The Iron Man is called a 'man', and he displays many of the required characteristics of personhood, but he remains just a machine, or so it appears, and in the early part of the story he is treated as such, as there is an attempt to destroy him on the basis of functional problems he causes, without regard to any rights or dignities he may have. It's not hard to see them as people, but that being so, should we treat them as such? And if we decide to, what are then the implications for human societies, for human identity, ethics and morality?
Higher order primates such as chimpanzees and bonobos present a particular difficulty. I would say personhood requires rudimentary intelligence, including sentience, and a conscience, but in practice this is an entirely subjective designation and I am unclear at where the demarcation would be between machine and person, let alone between human beings and non-human animals. Or maybe it is not fear? Maybe it is just another mechanistic response that the author anthropomorphises? It's not made clear, and the lack of clarity makes the story all the more intriguing.Īt what point does a machine become a person? It's not difficult to imagine that in the future machines might assume legal or juristic personality, but here I refer to personhood in the natural sense.
And yet, during his elective trials of strength with this Space-Being, the narrator tells us that the Iron Man feels fear.
When he does save humanity, from a still greater monster - in a way, saving the monster in the process - it seems the Iron Man is merely acting in a functional sense, to preserve himself, having been warned that his own destruction would follow if he does not stop a terrible Space-Being - a lizard that threatens to consume everyone and thereby wipe Man from the face of the Earth. In short, the Iron Man is a .robot.person (I'm not sure) - a thing - without a heart. But this seems to be an entirely mechanical process. The only sign of any discernment is that the Iron Man's eyes change colour at times, sometimes rapidly and dramatically, to indicate variable responses to visual stimuli. There is no evidence in the story that the Iron Man has any compassion for humanity or conscience, or any emotional sense other than for the urgency of his own preservation and the satisfaction of his hunger. So the Iron Man begins this story as the Iron Monster, an unwelcome stranger that the local community is keen to be rid of, understandably so. The Iron Man has no sense of human laws or morals, as he steals and consumes anything made of metal, including expensive machinery belonging to local farmers. It's never explained where the Iron Man came from, and nobody knew how he was made.
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