s put all that (in addition to the politics) aside and get to the meat of the novel, which involves the moral dilemma I mentioned above. During and shortly after he is cross-examined in court, James Marchuk, a psychology professor who is an expert in psychopathy, discovers he has a six-month gap in his memory. It turns out he was a test subject in a neuropsychology experiment as an undergrad. Marchuk discovers that a classmate, who was also a test subject, has been in a coma ever since. Marchuk sets about recovering his lost memories of a time during which he wasn’t the kind, generous, and humanistic vegan that he has since become. Therein lies the plot.
The utilitarian philosophy that underlies Marchuk’s behavior and the novel’s moral dilemma (borrowed from Kant or Mr. Spock, as you prefer) -- “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” -- suffers from the problem that people rarely agree about the “needs” that should be served or how that can best be done. Sawyer gives scant attention to that issue. Marchuk’s proposed solution to the prevalence of psychopathy is, in my mind, morally unsound and uncloaks the weakness of his utilitarian philosophy. His proposal might serve the needs of the many but only by doing harm to a smaller but still huge number of others, without their knowledge or consent. What could possibly give Marchuk the right to do that other than his own belief that he’s right?
That, at least, gives the reader something to chew on, and that makes Quantum Night worth reading, even if I didn’t buy into the premise. Sawyer is always easy to read, even if his attempts at humor are a bit lame. Sawyer is probably just too nice to do humor with the kind of edge that provokes a belly laugh. Of Sawyer’s books that touch on consciousness, I would rate FlashForward well ahead of Quantum Night, but I enjoyed Quantum Night enough to recommend it, despite my unsuccessful attempts to suspend my disbelief.
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