Darth Wedgius wrote: ↑Mon Dec 31, 2018 8:43 am
IMHO dogs are already sentient, that is they have a subjective experience and have feelings. Of course we'll never know for sure. Dogs certainly have intelligence (again, IMHO), but it's certainly not to the level of a typical human adult's. If a dog in Trek were enhanced somehow to the point of getting 90 on an IQ test, and applied for Federation citizenship...? Would the dog be entitled to keep any tips she earned rescuing children from wells?
But I think intelligence may be easier to test for than sentience. How do you objectively determine that someone has a subjective experience? Telepathic or empathic abilities aside, I suppose,this being a setting where Spock can mind-meld with an alien probe and Troi seemed to sense Lal's emotions.
I should have used some other analogies to build up my point. Yeast has a similar biochemistry to human cells but obviously has the wrong behaviour to be sentient or intelligent etc. Now they don't have nerve cells, so we can move up to sponges (not sure if any sponges have nerve cells), starfish (star fish not only have nerves but concentration of nerves in their star point, I am pretty sure starfish are smarter than sponges despite what Sponge Bob Square Pants may suggest), insects and so on up the ladder. We can even talk about humans with working brains that are somehow in a dreamless sleep, coma etc.
My point is that you can define a set of similar causes of behaviour (similar biology, neurology etc.) but that will not be sufficient to get the rights, regards etc. at stake in a debate like that of Measure of a Man, because the causes must create the right sort of behaviour (the ability to vote requires both a recognition of your right to vote and a voting behaviour). Also their is an ambiguity between behavior and structure, so yeast does not have neurons (or indeed multiple cells) so you can say that is the not the right cause however it behaves, but as we move up to more complex organism the kind of neurology you get out and the behaviour becomes difficult to disentangle . You can't just say well it lacks this structure or this function so it can't be intelligent or it has this structure so it must be intelligent and so on.
In terms of Measure of a Man I can imagine ways to make the exposition etc. around a comparison of human neurology and Data's positronic brain theoretically interesting (like a documentary about brain science), but we don't know enough about brain science or positronic brains to make such a doc and while it might be interesting making it dramatic is harder to imagine. Whereas exploring the output of Data's brain , the way he behaves or not like a self-aware, intelligent being does seem to me have the potential to be dramatic because we can identify it and bring out these characteristics in a way that uses action and tension between opposing sides etc.
In terms of having subjective experience, my view is if having subjective experience is the best explanation of its behaviour believe that. So again its my application of the idea if I don't know that the computer, alien or whatever is lying to (or otherwise misleading) me believe it.
Note telepathy does not work on all species (or at least Betazoid telepathy does not work on all species). So Troi can't sense Quark's emotions, does that mean he does not have any?
Although as has been pointed out if it is a school league, the player might have to be a student in good academic standing at the relevant school. In an adult league the dog might have to be 18 or something a pretty unlikely age for a dog and so. So there may not be a rule that the dog can't play but there may be rules about who can play that will tend to exclude dogs.
Edit: Note the reference to Measure of a Man in About a Girl review occurs around 14:20 in that review. It is just one off-hand sentence as I earlier said, hope that helps...
