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[DISCUSSION] In TNG's "The Most Toys" (s3e22), did Data lie about firing the disruptor?
(lemmy.world)
Episode premise:
Kivas Fajo is determined to add the unique Data to his prized collection of one-of-a-kind artefacts and, staging Data's apparent death, he imprisons him aboard his ship.
We know that Data is later logically coerced to lie in "Clues" to protect the crew, but this appears to be a decision all his own. Or did he not in fact actually fire the weapon?
In the end, human emotions are motivators. They decide our actions. If we're happy with something, we continue doing it, if it hurts, we stop it. Data clearly has a system in place that motivates him to do things.
These might be emotions, like you say, but this is not the only possibility. Can we really imagine what a motivator would be that is not an emotion? I don't think so. But I think this is what Data has. It's not emotions like we experience them, but it's something that causes him to do things/stop doing things. Now these motivators are just that, and thus act very similarly to our emotions. You might very well think he has emotions, but he hasn't, he has something else.
Everything makes sense if you think of it like this. Data behaves almost human, but not quite. The emotion chip actually has a huge effect. Lore is completely different. This all makes sense when you think of emotions as an actually new thing for Data, but something else still being there.