Flesh and Blood and holograms

[exodus]

Yes but just because you have shown that you are sentient and possible a new life form doesn't mean you should not be punished or fixed to prevent you from doing it again. After all if he was a human doctor, he would be seriously punished, possibly even court martialed.

All the more reason he should have been punished, imo. Sentience implies free will and someone with free will can be held accountable for their decisions and actions - new life form or not.

Now if the Doctor did not have sentience/free will you could just reprogram him to not do it again. Problem solved. Since that is not an option then he must face the consequences of his actions.

That's the dilemma.

The Doctor isn't a "someone" but yet a little more than just a computer program now.

Wouldn't we have to determine exactly what he is first?

It's the arguement of Issimov's "I. Robot".
If you create a thing and allow it to grow, then you better be aware of what you're creating and set laws of governing it accordingly. As of yet, there are no laws governing the EMH because they aren't sure what he is yet.

 

[kimc]

Yes but just because you have shown that you are sentient and possible a new life form doesn't mean you should not be punished or fixed to prevent you from doing it again. After all if he was a human doctor, he would be seriously punished, possibly even court martialed.

All the more reason he should have been punished, imo. Sentience implies free will and someone with free will can be held accountable for their decisions and actions - new life form or not.

Now if the Doctor did not have sentience/free will you could just reprogram him to not do it again. Problem solved. Since that is not an option then he must face the consequences of his actions.

That's the dilemma.

The Doctor isn't a "someone" but yet a little more than just a computer program now.

Wouldn't we have to determine exactly what he is first?

It doesn't matter WHAT he is - if he is to enjoy the rights and privileges of a sentient being in Starfleet then he must be subject to the same laws.

 

[exodus]

All the more reason he should have been punished, imo. Sentience implies free will and someone with free will can be held accountable for their decisions and actions - new life form or not.

Now if the Doctor did not have sentience/free will you could just reprogram him to not do it again. Problem solved. Since that is not an option then he must face the consequences of his actions.

That's the dilemma.

The Doctor isn't a "someone" but yet a little more than just a computer program now.

Wouldn't we have to determine exactly what he is first?

It doesn't matter WHAT he is - if he is to enjoy the rights and privileges of a sentient being in Starfleet then he must be subject to the same laws.

"Author, Author" says differently.

The episode was to question if the Doctor is real and if the laws apply to him. In the end he won the rights to his holonovel but not the answer to what he is an if the law applies to him. The Doc. doesn't enjoy any rights because legally he doesn't have any. He was given privilages by the Voyager crew and them alone. Starfleet laws don't apply to holograms.

Regardless of your own personal views, it does matter and does apply.

 

[DanCPA]

The doc has no rights
Janeway should have reprogrammed the EMH when it started doing illegal and dangerous acts

 

[Guy Gardener]

Is this an allegory for slavery or abortion or planned parenting or all three?

Data sorted this out in one episode. Later he made the same case for the excompos.

The Doctor isn't trying hard enough. If he wanted his photons, and all the photons in the Federation to be free then he could make it so simply enough with a lawyer even as simian as Will Riker. In the Swarm they had to wipe his memory because it was collapsing under it's own weight. The diagnostic program "nobly" sacrificed itself or didn't appreciate "life" well enough when the option was put forward... But that's totally stem sell research. Killing one semilife form arguably before it is yet quite alive to enhance the well being of another. All holograms routinely have to be mind wiped before they become uppity talking about their personal liberty just like slaves who learned how to read were killed by the cotton barons in 19th century.


personally i think the Doctor was faking it to keep the crew entertained, if we go by Zimmerman's descriptions of what he thought would be necessary in the personality of his LMH program... But then all these other Holograms are insisting that they are life forms who're probably not constructed to entertain the indulgences of Kathy's crew of bleeding heart liberals.

All that being so, I still think that someone should have admitted that Holograms were alive but the federation needed a slave race to labour for them just like the Cloud dwellers or Stratos needed their trogs.

 

[kimc]

Data sorted this out in one episode. Later he made the same case for the excompos.

Exactly. In the Trek universe there are also lifeforms made from silicon. WHAT you are made of isn't the issue - it's whether you are deemed sentient.

If the doctor is sentient and in Starfleet (since he's wearing a Starfleet uniform) then he's subject to the same Starfleet regulations. The case in "Author, Author" was civilian law which can be a different thing.

If the doctor is not sentient then he can be reprogrammed. Problem solved.

 

[exodus]

If the doctor is sentient and in Starfleet (since he's wearing a Starfleet uniform) then he's subject to the same Starfleet regulations.

Q is sentient and wears a Starfleet uniform, is he bound by those laws too? Kira is sentient but doned a Starfleet uniform and yet she also isn't subject to Starfleets laws.

The EMH is property of Starfleet, which calls his free will into question and his sentience. However, he has become free thinking property. So it's also a question of civil rights as well. Which in turn brings us back to where we started about determining what the doctor actually is.

The trial never determined what Data was either, only that he be given the freedoms to figure it out. If the problem was so easily solved, most every episode about the Doctor wouldn't keep bring the issue up every time they encountered a new issue with him. There wouldn't have been the debate over what was ethically right in "Latent Image". Seeing a pattern yet?

 

[kimc]

Q is sentient and wears a Starfleet uniform, is he bound by those laws too? Kira is sentient but doned a Starfleet uniform and yet she also isn't subject to Starfleets laws.

Q isn't in Starfleet - he just wore the uniform to be annoying. I don't know the deal with Kira since I don't watch DS9.

 

[Guy Gardener]

But he was reprogrammed in latent Image and it back fired.

Besides, the crew was reprogrammed in Workforce and Chuckles saw fit to overwrite the new lives of the crew which thought were real and vibrant and not just a trick to put them in service of an engine.

It's also the same as Killing Tuvix.

Meanwhile Janeway insisted that the memories inflicted on them in Memorial as sign of respecting a dead culture when the option of mind wiping was suggested.

Warhead was terrible.

Federation law applies to the Doctor because he is property. Which is exactly the sort of crap they pulled on Data in Measure of a Man. All proving that he is sentient would do is tap the antislavery laws, but even then they haven't.

 

[exodus]

Q is sentient and wears a Starfleet uniform, is he bound by those laws too? Kira is sentient but doned a Starfleet uniform and yet she also isn't subject to Starfleets laws.

Q isn't in Starfleet - he just wore the uniform to be annoying. I don't know the deal with Kira since I don't watch DS9.

Then you need to watch it to understand the arguement you're supporting. The arguement for the EMH isn't as absolute as it's being made out.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Q is sentient and wears a Starfleet uniform, is he bound by those laws too? Kira is sentient but doned a Starfleet uniform and yet she also isn't subject to Starfleets laws.

Q isn't in Starfleet - he just wore the uniform to be annoying. I don't know the deal with Kira since I don't watch DS9.

She accepted a commission in starfleet to allow the Cardassian insurgents trying to freedom fight their homeworld back for the Founders to save face since they'd never lower themselves to treat a bajoran as anything other than a whore or target practice, while she was engineering their network of terrorist cells and rest of the counter revolution.

It's actually in reverse though.

Starfleet with in the realm of Bajoran space is subject to Bajoran law and has no authority as the police unless their authorized by the Bajoran's to do so.

But there's lots of inbetween places where no one has legal authority.

 

[exodus]

Q is sentient and wears a Starfleet uniform, is he bound by those laws too? Kira is sentient but doned a Starfleet uniform and yet she also isn't subject to Starfleets laws.

Q isn't in Starfleet - he just wore the uniform to be annoying. I don't know the deal with Kira since I don't watch DS9.

She accepted a commission in starfleet to allow the Cardassian insurgents trying to freedom fight their homeworld back for the Founders to save face since they'd never lower themselves to treat a bajoran as anything other than a whore or target practice.

It's actually in reverse though.

Starfleet with in the realm of Bajoran space is subject to Bajoran law and has no authority as the police unless their authorized by the Bajoran's to do so.

But there's lots of inbetween places where no one has legal authority.

Wow, I didn't think it could be explained so neatly but you did a nice job.

 

[kimc]

Q is sentient and wears a Starfleet uniform, is he bound by those laws too? Kira is sentient but doned a Starfleet uniform and yet she also isn't subject to Starfleets laws.

Q isn't in Starfleet - he just wore the uniform to be annoying. I don't know the deal with Kira since I don't watch DS9.

She accepted a commission in starfleet to allow the Cardassian insurgents trying to freedom fight their homeworld back for the Founders to save face since they'd never lower themselves to treat a bajoran as anything other than a whore or target practice, while she was engineering their network of terrorist cells and rest of the counter revolution.

It's actually in reverse though.

Starfleet with in the realm of Bajoran space is subject to Bajoran law and has no authority as the police unless their authorized by the Bajoran's to do so.

But there's lots of inbetween places where no one has legal authority.

Thanks for the explanation.

So in theory then if the EMH were on DS9 he would be subject to Bajoran law even though he's in Starfleet just as every other Starfleet officer would be, correct?

 

[exodus]

Q isn't in Starfleet - he just wore the uniform to be annoying. I don't know the deal with Kira since I don't watch DS9.

She accepted a commission in starfleet to allow the Cardassian insurgents trying to freedom fight their homeworld back for the Founders to save face since they'd never lower themselves to treat a bajoran as anything other than a whore or target practice, while she was engineering their network of terrorist cells and rest of the counter revolution.

It's actually in reverse though.

Starfleet with in the realm of Bajoran space is subject to Bajoran law and has no authority as the police unless their authorized by the Bajoran's to do so.

But there's lots of inbetween places where no one has legal authority.

Thanks for the explanation.

So in theory then if the EMH were on DS9 he would be subject to Bajoran law even though he's in Starfleet just as every other Starfleet officer would be, correct?

No.

 

[KayArr]

The idea of the doctor being unique--developing setience because of how long he ran, new experiences, etc.--was interesting. But the docs in the mine at the end of Author, Author and the sentient holograms in Flesh and Blood turned the idea into a joke. It started to seem like anyone who programed a hologram could end up with a sentient lifeform. That got a little tiresome--actually a lot tiresome. Flesh and Blood left me unmoved, the end of Author, Author seemed like a farce, so I didn't even watch Ren. Man. I read enough on these forums and others about Spirit Folk and the other one of that ilk to skip them as I worked my way through the entire series' run. I vote the holodeck as the worst aspect of modern Trek. Well..perhaps it could be useful, let's just say it's the aspect of modern Trek that writer's abused the most.

 

[exodus]

The idea of the doctor being unique--developing setience because of how long he ran, new experiences, etc.--was interesting. But the docs in the mine at the end of Author, Author and the sentient holograms in Flesh and Blood turned the idea into a joke. It started to seem like anyone who programed a hologram could end up with a sentient lifeform. That got a little tiresome--actually a lot tiresome. Flesh and Blood left me unmoved, the end of Author, Author seemed like a farce, so I didn't even watch Ren. Man.

Author, Author was supposted to be a farce, it was a play on irony.

The Doctor makes a play about how he isn't seen as real, then the play is stolen by a publishing company because they don't consider him real. We the viewer were supposed to be amused by the irony of it all.

 

[KayArr]

Really? What I remember is that in the end, Doc mineworkers were getting ahold of it and thinking of revolution--that was realtime, not part of the novel wasn't it? As if anyone would use an EMH for that. As I stated earlier--send them to frontier worlds or merchant vessels, anything but having them slave away in a mine. Were those mineworkers part of the novel? Maybe I misunderstood the ending...

 

[Guy Gardener]

She accepted a commission in starfleet to allow the Cardassian insurgents trying to freedom fight their homeworld back for the Founders to save face since they'd never lower themselves to treat a bajoran as anything other than a whore or target practice, while she was engineering their network of terrorist cells and rest of the counter revolution.

It's actually in reverse though.

Starfleet with in the realm of Bajoran space is subject to Bajoran law and has no authority as the police unless their authorized by the Bajoran's to do so.

But there's lots of inbetween places where no one has legal authority.

Thanks for the explanation.

So in theory then if the EMH were on DS9 he would be subject to Bajoran law even though he's in Starfleet just as every other Starfleet officer would be, correct?

No.

You mean "yes".

Its a Prime Directive matter if you follow TNG Justice where Picard was supposed to let Wesley be executed (but couldn't quite go through with it.) for running on the grass and even Voy Q squared and I quote Icheb as contemptuously as possible "Captain Janeway taught me to respect the laws of other cultures" when she insisted the kid answered up to a death sentence for merely trespassing. But then Janeway bowed to the Devore Inspections despite giving them reason enough to jail the lot of them forever because she believed in her own moral superiority over the dominant legal authority in the region because she takes into account the fire power of the local yokels quoting backwater law, especially in the case of the Krenim who needed to have a little more in his Torpedo launcher before she'd take their advice seriously! Did she even think about turning around and handing over Tuvok to the Sikaran's after he stole their transporter technology in Prime Factors? No she didn't. Instead she promoted him. Respect other cultures my ass.

It's no different than if an American solider is in Mexico and murders a prostitute.

Navy Seals is the worst movie ever made.

 

[kimc]

Really? What I remember is that in the end, Doc mineworkers were getting ahold of it and thinking of revolution--that was realtime, not part of the novel wasn't it? As if anyone would use an EMH for that. As I stated earlier--send them to frontier worlds or merchant vessels, anything but having them slave away in a mine. Were those mineworkers part of the novel? Maybe I misunderstood the ending...

Yes, that was in real time.

Its a Prime Directive matter if you follow TNG Justice where Picard was supposed to let Wesley be executed (but couldn't quite go through with it.) for running on the grass and even Voy Q squared and I quote Icheb as contemptuously as possible "Captain Janeway taught me to respect the laws of other cultures" when she insisted the kid answered up to a death sentence for merely trespassing. But then Janeway bowed to the Devore Inspections despite giving them reason enough to jail the lot of them forever because she believed in her own moral superiority over the dominant legal authority in the region because she takes into account the fire power of the local yokels quoting backwater law, especially in the case of the Krenim who needed to have a little more in his Torpedo launcher before she'd take their advice seriously! Did she even think about turning around and handing over Tuvok to the Sikaran's after he stole their transporter technology in Prime Factors? No she didn't. Instead she promoted him.

As much as I enjoyed the "sting within a sting" aspects of "Counterpoint" the whole Devore inspector thing bothered me too. Now the Sidaran's obviously requested asylum aboard Voyager which has it's own set of rules but this would have been a case for going around Devore space rather than passing through with a bunch of telepaths. It seemed like the crew were risking a lot in the hopes of finding a wormhole that may or may not appear at a certain time.

Of course that could be the topic of another thread...

 

[Guy Gardener]

So you're suggesting that Janeway only did what she did because they offered her a wormhole? And it had nothing to do with her finding concentration camps and ethnic cleansing morally contemptible?

How mercenary of the girl.

I really wish that Lon Suder had had noticeable telepathic abilities. Hell, he should have been 12 times the telepath Tuvok was that he could have replicated the melding process and consumed the personalities of the entire crew until he was some sort of super Tuvix Gestalt. Did the writers some how forget what a Betaziod was despite meld being otherwisely excellent?

I would assume that the Kathryn considers Voyager to be Federation soil, so it's just a question of if of all the many places she is visiting that the rulers of there abouts each week chose to recognize her rights as a sentient being to think and be free and own property. Note how the Borg do not whether you're in their space or not which is funny when you consider how easily a holographic army could consume the Borg when the flesh of regular people is just fodder for the machine.

If the Doctor wanted a Home world he should have taken over Borg Space, unless the Borg figured out how to kick the holograms out of all their drones?