How Did The Doctor Turn Himself On?

[Captain Rob]

Human Beings don't retain some level of consciousness when asleep (offline). So why would the Doctor? We may retain a few minutes of a particularly vivid dream but that's it. The Doctor would log the time of his reactivation and probably compare it to his last time of deactivation. Noting a passage of time between the two records. But that's the same as us checking the clock when we wake up.
Perhaps when his holographic projection in Sickbay is terminated his program is transferred to some type of Moriarty-like box down in the computer core. Where he spends his time in a virtual environment doing whatever he wants to. Maybe he has a ice rink in there where he's learning the winning routine from the last Olympic figure skating competition.

 

[hux]

If there is nothingness in the void when offline then his periods of online/offline/online again would be instantaneous. When I wake up, I have knowledge of having been asleep for only a certain amount of time (barring any weird occurrences) but the doctor is oblivious to the passage of time.

If he's activated after three hours or three days, he doesn't know the difference. It's only after he gains control of when he's on or offline that he has the appearance of knowing.

If - as the consensus seems to be - he maintains some level of consciousness when offline then how does that manifest itself? Golf at St Andrews? Or a nightmare world of anxiety and nothingness. I think the doctor gave us a clue in Night when he said:

EMH: Nihiliphobia. the fear of nothingness. Or in layman's terms, the fear of nothingness. If it's any consolation, I can relate to it. I go into a void every time I'm deactivated. Emptiness, complete and utter oblivion. I'll admit it was unsettling at first. The existential horror of it all.

 

[T'Girl]

Human Beings don't retain some level of consciousness when asleep (offline). So why would the Doctor?

What a strange thing to say, if you don't retain some level of awareness why do you wake when there's small strange noise (and remember the noise), wake if there's a slight smell of smoke, wake to go to the bathroom?

Of course our consciousness continues ... at least mine does.

.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Human Beings don't retain some level of consciousness when asleep (offline). So why would the Doctor? We may retain a few minutes of a particularly vivid dream but that's it. The Doctor would log the time of his reactivation and probably compare it to his last time of deactivation. Noting a passage of time between the two records. But that's the same as us checking the clock when we wake up.
Perhaps when his holographic projection in Sickbay is terminated his program is transferred to some type of Moriarty-like box down in the computer core. Where he spends his time in a virtual environment doing whatever he wants to. Maybe he has a ice rink in there where he's learning the winning routine from the last Olympic figure skating competition.

That's debatable. I've had cases where I'm dreaming, and a song is playing in the dream, then I wake up and realize the song was playing in real life.

I'm not consciously aware of what's going on when I'm sleeping, but I am still receptive to visual and auditory stimuli. I'll wake up if it gets too bright or somebody makes a loud noise. It's probably the same with the Doctor, he has triggers which cause him to wake up.

 

[Captain Rob]

I guess I should have specified "waking consciousness".
I kind of look at it from a computer perspective. When you're asleep you don't have any active applications running or even Windows running. But your BIOS (Basic Input Output System) always runs. Which could be referred to as your subconscious self. Which is the level at which your hard coded instincts run. Hard coded as in your DNA. And your system will wake you up if triggered by certain inputs like the smell of smoke or a loud noise. It could be a matter of survival.
It's like you are a TV that's turned off. But the little green light is still on and waiting for a signal from the remote.
As for the Doctor not knowing the difference between being on for three hours or three days. My computer logs every time it's turned on and turned off. So it knows. It just doesn't bitch to me about it. Of course if it's been left on for too long it starts experiencing minor performance issues. Maybe it's tired. So I reboot it. it's always a good practice to reboot computers, specially servers, that are on all of the time.

 

[hux]

But we're talking about a self-aware being who has an imagination and presumably some kind of innner dialogue. What happens to that imagination and internal thought process when offline? The doctor strongly suggests that it shuts down entirely.

If it's analogous to instantly going to sleep and instantly waking up then that must be an extremely disconcerting experience for a self-aware being to endure plus it still doesn't explain how he brings himself online if he's "asleep."

Having agency over that would suggest he is not asleep but rather constantly present which in turn would suggest ongoing thinking and awareness but he makes it clear that that is not the case so we're back where we started.

 

[T'Girl]

The EMH being in shutdown mode might be more like death (brain dead), instead of sleep or even a coma.



.

 

[hux]

But that again still leaves us with the question, how does he activate himself back into existence from within the void? (Whether that void is sleep, coma, death etc).

 

[Captain Rob]

The answer is simple. HE doesn't. The ship's computer does. And it's always running. The activation program and it's subroutines all run on the ship's computer. And the Doctor can modify those subroutines to specify the conditions of his activation. He just appears to activate himself to the outside observer.

 

[urbandefault]

In the beginning he was dependent on someone activating him. At one point they did some techno thing so he could control it himself and from that point on, I think, he was never "off".

Exactly. He was in "sleep" mode when off, but still active.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ I think the same thing applies to Vic Fontaine on DS9. He has control over activating his own program, just like the EMH.

 

[Lynsioux]

Great related discussion here,
http://scifi.stackexchange.com/ques...clear-that-the-emh-on-voyager-became-sentient

 

[hux]

The answer is simple. HE doesn't. The ship's computer does. And it's always running. The activation program and it's subroutines all run on the ship's computer. And the Doctor can modify those subroutines to specify the conditions of his activation. He just appears to activate himself to the outside observer.

I can live with that. But only because I don't acknowledge that the doctor possesses true sentience. He's an extension of the computer. But we've already had that debate.