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This chapter discusses time travel as the secondary device for exploring the idea of liberty in Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys. It analyzes the juxtaposition between free will and determinism, in which the film seems to be caught in something of a bind. It also explains time travel that is one-directional, in which the scientists only ever send people into the past, never into their own future to see if their plan will pan out. The chapter talks about how 12 Monkeys seems to suggest that it is possible to influence the future, which is an idea that is entirely reliant on the illusion of linear time. It examines the debate between compatibilists and incompatibilists that centres on a failure to distinguish between that which is known and that which is real.

This chapter illustrates the desperation that is almost tangible in the attempts to support moral responsibility. Evidence of this desperation becomes apparent in the wide variety of distinctly different and often conflicting proposals for supporting moral responsibility. The moral responsibility system is deeply embedded in common sense, the legal system, and deeply entrenched in man’s natural strike-back emotions. Existentialists refer to concepts such as “being-for-itself” to demonstrate the great choices one makes sans constraints and conditions. Contemporary libertarians offer similar arguments, but with a hint of apprehension. Robert Kane is one such libertarian, and he rejects mystery and relies on quantum indeterminism amplified by chaos. Compatibilists, on the other hand, are united in their rejection of miracles but divided on almost everything else.

This chapter discusses how the natural sciences have relegated the miracle of unlimited creation of the self into obscurity. As biologists and psychologists enlarged the areas explicable by causal forces outside our ultimate control, the space available for special acts of free will was squeezed tighter. What used to be an almighty God, capable of miraculously creating the cosmos, has become a “god-of-the-gaps” that possessed limited power confined to “whatever science cannot yet explain.” On the other hand, compatibilists continue to insist that moral responsibility is compatible with naturalism and, consequently, making advances in natural science poses no problem for moral responsibility. The opposing view is discussed first—that of the incompatibilists, stating that the special human freedom essential for moral responsibility must be independent of natural explanation and natural causes.

This chapter addresses an implication of radical enhancement that is obscured in some of the more lighthearted presentations of the idea. Radically enhanced beings are not only significantly better than us in various ways, they are different from us—so different that they do not deserve to be called human. Moderate enhancement raises serious moral issues; advocates of radical enhancement are divided on the question of whether our humanity can withstand radical enhancement. Some—compatibilists such as Huxley and Kurzweil—hold that radical enhancement is compatible with our humanity. Incompatibilists like Nick Bostrom and James Hughes, by contrast, emphasize just how different from us radically enhanced beings will be. The chapter argues that although it is not logically necessary that a human who has been radically enhanced will become a nonhuman, it is likely that he or she will.