First note of interest, the title for this episode, "Root Path," pairs off against the title of the episode first introducing Root in season 1, "Root Cause."
Many points of philosophical interest are possible in this episode especially, such as providence in a chaotic world (chaos theory), and the "greater good" vs the good of the single life etc. But the one that caught my interest the most is when Root states her take on the machine continually telling her to protect the janitor as Finch having to have broken the machine so badly for it to care so much about people. Finch states that it was only when he taught the machine to care about people that it was able to understand people enough to be able to see what it needed to see to analyze threats.
This reminds me of something Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger said, before he became Pope Benedict XVI, in regards to Biblical Studies. He spoke of "sympatheia," having sympathy with the subject. His basic point was that in order to understand something like the Biblical text, a scholar must be exercise sympathy with it ... meaning it cannot be treated simply in a completely cold and "objective" scientific fashion. I liked seeing the same theme here.
No great big further thoughts on that one yet, just cataloging it for now.
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