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Resolved: Lt. Commander Data Is Not a Person
Star Trek is a frequent topic of conversation at Ricochet, and with a new Trek feature film and new Television series impending, it’s a topic which once again merits some discussion.
At its finest, Star Trek is much less space opera than it is high-concept science fiction which explores philosophical issues using the trappings of space travel as a backdrop. I have several thoughts that I’d like to get people’s take on.
Since I was young, I’ve been fascinated by the ninth episode of season 2, of The Next Generation called The Measure of a Man.
In this episode, The Enterprise arrives at a star base whereupon a Starfleet researcher, Commander Bruce Maddox, insists that Data accompany him to essentially be disassembled and studied in order to be copied. In due course, Data would be reassembled, his memories restored and be free to continue his service to Starfleet.
Data refuses to have what is at best, a speculative mechanical procedure performed on him, and when ordered to undergo it, he resigns from Starfleet in protest.
Much high courtroom drama ensues when Riker (prosecution) and Picard (Data’s defense) are pitted against one another by a Starfleet magistrate to argue for or against the idea that Data is Starfleet’s property, and thus has no right to decline being taken apart.
Various tests are undertaken to demonstrate that Data is a man-made machine and not human – for instance, he displays unnatural strength, is able to calculate tremendously large numbers and can retain vast quantities of information. Data is synthetic, and Riker pointedly demonstrates this by removing one of Data’s limbs and then switching him off.
Shocked at Riker’s ruthlessness, Picard retreats to the counsel of barkeep Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg… come on, it was the late 80’s) who hands Picard the key to winning any argument: comparing a situation you don’t like to slavery and then changing the subject from the matter at hand.
Guinan’s contention is that, if allowed to have his way, Maddox would essentially be copying Data into a whole race of androids (a race of Datum?) which would have been the equivalent of “disposable people” or “slaves” belonging to the Federation, being sent on various dangerous missions (replicate some Red Shirts!) or as an inexhaustible supply of soldiers.
The second part – the changing of the subject – is where Picard’s argument goes far off the rails. The Captain challenges the court to show that Data isn’t sentient after showing that Data is both intelligent and self-aware. Aside from the absurdity of being forced to prove a negative (the burden of proof should always lie with the party making extraordinary claims) which the Magistrate should have rejected on the grounds of Popperian unfalsifiability there are other issues at hand as well.
First off, even though Data is a cunningly devised human simulacrum designed to allow humans to interact with him in a natural fashion, he nonetheless lacks the capacity to experience emotions. While surely the Lt. Commander could pass the Turing Test he also equally lacks the ability to form emotional bonds or experience love, which are critical features of the human experience.
Second is the question of whether or not Data is actually even alive. While there are plenty of examples of life that we can point to which are unusual (even in a galaxy as diverse as Star Trek’s) it’s hard to argue that Data actually fits into any of those categories. Life at its most granular level is a self-perpetuating chemical reaction. Even viruses are not considered to be living organisms while bacteria are. By comparison, Data lacks many of the features of even a simple paramecium.
He cannot replicate himself, and did not lose such ability through age or damage. He is capable of being dismembered and reassembled with little consequence, as is put on display multiple times. Also, unlike sentient biological entities he exhibits the limited ability to transfer his consciousness into a new body, meaning he cannot suffer biological death. Even the normal cessation of mental activity which would define brain death or the end of consciousness for biological entities is defied by Data. If Data is alive, he certainly displays characteristics far outside of the normal parameters of what is considered “life.”
Lastly there is the human component to be considered. In “The Measure of a Man” it is ultimately decided that Data is not Starfleet property and has the ability for self determination. Data makes the decision that he will not undergo Commander Maddox’s procedure and continues with Starfleet. It’s hard to tell how many lives this decision ends up costing the Federation.
For instance, when the Federation ultimately engages in war with the Dominion, think of the possibilities: perhaps they could have warships crewed mostly by autonomous androids. Even if each Datum had 75% of Data’s capabilities this might be a bonus because they would have most of the capabilities but correspondingly less sense of self and therefore follow orders unflinchingly but make combat decisions flawlessly. This robot army would represent a massive strategic advantage to the Federation against the Founders without facing the ethical dilemmas of sending humans or other sentient beings into battle. What is dead can never die, after all.
So, it is resolved. Not only is Lt. Commander Data not a person… he isn’t even alive. Under that heading, the Federation should have copied him to the best of their abilities to save the lives of those who could die.
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It’s made pretty clear that the Prophets are not metaphysical entities, but really different, advanced aliens. I don’t recall any proof that Sto’vo’kor exists or the Jadzia was welcomed there aside from the statements of living Klingons (though this I remember less clearly). So that’s pretty thin proof.
Isn’t it the case that both biological and mechanical entities are reproduced with perfect accuracy every time they travel by transporter? I have never been able to figure out any explanation for transporter technology that would allow the transporter to reassemble a person, but not assemble a duplicate of that person. Even if you posit that the original physical substance of the person, at a submolecular level, is physically moved over a beam of energy (which does not seem possible), there is no reason that I can see why an identical bundle of atoms or quarks or whatever could not be assembled into a duplicate of the original.
This also raises the question of whether a person’s soul (assuming there is such a thing) can be re-installed in the person during the process of reassembly after the person goes through the transporter. I think Dr. McCoy touched on this question one time, but after his usual grumbling he dropped the question.
Maybe John would care to opine on these issues.
That’s absurd, of course. Circuit breakers and switchgear were somehow un-invented in the 25th century?
Like!
Yes, well how else are you going to show the consequences of deck 34 being blown up? Its not like you can just make a set for each damaged section.
Well, the judge in this case wasn’t reasoning very clearly. Maybe Picard wasn’t either; I don’t recall.
But most or all of your evidence is irrelevant, isn’t it? So what if he’s not a human? That’s an accurate premise providing no support at all for the conclusion that he’s not a person.
Consulting the dictionary, written by and for humans, we have 7 definitions of “person.” Definitions 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 7 do not apply to Data, Worf, Spock, Sarek, Garak, Nog, Troi, or Gowron because they aren’t human. So they are all non-persons by those definitions, and if those are the legally relevant ones then Vulcans and Betazoids shouldn’t have rights in the Federation either.
Obviously they do have rights, and the relevant definition is number 5: “a self-conscious or rational being.” (Note: I think this is poorly phrased; it should have been “self-conscious and rational.”)
Granting that he’s non-human, the important question is this: Is Data self-conscious and rational? That is all that matters to his personhood.
3 likes that fast? I fear someone made (perhaps unintentionally) use of the click-fast-to-generate-extra-likes bug.
Uh oh. I hope this doesn’t go here.
Again, this is why I reject the notion of personhood as a legal concept.
As we have so often learned from the abortion debate, a fetus is clearly human and alive. But it displays no evidence of rationality nor self-consciousness; at best, it only displays the potential for reason and self-consciousness. The same applies for a recently-born infant: although born, it doesn’t display intelligence, and couldn’t pass a Turing test.
But that’s irrelevant; clearly a newly born infant (and in turn, a fetus) is a living human being. It has human rights – including the right to life. Its rights are based on those facts, not on intelligence.
Intelligence alone cannot be the basis for “human rights.”
Naturally, you can always extend the concept of rights by stipulating something explicitly. Nothing says we can’t protect Data; at that point, he would have ostensive rights, but not natural “human” rights, because he’s not human.
Well done! I’m not going there. Please note my correction to the original comment.
Self-consciousness and rationality are a sufficient condition for personhood. Being a human being is also a sufficient condition. Neither is a necessary condition.
I tend to believe Data was a person, but Majestyk’s point here is quite valid. A simulation of a thing is not the thing. We judge our fellow human beings to be sentient because we know that we are, and they appear to be the same as us. Extending this assumption to a machine that is designed to appear as one of us is a mistake.
Fetuses aren’t really people then either – but I’ve made that argument before.
It seems likely that the dictionary definition you’ve given here is too anthropocentric in a linguistic sense. Our dictionaries don’t recognize the existence of Klingons and include them as persons – so I’m tossing that semantic objection out.
It’s worth noting that the definition could be modified slightly to include those individuals and species you note without including Mr. Data on the obvious basis that he isn’t alive or a natural creature and that his “self-consciousness” is likely an artefact of his programming, only seeming to be such because of human understanding.
Indeed. Those who are not pro-life, from conception, are either ignorant of some of the basic biology, or else have no regard for human rights as such.
Given the reality of non-human persons such as (in fiction) Data or Spock or (in reality) angels, I do believe in the existence of the rights of persons as such–without regard to their species or to the nature or even existence of their bodies.
That doesn’t follow. Please see my clarifications above.
We’re talking about sufficient conditions for personhood, not necessary ones.
Perhaps. I don’t have time to think about that one today!
Ah, you really think he’s not really conscious?
And a human struggling to be human and trying to fool other humans into accepting his full humanity might act that way, too.
The Great Ghost of Gödel works in AI. In another conversation with me, he once said,
Now, G^3’s remarks mostly pertain to those whose metaphysics are already quite different from yours, Maj. So his objections to many of the typical arguments for human uniqueness don’t apply directly to your arguments here. Nonetheless…
I suppose it’s only human to bristle at the idea that we’re all meat robots. We are more than meat, we believe, and more than robots. But the way I see it, being more than meat or robot doesn’t preclude a person from still being both meat and robot.
(Incidentally, G^3 and I are both Christian – and both raised at least partially Lutheran. Amy is a confessional Lutheran, too… am I sensing a pattern?…)
I think we have limited means of assessing whether or not he is genuinely conscious.
There are some things that we can know about Data.
It’s possible that this cleverly devised simulation of consciousness, including advanced machine learning has fooled many people into believing that Data has sentience – but machine learning is not sentience. It is inherently limited by the nature of what the machine can modify in itself. Machines are unlikely to begin writing their own Operating System code anytime soon. It’s still just an automoton; a golem.
To draw a different parallel, nobody believes that C-3PO is a person. When Princess Leia shut him off in the asteroid field it was obvious to everybody that he wasn’t. What makes Data different from C-3PO? Appearances, mostly.
If Data appeared as a completely synthetic or metallic-looking construct rather than a humanoid, nobody would be disagreeing.
My 12 yo son and I were discussing this thread and he reminded me of the episode in which they get a virus that causes the crew to all act drunk, and Data is also infected. So more than appearances?
Yes. Bad writing.
The reality of Data being conscious or not is a question that cannot be answered, just as it will not be answerable any time soon for advanced computer programs in the real world.
I would like to point out though that most computer scientists (G3 is an exception) assume that if it acts like it’s conscious, we must conclude it’s conscious, which strikes me as profoundly silly.
Ask a different question of Data: Is he human? Now, Data has dead give aways that he isn’t, but imagine he had perfectly human skin, and more natural head movements.
If you were unable to examine his body in detail, and judged him solely on the facts that you are human, and he appears to be like you, the wrong conclusion would be drawn.
I’m flattered. :)
Fair enough. However, that doesn’t by itself make much of an argument that he’s not conscious.
If you mean we are left with no good evidence for his consciousness, then, given Occam’s Razor, it makes a decent argument that he’s not conscious–and thus not a person.
You mean within the story, right? Outside the story, we have commentary such as http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2013/06/droids_in_star_wars_the_plight_of_the_robotic_underclass.html. I think Goldberg picked up on it in his G-File.
Tardigrades “can go without food or water for more than 30 years, drying out to the point where they are 3% or less water, only to rehydrate, forage, and reproduce”. Now, tardigrades are microscopic, the kind of animal we barely think of as an animal – very different from large, bald, bipedal primates. Plant seeds surviving thousands of years or bacterial spores are even more different. Tardigrades, plants, and bacteria are just life in the biological sense – their lives are obviously quite different from human lives.
I guess that means me. But I don’t know nothin’ ’bout no magic smoke.
Here’s the deal: Everything going through the transporter is a hylomorph. The soul goes with the body through the transporter–although it would be more precise to say that the body goes with the soul.
Yay! Star Trek is headed for the TOP of the Most Popular box!
Good work, Majestyk! Well done, everyone! Raktajinos and Romulan ale all around! May this thread live long and prosper!
Qapla!
Fair enough. I suppose we can look forward to advocacy of sex-bot marriage in the future as well.
All hail our robotic hooker overlords!
You clearly don’t believe that Watson is sentient. Is there some barrier that we can define where a synthetic creature crosses a boundary of apparent sentience, or is it fundamentally unknowable, a la Schroedinger’s Cat? In my estimation, the ability to shut such a simulation off and then resume it without harming the function of the simulation is a stark dividing line between real and synthetic which will always separate us from machines – and machines should have no rights whatsoever.
What about Thomas Riker? Is he a soulless golem?
Yes, just like all the other scum who joined the Maqis!
No, seriously, no, he’s not a soulless golem.
On hylomorphism, the body goes with the soul. If the body got copied, so did the soul.
Indeed.
Another excuse to post this:
Well, at least he isn’t a ginger.
I assume that Mr. Scott also retained his soul despite being trapped in a transporter buffer for decades? :)