Data had emotions!

[Trekker4747]

Why does Data have tear ducts? That always confused me.

Humans have tear ducts because they keep our eyes moist we only "cry" when they "overflow" during a swell of emotion. Since Data's tears were yellow it can be inferred that his "tear ducts" were just a plumbing system for the lubricant that goes to the servos that operates his eyelids. Soong, planning the emotion part of Data, also probably had the emotion chip work to cause them to "overflow" too in a swell of emotion.

Also Data and Lore were said to be exact copies and Lore had emotions so Data could have tear-ducts as it simply being part of the Soong-Type Android construction.

 

[Cpt. Chris Pike]

Data was simply mimicking human emotion. Kinda like how you pretend to be nice to people you cant stand.

He sure as heck wasn't mimicking a type of sorrowful emptiness when he lost Lal. For an emotionless android, I was really expecting him to shed a tear (which goes to show how powerful that episode was).

I don't remember him displaying any emotion after losing Lal. In fact, he showed none when the crew offered their condolences to him and when he was with Lal after she shut down.

 

[Cyke101]

Data was simply mimicking human emotion. Kinda like how you pretend to be nice to people you cant stand.

He sure as heck wasn't mimicking a type of sorrowful emptiness when he lost Lal. For an emotionless android, I was really expecting him to shed a tear (which goes to show how powerful that episode was).

I don't remember him displaying any emotion after losing Lal. In fact, he showed none when the crew offered their condolences to him and when he was with Lal after she shut down.

Not overtly, no. But if you rewatch the scene, when he takes his station he starts typing but stops suddenly and arcs his head upward, as if he just realized, and became confused with, what had happened -- so he was clearly affected by Lal. The camera lingers on him quite a bit while he essentially looks into space (aka the void, or oblivion as Data mentioned earlier), and that specific shot and angle strongly implies from the director that he felt something. It's these nuances that often represent the character's thoughts, rather than sledge-hammering us with a crying, whiny, overly-sentimental Data from Generations. Whenever Data does a task, he only stops when something is extraordinary.

Admittedly, you have to interpret the scene with a certain amount of silent context, but it's a wonderfully subtle piece of acting for Spiner, who found a way to inject a considerable amount of emotion into a machine, to the point of touching the audience.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I remember Data smiling when he pulled Wesley out of the water in 'Encounter at Farpoint'.

He could have been faking that emotion for Wesley's benefit, just like he would later do with Hobson on the Sutherland.

 

[Holdfast]

I don't think there are any clear-cut instances of absolutely definite emotional expression from Data unless under outside influence or emotion chip. The dialogue always maintains that he lacks emotions, too.

The examples upthread could be explained by:
- calculated simulation either for effect (eg the "anger" displayed to the XO in Redemption) or simply as part of his "trying to be more human" (smiling while pulling Wesley out of the water)
- projecting our own emotional state onto his tabula rasa, as in The Offspring, when appropriately cued by music, acting, context, etc.

The much more interesting point, and one I would like to think the TNG writers were aware off, is that in fact, we have no way of knowing whether any other human being has emotions or not.

Someone with excellent emotional poise could mimic Data's unemotional appearance for a moderately extended period of time. Not indefinitely, but quite long. And of course, in Star Trek, we have an alien race who CAN do it almost indefinitely: the Vulcans.

The only we can really separate the emotions we see in other people from the alternative explanations above is because people tell us they are experiencing emotions. Under this interpretation, the real difference between us and Data is truly down to our perception of being human. To this way of thinking, Data's quest for humanity is really a quest for identity, with emotions simply being a facet of that identity.

As I said, I don't know whether the TNG writers actually thought this deeply about Data's humanity quest/emotional lack, but I rather hope they did, and I think there are certain episodes that reveal indications that they did. The Offspring is one, Measure of a Man is another, and there are others too.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

At that point it probably was meant to be emotions. The very next episode as well had him "drunk" and behaving irrationally expressing emotions.
To be honest I'm not sure the writers knew at that point that he was fully machine.
I've been rewatching the first few episodes lately and whenever Data needs "maintenance" of some sort it's Crusher treating him.
It wasn't until Datalore that an engineer got involved.
He was more treated like a cybernetically enhanced entity even though referred to as an android.
Later on that shifted and Geordie became the expert on Data and his maintenance guy.
Of course in-universe it could be explained as them having no idea how robotic Data was under that skin until they found disassembled Lore.

 

[Cpt. Chris Pike]

He sure as heck wasn't mimicking a type of sorrowful emptiness when he lost Lal. For an emotionless android, I was really expecting him to shed a tear (which goes to show how powerful that episode was).

I don't remember him displaying any emotion after losing Lal. In fact, he showed none when the crew offered their condolences to him and when he was with Lal after she shut down.

Not overtly, no. But if you rewatch the scene, when he takes his station he starts typing but stops suddenly and arcs his head upward, as if he just realized, and became confused with, what had happened -- so he was clearly affected by Lal. The camera lingers on him quite a bit while he essentially looks into space (aka the void, or oblivion as Data mentioned earlier), and that specific shot and angle strongly implies from the director that he felt something. It's these nuances that often represent the character's thoughts, rather than sledge-hammering us with a crying, whiny, overly-sentimental Data from Generations. Whenever Data does a task, he only stops when something is extraordinary.

Admittedly, you have to interpret the scene with a certain amount of silent context, but it's a wonderfully subtle piece of acting for Spiner, who found a way to inject a considerable amount of emotion into a machine, to the point of touching the audience.

That's a good point, I will re-watch the episode, but I do remember that scene.

 

[Cyke101]

As I said, I don't know whether the TNG writers actually thought this deeply about Data's humanity quest/emotional lack, but I rather hope they did, and I think there are certain episodes that reveal indications that they did. The Offspring is one, Measure of a Man is another, and there are others too.

Whenever I rewatch the ending of The Offspring, I can't believe the amount of intention that was injected into that scene. It's a series of small, normally-insignificant pieces that, when put together, hit the audience with something, but it was just so well done, so well planned out that I can't help but believe that the writers were deliberately giving us clues into Data's psyche.

 

[GalaxyX]

Data had emotions. The desire to learn and grow is an emotion.

What I would have liked to see is a Data that was emotionless at the beginning, but capable of learning them along the way, so that way there could have been an in universe reason for his actual "emotions" (curiosity is an emotion, for example. He was "intrigued" quite often, which is an emotion as well)

 

[Amaris]

He sure as heck wasn't mimicking a type of sorrowful emptiness when he lost Lal. For an emotionless android, I was really expecting him to shed a tear (which goes to show how powerful that episode was).

I don't remember him displaying any emotion after losing Lal. In fact, he showed none when the crew offered their condolences to him and when he was with Lal after she shut down.

Not overtly, no. But if you rewatch the scene, when he takes his station he starts typing but stops suddenly and arcs his head upward, as if he just realized, and became confused with, what had happened -- so he was clearly affected by Lal. The camera lingers on him quite a bit while he essentially looks into space (aka the void, or oblivion as Data mentioned earlier), and that specific shot and angle strongly implies from the director that he felt something. It's these nuances that often represent the character's thoughts, rather than sledge-hammering us with a crying, whiny, overly-sentimental Data from Generations. Whenever Data does a task, he only stops when something is extraordinary.

Admittedly, you have to interpret the scene with a certain amount of silent context, but it's a wonderfully subtle piece of acting for Spiner, who found a way to inject a considerable amount of emotion into a machine, to the point of touching the audience.

Agreed. It's one of my favorite episodes, and I find that scene so poignant and bittersweet.

 

[Kelthaz]

Whenever I hear people make the claim that Data has emotions I always think of this clip.

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeyEXt7-0jU&feature=related[/yt]

It's human nature to assign emotions and feelings to inanimate objects or complex emotions and thought patterns to animals. It's the way we're wired, but it doesn't make those claims true. Is Data sentient? Sure. Does Data have emotions (pre-emotion chip)? No. You can't accidentally program emotions into a robot and if Soong was convinced Data didn't have emotions than who are we to argue?

 

[Cyke101]

You can't accidentally program emotions into a robot and if Soong was convinced Data didn't have emotions than who are we to argue?

Well, Soong accidentally programmed Lore with super-charged, unstable emotions. It's the opposite of saying you can't do something, by not just doing it, but overdoing it.

Besides, it wasn't really Soong who created Data -- it was the writers and Brent Spiner. They're free to inject into the character whatever they want, even if it openly contradicts what they establish. Kind of like how warp speed is established with limits, yet the various hero ships we've seen seem to break those speed limits on a semi-regular basis due to writer error or plot demands. In that Ikea commercial, the writers could have easily attached arms, legs, and a goofy Pixar-type personality (think Wall-E) if that was their intent, and suddenly you'd have a lamp with emotions and adventures on its own.

Above all: the goal of achieving humanity is itself an emotion (desire, hope), so what we have then are two conflicting traits of Data: both that desire and his lack of emotions are two fundamental, defining, primary characteristics of Data, but one seems to override the other.

 

[BillJ]

Above all: the goal of achieving humanity is itself an emotion (desire, hope), so what we have then are two conflicting traits of Data: both that desire and his lack of emotions are two fundamental, defining, primary characteristics of Data, but one seems to override the other.

But how do we know that "desire" wasn't programmed into him by Soong? Sort of a fail-safe to keep Data from looking down on and dismissing humanity.

Learning from his mistakes from the design and construction of Lore.

 

[Cyke101]

Above all: the goal of achieving humanity is itself an emotion (desire, hope), so what we have then are two conflicting traits of Data: both that desire and his lack of emotions are two fundamental, defining, primary characteristics of Data, but one seems to override the other.

But how do we know that "desire" wasn't programmed into him by Soong? Sort of a fail-safe to keep Data from looking down on and dismissing humanity.

Learning from his mistakes from the design and construction of Lore.

That's a fair point, but that doesn't negate the possibility that Soong, who already knew how to program emotions, could program some sort of single emotion in order to guide Data.

Of course, that's merely a hypothetical from me and nowhere near fact, so feel free to address at your leisure.

 

[Kelthaz]

You can't accidentally program emotions into a robot and if Soong was convinced Data didn't have emotions than who are we to argue?

Well, Soong accidentally programmed Lore with super-charged, unstable emotions. It's the opposite of saying you can't do something, by not just doing it, but overdoing it.

Correct me if I'm wrong, it's been a long time since I've watched TNG, but wasn't Lore intentionally programmed with emotions and they were removed for Data's construction because the emotions were unstable? Accidentally overdoing it on the emotional subroutines (typo added an extra 0 to his psycho variable) makes a lot more sense than accidentally programming in something specifically designed not to be there.

Above all: the goal of achieving humanity is itself an emotion (desire, hope), so what we have then are two conflicting traits of Data: both that desire and his lack of emotions are two fundamental, defining, primary characteristics of Data, but one seems to override the other.

How is the goal of achieving humanity an emotion?

 

[Cyke101]

You can't accidentally program emotions into a robot and if Soong was convinced Data didn't have emotions than who are we to argue?

Well, Soong accidentally programmed Lore with super-charged, unstable emotions. It's the opposite of saying you can't do something, by not just doing it, but overdoing it.

Correct me if I'm wrong, it's been a long time since I've watched TNG, but wasn't Lore intentionally programmed with emotions and they were removed for Data's construction because the emotions were unstable? Accidentally overdoing it on the emotional subroutines (typo added an extra 0 to his psycho variable) makes a lot more sense than accidentally programming in something specifically designed not to be there.

Yes, Lore was intentionally programmed with emotions. But unstable emotions tend to breed new emotions or new ways of blending present emotions (ie, such as love-hate emotions in a dominatrix-type sexual relationship). Part of the allure of new emotions is the exhilaration of feeling it for the first time and wanting more of it (Data in "Descent," for example), and that type of exhilaration from new emotions can't exactly be controlled. Soong didn't mean to overdo it, but in doing so he made Lore power-hungry and homicidal, and I sincerely don't think that was Soong's intention when he invented a way of programming emotions.

Above all: the goal of achieving humanity is itself an emotion (desire, hope), so what we have then are two conflicting traits of Data: both that desire and his lack of emotions are two fundamental, defining, primary characteristics of Data, but one seems to override the other.

How is the goal of achieving humanity an emotion?

Because you want to do it, and wanting itself is an emotion. You have the curiosity to dream about it, the determination and motivation to do it, the willpower to go for it it, as well as the ability to conceive and fantasize and dwell upon it, all of which involve emotion. And then when you achieve your goal, there could be the feeling of satisfaction and triumph as a result of it. If TNG hammered anything to the audience through Data, it was the idea that emotions and humanity are integral parts of each other.

 

[Destructor]

Whenever I hear people make the claim that Data has emotions I always think of this clip.

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeyEXt7-0jU&feature=related[/yt]

It's human nature to assign emotions and feelings to inanimate objects or complex emotions and thought patterns to animals. It's the way we're wired, but it doesn't make those claims true. Is Data sentient? Sure. Does Data have emotions (pre-emotion chip)? No. You can't accidentally program emotions into a robot and if Soong was convinced Data didn't have emotions than who are we to argue?

That as is awesome. Anyway, I quite agree- Data had no emotions prior to the emotion chip, he just would occasionally mimic human emotions. Psychopaths do this all the time.