Lit Humans v. Droids: What's the difference?

Not really, no. Without even knowing whether they can have consciousness, because we can't define it, you can't determine whether or not they can have gender roles. Indeed even animals with 'lesser' consciousness complexity as humans (we assume) have gender roles. In humans, of course, gender roles aren't necessarily aligned with sex.

Without defining consciousness you can't know whether humans and robots are too dissimilar in SW. You simply can't know the latter without knowing the former. Neither can you wed the concept of consciousness to ontogeny without knowing the definition of the former.

 

It was a joke. I think you missed the linked article there, proving once and for all that droids have gender.

 

That is an interesting point. It shows the contrast between my view and your view. I do indeed wed the concept of consciousness to ontogeny. Ontogeny is intrinsically part of the sum and the sum is greater than its parts. So, yes, I'm committed to that view.

I'm willing to wed consciousness to ontogeny regardless of whether consciousness can be defined. The aspects of consciousness that are empirical to me are dependent on ontogeny.

Ok, it was a joke. I get it now.

 

But how can you be committed to it if you can't define consciousness in the first place?

 

It is sensible to say that ontogeny is a vehicle for consciousness. But that they are one and the same? That's like saying blue is green, when it is actually only part.

 

I added to that post a few times. Consciousness is too much a part of our lives for us to fully define it. The thing cannot define itself.

It is surprising how much of consciousness we can define if we break it down into different mental states that occur with different types of behavior.

We have conscious mental states that can be empirically observed. Throughout a 24-hour period, we go through a series of conscious mental states that are qualitatively different from each other. Our waking state is qualitatively different from our dreaming states.

So how am I committed to that view if consciousness cannot be fully defined? The part of consciousness that I am able to understand suggests to me that consciousness is dependent on ontogeny.

I believe that nature has created a natural barrier between biological entities and robots. Ontogeny is part of that natural barrier. We can try to design robots with ontogeny but then the effort towards designing them gets focused on simulating ontogeny (life span development and cell development of living tissue).

We have other, more efficient ways of simulating ontogeny through genetic engineering but that is fraught with limitations, ethical conundrums, and the risk of contaminating gene pools. Nature has essentially given us gene banks. But cross a horse with a donkey and you get an infertile mule. The mule is neither a horse nor a donkey. It is a dead end.

A building needs a foundation. What are the foundational elements of consciousness? What is essential for consciousness mental states to occur? My view is that ontogeny (life span development and cell maturation of living tissue) is essential for consciousness.

 

In terms of brain behavior, not by much! Deep (non-dreaming) sleep is quite different, however.

Good point, but if consciousness has anything to do with quantum wavelengths, who's to say that we couldn't use (currently little explored) quantum computing to synthesize inorganic lifeforms?

 

I don't think you can make ontogeny an indispensable part of consciousness without having a definition of consciousness, nor do I think you can simply say that we can definitely never define consciousness (or that a thing cannot define itself). To be honest I don't really understand why you put so much reliance upon ontogeny as an indispensable part of consciousness. Why is there a theoretical barrier between consciousness and a very complex quantum computer? Why is the mode of creation of a 'mind' necessarily something that is important?

 

Interesting experiment setup and I agree a neutral gender is needed in this concept. But any observer would judge the droids on what basis?

This experiment looks to be based on gender roles and gender attributed behavior, which is an older concept that is challenged and broken up these days with roles and behavior not affixed to gender but learned or forced on to people of a certain gender by society and their surroundings, expectations and so forth.

The question thus is, is gender more than just applicable to procreation? We do know that f.e. the female and male bodies for all their similarities do have genderspecific differences that specialise them to fulfill certain tasks better. Be it how they endure pain or other biological differences. And constant evolutionary adaption has further cemented some of those differences into our code and makeup. Nevertheless these are just basic setups that anybody can overcome. Like the Force, some are more attuned to it than others and have it easier accessing it but still both/all can and can reach the same levels in it, it just is easier for some.

So back to the droids, if not a procreational concept, is gender something else to them? Behavioral? Droid bodies too are created to fulfill different tasks and based on that droids are even sorted by humans into classes. This is a different dichotomy than gender, and we had droids show human gender behavior and speach patterns over various droid classes, but how does that come into play here then?

What would you think can an observer of your droid colony actually observe regarding gender? Or would it more class droids regrading their societary functions which may align with their droid classifications based on their tasks/duties. In this caste system for droids they can overcome this by selfmodification to ascend into a higher class or have halfdemolished models still keep contributing in lower droid classes/castes.

 

Presumably "masculine programming" droids, and "feminine programming" droids have this, based on intended behaviour.

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Sexes/Legends
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Sexes

Droids being machines, lacked a biological sex. However, in order to appear more lifelike, many droids were programmed with a "masculine" or "feminine" personality. Thus, even mechanical beings were designated either he or she.

 

How much of consciousness can we define? If we use mental states during waking and sleeping -- realizing that mental states are correlated with specific types of behavior -- we can start to reach a working definition for consciousness.

Brainwaves, cortical activation, and behavior change markedly between waking states and sleeping states.

The biological tissue allows the organism to navigate through mental states through every 24-hour period. The organism has drives to maintain its equilibrium. If an organism does not get enough sleep, food, hydration, social contact, etc., it has a mental state that drives its behavior to compensate for the lack of one of those.

Vice and greed are when an organism has an overabundance of something that satisfies a drive (food, sleep, sex, curiosity, etc.). The pleasure centers of the brain become addicted to the behavior.

I would assume there are theoretical limits on what can be done with quantum computing. The biological limitations we have create limitations on advanced machines which are not necessary. There is no reason to impose those limitations because they drop the work productivity and build depreciation on equipment.

Droids are a piece of equipment. But they can outlast frail biological beings and record their stories in the Journal of the Whills.

We do not perceive everything with our senses. There is more going on with biological beings than can be perceived with our conscious senses. We give out olfactory cues that influence our behavior. Biological beings are very complicated.

Look at the complex interactions between human beings and pet canines. Canines have cortical tissue devoted to the olfactory sense of smell which we lack. Does that provide canines with information which human beings do not have access to? Yes, undoubtedly yes. The canine sense of smell is part of their mind. Their cortical tissue gives their mind information which guides their behavior.

Nature has provided the gene bank for canines. We have created new canine breeds by selective breeding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_breeding

There are complexities in nature which do not register with us but influence our behavior. A mind is like the command center that allows the biological organism to act upon the environment. (I'm not going to mention freewill here.)

There is no breeding with computers and robots. We should not be fooled by the "form factor" of the computer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_factor_(design)

Robots are computers. Just because a computer looks exactly like you does not mean that the computer will do anything other than what you program it to do. Never judge a book by its cover. Never judge a computer by its form factor.

 

I think you're putting too much reliance upon the idea that our biological functions are indispensable parts of consciousness. I don't think they are, or at least I'm not willing to say that they are, because we don't really have a definition of consciousness. An artificial intelligence would likely develop their own functions would inform their own consciousness in a unique way.

 

Regarding breeding you brought up:

Breeding serves several functions. Survival of the kind and evolution. Survival of droidkind could be achieved by droids simply replicating themselves. Evolution would though mean droids have to change and improve with every reproduction.

While simple replication is akin to cloning, the evolutionary reproduction also is visible within droidkind. Droids do not simply replicate, they create new models with new functions and crosses of various droids. In Legends YJK C3PO had a child so to speak in MTD, the translator droid Lowbacca used with his friends. It was no copy of 3PO yet he helped create it. In canon L3 selfmodified herself, evolving and ultimately with help from Lando evolved into an integral part of the Falcon. So to speak, the Falcon is the lovechild of Lando and L3 both!

Droidkind though has no sense or urge to reproduce or replicate as humanity does. Given longlive of its parts, they do not sense a finality and need for creating something to outlast themselves. They rather shed a body and take a new one. Droid reincarnation so to speak.

Now if looking deeper into droidkind, beyond the well known model and utility bots, there are some remarkeable and special droids that may give us more insight into their kind.

Mistress Memnos and other even more ancient BRT supercomputers have no need to be mobile yet oversee a huge network of droids. One could even say droidkind, due to their electrical nature, has the tech version of telepathy and communication without words, and likewise could share information and hack each other easily. Droidkind is more connected permanently to the holonet and each other than people may realize. Is their kind, at least those models that have that kind of uplink, like a hivemind with individual subminds, yet less mindcontroled by a central figure than with the Killiks or Geonosians?

The Silentium and Abominor are the highest evolved droid species we do know of. While their shells still look droid-like metalbased, they utilize nanotechnology beyond gffa standards and are closer to the Transformers franchise than SW in that regard. Yet they choose simple tech forms rather than to look human or else. Interesting here is that Silentium start small and grow to huge spaceship or maybe even planetoid/planet sized entities! Droids that grow over time, that's new!

PS: I still headcanon that Palpatines Worlddevastators are actually reverse engineered from the Great Heep Abominor and once awakened would be devastating huge Abominors on the loose!

PPS: Headcanon also that L3 was awakened by a Silentium and in return spread the spark of life to her own droid revolution and other models including the Falcon!

 

I could post links to brain lesion studies. When the cortex suffers an injury like a stroke in a particular area, the cognitive deficits that result are predictable. For example, the classic examples are Broca's aphasia and Wernick's aphasia. Both types of injury result in language deficits.

This is the structure of brain biology controlling cognitive abilities.

Our consciousness is seated inside of our biology. The brain is an organ. We cannot give people a brain transplant. Neurosurgeons remove cortical tissue or operate on brain tissue.

How do we get rid of our annoying biological limitations?

We would need to remove the biological brain and keep it's structure intact before giving it a new body. Another path is to digitally represent someone's unique brain activity in bits and bytes. And then there is the "Palpatine" route of growing clones in a vat and doing an essence transfer.

Pick your poison.

I believe nature has provided barriers so that all of these routes ultimately fail. They are an attempt at creating fantasy hybrids to overcome biological limitations imposed by nature.

 

Transferring Essence as in soul is something different from brainsurgery and placing the brain in a new body though. SW allowed both to happen and work within their universes laws.

One crux though, General Grievous did not have his brain removed from his body but had his body step by step removed and replaced with droid parts until only the brain and a few organs remained. It shows how much can be replaced and that still not all could be. While most people see the brain as the last big medical/biological secret too complex to yet understand it fully, others seek still if there is a soul how and where it is connected to the body. Now esoterics and Aura/Chakra systems may shed some light on this but that depends if you believe in this.

We can replace organs but even if it works, it still needs strong meds that ruin health and body security systems to keep it integrated in your system and not attacked like an alien piece within yourself. We can replace some functions with machinery already. But the brain has defied removal and replacement so far.

In SW Dr. Evazan managed even that with the Decraniated. One still was alive and conscious despite lacking his brain in Aphra comics, so they are not just fleshbot-cyborgs.

In the real world, there were accidents where people lost a huge part of their brains (impaled by iron staffs) and still kept on living and functioning with minimal to no problem aside the scars. Others have been scientifically been found and checked that had nearly no brain matter in their head (case I recall from South America), which still lived and worked like normal. It may be rare but shows how few with know of the brain and how adaptive it is despite medical sciences attributing all kinds of functions to its areas.

Even genedefects due to mutation and other brain affecting diseases are known, not few leading to a premature death with no cure existing yet. My own son was diagnosed with this, so I speak from experience and do all kind of research in this area hoping a cure is found before it is too late!

While I agree with you that in the real world we still are at many limitations, the GFFA is far beyond that and has crossed all these barriers successfully. They even have nanodroids that can alter humans looks and turn regular humans into shapeshifters as per Kenobi in TCW! Imagine a HRD droid using synthflesh skin in addition with these little bastards... you'd have a droid shapeshifter that can look like anybody! Add realistic holotech the gffa has too as we saw holodroids looking like the real deal fooling people and you got perfect imitators.

So, while you argue from out of universe Tython, arguing inuniverse strictly would be different.

Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. So the soul, is an energyfield akin to the Force, localised imprinting itself into a body like a program does into a machine's computer? Whose to say this energy we are cannot imprint itself in other forms and bodies?

Remove the brain and the connection is gone. What if this energy could disconnect from the brain and reconnect, would that make a transfer of a brain easier? Does the brain change so it cannot reconnect after the transfer? Or does this energy, without a tether, merge too quickly into the Force of Others?

 

You've explained the uniqueness of biological consciousness, but, again, there is nothing definitive to suggest that what creates consciousness is essentially found in the biological structure. You say there is a barrier but you don't know exactly that it does exist. You're just assuming that it does.

 

Look at brain imaging studies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_resonance_imaging
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positron_emission_tomography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CT_scan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroencephalography

 

If there is a specific study you want us to look at that validates your point, you should post a link to it an an abstraction of it.

 

Yeah I heard you when you wrote that. I'm fairly sure if there were something overpowering in brain imagining neuroscientists wouldn't consider this an open issue.

 

I already gave the classic textbook examples and I posted wikipedia links so you know what I am writing about. Look at any study.

 

C'mon. You should know that just dropping a wikipedia article and saying 'look at studies' doesn't do anything for me or anyone else.

 

It's interesting how people look for how biology creates consciousness when it is the other way around actually. But in completely ignoring the metaphysical context to life, one runs in circles and lacks pieces of the puzzle forcing them into a half-finished picture that does not fit.

Even modern physics, especially quantum physics are at points chemistry, biology and medical sciences have yet to acknowledge and take into account. Those still work with concepts physics conceptualised decades if not centuries ago!

While no theory is perfect, not even string theory or other new models, they open up a lot more possibilities and understanding than previous models limited to technological understanding of the biological machines we were thought to be once long ago.

We need to accept new definitions of what matter is. How most matter consists of empty space within, how dark matter has a place and role to play, how the duality of energy/waves and solid matter like for electrons might exist for all types of matter and much much more.

Though, and that is what has many if not most people shy away from these new concepts, accepting some of these new definitions implications ultimately means questioning some cornerstones of our believes and foundations people are unwilling to let go of. Without going off into esoterics again, there are certain religiously founded believes that inform a lot of science and that a certain group of scientists can not let go of despite claiming their science is solid and not based in religion.

The laws of nature though, however approximate they are, do not lie.

 

Scientists are stuck researching the structure of the human brain to understand how it produces mental states and cognition. It is easy for you to hint at something else creating consciousness, but those are not the most fundamental methods used. The structure of the brain needs to be studied before we can understand what is acting on the structure of the brain. From what we can empirically observe, biology sustains consciousness.

Yes, empty space is important. But don't you think the density of organic cell bodies is taken into account?

Are we cells or are we waves? The waves are the environment acting on the group of cell bodies.

 

Empirical observations can be wrong though. If biology is the veil we see the consciousness/soul through, we can observe changes to the veil and draw conclusions based on these observations. But, if say the veil lets more or less through to be seen, depending on state/damage of the veil, does that tell us about the veil or about what is behind it? The same image can be interpreted many ways, some claim they suddendly can see less through it and that means there is less behind it. Others see the reason for the observation elsewhere with the veil itself.

Or in more medical terms, if the brain is the conduit for the soul to express itself in the body, damage to the brain may seem like it alters the consciousness/soul when in fact it only alters the window through which it can act and thus denies it access to certain parts of the body-self.

Your question if we are cells or waves is answered by modern physics as both at the same time. Waves are not environment acting on the cell bodies. Of course environment like all matter too is wave and solid at the same time and thus actis on the cell bodies, too. But You cannot separate matter and waves like you just did, that is against current empirical sciences, be it physics or others, that you hold so dear in your argumentation.

I could move this further away from the atom model or string theory model to the latest models that account for both and more variations. Like the universe as a membrane or energy field within which frequency and probability define what state and form energy takes as it chooses to become matter, or not. Though I probably would have to elaborate a bit more before going that far.

 

Eleven Thirty Eight had some interesting articles on the subject, of which the most recent is this:

http://eleven-thirtyeight.com/2018/07/mind-or-matter-unpacking-droid-sentience-in-the-films/

I don’t see how this issue is any different from human slavery, to be quite honest. By the standards of slave holding societies, slaves weren’t even human—some masters might well be kind to their slaves, some might free their slaves. We might point to some slave societies as being kinder than other slave societies. But they’re still slave societies. And anyone in our era who tries to defend or justify slavery is a terrible person.

Droids are apparently sentient in various degrees. Their sentience is routinely guarded against by regular personality wipes. That in itself is barbaric. That Threepio has developed and learned so much, and is mind-wiped for convenience because of his own programming that requires him to serve a master—that’s very messed up.

Maybe Bail doesn’t know it and his behavior is totally routine and acceptable by the standards of the late Galactic Republic. But it doesn’t matter, we know droids are sentient and we know that kind of forcible erasure is wrong.

End of story.

...

We can’t deny that the Star Wars universe survives on a whole underclass of artificial beings, something that feels like part of a pulp dystopia. There’s no way Threepio or Kaytoo would not pass a Turing test, but it would appear that this concept does not exist in the GFFA. It’s safe to assume that Bail’s behavior is the norm, that no one considers droids to exhibit intelligent behavior. So, in-universe, what could cause this to happen? Surely a modern society would not subsist on slave work! How come a civilization like the Galactic Republic never thought of emancipating droids? Why does the galaxy not consider droids to be actually alive?