Author: amyint

Finalizing on our last module is memories. I feel like it’s kind of fitting because likewise memories are bittersweet and so is having our last module for this class. It’s very poetic. In our last two films, “Marjorie Prime” and “The Measure of Man”, I see that memories are things that cannot be recreated. Physically, these films show that it is possible, but the experiences and emotions of it cannot be cloned.

In “Marjorie Prime”, we see that Marjorie has interactions with a holographic version of her late husband to ease her Alzheimers. The recreation of Walter is based off of Marjorie’s memories, maybe the best version of him that she wants to reimagine. While he knows the objective versions of each story, its essence is not the same. She even adds her own twists to each stories because the hologram absorbs everything that has been told to it. Therefore, the memories are not accurate and very subjective based on who is talking to hologram Walter. I think this relates to “Good Remembering” with the concept of subjective truth. While each person’s memories may be different due to their own personal experiences, this makes every persons’ truth to only be true to themselves. However, that doesn’t make the memory any less significant. For example, in the scene where Marjorie is telling hologram Walter on when they got engaged. She added many different details that were not part of the original memory, but it doesn’t decrease its significance because it was important enough for her to recall despite her Alzheimers.

In “The Measure of a Man”, the concept of transferring Data’s memories into the starbase mainframe is similar to hologram Walter. Even though Data is a cyborg and it is similar to a hologram, his networks and consciousness is personalized to himself. His experiences shaped his own memories, whereas with hologram Walter, others’ memories shaped its own memories. The argument between whether Data is a conscious being or not is brought up between Maddox and Picard, which leads me to make the own question. Emotions and memories make up one’s consciousness, and while Data is a cyborg, he seems to possess memories that are full of emotion and his own experience. While Maddox thinks that Data’s memories are stored and will be able to be rebooted, Data disagrees. This is similar to the Reconstructivits view of Memories where they are build by the mind. With Data’s own consciousness, he seems to have to process his memories like we do and put meaning to it. It seems to be influenced by his emotions, environment, and other factors, instead of just objectively taking it like a computer. Even computers have emotions I suppose.

I think the two pieces this week were the best ones we’ve ever watched and it is majorly because of “Inside Out”. I think it’s the cutest movie ever. So heart warming, yet heart wrenching at the same time. A masterpiece.

I believe “Inside Out” expressed the James Lange “Appraisal Theory of Emotions“, where Riley’s life was the chain of events that the Emotions could react to. In this sense, the Emotions controlled Riley and these were two separate cognitions. From how I interpreted the movie, Riley’s reaction to her environment was partly due to her own cognition, along with the Emotions. The movie makes them out to have a separate consciousness from Riley, but all serving the purpose of helping Riley respond in the best way she knows how or they think is best for her. Each Emotion controls an aspect of Riley and in turn makes up her Islands of Personality. While we learned concepts of emotion and cognition being intertwined, “Inside Out” shows emotions that are put upon us. For example, when Sadness and Joy are stranded from Headquarters, Riley seems to turn numb, unable to feel happiness or sadness. While Anger, Fear, and Disgust are still at Headquarters she is unable to feel 2/5 of her emotions that make up her personality. She ends up running away, but as soon as Sadness fixes her core memories and integrates sadness into them, Riley is able to experience joy again.  Sadness and Joy are the core Emotions that help her personalities exist, or more so to appreciate happiness while experiencing sadness. Without them, Riley is unable to achieve happiness or sadness without them. This shows that the Emotions control part of her cognition and is not integrated. The Emotions control her emotions, thus her emotions out of her command.

Crossing over to “Man of the People”, I really enjoyed this episode. It was quite interesting and the plot twist was INSANE. I feel like the concept of cognition and emotion being separated is once again seen. While Counselor Troi is an empath and takes in other people’s emotions, once Alkar has Troi go through with the funeral customs, her emotions are not her own. To be exact, the complex emotions she feels are her own, but an outside force is causing her to experience them. While she is usually calm headed and docile, Troi experiences very negative and forward emotions that cause her to fiend over Alkar. She can do so much better to be honest. In the scene while she is exercising in front of the mirror, her body seems to be taken control by something and she seems to touch herself as if she is experiencing it for the first time. It seems as though an outsider is experiencing her own body, thoughts, and emotions. This expresses a distinct distance from her cognition and emotions, and she becomes almost lifeless or possessed just as Riley did when she became disconnected from Sadness and Joy.

In both pieces that we watched, alien species come into contact with human civilization. The Heptapods and Tamarians use their own language majority of each film is spent trying to dissect and interpret their language that can be made sense from our perspective.

In “The Arrival“, the government along with Banks and Donnelly are attempting to understand the language of the heptapods. We see that they use frame shifting to and what they understand from the human language to transfer it over to the language of the aliens. Even before contact, this occurs between human like in the beginning when Banks is first shown the tape recording. She listens and asks, “How many?”. To this Colonial Weber asks “How many what?”. I think this can be viewed as frame shifting because within conversation there is a certain frame that it settles in. With continuing dialogue new pieces of information are usually given and in this sense we can see that Weber tries to piece together what Banks is asking, which is a form of frame shifting. This happens once more when the scientists are discussing how oxygen runs out rather quickly in the pod and it takes hours to regenerate. Donnelly responds with “Atmosphere”. We see the frame of the conversation shifting as Donnelly is introduced within and with the new information that is presented, they try to make sense of what he means by atmosphere. In the scene of initial contact, shifting of framework is once again seen when Banks holds up a white board that reads “human” on it towards the aliens. They respond with their own symbol of what is interpreted as humans. Another day, she goes in writing her own name on the board. The heptapods respond with a similar symbol, but it has a curve at the end. This puzzles Banks and her team and they start questioning what it could be. This is frameshifting as Banks assumes, “It might be a question based on the curve at the end”.

Frame shifting is seen once more in “Darmok” as the Enterprise makes contact with the Tamarians. The difference between conveying of the languages between the Enterprise crew and Tamarians show multiple frame shifting. They take new information from each other to try to fit in slots from their own perspective; one that makes sense to their own experience. The Tamarians form of conversation which is more allusions clash with the direct language of English. While our language is full of metaphors, their language is metaphors turned to reality as it can be literally seen and interpreted. This  highlights the different meanings which can be prone to be lost in translation. At the end, the Tamarians mark the whole experience with a new allusion that they keep as history, which sets a new frame and forms a new phrase.

In “Possessor” and Futurama‘s, “I Second That Emotion“, the seeming antagonists of both the pieces show apathy and even exhibit behaviors similar to sociopaths. Tasya Vos and Bender have a hard time socializing with others and being aware of the human experience. They seem to go about the world simply observing and reacting, without feeling any emotions.

With Vos’s line of profession, we see that she often has to become her victims in order to occupy their mind and body, living as them until she completes her mission. With countless times spent away from her personal life imitating actions of strangers, soon it shows the psychological effects weighing on her. Slowly she becomes detached from her identity reliving herself in her last victim until bits of her reality pulls her back out. Through our lecture we learned the term “theory of mind“, which is the ability to perceive and interpret others thoughts and actions separate from our own. Connecting it to the film, I personally see Vos having a hard time with this, possibly due to her immersiveness and inability to separate her own emotions from her victims. With the first victim, her tactic for murder is quite personal, stabbing instead of using the gun provided for her. With countless Criminal Minds episodes I’ve watched, stabbing someone, especially as many times as she did, shows a personal vendetta. Possibly, she might have inhibited her victim’s emotions and was not able to differentiate it from her own or it is a means to signify something greater in herself that she wants to kill. Nonetheless, going back into her own body, she has a hard time adjusting back to her identity and seems lifeless, practicing over and over again how to say hello to her son and husband. This shows great apathy and her inability to connect with human emotions, but due to her profession she is able to act as if she feels the way she should feel.

There are many moments of embodied cognition throughout the film as well. Due to Vos’s inability to feel her emotions, she uses embodied cognition with the body language of people around her to adjust accordingly and react normally. She acts as a parasite in her own body as it seems easier for her than taking time to get back in her own identity. As she inhabits Colin, she does this with the people around him as well. The turnover of the film shows Colin trying to take control of his body again. Now that Vos and his own identity are living together in his body, they seem to fight over dominance. Both have access to each other’s memories making it difficult to differentiate reality and illusion. With two minds in one body, they fight for control. However, Colin’s consciousness is full of empathy and normal human emotions, while Vos is without, so ultimately it seems to be a fight of empathy vs. apathy. In the end, Colin loses the fight with Vos in complete control of the body as she kills her son. Does this mean that apathy is stronger than empathy? Does having emotions signify a weakness in humans?

In turn, we see that Bender has no human emotions because he is a robot. However, we see this gets out of hand when he flushes Nibbler down the toilet. To reflect on his actions, the professor inserts an empathy chip into him that radiates on Leela’s frequency, allowing him to feel everything that she feels. Bender’s emotions after insertion shows empathy; he literally feels every single emotion that Leela does. He cries when she cries, gets angry with her, and even misses Nibbler. It is a great example of embedded cognition and theory of mind as well because of the connection to her. He is able to feel what she feels, but is able state that this is not his own emotions. In the end, it shows he was able to imitate his own feelings in response to Leela’s, but is still unable to actually feel emotions. Leela states she learned more from Bender than he did her, showing her preference to apathy. Does this make apathy better than empathy? Does empathy just get in the way of the human experience?

In all three episodes, the idea of cognition and the mind being able to survive millions of years is relevant. They take different approaches with this idea, yet the fragility and decline of the mind is taken far beyond with technology and science.

In Altered Carbon, with the use of cortical stacks places in the spine that have “pure human mind inside coded and stored as… digital human freight… consciousness can be downloaded into any stack, in any sleeve”. Relating back to our lecture, this plays upon the idea of cybernetics. The mind is no longer an unknown and the technology in this show takes us beyond any that we can comprehend. It breaks down the humanness of the mind and the fragility of it; the mind is the most powerful essence of the body. The only weakness varies upon injury of the stack, which is not a human error, but a technical one. Bodies are less valuable, replaceable upon every physical death, which is separate from a “real death”. The realness of death only settles in once the mind is destroyed, suggesting a the disconnection of mind and body. Through the main character, we can witness an embodied cognition because despite his new sleeve, his emotions and thoughts that he felt within his last body are still very prevalent even after its physical death.

Embodied cognition is shown again in Star Trek with the emphasis on the human experience that is only integrated through the body. As the crew touches down onto the unknown planet, they meet Sargon, Thalassa, and Henoch. They are minds inside a ball, expressing the idea of a brain in a vat. They seem to be more powerful, intricate, and intelligent than any race in the universe, yet lack touch. How does one find meaning in living without experience? One can only understand experience through understanding what it feels like to be a human. Sargon and Thalassa value of a body, which is opposite of the value of body in Altered Carbon. As Henoch is ultimately defeated, I believe it provides a greater message that the mind and body are interchangeable; ultimately, one cannot survive without the other. Henoch’s plan to simply exchange suits of armor to survive in is not enough for the minds to survive in, highlighting that the human experience and body are just as important as cognition.