Transcription
[Music] [Music] [Music] Star Trek, created by Gene Roddenberry in the 1960s, tells a story of explorers in the distant future searching for new life and new civilizations. It contains an optimistic view of the future, one in which Earth is a paradise and has joined with other planets to form a galactic diplomatic and peacekeeping organization called the United Federation of Planets.
The Star Trek franchise contains film, television, novels, comics, and other media. Though in recent years, it is most commonly associated with film. Star Trek is filled with sociopolitical themes and philosophy, particularly about how we can progress into a better society in the future. These include episodes about race relations, sexual orientation, and much, much more.
One philosophical question that flows through Star Trek may have even been by accident. To examine this, we need to look all the way back to the first century. Lucius Mestrius Plutarch, or Plutarch, was a Greek historian and essayist born in 46 AD. He famously wrote *The Lives of the Ancient Emperors*, *Moralia*, *Parallel Lives*, and many other texts that tell of great leaders and events of his era. Much of his writing has been lost over time, but what has survived has been an invaluable resource for learning about that time period.
As a philosopher, he was said to be more interested in moral questions rather than theoretical questions with little chance of an answer. And yet, a question he posed, one which is difficult to answer definitively, is that which will be discussed today. The Ship of Theseus can be found in Plutarch's *Life of Theseus*. In this story, a ship which holds Theseus and the youth of Athens returns from Greece. The ship's parts had to be replaced along the way, so much in fact that the ship became spare parts rather than the original parts.
The question is this: If a ship has all its parts replaced over time, everything from the oars to the planks, without any of the original parts left in the end, is it still the same ship? Is it still the original object? This leads philosophers to use the Ship of Theseus as an example of how to picture identity, how to examine the uniqueness of a person, and question the sum of our parts.
So how is any of this related to Star Trek? Well, if we as human beings are broken down and have all of our parts replaced or reformed, are we still the same person afterwards? Or did the original person die, only to be replaced by a new consciousness, a copy of the original? That actually leads us to two separate uses of the Theseus Paradox in Star Trek.
Beginning first with that of the Transporters. For those without a Star Trek technical manual, a brief explanation of the Transporters may be required. A transporter is a machine that moves an object from one place to another. This is accomplished, and forgive all the Trek speak here, by converting a person into an energy pattern, sending that person through subspace, and reconstituting the individual. It can also be used to transport non-living matter, but we, the audience, more often see people transported than shipments of dilithium. In essence, the transporter breaks down a person into millions of pieces and reforms them elsewhere.
There are a few problems with this. Firstly, if a person is torn into so many pieces, isn't that person dead, at least for a few seconds? That person has died, restructured later, yes, but still briefly dead. Secondly, is this person, once materialized, still the same person, or has a copy been made? Star Trek has been written by hundreds of writers over the years, and while they all try to remain true to canon, different minds write how the Transporters work. In one episode or one movie, the Transporters simply take someone's atoms and put them somewhere else. End of story. Yet, in some episodes of certain Star Trek series, it is more complex.
In a sixth season episode of *Star Trek: The Next Generation*, a transporter accident is revealed to have created two Will Rikers. When asked which one is the real Will Riker, it is simply said that they both are. The transporter made two instead of one. With this in mind, does that not mean that everyone who has gone through a transporter is a copy, a singular copy with the original gone? There is a lot of debate about this among Star Trek fans, both from a technology standpoint and philosophical, but if what some Star Trek fans say is true, every character who has stepped into a transporter is a copy of the original with the same memories. The person who stepped onto the platform is dead.
There is even another way in which the Ship of Theseus and identity factor into Star Trek. For the sake of making the next argument and having this be less confusing, let us assume for a moment that the Transporters really do send the original person somewhere and that everyone is who they appear to be once materialized. Every Star Trek character really is that Star Trek character from their first appearance to the last. Everyone. Perhaps except for Spock in *Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan*.
In order to save the USS Enterprise and her crew, Spock makes the ultimate sacrifice and ends up with lethal radiation poisoning. He has a brief conversation with his friend and Captain, James T. Kirk. He says the Vulcan motto and dies heroically. Shortly before this happens, however, Spock touches the face of Dr. Leonard McCoy and says, "Remember."
In *Star Trek III: The Search for Spock*, this is revealed to be Spock giving his Katra to Bones. Katra is a Vulcan's spirit, or soul, or if one wants to use less mystical phrasing, it is a Vulcan's memories and personality existing in brain waves. In *Star Trek III*, Spock's corpse is seemingly rejuvenated by the lifegiving Genesis device, originally designed to build planets but accidentally containing this additional side effect. His DNA is taken and reborn as a child who goes through rapid aging but conveniently stops aging to look exactly like Leonard Nimoy. Anyway, the person with Spock's DNA is somehow still called Spock, in spite of the fact that this feels more like a clone. Clones don't have the memories of their DNA donor.
Some Trek fans might say it is controversial to call this Spock a clone, but that is what it really seems to be presented as in the film without the script actually using that term. Spock, if one can actually call him that, is taken to Vulcan, where Bones transfers the original Spock's Katra, or soul, or brain wave patterns, into the new Spock body. We say that the new Spock is still Spock because if one believes in the immortal soul and that such an intangible thing is our real mind and not our brain, then it almost makes sense. But the Katra, as it is depicted in Star Trek, can't be the soul. This is not only because Star Trek is not science fantasy like Star Wars, but also because it simply does not add up.
If we pretend that the Katra is the soul, when Spock transfers said soul to Bones in *Star Trek II*, Spock should not be able to walk around, save the ship, and then say goodbye to his closest friend. He transfers a copy of himself into Bones, not everything that he is. It's just a copy of his memories. That's why he says "Remember" and not "Here's my soul."
With this in mind, in *Star Trek III*, Bones gives the brain copy of Spock into the body copy of Spock. But in both instances, what we get in the end of *Star Trek III* is not actually Spock. That means the character we see in *Star Trek IV* and all subsequent appearances by Spock in *Star Trek V*, *VI*, guest appearances in *The Next Generation*, and the two recent alternate universe Star Trek movies is not the original Spock. He died. He is dead. What we have left is a copy of brain wave patterns and a rapid growth clone.
Some would certainly argue against these two notions about the Transporters and Spock's death. That debate is welcome. There may be holes in the argument that Star Trek creates copies rather than transports and resurrects the dead, but the counterarguments often have even more holes. In science fiction, when we come to a question of technology, the explanation with the most scientific plausibility is closest to being correct, no matter how uncomfortable it may seem.
[Music] [Music] new box