The Minority Report (2002) is set in the year of 2054, where a special division of the police force in Washington D.C. aims at maintaining a safe society by preventing future murderers from committing a horrible crime. This special unit of the police force, known as the “Pre-Crime” division, is led by the main character John Anderton, who firmly believes that the pre-crime system is perfect and that the system works. The central idea of pre-crime in this movie introduces one of the oldest philosophical debates that has been discussed amongst philosophers throughout the centuries. To break down the philosophical aspects of Spielberg’s film, the concept of pre-crime discussed clearly in one scene of the film will be explained in the context of free-will and determinism and that Laplace’s Superbeing and Spinoza’s Conscious Stone thought experiments are the two significant arguments given to support pre-crime.
One of the most crucial scenes in the film is when Anderton explains the concept of pre-crime to Danny Witwer, an agent from the United States Department of Justice. Anderton demonstrates the concept of pre-crime through rolling a wooden ball across a glass curved table. When Anderton rolls the wooden ball across the glass surface towards Witwer, Witwer captures the ball to prevent it from falling towards the ground. When Witwer reveals his reasoning of why he was so sure that the ball was going to fall, Anderton refutes back at Witwer that the ball did not fall because he (Witwer) caught it and concluded that “the fact that you prevented it from happening doesn’t change the fact that it was going to happen” (Minority Report). What Anderton proves here is that everything in the universe is predetermined. The philosophical significance of this act that Anderton demonstrates in this scene is that the theory of determinism is true and that the belief of free will is just a mere illusion. Abiding to the theory of determinism, the fact that the wooden ball rolled across the glass surface is determined by the forces that act upon it. Because of all the forces that were acted on the rolling wooden ball, it allowed Witwer to accurately predict that it was indeed going to fall in the future. The reason why Witwer caught the ball to prevent it from falling was already determined due to the forces that caused the wooden ball to roll. Here, Witwer’s action proves one of the notions of determinism: if one is able to predict one’s actions, then it is not considered as a free will to do that certain action because the result of that particular action is determined by the forces outside of one’s control. Therefore, Witwer’s action to prevent the ball from falling is not an act of free will. In pursuance to better understand the concept of pre-crime and its theme of free-will and determinism, there are two philosophical thought experiments that both will support the concept of pre-crime in a logical manner.
Since the factors of hard determinism and no free will constitutes the principles of pre-crime, the two arguments that fully support the concept of pre-crime are Laplace’s Superbeing thought experiment and Spinoza’s Conscious Stone thought experiment. According to Laplace’s Superbeing thought experiment, it suggests that “an intelligence which could comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective situation of the beings who compose it…would embrace in the same formula the movements of the greatest bodies in the universe and those of the lightest atom; for it, nothing would be uncertain and the future, as the past would be present to its eyes” (pg. 181). What Laplace proposed here is a being that can predict the future due to his or her knowledge of how everything follows the laws of interaction and of all the details each object presents in the universe. In other words, since Laplace’s Superbeing is able to see the past, present, and future events from accurate predictions, it is easy to logically conclude that all actions in the future are predetermined by what one had done in the past combined with the influence imposed by the laws of nature. Furthermore, it is impossible to change the past and the future because it is already fixed. This narrow downs to only one possible future and thus proves that one does not have free will. For this reason, Laplace’s Superbeing thought experiment reinforces of how the pre-crime system works. Much like Laplace’s Superbeing thought experiment, the pre-crime system in the film has its own special beings known as the Precogs, whom can all predict and see the past, present, and future events of what crimes will be committed by which individual, leading to the fact that there will always be just one possible path that the individual can only take. The parallelism between Laplace’s Superbeing thought experiment and the important role of Precogs in the pre-crime system ultimately echoes the same message about pre-crime: the reoccurring theme of determinism and that no free will are the essential components of pre-crime. Another example that supports one aspect of pre-crime is the Conscious Stone thought experiment. In this experiment, Spinoza proposes that the stone traveling in continuous motion is “being conscious merely of its own endeavor and not at all indifferent, would believe itself to be complete free, and would think that it continued in motion solely because of its own wish” (pg. 182). To clarify, Spinoza’s interpretation behind this thought experiment is that the conscious stone thinks that it is truly “free” because it is doing exactly what it dreams of: its motion in air. But, one would know that the stone is not free because its motion is determined by the forces beyond its control. From this demonstration, humans, like the conscious stone, have no free will. The vital part of having no free will in Spinoza’s experiment successfully defends the statement of no free will in the concept of pre-crime.
In short, the concept of pre-crime in Spielberg’s film has portrayed a prominent part in representing the philosophical theories of free-will and determinism. The concept of pre-crime, which is explained through Anderton’s rolling ball scene in the movie, thoroughly delivers its meaning of how the pre-crime system is deterministic in all actions and that free will does not exist in individuals. The thought experiments of Laplace’s Superbeing and Spinoza’s Conscious Stone provides evidence to support the major themes of determinism and no free will in the pre-crime system. Laplace’s Superbeing experiment proves that a being can predict the future if it knew the laws of motion and knew everything about all the objects in this world; therefore, the predictions of what we do in the future is determined by forces outside of control and that we do not have a free will. Spinoza’s Conscious Stone experiment proposes that the conscious stone is not free in making its motion because the motion is determined by forces not in its control; this directly ties to the idea that we do not have a free will. The concept of pre-crime has justified its relations with the problems of free-will and determinism along with arguments given to support itself.