Day: July 14, 2022

All three episodes featured this week were different from one another but a great introduction to how the concepts of cognitive science can applied in a science fiction show, from a cartoon to action and drama. 

In Altered Carbon, the main character’s “stack”, which is essentially their brain is put into a “sleeve,” or another body when a person is dies. We learn that this is a process that some can’t afford when someone’s stack is put into an old, subjectively unattractive sleeve. In this show, cognition is embedded. The person, Kovacs, was a lethal weapon before being resleeved, and he began an aggressive fight once they opened up the package the sleeves are kept in. It could also be said that while all of the characters in this show have a disk, Kovacs has something more in that his mind is like a computer, like cybernetics. 

The next episode I watched was Futurama’s, “The Day the Earth Stood Stupid”. In this episode, “the brain spawn” are attacking, turning everyone stupid except Fry (comedically because he may already be too stupid). When Fry and Leela confront the Big Brain, he transports them into different classic books, Moby Dick, Tom Sawyer, and Pride and Prejudice. Fry is able to defeat the Big Brain when he gets out of his grasp and writes his story that the brain and Leela are in. This scene is an example of enacted cognition, since they were outwardly affected by the control the brains had over their own minds but also how they were affected within the books. Even the brain was painting with Tom Sawyer. 

I’m not going to lie, I wasn’t looking forward to watching Star Trek, I’ve never been into anything to do with space (because space terrifies me) but after viewing the episode, I can understand why it’s a cult classic. Kirk is taken over by Sargon, a mind without a body, places in a sphere. Sargon takes over for only a short time, but he is elated to be in a body again when it happens first. Fast forward to when they all decide to let the minds within the spheres take over their bodies, Sargon and Thalassa are able to embrace for the first time in years. This shows the importance of body to the mind for maximum experience. 

I love the creativity applied to the cognitive science theories portrayed in these different shows. I didn’t realize the depth of real science that contributes to science fiction, since my exposure thus far has been so limited. I will definitely continue to watch Altered Carbon, which I found the most fascinating of all three television shows. I have to wonder if Altered Carbon was inspired by this Star Trek episode with the concept of “sleeve” bodies and the body that is waiting for Thalassa. Hmmm….

The first show that I watched was Altered Carbon. It starts by introducing the main character Takeshi Kovacs who is shown looking out the window of a futuristic cyber-punk city. Before we learn what sleeves are, how they are transferred, and how they work the Russian woman would ask Kovacs “Have you always been such an asshole?” to which he replies “Every sleeve, every time”(5:10-5:25). Takeshi has obviously been transferred from body to body and says that he always acts the same. Even though his body is completely different from the one he was born with, Takeshi still knows who he is mentally.

The second show I watched was Star Trek: The Original Series with an episode involving the character known as Sargon. As he explains, his people were able to separate the “essence of their minds” into receptacles of pure energy (9:50-10:00). They would do this to leave “seeds” of their people across many different planets in the galaxy. However, when turned into these beings of energy, are they still the people they were originally or new conscious beings? Sargon talks about how the memories of his people and their conquests are long gone. If he cannot remember his past and who he lived with, is he truly still himself?

The last show I watched was the American cartoon Futurama. In this episode, aliens in the form of brains are attempting to take over Earth by making all its inhabitants lose their intellect. This relates to the Star Trek episode regarding the loss of memories and other key brain functions However, Futurama (Like most of it’s episodes) approaches most scenarios in a completely different way than most shows. Sargon lost his memories over thousands of years but kept his intelligence and abilities. On the other hand, Futurama shows the people of Earth in rebellion against themselves because they can’t comprehend anything on their own. Sargon may have had some form of his own personality left but those infected by the brains lost their memories, interests, and most importantly, their personalities..

The first episode that I watched this week was “Out of the Past”

Altered Carbon. In this episode we meet the main character Takeshi Kovacs, In the beginning we see Kovacs in the past and then we are brought to the show’s present where Kovacs is essentially being resurrected with a new body; referred to as a sleeve. We soon learn that this was done with a small disk device called a ““Cortical Stack” that is implanted in people’s heads when they are one, inside the stack is the human mind.” (11:42-12:15) Because of this stack we learn that as long as it is not destroyed when one dies their consciousness can be downloaded into any sleeve. Because of these stacks one’s consciousness is something that can be moved and transferred many times.

The next episode that I watched was “The Day the Earth Stood Stupid.”                              Futurama. In this episode the characters had a fight against the human brain itself. The brains have begun to work without a human body and so the characters must use their own minds in order to defeat them. When the brains begin to attack and the characters in the show begin to lose intelligence, except for Fry who is unaffected by the brains and has to use his own to defeat the mother brain.  

The final episode that I watched was “Return to Tomorrow.” Star Trek: The Original Series. In this episode the characters are contacted by a consciousness named Sargon, who says that the energy of his thoughts took control of their devices and brought them to him, (1:22-1:28). Although Sargon was able to do things such as this without being constricted by a body, when he entered Kirk’s body he notes the different sensations that he experiences returning into the human form. He can feel the air in his lungs and his heart pumping, and after having been just a consciousness for 1000 years he misses those things.

The brain is an interesting concept to describe in television. At first, it seemed hard to understand. But after watching all the episode and giving myself time to think about it, I thought all three shows showed great levels of respect and intrigue towards the concept of mind vs. body.

When I watched the episodes, I started with the Futurama episode “The Day the Earth Stood Stupid”, whose title is a parody of the 1951 film “The Day the Earth Stood Still’ which I’ve heard of but never seen.  To sum up, an army of brains attack Earth, turning everyone on the planet stupid, except for Fry. I thought this was because he was already a pretty stupid character, but after doing a bit of research, I learned that he lacks a Delta brainwave, which is referenced in the Season 3 episode “Roswell That Ends Well”. So, it’s up to Fry, who is the dumbest character in the planet to defeat the smartest creature in the galaxy. Two scenes I want to focus on happen in the same location, the library at the end.

The first one is when Fry defeats the big brain by writing a grammatically incorrect book. This is an example of the embodied section of 4e cognition. Not only did fry have to think with brain, he also had to use his body to write the book to defeat the brain creature. The second one is when Leela gains her intelligence back. Before she does, she believes that Fry broke his neck from a fallen bookshelf, so her body was acting emotional. After she gains her intelligence back, she starts to fix her sentence structure, showing the audience that no body can work without a mind and vice versa. Unlike other shows, Futurama is seen as one of the most smartly written shows on television, considering that the shows writing team have 3 PHD’s, 7 Masters degrees, and a collective 50 years in Harvard university.

After Futurama, I watch the Altered Carbon episode “Out of the Past”. It was hard for me to get into it at first. But after getting to the 10 min mark, I became intrigued. Honestly, I might start watching the show for fun. The one scene I want to elaborate on is the exposition scene at Alcatraz Prison.

Takeshi Kovacs, played by Joel Kinnaman, is told by a hologram about the functions of cortical stacks. Basically, a persons mind and personality are stored in chips that are the size of poker chips, and the bodies are seen as sleeves, disposable bodies that the person can control. Kind of like a CD and a CD player, the machine might break down, but as long as the CD is intact, it will work in another machine. This is shown later when a prisoner with a cortical stack of a seven year old girl is placed in the body of an elderly woman. I absolutely loved this concept, because the contrast of mind vs. body was a very unique way to describe the concept of cybernetics, or the mind as a computer, where ones memories are “stored” in the mind, and are remain alive as long as the chip is undamaged. So, this is technically seen as gaining immortality, despite going thru multiple bodies. This also contradicts Futurama and their understanding of mind vs. body. Unlike Futurama, the cortical stacks, or brain, retain not only a persons intelligence, but also their feelings and personality.

Finally, the last show I watched was the Star Trek: The Original Series episode “Return to Tomorrow”. Now as someone who has barely seen any Star Trek content, aside from two of the James Gunn movies, and is a Star Wars fan, I didn’t know what to expect from this show. But, after seeing the episode, I can see where the respect for this series comes from. Unlike Star Wars, where it’s mainly rooted in fantasy, Star Trek has more of a grounded to reality approach to space travel and exploration, such as Kirk’s captain’s logs taking weeks to be sent to HQ.

Anyway, this episode was fun to watch, and the scene I wanna focus on is the beginning. In it, Captain Kirk, Spock, Dr. Bones, and Ann Mulhall are beamed down to a planet, and meet an ancient being called Sargon. The character of Sargon is the biggest example of the concept of a brain in a vat. When Sargon is in the ball, or vat in this case, he shows signs of high intelligence and some signs of emotion when he talks about his wife Thalassa. When Sargon takes over Captain Kirk’s body, he reminisces on how he misses having a body.

In my opinion, these show have done a fantastic job portraying the concept of cognition and how the mind differs from the body. If I had to pick a favorite interpretation, I would have to go with Altered Carbon, and how the characters are technically immortal as long as the cortical stack is unharmed. I can say now that this is gonna be a fun class.

In this week’s module, we are exploring the relationship between our minds, bodies, and brains. How exactly is this relationship portrayed in Altered Carbon, Star Trek, and Futurama? Let’s go on a mission to find out.

Altered Carbon

In the pilot episode “Out of the Past”, there is a scene in which Takeshi Kovacs’ “sleeve” is about to be taken out of its bag at Alcatraz Prison. We get many close-up shots of the sleeve while it is still packaged. In the voiceover we hear, “Your body is not who you are; you shed it like a snake sheds skin.” This perfectly encapsulates the relationship between mind, body, and brain in Altered Carbon: they are separate entities to the characters. The mind is downloaded onto disks, which are like brains, that can be changed from body to body, or in terms of the show, sleeve to sleeve. The body is a commodity, not a partner to the mind. We get close-up shots of the sleeve packaged to show this. This relationship is similar to the concept of Cybernetics, which is the comparison of the mind to a computer. In Altered Carbon, the disk is like a central processing unit (CPU), aka the “brain” of a computer. The sleeve is like the tower of a computer, which essentially holds everything inside. Without the CPU, the tower is nothing. In Altered Carbon, the sleeve is nothing without a disk. The sleeve is simply used in order to experience the environment.

Star Trek 

In the episode “Return to Tomorrow”, there is a slightly different approach to this mind, body, and brain. There are spheres that act as the brain and hold the mind, but the characters don’t consider the mind to be at its full potential without the body. When Captain Kirk initially hears Sargon’s voice after discovering a dead planet, we get somewhat of an eye-level shot of him (showcasing his confusion) as he says, “The planet is dead. There’s no possibility of life there as we understand life.” Sargon responds saying, “And I am as dead as my planet.” Sargon is technically not dead, as he is one of three “people” left from his planet, but he considers himself to be dead in the sense that he is there, but he has lack of experience. Sargon exists, but he has no body to experience the environment. In a later scene, Sargon’s wife goes to Sargon, she in Dr. Ann Mulhall’s body and him in Captain Kirk’s body, expressing concern about transferring their minds to the humanoid robots. She touches him and says, “Can two minds press close like this? Can robot lips do this?” It is clear that she values the capabilities of the human body in order to fully experience the mind’s reaction to the environment. This is similar to Distributed Cognition, in which the mind is how we experience the world around us- not our brains or bodies. Even though Sargon and his wife have “minds”, they feel as if they don’t have the full extent of it without bodies. With bodies, they have the 5 senses and can touch each other to experience a closeness that they can’t without their environment.

Futurama

In the episode “The Day the Earth Stood Stupid”, it is considered in the beginning that cognition is simply located in the brain. Leela escapes with Nibbler to his home planet after flying brains start attacking earth. After the Nibblonians eat food, Leela sits with them (and pets the cuties). She asks, “So why are these brain spawn attacking Earth Nibbler?” He responds and says, “The brain spawn hate all consciousnness. The thoughts of others screech at them like the forced laughs of a billion art-house movie patrons.” Another nibblonian adds on saying, “Thus they travel from world to world making everyone stupid in order to wipe out all thought in the universe.” Essentially, the brain spawn attack people’s brains in order to make them stupid, and therefore affect their cognition. It creates lack of thought. However, Leela proves this wrong as she uses her body in order to showcase her thoughts. When she arrives back on Earth, she tells Fry, “Brain! Brain make people dumb!” Fry replies saying, “No Leela, brain make people smart.” Out of frustration, she grabs him and spins him around so he can see the flying brains outside the window. Leela used her actions, therefore her body, to express her thoughts when she couldn’t explicitly share them through words. Her mind, body, and brain worked together. This is just like Embodied Cognition, as Leela shows that the body is involved in cognitive thought. It works with the brain to create our cognition. As stated in the Voicethread, the body isn’t something you have- you are the body.

All in all, all of the shows have different approaches with the mind, body, and brain, especially when it comes to the importance of the body in the cognition process.

In Altered Carbon bodies are viewed as “sleeves”. Sleeves are a body that the government can put anyone stack in. A stack is basically a small computer containing a person’s digital consciousness and is inserted into the back of the neck. Inserted into the persons spine, the medical person in me has to say it seems like the cervical spine of C4-C5. After Takeshi Kovacs wakes up after 250 years of being dead, he is put into a random sleeve that they had available at the time. The government gives what is available at the time and if you want a better sleeve or an upgrade you must pay for it. Showing how they think of bodies, that they are just vessels to hold our DHF: Digital human freight. It shows that if they keep the DHF safe, they can live in any sleeve- even multiple sleeves. Bodies are easily replaceable, but the mind is not. Once the chip that holds the DHF gets destroyed there is no way in saving that mind. That person is now considered officially dead. Just like a computer, if the motor board is safe and not broken it can be used in a different computer. The mind in this case is the chip that holds the DHF. The mind is the software, and the body is the hardware.

The episode of Star Trek “Return to tomorrow”, viewed bodies differently. A person’s body was seen more than just a vessel but something that was needed to live a life. A body can feel, touch and in the episode that was a big component. Having a brain full of knowledge is one thing but you’re not able to live life fully. For example, when the crew went to go see Sargon, the crew witnessed how these “peoples” mind was stuck in a sphere alien like object. They did not have a body to live in, there were stuck in this sphere.  All they wanted were bodies for them self’s and they wanted to create them by being in three crew members bodies. But once they were in the crew members bodies, they quickly fell in love their new borrowed bodies. Sargon even explained what it was like going into Jim’s body, he felt the air in his lungs, he saw things, and he felt his heart beating. The classic things our bodies do every day automatically and we don’t cherish that enough. We take something like breathing for granted.

Going back to the 4E cognition this is an example of embodied cognition because the idea that the mind is not only connected to the brain but that the body influences the mind. The idea that you need a body to live a complete life.  At first, I thought that Sargon felt more superior to the crew because he is light years more intelligent but once he was in a body, I could tell that it was an act and he missed feeling alive. Sargon stated that he needed a body to live again. Being stuck in a sphere is not living, it’s the bare minimum of being alive.  During the lecture this really stuck out to me, “a body is not something you have; it is something you are”. Showing that you won’t feel complete without a body to live experiences from.

At the end all he wanted to do was be able to kiss his wife one last time, to be able to touch and feel her kiss. Viewers were shown of their love for each other and how precious it is to feel and touch.

Lastly the show futurama really had me thinking on what this episode really meant about the body and mind. In this episode everyone who lived in earth became stupid. As the title of the episode suggests, but one character was not affected. Fry was not affected because he was seen as the most unintelligent character. When the brains came to earth, I instantly saw that everyone was looking up at these brains. The floating brains were higher than anyone there. And it showed to me that the brains wanted to feel like they were superior to the people living there. However, these brains did not speak. I thought that was comical considering to be intelligent people believe that you need to speak. The only brain that spoke was the “big brain”. He is the master mind behind all the other attacks on the planets. The big brain states “We have long since evolved beyond the need for asses”.  Demonstrating that he doesn’t need a body, his mind was far superior to anyone else’s. He was able to attack other planets and take over them without having a body.  Fry knew he needed to do something, he noticed he was alone, and everyone was now stupid. When Fry was thinking of ways to stop the big brain, he realized that the big brain was losing his powers and becoming substantially weaker and smaller. Demonstrating embodied cognition that the brain and body are needed; fry was able to beat the brain by thinking. When Fry thought more, he decided to write a story and that is what ultimately made the big brain loose and everyone turned back to their normal self’s.

As shown in all three episodes in different ways, we need a brain and a body to feel alive. without the other, we are not complete. That embodied cognition is not limited to the brain, rather we think through with our bodies. Being able to touch and feel something thru our bodies help us feel alive. If we just all were brains with no body, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy life to its full capacity. We think with and through our bodies and not just our mind.

The three episodes we watched this week allowed us to see different interpretations of cognition and whether or not bodies and brains work together as one entity or as separate entities. They were all quite different, but also similar because of the concept they were portraying.

In Altered Carbon’s “Out of the Past,” viewers were shown a completely different society full of people that essentially lived forever because they were controlled by a disk that encapsulated memories and knowledge. The idea of cybernetics was used greatly because the mind or the chip that was installed acted as the software and the physical body which was easily replaceable was the hardware. The body wasn’t important, just used as a form for the chip to live and experience life. The “software” could be running for years and years and never die off, unless destroyed, unlike a normal body.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Star Trek’s “Return to Tomorrow” was a bit similar in portraying the idea that a body was needed to live. Sargon was energy in the universe, but it was never able to experience life because without a body, thoughts weren’t able to fully exist. It was almost as if Sargon and all the other energies were trapped and had no real purpose. This made me think of a person who is in jail for a very long time. In jail, the person has thoughts and feelings, but their bodies are physically trapped and they can’t really experience life in a way that others can or in a way that they probably would like to. When Sargon first came into Jim’s body, he felt the air in his lungs, he saw things, he felt his heart beating (13 minutes)– it was something that as energy without a body, he would’ve never been able to experience. This is showing embodied cognition because the body and emotions are integrated into the cognitive system, so both are needed simultaneously.

Futurama’s “The Day the Earth Stood Stupid” also uses embodied cognition to show that brains and bodies are needed simultaneously. In this episode, brains that make people stupid take over the world and everyone but Fry was affected. The brain was winning, but it lacked one important thing… a body. Fry isn’t the smartest person in the show, but he had a brain, that wasn’t affected by the brain attacks, and a body of course. Fry was able to beat the brain by literally thinking. When the brain was beat and Leela came back to her senses, she felt “a bit better in cognitive faculties” (21 minutes).  The brain is a very strong in life, but the episode showed that without the body to complete the cognitive system, it was essentially useless. The cognitive system is made up from bodies and the brain and both are needed to experience a lived life.

In all three episodes, the idea of cognition being made up of some form of a body and brain were used to show full life. In the episodes, the brain concept was alive, but it didn’t have the body there to aid the life experience. I feel the episodes showed cognition as being embedded because the brain or the idea of a brain wasn’t able to be successful living on its own without a body. Yes, it could be there thinking, but it wouldn’t mean anything because no action or real experiences could take place. A brain in a vat, is just a brain in a vat. It doesn’t have any definite characteristics that make it a full on living thing that has the same experiences and motives as a brain in a body.