Star Trek
r/startrek: The Next Generation
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Upcoming Episodes
| Date | Episode | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 11-28 | LD 5x07 | "Fully Dilated" |
| 12-05 | LD 5x08 | "Upper Decks" |
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Outside of measure of a man-type episodes, I don't think they've ever had a super in-depth discussion on selfhood and the soul as characters see it in universe. , but it seems like materialism is the generally accepted philosophy. Post Enterprise, people who have hangups on the transporters (perhaps more based in dualism) are treated as weirdos.
More evidence for materialism: Q, the godlike being who might be able to tell the difference, treats Golem-Picard the same entity. And last I checked nobody's going around saying that Thomas Riker and William Boimler are p-zombies.
(I guess Gray Tal is the odd man out, since there was some consciousness that got somehow ceremonially split off before shoving it in a golem. Maybe that's just trill symbiont weirdness though).
The fact that everyone treats Golem-Picard as True-Picard felt to me like confirmation that, in the ST universe, what makes you you is your mind. Memories, thought patterns, etc... I know it was tv-show hand wavery but the fact that no one mourned the death of their friend, or really ever once questioned the validity of the golem taking his place bothered me a little.
Also, M'Benga's daughter is still the same person, despite being an energy being now, without a physical body.
If my consciousness is continuing, especially into a physical form that looks exactly like myself, what practical difference does it make?
Sure, and maybe I could have phrased my comment above better. I just watched Second Chances recently, and they make a point of saying the Thomas and Will Riker have very similar brain patterns. So star trek has pretty consistently been a universe in which the self is brain patterns, and brain patterns are physical things that can copied, saved in worm aliens, and reformatted to robot bodies types.
Which is absurd as souls objectively exist in Star Trek and at least two major species objectively have them-- which implies most do.