What happened to Data's emotion chip?

[Christopher]

Sorry, but no one has to follow unethical orders - and this is one of them.

Actually a lot of things that officers and soldiers do under orders are unethical -- spying on people, trespassing on private property, shooting people, dropping bombs on people, etc. Part of the reason there is a chain of command is because soldiers often have to do things that an ordinary person would be ethically opposed to doing voluntarily. It's illegal orders that one is obligated to disobey. You can't order a subordinate to commit a crime. But any lawful order must be obeyed, even if the person given the order disagrees with it.

And Federation law as it pertains to artificial life forms is still evolving. According to A Time to Be Born, Ch. 17 (p. 276 of the paperback edition), Admiral Nakamura was able to use the loophole that since Data's chip was added after he joined Starfleet, it could be considered add-on equipment, and regulations gave Starfleet the right to determine what equipment an officer used while on duty. Without any specific laws or regulations to the contrary, Nakamura's order, however unethical, was still lawful and thus had to be obeyed.

Now, one could question why the characters didn't mount a legal challenge as they did in "The Measure of a Man." But we need to keep in mind that what's at issue here is Data's right to choose. The legal challenge in TMoaM only happened because Data chose to resign rather than obey orders. It wasn't something Picard or Geordi made him do; it would be pretty hypocritical to fight for his right to choose by denying it to him. He chose to resign rather than submit to Maddox's experiment, and Maddox then issued a legal challenge to force Data to obey, leading to the hearing that determined Data's right to choose. But in this case, conversely, Data chose to obey Nakamura's order rather than fighting it. Why did he make the choice differently this time? Well, my story "Friends With the Sparrows" in The Sky's the Limit might help explain that. It shows Data learning that he doesn't need to depend on the chip to define him as a person, that he is who he is regardless of his emotional state. I wrote the story to justify why the later movies showed the chip becoming less and less a part of his life despite Generations treating it as a life-changing thing.

 

[JWolf]

Thanks for explination guys!! Helps a lot. Hopefully, I can get my hands on the entire series one day, but it's still cool to at least know now.

http://www.booksonboard.com/index.p... the next generation a time to&P=pocket books

There's a link to the entire series.

 

[Claudia]

And Federation law as it pertains to artificial life forms is still evolving. According to A Time to Be Born, Ch. 17 (p. 276 of the paperback edition), Admiral Nakamura was able to use the loophole that since Data's chip was added after he joined Starfleet, it could be considered add-on equipment, and regulations gave Starfleet the right to determine what equipment an officer used while on duty. Without any specific laws or regulations to the contrary, Nakamura's order, however unethical, was still lawful and thus had to be obeyed.

First, thanks for providing further details, Christopher! As I said, I didn't read those novels, and now reading about the fact that Data was ordered to get his chip removed just bothered the hell out of me.

OTOH, shouldn't it have sufficed if Data just turned the chip off, like he did in FC? Or have some kind of subroutine installed that prevents him from using it during a mission? I'm not even talking about the fact that the definition of the emotion chip as some equipment like a tricorder doesn't sit well with me. Geordi's eyes, Picard's heart etc. don't fall under this definition, either, so why should the emotion chip?

Now, one could question why the characters didn't mount a legal challenge as they did in "The Measure of a Man." But we need to keep in mind that what's at issue here is Data's right to choose. [...]But in this case, conversely, Data chose to obey Nakamura's order rather than fighting it.

What I'd like to know is if there even had been a discussion, or if Geordi/Picard etc just accepted the order and Data's choice. It's one thing to accept Data's right to choose after a discussion, it's another to try to force their will onto him, after all. So, perhaps I really need to read this scene... If I just knew where I put that book...

Why did he make the choice differently this time? Well, my story "Friends With the Sparrows" in The Sky's the Limit might help explain that. It shows Data learning that he doesn't need to depend on the chip to define him as a person, that he is who he is regardless of his emotional state.

I never was a friend of the emotion chip. Actually it was his appeal that he was different, that he didn't have emotions. Once he got those he lost the thing that made him unique among the crew.

And even without the emotions the chip provided he grew as a character, there were lots of stories to tell simply *because* he didn't have emotions, such as f.e. "The Offspring". In that episode the lines blurred quite a bit. Even without the chip I couldn't really tell where programming and logical thought process ended and caring, nurturing and simple parental instinct began.

It would have been great if that had been explored more instead of focusing on plainly obvious emotion. Because if we are honest, emotion isn't much more than brain chemistry and hormones... it's just a different kind of programming, I guess. Okay, I'm getting philosophical, time to stop now. *g*

 

[Christopher]

^Exactly. That's why I hate the cliche "Robots don't have feelings, all they have is programming!" Emotions are programming. They're preset responses hardwired into our brains. We don't learn to feel or choose to feel, it happens automatically. An animal's emotions are pretty simple -- you're scared and you run, you're angry and you attack, you're horny and you mate. What makes human emotions complicated is their interaction with our thoughts, beliefs, and choices -- like the loyalties and commitments that make us choose to face danger when we're scared, or the cultural mores that keep us from sleeping with the wrong partner. So emotion is the easy part; intelligence is the really complicated part. It would be far easier to program a computer with emotion-like responses than it would be to make it sentient and capable of autonomous thought and choice. So the fictional conceit that emotion is some magic alchemy that's beyond the capacity of an intelligent machine is just silly.

Of course, it's not quite as bad in the case of Soong-type androids, since we've seen that models like Lore and Lal can have emotion, but it goes wrong, either leading to cascade failure or resulting in a psychopathic personality. So Soong left emotion out of Data on purpose as a stopgap, intending to restore it once he'd solved the problems, but never getting around to it because he had to flee the Crystalline Entity and abandon Data.