Ghost in the Shell

Cogito ergo sum * *A film that leaves you with the double amount of questions inquired in the own film. What make us humans and them machines? "Ghost in the Shell" deals with the differences between men and the machine in a philosophical rather than a physical way. If humans are made by emotion and their moral compass, a machine that can also adapt and learn, therefore feel, meaning have a soul, can be consider a human? Humans think therefore they are, so if machines can think, are they technically a human? Is there a spiritual difference between humans and machines if both have souls? These are some of the questions that the AI generated android Matoko Kusanagi, asks herself. Her brain is based off a human brain, and it works the same way as ours, therefore she have these existential questions. The plot develops based on Kusanagi's internal conflict: Is she a true individual? Does she really have feelings? Or are these feelings an illusion? Can she be considerate a living being like humans? Kusanagi doesn't know if her memories are genuine, however she still have them, even if they were made artificially. As she said, her memories shape her personality, so if she has a personality of her own, she must be someone or at least something. "my thoughts and memories are unique only to me and i carry a sense of my one destiny" Even if her memories are made artificially by the government, she still feels and thinks, she has a soul and a body. And what is a human if not a soul within a body, a ghost within a shell. However, Kusanagi's actions, as an AI controled by the government, was alienated to the superiors, her creators, this means that, ironically, the one who gave her life also limits it. But aren't we all alienated in a minimal level to the capitalist system that the government obligates us to follow? Her memories might be false, her actions controlled, but she still confronts reality, and keep making questions and looking for answers. (spoiler warning) This way, as she, in the end of the movie, breaks free from the political chains, she is reborn. Or maybe now entirely born. Matoko Kusanagi might not be a human but she is certainly another type of living being. Thus, accordingly to Nietzsche's critique of the famous Descartes's sentence "I think therefore I am", one doesn't need to be a person to think an idea, once, as he quoted "Something thinks an idea".