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Finally, think of a decision you made that you have come to regret. You believe now that you could have made a different, better decision back then. And now, having thought about it, it may cause you pain. Surely many such regrets passed through the dying Anakin Skywalker’s mind after his redemption at the end of Return of the Jedi.

These three experiences seem to get at the idea of a mental state because they entail beliefs, emotions, desires, and intentions. It would seem that only members of the human race experience such mental states. We don’t have any evidence of other animals realizing that their pain is their pain, relishing moments, thinking back to past events with regret, or looking forward to future events with joy and anticipation.94

The capacity for language is another qualification for being considered a person. Language is a tricky thing to understand, and many people think that each kind of animal has its own language, including bees, ants, apes, dolphins, and even Tauntauns (just to name a few). We must distinguish, though, between communicating some information and speaking a language. Whereas communicating some information does not require having mental states, speaking a language does entail mental states. When speaking a language, it seems that more than mere information is communicated; beliefs, desires, intentions, hopes, dreams, fears, and the like are relayed from one person to another.

Many beings can communicate information by relaying some useful data back and forth to one another. All animals do this to some extent. A bee is not speaking to another bee when doing his little bee dance in order to communicate information about where pollen is located outside of the hive. I know this is going to sound controversial, but even apes who have been taught sign-language are not speaking (using a language) to their trainers; they merely are associating stimuli with stored memories. As far as we know, no bees or apes have experiences of joy, hope, or anticipation to communicate.

Do droids have capacities for mental states and language? There are plenty of examples of droids apparently engaged in behaviors expressive of mental states and language. One glaring example is the torturing of a droid at Jabba the Hutt’s palace in Return of the Jedi. When the droid’s “feet” are burned, the little guy appears to know what is going on, anticipates the pain he’s going to experience, and screams in pain and terror when the hot iron is lowered. (Interestingly enough, one also gets the sense that the droid administering the torture is enjoying what he’s doing.)

C-3PO expresses emotions himself on numerous occasions. Before getting into an escape pod with Artoo he claims, “I’m going to regret this.” On Tatooine he despairs, “How did we get into this mess … We seem to be made to suffer; it’s our lot in life.” After reuniting with Artoo in the Jawa sandcrawler, Threepio exclaims, “R2-D2! It is you! It is you!” When Luke comes back to discover Artoo has gone off to look for Obi-Wan Kenobi, he finds Threepio hiding (expressive of shame) and begging not to be deactivated (expressive of fear). When Luke returns to Yavin Four after destroying the Death Star, and Threepio realizes that Artoo has been damaged, he offers his own body parts in order to save his little friend. In The Empire Strikes Back, C-3PO expresses sorrow and reverence when Luke cannot be located before the main doors of the Hoth outpost are shut for the night (because Luke likely will freeze to death), frustration at having Han’s hand placed over his mouth in order to shut him up, as well as fear before being shot by stormtroopers on Cloud City.

C-3PO exhibits many more examples of anticipation, fear, anger, joy, as well as put-downs (“you near-sighted scrap-pile” and “overweight glob of grease,” directed toward Artoo) and passive aggression (“fine, go that way, you’ll be malfunctioning in a day,” again directed toward Artoo). Threepio and Artoo share a very human-like, personable relationship wrought with the same kinds