Abstract

The hosts in Westworld can not feel pain or suffering; nevertheless, they exhibit behaviors when they're shot or otherwise abused that mimic how humans act when in pain or suffering. It is evident that Westworld has apparently evolved into a world of persons versus persons, each seeking to write their own self‐narratives and, in the process, pursuing dominance in order to flourish – recall Nietzsche's concept of the fundamental “will to power”. An artificial reality like Westworld can indeed be an appropriate environment in which moral agents exercise habitual actions that result in the cultivation of persistent character traits, whether virtuous or vicious. Westworld provided an environment in which Bernard William was able to realize his own personhood by freeing him from the moral constraints of the real world and the narrative that had been largely written for him by others in his early life.