Are the “Visitors” human?
One question that I found extremely interesting in Solaris was that of whether the “visitors” were human, and the related question of the morality of destroying the visitors. Lem’s seems to be getting at the question of what constitutes humanity: if Rheya looks like a human, has the feelings and emotions and memories of a human, and even tries to kill herself out of love for Kris, who are Snow and Sartorius to say that she isn’t a human? On the other hand, her molecules are clearly not made up of atoms like a normal humans, but instead are made up of neutrinos. I think that Lem here is raising the question of what is more important to humanity – physical construction or some sort of psychological awareness? If Rheya had never found out that she wasn’t actually Rheya, could she have gone on happily living as a human?
This also brings into question the morality of destroying Rheya and the other “visitors.” While Rheya makes it fairly clear that she wants to die, we don’t know anything about the wishes of the visitors to Snow and Sartorius – do they want to die? Do they know that they’re not human? The visitors are some sort of manifestation of the ocean, which appears to be conscious, and they’re definitely conscious, with their own feelings and memories and desires; is it ethical to kill them? Or can we argue that the visitors are parasites on the crew, depriving them of the will to live or even, in some cases, the ability to live (for example, as Kelvin is further sucked into Rheya’s spell, he stops drinking liquids, which is a remarkably good way to die). In the latter case, is it ethical to kill the visitors to save the crew?
The question of the ocean’s consciousness is also interesting. Is the ocean conscious? Is it aware of the experiments being done on it, some of which are fairly cruel (there is mention of a blast that destroys a large part of the ocean), and trying to get revenge, or simply to drive the humans away? What are the ethical implications of experimenting on a living thing that may or may not be conscious and can’t communicate? It seems like a moral gray area, much more so than the question of how the newts are treated in “War With the Newts,” and more akin to the treatment of the robots in R.U.R.
Ok so I want to make a few surface comments before getting more into what it means to be human. First, it is not entirely clear what form exactly Snow and Sartorius’ visitors take. From Snow’s comments we can glean that they are objects of desire but that does not mean that they human in form. Additionally we are given the believe that at least one of the visitors to whom we are not introduced would not be considered a socially acceptable object for a man’s desires.
As for Kelvin giving up drinking liquids I am not sure that is accurate. I couldn’t remember (i.e. find the page) a glass a juice is only half drunk but I think it was Rheya and not Kelvin that claimed to be thirsty and then was only able to drink half of the glass. Alex feel free to correct me if you are referring to a different part of the story.
The question of humanity, as I see it, is not one of if the “visitors” have aspects of the humanity but if there is anything that disqualifies them from being human. Either in that they lack something that is necessary to be human or have a characteristic which is fundamentally inhuman. Their apparent immortality of the “visitors” is one possible problem. But a fundamentally more troubling one is their compulsion, at least initially, to remain near the person they were sent to. This can be expanded in the broader view with an assumed inability for them to leave Solaris. Regardless their exists, in some sense, a fundamental lack of freedom and free will. While it is accepted that a person who has been deprived of these rights is still human the question becomes far more interesting in the case of an individual who is incapable of having them in the first place.
The question of Rheya (or Phi-Rheya)’s relationship to the ocean is perplexing too: we can’t tell how much she is responsible for the ocean’s ability to ransack Kelvin’s mind as he sleeps, and yet he really does seem comforted that she is near – as if her presence gives him a kind of second chance after his first bad behavior. On the other hand, he doesn’t treat Phi-Rheya particularly well, though he refers to discussing their future life on earth with her. (I think again of the folklore creatures who were made of snow, or of flowers like Blodeuwedd (sp?) in the Mabinogion; we’re led to believe that they are human despite their miraculous origins and special fragility. The folk imagination wouldn’t care that someone was made of neutrinos.) It would suggest that Rheya is all too human if she took his miserable state during the ocean-penetrated dreams as his reaction to HER, or should we assume that she is somehow aware that she and the ocean are part of the same entity, thus she is also to blame?
The definition of a person is easier than the definition of the word human. It is possible to be a person and not human, (the Martians in Red Star) and possible to be human but not a person (someone who was born in a vegetative state and never awakes before they die, although this is a debate in philosophy) so the question of person-hood becomes more important.
The newts for example, I would argue are people. They have nothing that I think disqualifies them. Yes, they look different and don’t value art, but it’s possible for human people to not value art and that doesn’t disqualify them from being people.
In this vein, let’s try to tackle the problem of the ocean. Is the ocean a person? I don’t see why having a set physical body is required so that aspect can be dismissed. I don’t think that it is necessary for person-hood. I think that the things that are important are intelligent thought (and by that I mean some sort of order that can organize truth data and come up with original conclusions, even if incomprehensible to us), sense of self, and maybe that’s it. In that case, nothing we learned about the ocean denied the possibility of it being a person. We just don’t know. From the external signs it would seem that the ocean is capable at least of mimicry. Mimicry does not necessarily imply intelligence, but the fact that it does NOT always imitate what it is presented with increases the likelihood that it is a sign of intelligence and not just a physical property of the ocean.
It is clear at least from what she says, that Rheya has the qualities I mentioned: intelligent thought and a sense of self. Therefore she is a person and should be respected as such when moral decisions come into play. Her connection to Kelvin is simply a sign that she isn’t human but not one that her death should mean less than a human death. The only justifiable reason for killing the phi-creatures instead of the humans is that the humans can live without the phi-creatures but we get the impression that the opposite is not true, thinking of the tall black lady. For that reason, if the phi-creatures truly are unavoidably (and I think this is debatable) causing the deaths of the humans then, they can be killed. If not, it is immoral.
-Masha