Abstract

Westworld is built on pretense. Philosophers have been interested in pretense and deception. Deception is another sort of pretense. This chapter answers whether it is morally permissible to deceive artificial intelligences just so that humans can play Cowboys and Indians. The delicate equilibrium of Westworld begins to fall apart as some of the hosts figure out the truth about themselves and their world. But that just injects a new level of pretense into the story. In order to hide their awakening from the staff, these enlightened hosts have to pretend that they still believe that they are human. Guests at the theme park, such as William and Logan, typically pretend to be cowboys. In order to rule out real cowboys, one needs to adopt an additional constraint in the definition of pretending. It clearly needs to have something to do with the mental state of the individual who is doing the pretending.