7. A Modest Note on the Monster Theory and Its Realist Semantics

Text by professor Timo Airaksinen part no: 7.

In fantasy literature, monsters are so terrifying that to meet one leads to insanity and suicide. However, "I am becoming a monster" must feel worse. Thomas Nagel asks, "What is it like to be a bat?"; I ask what it is like to become and be a monster – is it possible to know? To answer, we need semiotic tools. I design a Nagel Test to determine one's ability to formulate de se thoughts and beliefs during and after the monstrous transmogrification. To do this, I will discuss what I call a Perry Case and Perry Tale. Most emphatically, my goal is not to offer new interpretations of the masterpieces of Stevenson, Stoker, and Lovecraft. I use their stories as sources of examples. I sketch a theory of monsters in the fantasy world. My modest main aim is to understand the logic and semiotics of losing one's personal identity and its psychological consequences. I imagine the semantics of a possible world maximally similar to the readers' actual world, except it allows monsters and, because of them, monstrous threats to one's identity. This is the language game played by the classical horror writers I will introduce.

Keywords: Thomas Nagel, de se beliefs, possible worlds, monsters; personal identity; physical identity; horror; suicide, madness, literary strategies, Oscar Wilde, George Orwell. "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn." (H.P. Lovecraft).

7. A Modest Note on the Monster Theory and Its Realist Semantics

The term "monster" is ambiguous. In the present article, a true monster is a grotesque, uncanny, disgusting, and somehow unnatural alien being that horrifies and may threaten us, humans. From the point of view of our actual world, any monster is an alien Other.[1] However, we can imagine a set of possible worlds, but we know no route from our world to any of the worlds that contain monsters. In other words, we do not know how to modify our actual world and its natural laws to permit monsters. However, in a world that permits monsters, truth-making circumstantial models exist such that some monster sentences are true. What do I mean by a model? In our novel world, a type of circumstantial configuration (model) make the corresponding sentences true. This is a type-level account. On the token level, we have particular sentences that become true when the typical circumstance described in the model are present. These sentences include monster terms, such as "Cthulhu's call."

The monster worlds are inaccessible to us because we know no way of changing our world so that it becomes a monster world. Call them distant worlds. Therefore, to imagine monsters is to create a distant possible world that cannot be our actual world. In other words, if we confronted a monster, we would have crossed the borders of our actual world and entered a distant possible world. The only way to do so is fictional. Only in fantasy literature is this world accessible from our actual world, which is an unrealistic assumption even if its ontology is realistic. Notice that I am not interested in the representational, metaphoric aspects and symbolism of monsters. I am formulating their realistic ontology. Let us imagine what such a distant world would be like if it were maximally like our world and yet allowed monsters. This entails a major surprise when a monster first appears – the witness realizes they do not live in the world they thought they lived in. I call this word a minimally augmented, new possible world.

Think of Erich Zann, who is dead but still playing his viola. Zombies and vampires are living dead. Vampires, for instance, pretend they are alive and live like human beings. HPL writes, "In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming." Such a construal of death as pretense is situationally ironic. Consider the sarcastic idiom "a dead man walking," take it literally, and Count Dracula and Erich Zann arrive. They enter our actual world from their distant possible worlds and change our world into a novel one whose existence we did not predict.

How to characterize monsters? Their physical appearance can be grotesque, but not necessarily. Indeed, they may look human – Dagon and Zann are both monsters. The key point is that monsters have otherworldly properties we consider surprising, scary, and ultimately threatening. For instance, the narrators are equally horrified by Erich Zann and Dagon. These are both alien Others the narrators do not expect to see and meet. They find their experience shocking and threatening when they realize they are facing a monster. Still, the key point is that they cannot know what it is to be like a monster – this is their core experience that becomes an analytical truth because it follows from the very idea of a monstrous being as an alien Other. Gregor Samsa thinks like a human being in his new insect's body. But if we asked what it is like to be an insect, he could not answer. Therefore, Gregor is not an insect but a human being in a grotesque body, and in this sense, he is a semi-monster – half a man, half an insect, and consequently an oxymoron.

A monster is an alien Other that does not belong to our actual world. Yet, we can consistently imagine an unexpected possible world that we share with them. In this novel world, we meet beings whose apparent de se thoughts we cannot share, nor do they pass the Nagel Test. But, as we know, this can also happen in our non-augmented actual world. The following two counterfactual propositions clarify the situation:

(1) If I were a Brazilian vampire bat, I could not tell what it would be like to be one.

(2) I could not tell how I felt as a corpse feasting with Nitokris under the Egyptian pyramids.

Two details must be considered. First, sentence (1) above presents a problem because Brazilian vampire bats are not monsters. If (1) and (2) are analogous, how to differentiate between bats and monsters? The main point cannot be: if I could not tell what it is like to be a bat, bats are monsters. In the present context, the difference between bats and monsters is that bats are not monsters; however, a similarity between bats and monsters obtains as well, namely, to turn into a bat and to turn into a monster are equally monstrous possibilities – and I do not mean semi-monsters. It does not matter that a human bat transformation is not an alien Other in the same sense as the monster: the undead vampires come from another possible world, but a human vampire bat is born right here. Of course, a vampire bite also creates new vampires in the present world. I say a human turning into a vampire bat is becoming a monster, or the idea of a human turning into a vampire bat is monstrous.

In a contemporary art exhibition, I once encountered a plain grayish bag half a meter long lying on the floor. The bag wriggled whole telling how painful and unhappy life can be. The bag moaned, "I am in great pain and so unhappy." The bag repeated the same message all day – the Unhappy Bag did not know what was said. However, the main point is that the bag used self-referential de se propositions. What happens when a monster uses "I"? Do they behave like us humans or the Unhappy Bag?

Gregor Samsa is a man's mind in an insect's body; thus, his "I" refers as usual. Count Dracula is a monster in a simulated human body; this body is not an actual human body because it throws no shadow, is invisible in a mirror, and presumably in a photo. It is also strangely malleable. Yet, the Count pretends to be a human male. What happens when he uses de se expressions and the indexical "I"? When the Unhappy Bag utters "I," the referent is the bag in the sense that if bags could be happy and unhappy, this bag would indeed talk about "myself." But they are not, and this the "I" does not refer. What happens here? The recording produces soundbites a listener interprets as human words signifying de se unhappiness and pain. Imagine a loudspeaker on the wall, and you hear, "I am so unhappy." How are you supposed to interpret that? The writhing bag produces an uncanny human-like effect that invites a misinterpretation.

But the Count is not a recording in a bag. The Count speaks coherently and convincingly and acts accordingly. We get the impression that behind this "I" is a mind like ours. We, humans, could understand what it is to be the vampire Count – a suggestion I reject. We face a dilemma: The Count looks and sounds human, yet we do not know what it is like to be a vampire. My conclusion is: if you do not know what it is like to be a vampire, you cannot expect their "I," which designates the speaker, to signify something like you. "I" designates the speaker as a speaker, but you cannot know what that speaker is – because you do not know what it is like to be that thing. We can call such an "I" a false "I." For us humans, the Count is like the Unhappy Bag and the loudspeaker on the wall because the Count simulates a person, and so does the Unhappy Bag.

While he addresses his human enemies, the Count simulates the human mind in a simulated human body. According to a psychophysical monist, body and mind are intimately connected via the brain – as if the mind were a body part. Therefore, the human mind cannot exist in an alien body; the mind must be as alien as the body. And we have no idea what the Count is like physically and mentally. Hence, we do not know the referent of Count's "I" and what it is like. But we know the Count's simulations are of excellent quality. The Count is a monster from another inaccessible possible world and, as such, an enigma. A talking lion would also be a visitor from an alien reality where the laws of nature are unlike ours. But the Count comes from a world we do not understand at all. –I say, "I am happy," and know what it means. A monster says, "I am happy," and have no idea what happens. This thing simulates a human being because human beings are present. In this sense, the Count is a human creation, a child of our fear of the unknown and unknowable.

References

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[1] On monster theory, see for example, Weinstock, 2020; Erdle, and Hendry, 2020. Baldick, 1987; Baumgartner, and Davis, 2008; Botting, and Pooner, 2015; Chia-Hung Lin, and Juinn Bing Tan, 2018; Cohen, 1996; Czachesz, 2012; Huet, 1993; Wright, 2018. Also, Research: www.cam.ac.uk/research/discussion/what-is-a-monster (with pictures). On possible worlds, see Menzel, 2023.