I'm still having a hard time getting past the likelihood that "Tuvix" is just delusional transporter psychosis ranting when he declares himself a seperate being with rights.
Ah, yes -- when we want to violate someone else's rights, we must de-humanize them. Make them the "Other." Make them into something "less" than us, deny their personhood.
Tuvix was a real person. He had his own personality. His own thoughts, his own feelings, his own goals, his own agency. He was a unique and distinct person from Tuvok and Neelix.
ETA:
Me, I'm sticking with the view that the very fact that Tuvok and Neelix were able to be separated at all, proves that they were never dead.
I for one question whether or not the Tuvok and Neelix who were brought back out of Tuvix were actually the same beings as the originals. I think it's more accurate to call them identical copies.
My question is, what was lost when Tuvok and Neelix were combined, and what was gained or lost when Tuvix was deconstructed into his components? If the memories of all three were retained before and after, the knowledge and skills were retained before and after, then what was gained or lost in deconstructing Tuvix?
The systems. The organized patterns of neurological interactions which constitute a unique consciousness.
Think of it this way:
An orchestra is a collection of instruments. Different instruments can interact in different ways to play completely different performances of musical compositions. The same instruments could play Beethoven one hour, and Elton John the next.
So it is with consciousness. A person's consciousness is not merely their body, nor is it merely the informational components. A person's consciousness is the unique and active system created by the sum of those components' interactions. It, like a performance of a musical composition, exists for a limited period of time, and ceases to exist when those instruments cease interacting. A person's consciousness is an
interacting pattern.
What we see with Tuvok and Neelix is, in essence, two orchestras -- each playing their own performances of their own compositions -- coming together, ending their respective performances, and then starting a new performance of a new composition that incorporates pieces of the first two. But just as a performance of a mash-up is a different performance of a composition than the originals it was created from, Tuvix was a different person from the originals it was created from. The performances of the "Tuvok composition" and the "Neelix composition" had ended, and a new performance called "Tuvix" had begun. And then that new performance was ended, and a new performance of the first two compositions began. But the Tuvok and the Neelix who emerged were not the same beings who had entered, just as two performances of the same composition remain separate performances.
So the episode "Tuvix" in essence was the story of five people -- of the deaths of Tuvok 1.0 and Neelix 1.0, of the birth and death of Tuvix, and of the births of Tuvok 2.0 and Neelix 2.0.
