The first show I watched was Star Trek. In the episode, “Return to Tomorrow”, the crew of the Enterprise encounter a planet that was decimated by a cataclysmic event. Eminating from the planet’s center (an example of extended-cognition) is a voice called Sargon who asks Captain Kirk, accompanied by Spock, McCoy, and Dr. Mulhall, to beam down to the planet. When they beam down, the crew finds Sargon speaking through an orb asking Kirk to allow him to take control of his body. Through Emboddied Cognition, Kirk touches Sargon’s orb and Sargon transfers his consciousness into Kirk’s body.
Through Kirk’s voice, it seems that Sargon feels immense freedom after being “trapped” in his orb for half a million years. He goes on to explain that Kirk’s mind has an insuffcient amount of energy for him to speak freely while Sargon is in control and his energy is too powerful for Kirk’s body to handle which, according to McCoy and Dr. Mulhall, will result in Kirk’s death. In this episode, I feel as if Sargon has an appreciation for Kirk’s well-being in that he factors in the emboddied relationship between mind and body–this being the health and safety of Kirks body as it effected by Sargon’s mind.
The next show I watched was Altered Carbon with the episode titled “Out of the Past”. 250 years after being shot and killed, Takeshi Kovacs wakes up in an entirely new body called “a sleeve”. While doctors prep Kovacs’ new body, a voice over states: “Your body is not who you are. You shed it like a snake sheds its skin. Leave it, forgotten, behind you.” This quote is a direct contrast to the basis of Embodied Cognition which says “a body is not something you have, but something you are.”
Compared to “Return to Tomorrow”, the relationship between the mind and the body “Out of the Past” is vastly contrasted. In this episode, the body is seen as disposable whereas the mind is seen as something that can essentialy transcend permanent death by being placed into new bodies. It seems the mind is the only constant in this relationship.
The last show I watched was Futurama with the episode titled “The Day the Earth Stood Stupid”. This episode, unlike Star Trek and Altered Carbon, is an example of the concept of the “Brain in a Vat”.
In one particular scene from the episode, the Big Brain, who is a member of a collective brain conciousness trying to wipe out all thoughts in the universe, transports Fry and Leela to “a mental realm” which lies in each book. In this scenario, the Big Brain would be the mad scientist and the act of him transporting Fry and Leela to different mental realms is an example of the creation of virutal stimuli that is being fed directly to their brains. As the Brain in a Vat concept states, the brain would register all these stimuli in exactly the same manner as normal human experiences. We see this as Fry and Leela can interact different objects and environments within each realm.
First of all I just would like to say the episodes we watched really had me thinking. How does my mind actual interact with my body? Are they separate entities that support each other? Can one really exist without the other? These are just the few questions that circulated my mind as I watched these episodes.
I started off watching the “Out of the Past” episode from Altered Carbon (I am definitely watching the rest of this show). The show takes place in the future so of course they have developed a way to live longer… however it’s a very interesting take. They literally take the consciousness or the mind and put it in a stack where essentially the body comes disposable after. I feel like this encompasses the concept of cybernetics because essentially this stack is like computer software which can be transferred over to a new sleeve (body). Therefore the body is essential because the stack can’t continue without a new sleeve. This shows how the body is a necessity to the mind as it provides the necessary feedback for the mind to continue.
The scene above really shows this transfer from on sleeve to another. It’s really trippy. I feel this scene is like a computer going through an update. The mind which has just been placed into a new body and it is updating to adjust to this new body. I mean talk about a long update!
The “Return to Tomorrow” episode from Star Trek: The Original Series was next on my list. For me, it really reflected the thought of 4e cognition. But in particular embodied cognition was highlighted throughout the episode. In particular when the mind entity of Sargon transmitted into Captain Kirk’s body, it was almost as if Sargon felt euphoric to be in a body once again. He is so happy to finally feel all his sensorimotor capabilities and how desperately he needs it which is what embodied cognition represents.
We can’t have our mind and the emotions without a body to really feel all those emotions. Which is why Sargon so desperately needs help in order to regain his body again. To me it makes sense, I would not want to exist without actually being able to physically feel. It is a necessity.
The last stop for me was the Futurama episode, “The Day the Earth Stood Stupid.” Now first I feel like I went from very realistic and probably to very unrealistic and not possible. I mean after all it is Futurama. I feel like here we really see that common concept of the “Brain in a Vat.” I mean after all the big brains say it all. The brain essentially is suspended in a vat as it is floating around in what appears to be liquid. Here the mind is separate from the body and is located only in the brain which is why the these big brains have immense power and able to take over.
Really though…this is Futurama so I can’t fully take it seriously.
I will say though all these episodes allow me to really explore the concepts of the mind and body and that relationship. It really does make me question which is more important or if they are equally important. I mean its a trip which I don’t think we will ever have a solid answer for.
The three episodes for this module, Altered Carbon, “Out of the Past,” Futurama, “The Day the Earth Stood Stupid,” and Star Trek, “Return to Tomorrow,” are all centered around the brain and cognitive function both in and outside of the body.
In Altered Carbon, the body is considered a sleeve into which different individuals’ consciousness can be uploaded. The consciousness is not a physical brain but more like embedded cognition that comes in the form of a cortical stack (disc) inserted into the spinal column of an interchangeable sleeve (body). A person can stay alive for eternity moving from sleeve to sleeve, as long as the cortical stack remains intact; if it is destroyed, death is permanent. A short scene in this episode stuck out to me the most. A young girl was killed by a hit-and-run driver, and the government told the family they would receive a new sleeve for their deceased child. When this young girl received her sleeve, she was embedded into an old woman even though she was no older than 8. When the parents complained, they were told that she was lucky to have received any sleeve at all, and if they wanted an upgrade, they were welcome to pay for one; if not, just to shut up and go away. When the little girl heard this, she cried and said no, she did not want to go back into the dark. This scene made me realize that the show’s foundation was not about the physical body and the connection to its consciousness but the power of the consciousness as it correlates to any physical form.
I am a Futurama fan, though I haven’t watched it for quite some time this episode, “The Day the Earth Stood Stupid,” was one of my favorite ones. This episode starts at a talent competition for the people in New New York after the talent show concludes, Leela is attacked and escapes floating brains bent on making people on Earth stupid. The brains achieve this, and everyone but Frye is turned stupid, and that is because Frye is already stupid, so it doesn’t work on him, which makes this episode hysterical. In this episode, there is no connection between a body and the brains that have attacked earth. According to the Niblonians, the brains hate all consciousness and want to make everything in the universe stupid. I feel like this episode would be considered extended cognition because the brains can create stupidity in any living being and do not possess bodies or need them to create destruction.
I am not a Trekkie. However, I have some family members that grew up loving Star Trek, and I do remember watching a few episodes at family get-togethers. In this episode, “Return to Tomorrow,” the USS Enterprise happens upon a new planet whose inhabitants are so powerful they direct the Enterprise to its location. According to the ship’s system, the planet has been dead for half a million years, but a voice that can read thoughts and communicate with or without words tells Captain Kirk and his crew that this is not true; life is on his planet. Captain Kirk is inhabited by an alien after being coerced to beam to the planet he and his crew were led too. This episode would define embodied cognition because once the alien inhabits Captain Kirk, he is so enamored with Captain Kirk’s body with the heartbeat and the air filling his lungs. These beings need bodies to survive; unlike the brains in the Futurama episode, their survival depends on physical form.
The episodes we watched this week all delve into the split between the mind and the body. Alva Noe said “you are not your brain” but these episodes all conceptualize the brain as independent consciousness, beyond the body.
Altered Carbon explicitly states, “Your body is not who you are, you shed it like a snake sheds it’s skin, leave it, forgotten, behind you.” But the episode seems to grapple with this statement. On one hand there are very cybernetic theories at play. The mind, people’s consciousness are downloaded into other bodies(sleeves). While Bancroft explains his “murder” to Kovacs its all very analytical, like a computer he is backed up to an orbiting satellite feed, he is theoretically immortal as long as his backup remains intact. This approach to consciousness appears to embrace the duality between mind and body, that the body is just imprisoning the mind and easily switched, because the consciousness is the core of the person not the body. However, there are many instances within the show that seems at odds with this thought, taking a more embodied approach to cognitions – that left me with so many questions. The most obvious variance from cybernetics is the conscious tie to the body as a form of the human identity. When Kovacs wakes up, he is told not to look at his reflection because he risks schism/a psychotic break. An Identity crisis seems like a logical assumption for someone suddenly inside a different body. So much of a person’s identity rests on their appearance, race, age, gender, perceptions. The consciousness is affected by the body’s production of hormones which fully displays this embodied conscious theory. When Ortega is speaking in the precinct, she states the envoys can “drop into any sleeve and be combat ready in minutes.. absorb local language culture and customs” This is where I have questions, were the languages and culture and customs a part of the sleeve’s knowledge, it seems like the envoy is merging their own consciousness with the remnants of the body’s conscious. For the first episode, I would need to see more of how this is explained but if that were the case, it would be interesting to see how the merged consciousness affects the stacked conscious.
What was interesting in the Futurama episode is the similarities between the brains race and the nibblonian race. These are 2 presumably far superior and ancient intellectual races. While the nibblonians were intelligent and perceptive enough to send nibbler to earth in an effort to save the galaxy from the brains, they are driven to an almost compulsory need for food. Plato would consider them a slave to their bodily needs, even in the direst situation they are easily distracted and influenced by ham. The brains, however, claim to be so advanced they have evolved “far beyond asses” yet they are said to be driven by pure hate – Plato associates emotions within the confines of the body – so it doesn’t fit in with the cartesian dualist theory that they would be motivated by emotion rather than any reason/logic. It’s interesting that the 2 ancient intellectual races seem to be driven by more primal needs.
In the Star Trek episode, we are introduced to another superiorly intellectual race, they had transmitted their consciousness out of their bodies, however when Sargon takes over Captain kirk’s body he breathes in and feels, and exclaims “to be again” almost completely diverging from Descartes exclamation, for centuries Sargon has been thinking – however, only once he is in a body and can see and feel again, does he consider himself as “being”. Similarly Henoch goes against plato’s perception of the body as the mind’s prison. When he is trying to convince Thalessa to steal the body, he calls the unfeeling bots they were creating a prison, trapping them out of a living/feeling body. I find these overt departures from the cartesian dualist theory important it denoting that humans/people are beyond just thoughts, we are a collection of our senses, our environment our bodies, our perceptions and our thoughts. This episode truly highlights what it means “to be”.
When analyzing the different viewpoints of the brain and the mind, it is easy to see that the brain is a pretty strong organ. The cognition of the power of our own brain may even be too hard to fully understand. The three episodes that we watched in this module may have given us a little bit of a clue of the power that the brain has when considering it through different perspectives.
Futurama
In the episode, “The Day the Earth Stood Stupid,” we see, “The Brain in a Vat,” example throughout the episode. Since the brains and Big Brain have the power to not only exist on their own outside of a human body, but also make the humans in the episode stupid, it shows the power of the brain and how the brain is the mind and can survive on its own. This is shown when Big Brain says to Fry, “We have long since evolved beyond the need for asses.” Big Brain doesn’t have an ass or anything other part of the body for Fry to kick. Just like, “The Brain in a Vat,” example, the organ can survive, have its own mind, and live its own life without the need of a human body. In this scenario, it seems that the episode is suggesting that the mind is actually stronger than the brain. If the brain has the power to make other humans stupid, then it must be stronger than the human body itself, right? 4E Cognition wouldn’t agree though considering the brain is only part of cognition. I agree because I doubt we would be able to think the same without our brain in our body lol.
Altered Carbon
The next episode that I watched was, “Out of the Past,” which represented the idea of Cybernetics and how the mind is like a computer. It was interesting to see how the episode used the cortical stacks to represent one’s mind, and how although one’s body can die, if the cortical stack is ok, or the mind, then it can just be placed in another sleeve, or body, and still work the same way it used to. It’s kinda like if a car were to crash, but the engine remained in tact, then you could essentially take that engine and put it into another car, and the car would be able to drive as the old one did. This analogy shows that the mind and body can be viewed as separate. It also correlates with Cybernetics because the cortical stacks (mind) is like the hard drive of a computer, and if the hard drive of a computer remains in tact, you could take the hard drive from one computer and use it in another. At the beginning of the episode, the woman says, “your body is not who you are.” Basically she’s referring to one’s mind and cognition as a person’s identity. Therefore, you could pass your mind from one body to the other, and you would still be you–just like a computer’s hard drive. The body in, “Out of the Past,” are just referred to as sleeves or something that holds your mind.
Star Trek: The Original Series
In the episode, “Return to Tomorrow,” we are able to see an example of Embodied Cognition. Part of the Embodied Cognition idea is that, “cognition depends upon the kinds of experience that come from having a body with various sensorimotor capacities.” Sargon, Thalassa, and Henoch, which are basically minds that were left without a body and are being held in spheres, need the bodies of Kirk, Mulhall, and Spock in order for them to basically construct their own bodies for their minds. Through the experiences of Sargon, Thalassa, and Henoch while they were using the other’s bodies, we can see the idea that Embodied Cognition has in regards to how, “bodies and emotions are integrated into our cognitive systems, not separate from it.” While Thalassa was in Mulhall’s body, she states that she forgot, “what it felt like to even breathe again.” Simply put, these minds that were inside of these spheres without a body were not actually living without bodies, as they had forgotten what it felt like to be alive inside of a body. So, our bodies help our minds have cognition.
All of these ideas and theories were pretty crazy to consider when watching these episodes. Can’t wait for the rest of the course.
In the first episode “Out of the Past”, Takeshi Kovacs is awakened 250 years after being killed. As he looks at his reflection for the first time, he sees his new body (“sleeve”). When you die you are given a new “sleeve” but your brain is kept in a disk that keeps the mind of the individual. This is similar to Cybernetics in which the mind is thought of as a computer, the mind being the software and the body the hardware. Although the mind is being treated as separate from the body, there’s a moment towards the end of the episode where Kovacs gets a dragon tattoo on his forearm, similar to the dragon tattoo covering his back in the beginning of the episode in his old sleeve. There’s still a connection between his body and mind, his new body is missing what his old body had, a tattoo, an individual’s self-expression on their body. Another similar scene was the seven year old girl in an old woman’s body. Her awkward demeanor in the beginning of the episode is further explained when her father brings up the unfairness of her situation, as she was killed in a hit-and-run. There is a connection with one’s body to one’s mind, as she does not feel connected to this older person’s body.
In Star Trek: The original series
In the episode “Return to Tomorrow,” the characters are flying through space and they encounter a talking-sphere on a different planet. However, what they encounter are the minds of three “people” that are considered to be dead on a dead planet. The characters acknowledged that there is “energy but no substance…matter without form is impossible.” The three minds of Sargon, Thalassa, and Henoch transfer into the body’s of Captain Kirk, Spock, and Dr. Mullhall. When they transfer, they are in awe as to what it feels to be “alive” again. They can feel their lungs expanding as they breathe, and their heart pumping. Sargon and Thalassa embrace, touching and caressing as husband and wife. They are using the physical and social world around them to further express their feelings towards each other. Thalassa reminds Sargon that if they decide to live life without a body, their bodies won’t be able to touch, or kiss.
Futurama
In the episode “The Day the Earth Stood Stupid,” the brain spawns attack planets by making the people in them more stupid. The brain is portrayed similar to “The Brain in a Vat” experiment, in which a brain would function on its own without a body. The brains roam freely and “live” on stimulation and the big brain even states, “We have long since evolved beyond the need for asses,” implying that they are deemed superior because they are able to function without a body. Having to need a body is deemed as inferior and beneath them.
I enjoyed watching the three different episodes this week. There were clear points/scenes in each episode that immediately reminded me of our topic this week about the body and the mind. It’s interesting how in Star Trek the body was as important as the mind otherwise you might as well be dead. In Futurama, the brain was seen as elevated compared to the body, and needing a body was seen as inferior. In Altered Carbon, the mind is what makes you your own person, and yet they don’t feel like their own person when they are in a new sleeve.
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.
After watching these three films, I have a conjecture; if cognitive functions can be transplanted into new physical bodies like computer chips, will no one die? If cognition is not a reality but only a part of the brain that directs the body’s movement, can this cognitive function be like the computing function of a computer? Can it be separated from the “hardware” of the brain’s physical structure and become a kind of detachment from the body? “software”?
“Out of the Past” Altered Carbon
Its highlight is that it introduces the concept of cortical stack and sleeve. In the future, everyone will be implanted with a cortical stack when people are one year old; inside is the pure human mind, coded and stored as DHF: Digital Human Freight. If you are killed, as long as the cortical stack is not damaged, you can be resurrected with a prosthetic body. This cortical stack is a bit like the U disk we use now. As long as the cortical stack is not corrupted, the mind can be imported into anybody like data. Consciousness can be transmitted, people will have a new sleeve/body, and human beings will live forever, but human nature is unchanged. For example, Bancroft, the richest man in the world, became “God” because his consciousness is immortal. The physical body is just a carrier. Cognition and consciousness can be digitized, copied, and downloaded to a new carrier anytime. Here, As Viocethread said, the body is more associated with women, people of color, and gay people; the body is a commodity, and there are different types, and the mind becomes the data stored in the USB flash drive. Losing the USB flash drive is death.
“Return to Tomorrow.” Star Trek.
The episode “Return to Tomorrow” is similar to “Out of the past.” Mind and cognition can be stored in any container, including spheres that act as brains to hold the mind, but the characters believe that without a body, the mind cannot reach its full potential.As Captain Kirk and the rest of the crew heard Sargon’s voice in a sphere, we got some visual footage of him (showing their confusion); Sargon said: “I am Sargon. Sealed in this receptacle is the essence of mind. A body much as yours. Although our minds were infinitely greater.” Sargon also showed that he could transmit his consciousness to the captain through a light beam. In a later scene, Sargon’s wife goes to Sargon, Sargon’s wife is in the Doctor’s body, and Sargon is in Captain Kirk’s. While it is theoretically believed that we cannot put our minds in our brains or bodies, cognition occurs through our interactions with the environment, and awareness extends from our brains and bodies into the atmosphere. We think in terms of context, including contextual cultural context and social or interpersonal context. Therefore, cognition is always abstract. In this cognition, the mind is how we experience the world around us – not our brain or body. So Sargon and his wife have consciousness and mind and can be embedded in any container; they are immortal.
“The Day the Earth Stood Stupid.” Futurama
In the episode “The Day the Earth Stood Stupid,” it is fascinating to show that the brain is itself. The mind in Voicethread is not necessarily our body; the brain is the organ of thought and exists in neural networks. In this episode, the gains brain begins to attack Earth, and Leela escapes with Nibbler to his home planet. This scene takes a “brain in a vat” approach to the concept of cognition. The brain can think freely without the need for a body, has enormous power over people’s brain waves, and it’s clear here that the brain becomes a flying organ that relies entirely on neurostimulation. Utterly inconsistent with the Cartesian dualism that there are two different fundamental entities in the world, mind and body. The essence of the reason is to think, be conscious and perform other mental activities. The nature of objects is that they are in space and have extensions. The biggest flaw in dualism is that it doesn’t explain how body and mind are united, or rather, it doesn’t explain how body and soul (mind) interact with each other.
In the show Altered Carbon, Takeshi Kovacs wakes up 250 years later after being resurrected from his death. He wakes up in a whole new body called a “sleeve”. “Sleeves” are the new bodies that one wakes up to after dying and you look different from your last body but your brain in still intact. This goes with what we learned in this week’s lecture because one of the terms we learned was called , Embodied Cognition. Cognition does not occur in a disembodied mind but is an embodied process. To quote the slide, “A body is not something you have; it is something you are.” I think this related to the episode because Takeshi was put into a different body, however, his emotions and personality are still intact. His “body” is who he is because both of his sleeves were nicely built guys that play along with his soldier like traits. When he first wakes up, after fighting the doctors he asks for a mirror and sees his old body in the reflection for a second before seeing his new self. Our bodies and emotions are integrated into our cognitive system, not separate from it.
In Futurama, the episode was about how brains were taking over the plants and making everyone dumb. Fry then has to stop the brains by using his own brain. He goes against the biggest brain of all and has to actually think of a plan to stop it. He reads a book to it and defeats the big brain. I feel that this episode of Futurama contributed to “The Brain in a Vat” concept and Embodied Cognition. “The Brain in a Vat” concept connects with the episode for the reason that the floating brains in the episode “made up” their own worlds by making other planets dumb which is similar to the experiment where the scientist would create an entire fictitious world that he captive brain would feel normal. Embodied Cognition also goes with this episode because the slide from the lecture explains how we don’t notice the thinking our bodies do. We think with and through our bodies. I’ve only seen a few episodes of Futurama to know that Fry isn’t the smartest character but he unknowingly used his brain to save his planet.
In the Star Trek episode, this voice appears and as the crew investigate, they find a device that contains a mind; Sargon’s mind. Sargon then takes over Captain Kirks body and starts to reminisce as if he were re-enjoying having a body again. He also got a chance to rekindle his with his wife. I think this goes with 4e Cognition because it shows that being just a brain isn’t enough. You need your body to express emotions physically, you need your 5 senses. To quote the lecture, “Cognition is embedded, always occurs and is often off-loaded onto, a physical and social environment.” The body is such an important factor in every thought and decision one makes.
Fun fact: the brain is the only organ to have named itself…
*Vsauce noises*
Did the brain really name itself, or did we, an outside force, name it? Well, having watched the three assigned TV shows, I can safely say that I frankly have no clue. In any case, it doesn’t change the fact that each episode has a unique way of viewing the brain/mind.
Altered Carbon has been sitting on “My List” on Netflix for months now, and I’m glad I had the opportunity to watch it. I’m a sucker for cyberpunk settings, and the shows portrays it very well (I’m planning on continuing it). In any case, the show takes a more cybernetic approach to the brain. To quickly summarize, since folks have covered this already, people can transfer their consciousness into a different body after they die. This body is called a sleeve. Inside their nape, they have cortical chips, which “hold” their memories, feelings, senses of touch, etc. Takeshi Kovacs is transferred into a body 250 years after his death. He is hired to solve the murder of Laurens Bancroft because of his status as an Envoy.
Cortical Stack, Real Life Replica
In this universe, people can solve their own murders by simply being transferred into a different body and telling the police who killed them. Very neat, right? Not only do they get a new body for free, but they also imprison the ones who took their lives. Actually…well, it’s a bit more complicated than that. Very early on, the show makes a point of this. We see a very young girl “sleeved” into an elderly woman’s body.
Cindy (7 years old), meeting her parents in an older body.
Apparently, despite having a right to a free sleeve, Cindy only gets “what’s in inventory”. The only way they could get her in a body fitting her age is to pay for an upgrade (this is obviously a ploy get rid of old sleeves, since the government could easily give a body appropriate for a child).
Now, this raises an interesting dilemma. Cindy being in an older body terrifies her, and her parents are equally terrified. This shows just how important one’s body is to themselves. Cindy cannot properly process what she is going through; her entire cognitive system is disrupted, because the body once holding her, the body that used to express her emotions and thoughts through gestures, is gone, replaced with a body that has a handful of years ahead of it. How does a child live with that fear, that despite her being mentally young, she is physically old?
How would you feel if you suddenly were transferred into an older body? Or maybe even a younger body? Sure, you’d be physically younger, but you’d be barred from a lot of activities you can do as an adult, and you’d, perhaps, have to go through high school, or even college again.
That scene is directly at odds with Cartesian Dualism. We are not just our minds; we are our bodies, too. They’re much more important to us than we think.
On the other hand, the scene where Laurens Bancroft meets Takeshi suggests the opposite.
Laurens Bancroft
He tells Takeshi that he always backs up his “mind” in a satellite orbiting Earth. Almost like his mind is a hard drive. He very casually says this like it’s not a big deal, and he doesn’t seem fazed by the fact his old body is gone, since he presumably has gone through other bodies, too. He is extremely comfortable with this, perhaps because he knows all his knowledge and emotions will be safely stored and good for use, regardless if his cortical stack gets destroyed. Unfortunately for him, his stack was destroyed before his memory was backed up (otherwise, no plot).
The Netflix show is ambiguous in that it doesn’t take one stance. Some people are comfortable with a new body, since their minds are the safe. Others need a body that fits them mentally (like Cindy).
This is not the case with Futurama, which, for the record, I’m glad was an assigned episode. The animation sees the brain/consciousness as an independent entity, Quite literally. There are flying brains making people stupider.
Mr. Brainley painting a fence…please tell me you get the reference
Big Brain, the leader of the flying brains, makes fun of humanity’s need for bodies, very bluntly saying, “We have long since evolved beyond the need for asses” when Fry tells him, “I’m here to kick your ass”. This episode takes a “brain in a vat” approach to the idea of cognition. Big Brain can freely think without the need for a body, and has immense power of people’s brain waves, mostly likely because he evolved outside of a body, like he claimed. The episode reduces the brain to just a flying organ relying solely on neural stimuli. Safe to say, Cartesian Dualism would not fit here.
I just realized I’m theorizing about a gag cartoon…
In all seriousness, this is the most disagreed on way of looking at the brain. Most modern philosophers, especially those in support of 4e Cognition, would immediately disagree and say that we need both the body and mind to fully feel “human”.
And this is excellently highlighted in the Star Trek episode. Now, for whatever reason, I had the blasphemous idea that Star Trek copied Star Wars. If I offended someone with that sentence, no need to get your pitchforks, I already punched a hole in my wall and put my hollow head in there.
Quick plot summary: the Star Trek crew are floating through space (as one does as a pass-time activity) when their radio waves are intercepted by a male voice that calls himself Sargon. The voice is coming from a seemingly “dead planet”, with a toxic atmosphere and all the rest. The crew decide to go to the source of the voice, and they find a spherical storage device that holds Sargon’s mind. He claims he cannot see or feel, and that he is as “dead as [his] planet”.
Sargon talking to the crew
Eventually, he transfers himself into Captain James Kirk’s body and makes a big deal about feeling human again: “Lungs filled with air again. To see again. Heart pumping, arteries surging with blood again. A half a million years. To be again.”
Similarly, when his wife, Thalassa is put into Ann Mulhall’s body, she says, “I’d forgotten what it felt like even to breathe again”.
This episode puts heavy emphasis on the body, how important it is to make someone feel alive, complete. It suggests that a person must have both to properly function, however, not as much emphasis is put on the psychological consequences of having a body after a long time without it, as seen in Altered Carbon. At the same time, the show tells us that it is possible to live as this body-less entity, so long as your thoughts are preserved in a form of storage. But it’ll not feel the same as having a body.
So, you can have your brain in a vat, so to speak, but you will never get the full experience unless you possess a body…which I hope all of you do…you do, right? None of you are flying brains, right? Please tell me at least one of you is so I can excuse this cringe humor.
Ahem.
I enjoyed all three of the episodes, though Star Trek’s music nearly made my ears bleed because of the volume and the distortion that comes with old school film. Looking forward to the rest of the modules.
