• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 393 0

judge distances while rolling up to, and firing their lasers at, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan aboard the Trade Federation ship. Droids also have memory storage capabilities, and can recall memories based upon present stimuli. When Jabba’s droid manager, EV- 9D9, notes that R2-D2 will make a fine addition to Jabba’s sail barge crew, he can do so only because he has a memory of the barge, the crew, the work detail, as well as a capacity to associate Artoo’s actions with the barge, crew, and work detail. C- 3PO knows “six million forms of communication,” has been on many adventures with Artoo, and is able to recount his past experiences to Luke—he even recounts the story of the previous Star Wars films to the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi. Furthermore, droids can solve problems. In Return of the Jedi, Artoo takes the initiative to open the door to the command center on Endor while he, Leia, and Han are under attack by stormtroopers. Artoo performs similar mechanical problem-solving when he gets the Millennium Falcon’s hyperdrive to work in The Empire Strikes Back and the Naboo Royal Starship’s shields up to escape the Trade Federation blockade in The Phantom Menace.

Finally, droids seem to be able to reason by deductively drawing conclusions and making inferences. Think of the holographic chess game played between Artoo and Chewbacca on board the Millennium Falcon in A New Hope, and Han’s comment that “droids don’t pull people’s arms out of their sockets when they lose. Wookiees are known to do that.” C-3PO comes to the conclusion that Artoo should choose “a new strategy. Let the Wookiee win.” This conclusion is arrived at by a process of reasoning that goes something like this:

1. Premise 1: If Artoo wins, my arms will be pulled out of their sockets.

2. Premise 2: I don’t want my arms pulled out of their sockets.

3. Conclusion: Thus, Artoo should let the Wookiee win.

Artoo also displays some clever deductive reasoning in his first conversation with Luke. He deceives Luke into removing his restraining bolt by falsely claiming that its removal will enable the image of Princess Leia to return, knowing how much Luke would want to see the entire message. The little manipulator appears to have reasoned his actions through quite well.

“I Am Fluent in Over Six Million Forms of Communication”

Just because something can reason does not mean that it is a person. A computer can be trained to reason in the same way that C-3PO does with Chewbacca, or Artoo does with Luke—making step-by-step calculations—yet, we would not consider a computer a person because of this capacity alone.92 Persons have the capacity for mental states and language. Mental states are a part of a human being’s psychological life and include such things as holding a belief, having a desire, feeling a pain, or experiencing some event.93

Probably the best way to understand what a mental state consists of is to close your eyes and think about experiences where you felt some pain, jumped for joy, or regretted a decision you made. First, think about the pain you experienced. Maybe it had to do with touching something that was very hot. Recall how that pain was all-consuming for its duration, how it lingered in your body, and how you thought, “Ow! That hurt!” (and maybe expressed some other choice intergalactic expletives). That was your pain, and no one else’s; only you could know what that pain was like. Only Han knows what his pain is like when the hydrospanners fall on his head in The Empire Strikes Back. All we can know is that he experienced pain based on his vocal expression: “Ow! . . . Chewie!”

Now, recall a time when you felt joy and elation over some accomplishment of your own or of someone else’s, like winning an award, or your favorite team scoring the winning goal in the last seconds of the game. Recall the experience: how you smiled, relished the moment, and wished that every moment could be like this one. Only Luke and Han know the joy of receiving a medal for heroism from the beautiful Princess Leia at the end of A New Hope—poor Chewie doesn’t get