Voyager 6 was primitive. V'Ger was by no means primitive, rest assured.
holographic sentience
- Thread starter roguephoenix
- Start date
Voyager 6 was primitive. V'Ger was by no means primitive, rest assured.
I seem to hold a minority view here and I'm not sure I have the vocab to explain why.
The philosophy of consciousness has a long history and although there is now a structured field of study, we are no closer to an answer. The question of consciousness is such an elusive one that we don't even know how a general anaesthetic works, or even if it exists universally, in all animals or even people.
When I look at a group of people, I know that they are all like me. They all have opinions, dreams, hopes, dreads, desires and needs, and that behind those eyes there is someone driving. That when I am not there, they still continue to experience their own existance. This is what sets people (and animals probably but thats another argument) apart from electrical/machanical "thinking" machines like my laptop.
I don't like to use the word soul because it has paranormal/religious conotations but stripping those away, and removing any hint of eternal existence after death etc, I still think it best describes the essence of a person. What I have, and what I am, behind my eyes, looking out at the world and considering my next words is my soul. How this soul is created in the brain I do not know, but its not the accumulation of knowledge and experience. I know that my brain is not a computer despite some of the apparent similarities. Likewise, a computer may emulate some brain functions, even replace them, but the conscious experience is a unique function of the brain.
Now, back to the trek world. Data is special because his positronic brain is special. It has gubbins that mimic biological brain function, the electrical fields and technowaffle give Data his sentience because its the same process. Its unlikely in the real world, but its not an original Trek concept and I can accept it as plausible in the context of the show.
Trek computers however have been shown to be rows of circuit borads, chips and the crew utterly indifferent to its non-physical needs. There has never been an episode dealing with the computer's non-physical needs. It never had a nervous breakdown. The Hal 9000 was portrayed as sentient and the crew had casual conversations with it. It also went mad. But we saw the Discovery through the eyes of Hal because the writer/director wanted us the think of Hal as being like us, but artificial. This is not the case with Trek tech, that intent is just not apparent in the writing or direction.
Infact, trek portarays a world as dumbfounded by consciousness as us today. If they had solved the connundrum, there would have been no question of Data's rights as a person. A simple technobabble test would have solved that problem, as with the exocomps. The same test would have been apllied to the computer and its holograms.
The Moriarty stories worked nicely as a 'what if?', but we leave it there and tune in next week and watch a 'what if' we breed super humans with aggressive immune systems, or even, 'what if' theres a writers strike and they do a clip show... My point being that sentient holograms are an interesting idea, but even the Moriarty character wasn't proven to be sentient, they just assumed he was because he acted that way.
Running with the idea throughout Voyager was a bad move because it wasn't consistent with the rest of trek tech and the ethical questions it raised were very limited. If a computer gives rise to sentience, a thinking mind, cheapens everyother character in the trek universe because it essentially trivialises the meaning of life. It makes existence a purely mechanical process and quantity of life was placed above quality of life. Life in trek is cheap because it can be created at whim, but that conflicts with the life is sacred do no harm attitude.
The same issues are posed by the dipiction of the transporter. The original being destroyed infavour of the copy. The original is killed. Under those circumstances, nobody would ever set foot in the transporter room. Its like transferring your job to a new town, but instead of moving, they just hire someone just like you and put a bullet in your head. Your conscious mind is not important, the job is still being done, there is still a 'you' walking about. Trek has confused sentience, intelligence, consciousness, computers and life and the soul in to one meaningless mess. I can't think of any episodes where they have shown disembodied consciousness, but how would that work for machines?
The point I am trying to make is that making the EMH sentient was to raise various ethical questions about what is life etc, it was to make him a colourful believable character whose life could be placed in jeopardy, to be just like us. Thats fair enough, but to me, and this is reinforced by everything I can find to read on the matter, sentience is linked deeply with that ineffable something that most people call the soul. That ineffable something is not to be found residing in a calcalating machine, however complex it is, or however convincing the simulation might be.
The EMH issue would have been better used to explore what it was to have a soul, what it meant to be alive, the whole sum of our parts and wotnot. Instead, we find it just being another civil rights debate. They never checked their holodeck simulations for any other sentient holograms that might have popped in to existence before ending the simulation, would that become murder? Some believe in the afterlife, some believe in reincarnation, while other believe in the impenetrable cold brick wall of death that ends our existence. I envy all of them because I simply do not know. The sanitised athiest future never addressed how the futurefolk will cope with their mortality and its a far more intriguing subject than the Doc's love of classical music or whatever.
Just look up sentience on wiki, and the follow the links and references on the dizzying ride of confusion into exactly how little we know.
The philosophy of consciousness has a long history and although there is now a structured field of study, we are no closer to an answer. The question of consciousness is such an elusive one that we don't even know how a general anaesthetic works, or even if it exists universally, in all animals or even people.
When I look at a group of people, I know that they are all like me. They all have opinions, dreams, hopes, dreads, desires and needs, and that behind those eyes there is someone driving. That when I am not there, they still continue to experience their own existance. This is what sets people (and animals probably but thats another argument) apart from electrical/machanical "thinking" machines like my laptop.
I don't like to use the word soul because it has paranormal/religious conotations but stripping those away, and removing any hint of eternal existence after death etc, I still think it best describes the essence of a person. What I have, and what I am, behind my eyes, looking out at the world and considering my next words is my soul. How this soul is created in the brain I do not know, but its not the accumulation of knowledge and experience. I know that my brain is not a computer despite some of the apparent similarities. Likewise, a computer may emulate some brain functions, even replace them, but the conscious experience is a unique function of the brain.
Now, back to the trek world. Data is special because his positronic brain is special. It has gubbins that mimic biological brain function, the electrical fields and technowaffle give Data his sentience because its the same process. Its unlikely in the real world, but its not an original Trek concept and I can accept it as plausible in the context of the show.
Trek computers however have been shown to be rows of circuit borads, chips and the crew utterly indifferent to its non-physical needs. There has never been an episode dealing with the computer's non-physical needs. It never had a nervous breakdown. The Hal 9000 was portrayed as sentient and the crew had casual conversations with it. It also went mad. But we saw the Discovery through the eyes of Hal because the writer/director wanted us the think of Hal as being like us, but artificial. This is not the case with Trek tech, that intent is just not apparent in the writing or direction.
Infact, trek portarays a world as dumbfounded by consciousness as us today. If they had solved the connundrum, there would have been no question of Data's rights as a person. A simple technobabble test would have solved that problem, as with the exocomps. The same test would have been apllied to the computer and its holograms.
The Moriarty stories worked nicely as a 'what if?', but we leave it there and tune in next week and watch a 'what if' we breed super humans with aggressive immune systems, or even, 'what if' theres a writers strike and they do a clip show... My point being that sentient holograms are an interesting idea, but even the Moriarty character wasn't proven to be sentient, they just assumed he was because he acted that way.
Running with the idea throughout Voyager was a bad move because it wasn't consistent with the rest of trek tech and the ethical questions it raised were very limited. If a computer gives rise to sentience, a thinking mind, cheapens everyother character in the trek universe because it essentially trivialises the meaning of life. It makes existence a purely mechanical process and quantity of life was placed above quality of life. Life in trek is cheap because it can be created at whim, but that conflicts with the life is sacred do no harm attitude.
The same issues are posed by the dipiction of the transporter. The original being destroyed infavour of the copy. The original is killed. Under those circumstances, nobody would ever set foot in the transporter room. Its like transferring your job to a new town, but instead of moving, they just hire someone just like you and put a bullet in your head. Your conscious mind is not important, the job is still being done, there is still a 'you' walking about. Trek has confused sentience, intelligence, consciousness, computers and life and the soul in to one meaningless mess. I can't think of any episodes where they have shown disembodied consciousness, but how would that work for machines?
The point I am trying to make is that making the EMH sentient was to raise various ethical questions about what is life etc, it was to make him a colourful believable character whose life could be placed in jeopardy, to be just like us. Thats fair enough, but to me, and this is reinforced by everything I can find to read on the matter, sentience is linked deeply with that ineffable something that most people call the soul. That ineffable something is not to be found residing in a calcalating machine, however complex it is, or however convincing the simulation might be.
The EMH issue would have been better used to explore what it was to have a soul, what it meant to be alive, the whole sum of our parts and wotnot. Instead, we find it just being another civil rights debate. They never checked their holodeck simulations for any other sentient holograms that might have popped in to existence before ending the simulation, would that become murder? Some believe in the afterlife, some believe in reincarnation, while other believe in the impenetrable cold brick wall of death that ends our existence. I envy all of them because I simply do not know. The sanitised athiest future never addressed how the futurefolk will cope with their mortality and its a far more intriguing subject than the Doc's love of classical music or whatever.
Just look up sentience on wiki, and the follow the links and references on the dizzying ride of confusion into exactly how little we know.
Umm, I would. Of course only after a thousand others had done it before me - but if it worked as we see it work in Star Trek, I'd readily use it every day. I have nothing whatsoever against dying and being reborn within an eyeblink.
Sure, there are people who refuse to be photographed, for the soul-stealing effect. But humans are extremely pragmatic at the core: eventually, they will accept that which works, even if they will squabble endlessly about things that have no practical significance, such as afterlife or consciousness.
But Data's rights as a person were only contested because a legal loophole existed for that. Initially, nobody questioned Data's consciousness, and nobody questioned the fact that this consciousness resided in a machine. Not even Bruce Maddox had a problem with it. But then Louvois let slip the fact that if Data were declared a non-person, Maddox could have an easier time ordering him around. Maddox immediately grasped the significance of Louvois' slip and went on a legalistic tirade about how Data should be considered "property". Louvois had no choice but to agree that the law would play in Maddox' hands, unless it could somehow be established that Data should not be property. And our heroes then proceeded to do that, without once questioning the accepted fact that Data was nothing but a machine.
Which is a fine assumption, also regarding Data. He wasn't treated much differently, after all. Or Wesley or LaForge or any other regularly dissed character, for that matter... But a difference that makes no difference is no difference. Consistent acting is all that is required for sentience.
But it's meaningless anyway. Sentience is an empty word, merely a fancy way of saying "acting like human". Consciousness, ditto. Life is ill defined, our only working definition so far hinging on the good old scifi cliche "life as we know it, Jim"; we just haven't met anything different yet. But once we do, we'll have to accept that, since we have already accepted so much diversity under that umbrella term. And "computer" (or "informationmachine", as our Finnish expression goes) is a perfectly good way to describe our brain. Or the separate elements of our brain. Or, say, our eyes, which also feature subprocessors identical in concept to the brain at large.
I get that there is a lot of philosophical ballast underlying the Trek portrayal of nonhuman life. But as a pure technicality, there is nothing to stop the Trek heroes and villains from encountering or introducing life that is fundamentally nonhuman, or defining it in ways that make the most practical sense for them. If it is to be argued that Data and the EMH are conceptually identical, our heroes can argue that. If it is to be argued that they are dissimilar, our heroes could argue that, too - but they don't. They could also perfectly well argue that Riker and LaForge are fundamentally dissimilar, as the latter's skin color is distinct, but they don't do that, either, even if they do diss the good engineer to an entertainingly alarming degree in social situations...
Timo Saloniemi
V'Ger had become sentient, but as we could see on screen it was still just the voyager six satellite. As far as I could tell from the on screen dialogue the ship was made to help it move, but V'ger was, as far as the components go, still the deep space sattelite earth had sent into the stars.
Yeah... Only, boosted by an asteroid-sized superbrain.
That is, we have no reason to believe that the original probe's computer did any of the thinking involved. It was just the "figurehead" or "flag" that was attached to the supership to remind it of its true purpose, perhaps at most beeping a primitive, mindless "must report findings to Earth, must report findings to Earth" command sequence or something.
Timo Saloniemi
That is, we have no reason to believe that the original probe's computer did any of the thinking involved. It was just the "figurehead" or "flag" that was attached to the supership to remind it of its true purpose, perhaps at most beeping a primitive, mindless "must report findings to Earth, must report findings to Earth" command sequence or something.
Timo Saloniemi
I think we'll have to agree to differ as there are fundamental differences in the way we view our existance. I will however draw your attention to another film about to illustrate the transporter quandry.
In the Prestige, the evil bad guy was using his duplicating machine on himself to create the illusion of a teleporter, however, the device created two versions of himself in different locations. One of him had to be disposed of so used a tank of water placed under the stage. Every night he walked in to the chamber knowing he had a 50-50 chance of walking out to the cheering crowds or death in the water tank. One of him would live and one would die. Would you really be happy sacrificing your life so a copy could live? I wouldn't.
But its not meaningless and a fancy way of say 'acting human' is exactly what its not. Consciousness is everything that you are, it is all that you are. Its what you have and a bacon sandwich does not, a view of the world. Without consciousness you are a zombie. Strip away everything, your clothes, your skin, your limbs, your skeleton, your skull; right down to just the brain in a jar, and it is still you, alone with your thoughts.
Using the transport analogy again, rather than being destroyed in favour of the copy, you were placed in the above jar. Would you still be happy to step in to the chamber? Knowing that you will spend the rest of your life in blackness doing nothing while a copy of you goes home and does your wife? Its not you thats reborn, it is someone with your memories that believes themselves to be you.
The only way round this is to have a 'soul' jump from the original body when its destroyed and leap to the new one when its created at the target location, but this creates other implications for the self, like what happens if theres no body to land in. What about transporter copies? Which one is you?
Data and the EMH are not conceptually identical, they are as comparable as a toilet brush and a tooth brush. To outside obsever, there are many similarities, but how would you explain the difference to someone with no concept of sanitation, hygiene or even teeth. Star trek goes to long lengths to show us different life forms, but the difference between a horse and a tree is different enough and I can't think any life in trek beyond the Gods that are as diverse as what we already have. Trek also tells us that data is a lifeform, but he's not.
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