Saga Why do Jedi often treat Droids as lesser beings?

A silver protocol droid is seen in a few scenes in the saga, I do remeber seeing a silver one on the TF ship.

 

In response to the original question, I think the dismissal of droids as equal to living beings is rather commonplace in the galaxy. Just look at the way compassionate Bail Organa had no qualms with wiping C3PO's memory. Or when the Kaminoans were deriding the droids and saying they couldn't think creatively. I imagine it's normal to treat droids as advanced tools rather than people.

Plus, you have to consider the Jedi's philosophy -- they believe in the Force and its centrality to the universe. The Force is produced and conducted through life, not mechanical parts. So I think that might partially explain why they're more inclined to treat droids as lesser beings.

 

I say droids are like appliances/tools HOWEVER they appear to have personalities because of programming (and really, you program vocal inflections and stuff that mimic human reactions).

Some folks respond to the programming and some see them as talking appliances. No moral good or bad there, IMHO.

With that said, I like Artoo and tend to think of him (and Threepio) as "almost" human although mentally I don't see them the same as I do emotionally.

 

Droid aren't living sentients plain and simple. Obviously because they develop their own personalities and quirks some people take a special and fondness or liking to them, as you would to an old car, but at the end of the day, they are programmed machines.

 

"Sentient" and "living" don't absolutely have to go together in the SW universe. There's quite a few "inorganic" lifeforms in the SW EU- the tsils in Planet of Twilight, the Shards in Star Wars Adventure Journal, and so on.

In the early novels (Lando Calrissian Trilogy) there's fifty kilometer wide spherical droids with a civilization of their own. Perhaps closer to Transformers than your average droid- mechanical lifeforms.

 

Droids have no consciousness. They have no souls, either. Regardless of the philosophical and spiritual debate over do living things have souls, droids are not living things, while the humans and non humans in star wars are alive. But droids are not. They are robots and machines with no consciousness or awareness. Humans and aliens in the SW galaxy are aware of their surroundings. They are alive. A droid has no consciousnesses. They are as aware of their surroundings and feelings as much as a computer, tv, or video game system.

Maybe I'm missing something from the movies. Maybe cp30 and r2 were alive, and maybe they did have more than artificial intelligence. But this is all speculation. George Lucas never confirmed anything about robots and their intelligence.

 

A machine cannot be conscious .

 

It's left a bit grey. There may be a sliding scale of "self-awareness" with maintenance droids at one end and highly modified droids with their "creativity damper" removed, at the other.

 

I like it better if droids are sentinent, not only because it's very sci-fi, but it's also very cool. Our robot companions should be alive.

 

Its really a question of how much computing and 'thought' processing power is designed into individual models of droids.
Take astromechs. Designed to repair ships in hard vacuum, capable of storing hyperspace coordinates and whatever specialized data is required. Throughout the saga and AU they show the ability to make indpendent decisions, albeit predicated on hardwired programming. They are also used as portable databases by the alliance. This suggests they have considerable data storage capacity and the processing capacity to access this massive pool of data while preforming other tasks very quickly.
In summary.
For Android sentience
High data storage(big memory)
high computing power(quick uninterupted decisions)
independence(to varying degree, dependent on owner's use of memory wipes)
Awareness of self(interaction between R2D2 and C3PO suggests Artoo is functionally aware of its 'cognitive' and physical self and its relationship to the world around it.)
Against adroid sentience
Mortality . . .
Programming(dependent on model programming, R2s seem to be able to contradict or rewrtite their programming under the right conditions. However protocol droids while capable of violating programming do so under expreme simulated diress. Others like battle droids and memory wiped astromechs have little or no individual will.)

The big negative against droids is that they are theoretically immortal, so long as they produce sufficient copies of their . . . electronic self (electronic soul?), in effect rendering mortality a moot point for droids. especially when most droids appear to function according to Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics.

 

Are cp30 and r2d2 sentinent, conscious, alive, with feelings, or are they just walking machines?

 

It's left a little grey. Some writers tend to emphasise "droid feelings" more than others.

We see a droid spa in The Clone Wars- where Artoo goes to be pampered by droid staff.

And we see a droid torture chamber in RoTJ- where Jabba's droid supervisor, EV-9D9, tortures those droids who Jabba thinks have failed him.

 

Why did c3po say "oh no"! at the end of episode 3?

 

Possibly because he values his memory and isn't keen on losing a chunk of it.

As it happens, it turns out there's a range of degrees of memory wipe- I'm guessing Bail only wiped that of the key events- so he couldn't give away the secret of Leia's heritage, yet still has recognizably the same personality 19 years later in ANH.

 

Did lucas confirm if droids have souls or are sentinent, concious, alive, aware?

 

Lucas did not.

 

In at least one Marvel comic, a point is made of how a droid- specifically a non-sentient droid- was used as a decoy- so implying that they wanted to avoid using a sentient droid.

 

True. But it's my opinion that droids are nothing more than very powerful machines. A totally different level than sentinent beings

 

There's a perspective that humans are "nothing more than very powerful machines"- just self-replicating, rather squishy ones.

 

There's also CN's handling of the concept in Patterns of Force:
"And this creature; a sentient droid? I am curious to know how such a feat was accomplished."

 

C'baoth was pretty hostile toward Artoo in Dark Force Rising:

"Droids are an abomination- beings that reason, yet are not genuinely part of the Force"

but then- he was insane.

Obi-Wan's "If droids could think, there'd be none of us here, would there?"

does seem like skepticism about true thought in droids.

 

Well yes, there are inorganic liferforms in the EU: Tsils, Shards, B'rknaas, stone eels... But, even if they are inorganic--i.e. there natural body is not made of carbon, it's still lifeforms. Droids, however, are artificial and are not "life."

 

Clones are artificial- but still "life".

 

Good point, Iron Lord. Very good point.
I still could argue that the clones are made artificially, but are made from natural cells. But somehow, the difference between life and droids is a matter of philosophy. "The truth is out there."

(If I were part of the SW universe, I probably would treat droids the way I treat animals: I wouldn't consider them persons in their own right, but I wouldn't treat them with cruelty either.)

 

I'd probably vary it depending on just how self-aware, independant, intelligent, etc the droid is. There would be a continuum between "droid animals" and "droid persons"