Hey there,
I have always been of the opinion that so-called Treknobabble actually (with only few exceptions) is internally consistent and makes sense if you accept some of its premises. It’s not just random words strung together, it makes sense if you simply listen to the characters and accept that their scientific understanding differs from ours.
Therefore, this is actually a piece of head-canon that I assume is largely intentional, and it’s about the concept of a soul, and where consciousness comes from in the Trek universe. So far, I have not been disappointed with this explanation; and it actually explains some of the more illogical parts of how consciousness and “a soul” supposedly exist in Star Trek.
Sentient beings in the Star Trek universe have a “soul”; some kind of energy field that is created by their neural system naturally. We call it a neural energy field or a bio-neural energy field; and we don’t yet know how to create or replicate ones ourselves, only how to move them.
This is the reason why we cannot clone-transport or replicate conscious beings: we have a way to move the neuro-electric field from A to B via the transporter beam, but we cannot create any new ones; any living being we would replicate would be just cells, out of a consciousness, practically a zombie.
That’s how we can transport someone from here to there, but not clone them; this is how we can replicate meat, but not a living animal.
This is also how telepathy works: if consciousness is merely some kind of energy field, we can manipulate it however we want by simply applying physical methods.
Let’s look at a few of the appearances in canon:
- In VOY 1x13 (Cathexis), Chakotay’s “bio-neural energy” is displaced, practically his consciousness, and can even ‘enter’ other beings. This implies that his consciousness is separate from his body, and can be moved around, and even “possess” others: the mind is totally separate from the body.
- In DIS 2x11/2x12, they store someone’s “bio-neural energy”, a representation of their consciousness, and it is said that it can uniquely identify a person.
- According to DS9 4x10 (Our Man Bashir), during transport, someone’s “neural energy” pattern is stored within the transporter buffer. The energy pattern occupies a huge amount of memory and so cannot be stored for a long period of time. In the same episode, they also establish “neural energy” to be separate from the physical form. They use the word “store” instead of “save”; I think that’s because it’s literally something like a battery, not a photocopier. You can only move around the consciousness.
- In VOY 4x13 (Waking Moments), they encounter a species which seems to be unconscious, but actually has a consciousness independent of its physical form; that even is able to pull others in with it. This is, once again, called a “neurogenic field”. This implies that the consciousness (the neural energy field) of people can be physically manipulated like any other energy, to induce hallucinations or dreams.
- In VOY 6x05 (Alice), there is a “neurogenic interface”, which seems to enable the user to connect their own neuro-electric field with the computer in order to transfer data from one source to the other, to connect the consciousness to another body, so to speak. This mirrors the ability to possess others from Cathexis.
- In ENT 4x10 (Daedalus) we find a disembodied transporter signal that contains a human’s consciousness and that can once again haunt things and people. This could very well be the person’s neuro-electric field from the pattern buffer, somehow broken free, in a very similar way to the independent-soul possession mechanics from Cathexis and Alice.
- In TOS and Enterprise, we also see many references to the Vulcan concept of “katra”; a person’s consciousness, independent from a body, that can be stored in a device, transferred to others, and communicated with for example via a mind meld. Sound familiar?
- In DS9 1x09 (The Passenger), Julian Bashir is possessed by a Vulcan’s consciousness, and Dax ends up removing the consciousness by using an “electromagnetic pulse” to “displace the pattern”. This once again strengthens the idea of consciousness being nothing but an electromagnetic field.
There are tons more (literally, dozens) examples of people’s consciousnesses being represented by some kind of electromagnetic field independent of their bodies; often called “neural pattern”, “neural energy”, or a variation thereof. It is surprisingly consistent.
So, what about Data, and the Doctor, and all the other artificial life forms? It seems to be simple to say now that the “measure of a man” is simply whether they are able to create a neuro-electric field or not. However, if this was the case, the entire philosophical debate on whether Data is a being or not would not make much sense: they could simply scan him to find out whether there is, in fact, one, or not. I therefore assume that he does not have one (there is also no canon reference to any neuro-anything when it comes to Data), and that positronic brains “merely” simulate consciousness.
I propose a more radical approach: it does not matter whether an artificial lifeform is actually conscious or only simulates consciousness perfectly; for all intents and purposes, they should be treated equal to all other beings.
but we cannot create any new ones; any living being we would replicate would be just cells, out of a consciousness, practically a zombie.
Maybe not on purpose, but they whoopsie poopsied a 2nd Riker… so in universe there isn’t a hard reason it could never be done.
I assume that the same way the transporter beam was reflected and split two ways, the neural energy field running along the beam was duplicated; but that was in the episode a freak occurrence due to the planet’s unique physical makeup, and I don’t think it’s easy to replicate outside that environment.
Hard to do, sure, but “cannot be done easily” is a far different proposition from “cannot be done.” Unless you want to argue that the multiple transporter clones we have seen are philosophical zombies.
Fair, but I did say “we” cannot replicate life (with a big fat hypothetical “yet” at the end)
The replication of life seems to be more of a technological limitation than much else. One of the main roadblocks for 24th century Federation replicators creating life is that they lack the resolution and reliability to create error-free copies of complex molecules like DNA, and those errors are typically incompatible with life.
A theoretical perfect replicator may be able to produce a copy of a person, to some degree. The experimental gentronic replicator was capable of replicating a fully functional Klingon spine, and assuming that a Klingon spine is at least as complex as its human counterpart, it's not far off from being able to replicate a whole entire brain.
A thing to remember is there are a lot of people and I mean a LOT in the TNG universe. Energy is also cheap and abundant. With replicators basic needs are also filled easily. This means that with hard problems, even if it’s super niche and only a tiny fraction of the population is interested, has the right skillset etc, you could have thousands if not millions working on a single hard problem.
This would mean if something can be done, chances are there is someone who figures out how to do it and how to do it at scale.
Now the question of ethics is another thing, if you could replicate a sapient creature, would it be ethical to do so? But we have some in universe examples of this not seeming to be an issue for most folk.
So I agree they dropped the ball, replicating a “soul” (for lack of a better word) shouldn’t have been possible. They opened up a big can of worms and hoped people would not think about it too hard.
The TNG Technical Manual explanation is pretty straightforward - storing “neural energy” (and indeed replicating any living creature) requires capturing the quantum state of every particle in the organism, with a zero percent error rate, and they simply don’t have the storage capacity to do so reliably. The one time they managed to store neural patterns long-term, it required the entire storage capacity of Deep Space 9 to store the neural patterns of five people (“Our Man Bashir”).
The transporter buffers can handle these patterns on a short-term basis, but the tradeoff is that they start to degrade over time (typically portrayed as within a few minutes, though there’s some variability).
That model breaks down a little bit (well, a lot) when you try and reconsile the TNG EP where Picard and Guinan and Kieko and Ro turn into kids and they use some transporter fuckery to get them back.
The physical structures of their brains strictly would have been different post-transport as they went from a physically smaller child’s brain to a physically more massive adult one… if consciousness and memory were strictly a function of molecular and energy arrangement, they couldn’t have done it (or at least, they wouldn’t remember the time when they were in a child’s body)
Sure, “Rascals” breaks the transporter rules in pretty much every way.
One thing that Trek consistently garbles up is evolution and biology in a larger sense, and it’s really frustrating! I can accept some premises to make the science possible (like, for example, that parallel timelines attract in order to merge, making the ‘butterfly effect’ not a thing and things like the time-loop in that one TNG episode possible where the universe doesn’t behave deterministically), but that evolution isn’t just a side-effect of efficient species living longer on average, but actually something encoded in the genes that just has to be “activated” somehow epigenetically… ehhh. I guess you can handwave that with the progenitors somehow, given that the DNA of humanoids is already artificially constructed.
I find it positive to think about these writers, inspired to try to create something scientific and exciting but lacking the education themselves to do it justice, but then inspiring generations to learn and explore, who then return having learned enough to spot the problems.
I hope Star Trek can use science, and the generations of fans now inspired, to keep pushing these stories further because it feels like our collective need for Star Trek’s vision is as deep as ever.
Hence why I theorize that the neural energy field is completely independent from the vessel it occupies; just like people can “possess” others. In “Rascals”, the neural energy fields were transported correctly, only their bodies were misconfigured in some way (a way that I really can’t be bothered to theorize about, lol).
The one time they managed long term storage… Our Man Bashir
Uh… Scotty managed to keep a whole ship crew alive for decades in the buffer of a transporter, and did not need the entire ship’s storage. (TNG - “Relics”)
I may need to watch the episode again, but didn’t the DS9 incident happen entirely on accident? That’s the James Bond holodeck episode, isn’t it? Scotty did this on purpose. The only accident there was whatever happened to the ship that forced storing them in the pattern buffer their only escape. That and not being able to get out again until The Enterprise found 'em.
Scotty’s crew was two people and one of them died; he was the sole survivor. His method has a 50% fatality rate.
Although that was due to hardware failure on the transporter itself, rather than an issue with the process. Even so, it's not a perfect process, since Geordi mentions that Scotty's pattern had some minor degradation (0.03%?) before Scotty was retrieved.
From the description of the process, it's not exactly a stable form of long term storage either. It's closer to constantly transporting someone in a loop, and refreshing the pattern that way. Basically the equivalent of preventing all the water from leaking out of a bucket by constantly moving it between buckets.
Guess I need to rewatch both.
Scotty managed to keep a whole ship crew alive for decades in the buffer of a transporter, and did not need the entire ship’s storage.
It was just him and Ensign Franklin, and Franklin didn’t survive the attempt.
didn’t the DS9 incident happen entirely on accident?
No, it was a deliberate decision by Eddington.
ODO: Do we still have their patterns?
EDDINGTON: Yes. They’re in the buffer. But the patterns will start to degrade if not used immediately. We need to store the patterns somewhere.
ODO: This is more complicated than just an ordinary transporter pattern. We’re going to have to preserve all the neural signatures of everyone on that runabout. Do you know how much memory it would take to save just one person’s neural signature, much less five?
EDDINGTON: I don’t think we have any choice. Computer, I need to store all data currently in the transporter pattern buffer. Where can I save it?
COMPUTER: There is insufficient computer memory to save the data.
ODO: The pattern buffer’s beginning to lose coherence. The patterns will start to degrade any second now.
EDDINGTON: Computer, what if we wiped all computer memory in every system on the station and then stored the patterns?
COMPUTER: That procedure has not been tested. It cannot be predicted.
ODO: The buffer is depolarising.
EDDINGTON: Computer, this is a command priority override. Wipe all computer memory necessary in order to save the patterns from the buffer. Authorisation Eddington 0-6-5-alpha enable.
What about the times the transporter does duplicate people, like Kirk, Riker, and Boimler? To me, this suggests the transporter’s inability to duplicate people is less of a technological limitation and more of a software-enforced taboo.
All of these had some external source making the duplication possible. The Riker duplication for example was an accident that could only have happened in the strange atmospheric layout of the rock he was on.
Some space phenomenon duplicating an existing electromagnetic field is not entirely impossible to imagine, if limited to that phenomenon, but creating it artificially in a transporter, practically on demand, is a different story.
The de-Tuvixing transport is functionally the same as the duplication transport and can be done with no external phenomena. And there are other examples of transporters being used in “impossible” ways that suggest they are more capable than the Federation is willing to admit, like both Scotty and M’Benga using them for long term stasis.
I think it stems from the Federation’s pervasive anti-transhumanist bent which is usually attributed to the trauma of the human eugenics wars.
If consciousness/souls are a natural byproduct of our brains, and we can create brains that produce these things from the transporter/pattern buffers, then that more or less means that we could replicate life. How the transporter buffer works is another question altogether, but I’m not seeing a part here where it is impossible to use a pre-existing pattern to create a brain with consciousness if you’re able to store the pattern.
In the same way that you might be able to perfectly replicate a fireplace and kindling wood but need a lighter to make it burn, there simply might be a process to “kickstart a brain” that goes beyond its physical structure, some way to “charge” it with neuro-electric energy that happens naturally but cannot so far be replicated. Star Trek never shied away from quasi-religious concepts like “the sanctity of life”.
Then if replicator technology isn’t able to kick start the process, how does transporter technology do it?
Star Trek never shied away from quasi-religious concepts like “the sanctity of life”.
To be fair, those concepts aren’t unique to religion.
Then if replicator technology isn’t able to kick start the process, how does transporter technology do it?
It physically pushes or moves the field, it does not recreate it.
So the transporter destroys all the matter, recreates it somewhere else, then moves the neural energy? So during the process our neural energy is detached from our brain, despite the brain being the thing that produces said neural energy.
Seems a little far more fetched than the process of consciousness kickstarting itself/being uninterrupted by the process.
Voyager used Bio neural circuitry / gel packs throughout the ship. From the name alone, that sounds like it is designed to mimic the living neural system. Does that mean it could have developed a soul, given enough time, whereas data could not?
Data's positronic network is also designed to mimic the living neural system, using positronic neurons instead of the standard ionic ones in fleshy brains. He might have a neural signature, but the difference in brain function just makes it harder/impossible to detect, since you might normally be searching for the biological equivalent.
Similar to how Ferengi brains are thought to be resistant/immune to telepathy because they have a vastly different structure compared to most humanoid brains.
We know that at the very least, Data's brain is completely capable of supporting a transplanted human consciousness. Ira Graves was able to transfer his over to Data and run without issue, with the only problems arising when his consciousness started conflicting with Data's, whereas his transfer to the isolinear computers on the Enterprise only stored his memories, with the implication that he effectively died as a result of only his memories being stored.
Conversely, we know that the Enterprise's computers are technically capable of hosting an active consciousness with no modifications at all. The Nth Degree has Barclay transfer his consciousness to the ship's computer, which would not be possible if the computer could only simulate a consciousness. Logically, it might be able to develop a soul of its own, if given enough time to develop a consciousness, but the timeframe might be impractical, seeing as Discovery needed centuries to do the same in Calypso.
Depends on the process by which a neural energy field first is created by an organism; whether it’s a “one time charge” thing or just a byproduct of their brains. If the latter, that’d throw the entire theory away since that just means you can replicate a brain and it starts going on by itself.
According to DS9 4x10 (Our Man Bashir), during transport, someone’s “neural energy” pattern is stored within the transporter buffer. The energy pattern occupies a huge amount of memory and so cannot be stored for a long period of time. In the same episode, they also establish “neural energy” to be separate from the physical form. They use the word “store” instead of “save”; I think that’s because it’s literally something like a battery, not a photocopier. You can only move around the consciousness.
It's also worth noting that the neural energy pattern is what is being stored, not the neural energy itself. The station's computers would not need to be cleared if they were simply storing the energy, since they could just bottle it up in a battery.
Logically, it would follow that if they are capable of storing the neural energy pattern on the station's computers, then it could be copied by a sufficiently advanced replicator, not unlike the replicator patterns that they normally use, or the data stored on the computers copied like conventional data.
