Measure of a Man: The solution.

You know, at this point I agree with @Timo. She was resentful of the whole Stargazer fiasco. Picard was later absolved of all charges, but she made a fool of herself because she was being too hard on him when it was evident that he was not at fault and it should have been just a formality.

She agreed with Maddox only to spite Picard. But during the hearing she realized that her name would forever be linked to the one who created a race of slaves.

She then she tried to limit the damage and she made a speech that was meant to be noble and inspired but that in reality made no sense ("We've all been dancing around the basic issue: does Data have a soul?": WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!?).

 

True, the word "soul" is highly tendentious No one ever uses it unless they have a religious belief of some kind. I certainly don't.

 

Plus Maddox changing his mind about Data makes no sense whatsoever. He's thought for years that Data was nothing but a machine and we're supposed to believe that all of a sudden he changed his mind about him because Data wasn't resentful? If anything, the fact that Data had no resentment whatsoever should have convinced him that he was right. Most human beings would have hated him for what he was trying to do.

This reminds me of the Jemadar first in DS9 "To The Death" hen he's rescued from his exploding ship, his first reaction was that they should take advantage of Starfleet weakness but then Sisko saves him for no apparent reason (which is in essence the same thing) and that second rescue makes him change his mind about Sisko... Why? if the first rescue was a weakness in the First's mind then so should have been the second.

 

Well, the point both sides tried to make was that Data would have to be of a certain nature in order to warrant the rights guaranteed a UFP citizen. Sentience doesn't cut it, since it's so easy to demonstrate both that Data has it and that he doesn't have it, just as seen here. So "the right sort of sentience" is what would be decisive, and calling it "soul" has good historical precedent. A non-white man-shaped thing could be made to dance, recite and write poetry, and solve differential equations and lead armies, but as long as it didn't have a soul, it needed no rights, either...

The trial is about defining Data in such a fashion that he either has or doesn't have what it takes to get rights. The trial is at total liberty to decide either way. The analogy to choosing whether Data has a soul is quite apt here: it's nothing but a title, a permit if you will, and cutting to the chase is where you admit defeat or declare victory, now that you have acknowledged that rational arguments are not relevant after all.

That no decision has been made on Data until now is only realistic. Starfleet and the Federation must make decisions like that basically every day, whenever encountering "life but not as we know it, Jim". It would be quite improbable for this learning experience to have resulted in a blanket solution; quite to the contrary, it might have been learned that one absolutely must go case by case there. And judging on Data should not affect, let alone solve, the cases of Exocomps or Horta or Vulcans or Southpaws or Those With IQ < 75 or Those With IQ = Q.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Yes, I must say the word "soul" used in a secular context like that of Star Trek made me a little uncomfortable. Neither Picard nor Maddox tried to prove whether or not Data had a soul. The discussion was on a technical level "Is he sentient or not?" or ethical "Are we creating a race of slaves?". But suddenly out of the blue Louvois decided that it was a theological matter. WTF?!? She was lucky that everyone agred with her, because saying that having a "soul" is a prerequisite to be treated as a sentient being with full rights is a dangerous territory.

So what? We should have a theological panel to decide if the members of a new race contacted by the Federation have a "soul"?

 

Why a theological panel? Just bring in the telepaths. They can tell for certain easily enough, even if they then spend a few minutes slugging it out whether they should return a verdict of "Yes, he has a pagh" or "Ye, he has a katra".

Timo Saloniemi

 

And then you have Ferengi whose mind can't be read by telepaths so....

 

I'm pretty sure Louvois was rhapsodizing here (she's hardly the first judge to do so), and I doubt she would have used such a non-quantifiable term in her official ruling. "Soul" is essentially whatever ineffable quality a being possesses that makes it wrong to treat such a being as property (by the standards of the hearing).

Don't let the Bajorans hear you saying that Star Trek exists in a secular context.

Anyway, in the cases of both the Nanites and the Exocomps, there may not have been a panel, but there were decisions made by Federation representatives that declared essentially that they'd reached a point where they had, or might have, "souls".

However, even Louvois says that she doesn't know whether Data has a "soul", just that she thinks he demonstrates enough potential "soulfulness" that he shouldn't be compelled to partake in a procedure that might "kill" him.

 

Using telepaths would be a cheat because there's no such thing in real life. It's classic Deus ex Machina. You could as well bring a tricorder with a soulmeter option!!

Episodes that are solved by technobabble or by bringing some "technological" gizmo are usually not very good ones;

 

Sometimes they can sometimes they can't.

 

Using that logic Data has feelings. He can also call for help if attacked.

 

Not sure about that. Real life pits us against technology a lot. It's quite a bit more relevant to how we prosper, suffer or indeed survive than, say, love or faith or poetry is. And Data is technology. Fighting fire with fire ought to be allowed in drama - the real challenge would come from fighting fire with water and applying telepathy on Data, or computational algorithms and blood screenings on deciding who is a criminal and who is not. Both sound like valid ways to do drama nevertheless, and the latter is actually quite central to topical drama nowadays.

Whether one would need to get the technology right, or clarify the rules before applying them... Well, drama has managed without, also in all those cases where no technology is involved. Fictional psychology is a thing, so fictional technology works fine, too: we have just enough competence there to accept the impossible with delight as long as we can see where it ties to the possible.

Timo Saloniemi

 

But aren't Ferengi supposed to be soulless minions of orthodo.... I mean, greed, anyway?

Yeah, that 'soul' part was vague. Introducing such a vague concept that's even less provable or falsifiable than 'sentience' doesn't help at all.

As far as I'm concerned, Picard should just have stuck with his earlier argument, that we're machines too, just of a different kind, and that by empirical evaluation, Data seems to satisfy most of the conditions they assign to 'sentience', and that the last one really isn't evaluable. (The second one isn't really, either, but Picard seems to assume it is).

Also, I found this in the script, which I found peculiar:

So not only will it 'stall' years of work in robotics (which I would expect) but it would destroy it. Either, Maddox is being emotionally manipulative here, or, when he is speaking the truth, that can only mean that most of his research of the last years was predicated on the assumption already that he would have Data to verify, and worthless without it. Which to me seems a very unsound work tactic, given that he must have known it wasn't sure at all Starfleet 'owned' Data.

 

Which is exactly why its valid for Louvois to bring it up at that point: she admits that the whole point of the trial is to make an arbitrary decision on a vague concept, based on criteria other than those somehow inherent in the concept.

Arguing about sentience was doomed in the first place, because we already know that Starfleet just plain does not care. It admitted Data without either explicitly or implicitly crediting him with sentience. No matter what this trial ruled on Data's sentience, supposedly Starfleet still wouldn't care and the Acts of Cumberland would still apply.

Well, it's a sound tactic when minding that very factor. That is, the research would apparently always be time-consuming, for the part where Maddox doesn't yet have to vivisect Data. Were the issue with Data to be put on the table at the very beginning, there would be time for Data to wriggle free. Get the time-consuming part out of the way and then strike, and your odds are either good or zero, when in the other scenario they would always have been really bad. It then becomes a question of the odds of the odds being good rather than zero - and those odds might be a lot better than the odds of Data remaining available were the legal process started at the very beginning.

Timo Saloniemi

 

I don't like the implications of what you're saying at all. If that is true, it means that the Federation juridical process is no better, no more fair than in our day, but just as easily manipulated by people with agendas staging the circumstances of the trial , where the judge apparently can be persuaded by emotional pressure. ('but I already invested so much time in it!', which arguments imho shouldn't enter the juridical discussion at all).

Or am I misunderstanding you here?

 

Well, she was lucky that Maddox was convinced by the Picard's Beautiful Speech too, because I would have appealed the ruling: "She ruled in favour of Data because she didn't know if he has a soul or not".

 

I would call that 'to err on the side of caution', Data's potential rights to freedom and self-determination being more fundamental than Maddox' 'rights' to have his research validated. So I think even in such an appeal her decision would have been defensible (even though the 'soul' part is very shaky, of course).

 

That's one way to read it. The other is that Louvois accommodates a pointless debate for a while, then declares "we could just as well be speaking of souls here!" and proceeds to ruling on the basis that it's better to err on the side of giving rights. This basis is quite valid, and found in many legal systems today.

Edit: Oops ninja'ed...

The agenda is the issue. The charges and arguments are sham, and better forgotten and swept aside. But the trial was an extension of a sham to begin with. Louvois just gives up on the evildoing and moves on to actually being a judge, when it begins to seem as if the evildoing doesn't pay after all. In the end, no harm done, and no hard feelings.

Timo Saloniemi

 

By the way, there is a point which wasn't mentioned the episode: was Data a Federation Citizen, with the associated rights, like the right to vote for his government? Because it would be considered relevant for both parts. He is? So, we are stripping a citizien of his rights in a rushed hearing? He isn't? Well, a point for Maddox!

 

I agree that his question of citizenship is relevant, and that it should protect him if he has it. If he doesn't, that's not necessarily a point for Maddox. After all, that could be part of the same oversight that didn't get him those rights granted to him that he should have gotten in the first place.

(Denying a slave freedom in the 18th century because he didn't have citizen rights may have been juridically sound, but it still sounds like circular or at the least doubtful reasoning from our vantage point)