Is the doctor a real person?

[STEPhon IT]

The word comes from Sentience which means the ability to feel, percieve, or experience subjectively. Eighteenth-century philosophers used the concept to distinguish the ability to think reason from the ability to feel. In Eastern philosophy, sentience is a metaphysical quality of all things that requires respect and care. The concept is central to the philosophy of animal rights, because sentience is necessary for the ability to suffer, and thus is held to confer certain rights.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Cut and paste from wikipedia why don't you?

Does that mean that you are lazy, or that you do not have your own words to explain simple concepts?

There's a clause for Science Fiction further down the page that qualifies sentience as a generalized glob that covers most everything conceptual inbetween ones ears.

 

[STEPhon IT]

It means that you're an idiot trying desperately to crave attention. As I've mentioned before there are many episodes of Voyager about the Doctor to make the argument valid.

 

[Guy Gardener]

I'm honestly wondering if I should report your post?

I mean I've never done that before, but you have the manners of a very attractive person.

Would you mind if I reported you for being derogatively abusive?

 

[STEPhon IT]

Better yet, I simply won't write to you anymore.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Quitter.

 

[hux]

The word comes from Sentience which means the ability to feel, percieve, or experience subjectively. Eighteenth-century philosophers used the concept to distinguish the ability to think reason from the ability to feel. In Eastern philosophy, sentience is a metaphysical quality of all things that requires respect and care. The concept is central to the philosophy of animal rights, because sentience is necessary for the ability to suffer, and thus is held to confer certain rights.

I'm not that bothered about what sentience is so much as I'm interested in....

1- how to spot the difference between genuine sentience and the ability to mimic it very convincingly and
2 - what the consequences of genuine hologram sentience might be

 

[Guy Gardener]

I substituted the word sentience for apples.

I'm not that bothered about what apples are so much as I'm interested in....

1- how to spot the difference between genuine apples and the ability to mimic apples very convincingly and
2 - what the consequences of genuine hologram apples might be

How can you not care about what apples are, yet still wonder about how apples impact on the universe, if you are not at all sure what apples are?

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

For millenia no one knew what anything actually was. Yet they still cared how stuff impacted on their universe.

 

[Taelon]

Haven't there been instances of information-based lifeforms in Trek before?

The Doctor is an information-based lifeform that uses a human-shaped hologram the way we use clothing.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

He doesn't just use a human shape, he uses programmed human humour and ego markers and sentiment. All of his dressing up that makes him nicer to work with than the ship's computer is human shaped.

You wouldn't do that with the ship's computer because it would be a pain in the ass and inefficient. That did happen once in TOS.

 

[STEPhon IT]

I'm not that bothered about what sentience is so much as I'm interested in....

1- how to spot the difference between genuine sentience and the ability to mimic it very convincingly and
2 - what the consequences of genuine hologram sentience might be

That's a good question.

1. Monkeys or simians, and parrots can mimic humans in certain ways and they're convincing based upon how long they're with the subject. Humans and other species learn how to function after birth by observing what a subject does. The Doctor in it's 2nd season started gaining a personality which was different from his subject Zimmerman and when activated he was different from the crew.

I didn't notice the Doctor mimicking any particular person from the crew. Was there a subject, a person, you thought the EMH mimicked?

2. The consequences might be the GHS - Genuine Hologram Sentient - would either expand this level of individuality or he might want to study whether they're are other holograms who could expand from their original function.

Humans original function is to breed and survive, but humans has expanded their functions to do all sorts of things.

Any negatives could spawn from the GHS, like humans and animals, based upon the nature of their environment.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Once you admit GHS exist, how do you avoid issues of slavery?

They create a holographic street sweeper, who decides that he would rather be a sailor and abandons his duties. They create a replacement street sweeper who also decides to become a sailor, so while Federation Security tracks down the rogue holograms who are running around Earth's marinas stealing boats. At what point to they redesign the street cleaners so that they can't desire to be anything other than a street cleaner? At what point do the sailors come back to save the street cleaners who should want to e sailors if their programming hadn't been lobotomised and simplified?

 

[Orphalesion]

I don't get why the EMH gets treated as a special case.

Anyway in my opinion Michael Sullivan and the other inhabitants of Fair Haven did display Sapience when they theorized that the Voyager Crew was of the Fair Folk, so it seems every humanoid Hologram has the potential to. So each time somebody kills or deletes a hologram they destroy something with the potential to be sapient. Janeway murdered someone when she deleted Michael's wife.

In some other episodes the programs seem more primitive and more in line with (very advanced) NPCs in a computer game. For instance in Barclay's three musketeers fantasy where holo-Will and holo-Beverly did not seem aware of the crew's strange appearance or even that real Will looked like holo-Will.
Holo-Deanna didn't even react to them at all, she just stood there and repeated her "goddess of empathy" speech over and over again, like the average peasant in a Skyrim game.
If you understand a bit of programming you can almost imagine the routines that are behind their behavior.

So there was definitely a difference between holograms like the EMH, Michael Sullivan and Moriaty and the "NPCs" of Barclay's program.
Or the writers of "Hollow Pursuits" simply had a better idea how to depict what is essentially a very advanced video game.

 

[hux]

How can you not care about what apples are, yet still wonder about how apples impact on the universe, if you are not at all sure what apples are?

Apples can't carry guns and enslave mankind (unless they're sentient apples in which case....)

Sentience only matters if the impact of their sentience matters (I think that makes sense)

1. Monkeys or simians, and parrots can mimic humans in certain ways and they're convincing based upon how long they're with the subject. Humans and other species learn how to function after birth by observing what a subject does. The Doctor in it's 2nd season started gaining a personality which was different from his subject Zimmerman and when activated he was different from the crew.

I didn't notice the Doctor mimicking any particular person from the crew. Was there a subject, a person, you thought the EMH mimicked?

I'm not talking about mimicking a particular person or template (though he does begin with the Zimmerman template and I wouldn't say he deviates from it that radically at any point) but rather programming that mimics sentience. I don't believe the doctor is genuinely self aware. He's basically just very clever technology. I can't be sure of that though so I'm open to the possibility of being wrong. What I don't get however is how people who believe he is self aware, can be so sure. What is your defining criteria for sentience (bearing in mind that whatever your criteria for sentience is, it can be very convincingly mimicked/reproduced by the EMH)

2. The consequences might be the GHS - Genuine Hologram sentient -

Any negatives could spawn from the GHS, like humans and animals, based upon the nature of their environment.

The first negative would surely be a ban on hologram creation and use (possibly excluding holodeck characters but even that might not be the case) as it would inevitably lead to slavery issues

 

[Guy Gardener]

I don't get why the EMH gets treated as a special case.

He's not.

If any holograms generated from Federation code are real, then all Federation holograms are real or on the road to real, because they are all built from/using the same underlying principles who will all grow into the same sort of lifeform.

Compare a transistor radio with a cassette tape deck to an ipod.

They both do the same thing, play music, but they are entirely different technologies that you have entirely different expectations of/for that might as well be from different planets.

Other races may intentionally build living, feeling, thinking Holograms, and know it, but the Federation does not know that they are building living, feeling, thinking Holograms, so why would they award rights to holograms who they don't know are real people or treat these living real people as anything other than dumb, disposable beasts of burden when there is no proof that they are anything else other than soulless toasters?

24 years into the Future (Endgame) the Doctor was allowed to marry a human being. If that was not a legal marriage, if there was some fraud or trickery during the process, I'm curious what the punishment would be? However if the Doctor is only a thing, he wouldn't be "punished" because you can't learn from punishment if you can't feel punished, but if he was defined as a danger to the institution of marriage, maybe he might be boxed or disposed of permanently?

500 years into the future (Living Witness), "Joe" is regarded as a person to such an extent that he can be held accountable for the horrendous crimes of Janeway the Bloody Butcher of Indiana, and be executed for that madwoman's plundering of the Delta Quadrant.

 

[TheSubCommander]

My Take:
Data was constructed from day one to be an artificial being, not simply a tool. So it is easier to argue for his personhood.

The difference with holograms, is they are not intended to be sentient. They are basically NPCs in holo stories. The EMH was basically an adaptation of that, that served an extra purpose: treat patients.

Had the Doctor been memory wiped, every time he was shut off and in effect was a clean slate every time he was booted up, he would not have been sentient any more than your standard holo character.

But because the Voyager crew kept him running continuously, and allowed him to retain his memory when he was shut off, he did become sentient. Once the crew started to actually treat him as a a sentient being, THAT is the point where the Doctor actually became a "person."

 

[STEPhon IT]

What I don't get however is how people who believe he is self aware, can be so sure. What is your defining criteria for sentience (bearing in mind that whatever your criteria for sentience is, it can be very convincingly mimicked/reproduced by the EMH)

I also think it's a clever program, but I'm leaning towards the EMH as sentient. What's defining for me which could value the argument is The Doctor being self-aware, not just knowing what pain is but feeling what pain is. Feeling what love is, feeling what hate is. Frustration, and sorrow; elements a complex, sophisticated programming like the human brain could achieve.

When the computer or hologram, created to assist and do what humans are told what to do, stands his or her ground and says, "No, I'm not doing that." And states a reason or just being bull headed, it could no longer be considered just a complex program but an individual.

The Doctor has gone beyond his original program to progress as a person. He chose to risk his existence to travel 55,000 light years to save his creator's life; who never could had imagined it would or could reach such a level of compassion. To the Doctor, Zimmerman is his father and would do anything possible to save him. This to me is sentience.

As I've said before, I'm leaning towards the Doctor being sentient.

 

[kirkfan]

What I don't get however is how people who believe he is self aware, can be so sure. What is your defining criteria for sentience (bearing in mind that whatever your criteria for sentience is, it can be very convincingly mimicked/reproduced by the EMH)

I also think it's a clever program, but I'm leaning towards the EMH as sentient. What's defining for me which could value the argument is The Doctor being self-aware, not just knowing what pain is but feeling what pain is. Feeling what love is, feeling what hate is. Frustration, and sorrow; elements a complex, sophisticated programming like the human brain could achieve.

When the computer or hologram, created to assist and do what humans are told what to do, stands his or her ground and says, "No, I'm not doing that." And states a reason or just being bull headed, it could no longer be considered just a complex program but an individual.

The Doctor has gone beyond his original program to progress as a person. He chose to risk his existence to travel 55,000 light years to save his creator's life; who never could had imagined it would or could reach such a level of compassion. To the Doctor, Zimmerman is his father and would do anything possible to save him. This to me is sentience.

As I've said before, I'm leaning towards the Doctor being sentient.

Humans can mimic successfully all these "symptoms" of sentience, doing something that's called acting, a program could do so even more convincingly given that unlike human beings it wouldn't be impaired by real feelings in doing so.

There's no way to tell whether the doctor is sentient or just imitating sentience to a T. In fact it's much easier to program a faux sentient being, which has already practically been done in some areas than a real one because we don't have the slightest idea how to do the latter. It would be like throwing random mechanical parts in a box, hoping that somehow they would joint together to form a clock. The chance of that happening are an astronomical zero. That is you stand a better chance of winning the lottery every day of your life than to see that happen.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

24 years into the Future (Endgame) the Doctor was allowed to marry a human being. If that was not a legal marriage, if there was some fraud or trickery during the process, I'm curious what the punishment would be? However if the Doctor is only a thing, he wouldn't be "punished" because you can't learn from punishment if you can't feel punished, but if he was defined as a danger to the institution of marriage, maybe he might be boxed or disposed of permanently?

Ideally I'd like to say that marriage won't be a matter for the state in the future but knowing the Feds it will probably be even more entrenched in the state than it is now. Probably if you want to marry your sibling or your action figure you have to go to the Outer Rim.