I picked up Season 4.0 today and my wife and I are marathoning our way to January 16th!
So I’m relaunching the “BSG & Philosophy Question of the Day” thread – “day” because I’m watching one 4.0 episode per day through the 15th. After Season 4.5 starts, it’ll go back to a “Question of the Week.”
Each day’s question will be based somewhat upon the episode I just watched as well as a particular chapter from my book, ‘Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy: Knowledge Here Begins Out There’ (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008): Click here!
For “He That Believeth in Me,” the question has to do with – wait for it, folks – BELIEF:
In “Adama’s True Lie: Earth and the Problem of Knowledge,” Eric Silverman explores how we can define and develop a reliable foundation for “knowledge.” He discusses Gettier counterexamples, an example of which would be if the Adamas (father and son) decide after their conversation in the pilots’ ready room to trust that Starbuck is not a Cylon and treat her as such. Now, the evidence in this episode is stacked against such a belief – to the point that, for Roslin, it would be completely unreasonable to trust Starbuck. If, in fact, Starbuck is not a Cylon and can be trusted, could the Admiral and Lee claim that they “knew” Starbuck wasn’t a Cylon all along, since their belief in her turned out to be true? Or, is it merely “epistemic luck” and they were fools initially to harbor such faith?
This probably doesn’t answer the question but…I always thought that the more important thing is not whether or not she is a cylon - but what her motives and purpose really are, that is important. We’ve seen time and again that cylons aren’t necessarily inherantly evil. I don’t even think Boomer is evil - but she was programmed to shoot the old man. So if Starbuck is a cylon - the question is what is her mission - does she have one? And if she is an exact copy of Starbuck - does it really matter? Aren’t we essentially our memories and personality - regardless of our phyiscal being? It’s like when you make a digital copy of something. If the original gets deleted - does it really matter that what you have left is a copy? Not really.
Now if Starbuck is a cylon and was created with some sort of nefarious purpose programmed into her brain - well that’s a problem. And there really is no way to tell at this point (either in the episode in question OR now)
It depends on what you consider faith to be. If you hae faith in a certain car winning the race, did you know all along? I think the real quesiton here is “Is Faith the same thing as knowledge?”. I think to an extent it, faith fouls knowlage. In order to knowledge, you msut have faith that it is true.
missmuffet-I love that question. I think it does matter that thsi Starbuck coudl be a different copy.
Take Athina vs. wanna-be-Athina. Now, I know therfe is some questions ove rif Athina is loyal to Helo, and frankly, I can’t wacth “Faith” and think otherwise. So lets jsut say shes loyal.
On the other hand, we have Athina-wana-be who takes her emmories, hwoever, when it comes to taking Three, she doens’t want to do it. She comes to a different conclution. Ahtina-wanna-be may have the sam eprsonility,b ut she makes different choices
I think its posible to have the same memmories. It shbow you react to thos ememmories that makes sa difference
I’m gonna be pretty hard on the Old Man and Towel Boy and say they weren’t playing with a full deck of Triad cards on that decision. After EVERYTHING they’ve gone through, so many betrayals and so much still unknown, with all the weird, unexplainable circumstances around Kara’s return, they decide to believe her because…
…She looks and sounds like their old Starbuck. Isn’t that Cylon par-for-the-course as far as sleeper agents go?
If she had never disappeared, never “died,” if she’d been with them the whole time, and suddenly someone stood up with evidence and said, “Starbuck’s a Cylon!”–well, that’s a different story. You could still successfully argue that this is the same Starbuck you’ve known for a long time, and though you’d keep an eye on her, you’d be forgiven for not immediately throwing her in the brig before carefully judging the evidence. But when she dies right in front of you and comes back in a shiny new Viper with no memory of where she’s been–c’mon. Take some precautions. Because she might just fly off the handle and try to shoot somebody.
Oh, wait. That happened didn’t it? I rest my case.
This seems to be the question the Final 4/5 are also dealing with. Does it matter WHAT you are as long as you are true to WHO you are?
Glad to see you back, Jason. I’ve been wondering where’d you’d gone off to. Probably teaching and other academic duties, or some such. :rolleyes:
Anyway, it’s been a while since I’ve read your book so I can’t really answer with the essay you cite fresh in my mind. I can say that, as far as I’m concerned, faith (which I believe–rim shot, please!–is what we’re talking about here) and its usefulness comes down to its final result. If people are aided by Lee and Bill’s belief that Kara is NOT a cylon then by all means they should continue to believe this and trust her. If people are hurt by this belief, however, then such belief is irresponsible. At the point where these characters find themselves in “He That Believeth in Me” such a choice is impossible. As we know, their eventual choice is a middle-of-the-road compromise which eventually leads to some unexpected results.
One could ask the same question (and, based on some of the previews for the last ten episodes, it seems we’ll be allowed to ponder this in the next ten weeks) of Laura Roslin and her belief in the Pythian prophecy. Was she justified in her faith in Pythia and her role as “The Leader” when Earth turned out to be, as far as we know, a barren, radioactive wasteland?
I’m gonna be pretty hard on the Old Man and Towel Boy and say they weren’t playing with a full deck of Triad cards on that decision. After EVERYTHING they’ve gone through, so many betrayals and so much still unknown, with all the weird, unexplainable circumstances around Kara’s return, they decide to believe her because…
…She looks and sounds like their old Starbuck. Isn’t that Cylon par-for-the-course as far as sleeper agents go?
If she had never disappeared, never “died,” if she’d been with them the whole time, and suddenly someone stood up with evidence and said, “Starbuck’s a Cylon!”–well, that’s a different story. You could still successfully argue that this is the same Starbuck you’ve known for a long time, and though you’d keep an eye on her, you’d be forgiven for not immediately throwing her in the brig before carefully judging the evidence. But when she dies right in front of you and comes back in a shiny new Viper with no memory of where she’s been–c’mon. Take some precautions. Because she might just fly off the handle and try to shoot somebody.
Oh, wait. That happened didn’t it? I rest my case.
Actually, Helo shot someone. I don’t think Starbuck has shot anyone since her return.
Anyway, I’d agree with you, Stroogie, except that the very nature of Cylons and what can be expected of them has changed (of course, it hadn’t at this point in the narrative, which KIND OF puts a hole in my own argument. Oh well! Onwards and upwards I say…). Cylons have proven themselves to be trustworthy…at least to a point (like Emily, I’d argue that Athena has proven herself to be completely trustworthy, not to mention noble. Perhaps to a FAULT). And as Lee will come to say, “all of this has happened before, but it does not have to happen again.” At some point the cycle has to stop. At what point it does is up to those stuck in the cycle. It may be an irresponsible decision (a chapter in Jason’s book suggests the same of Helo’s murder of the captured, infected cylons not because he stopped genocide–that’s good–but because he went about it the way he did. I’d argue that, while that is certainly evidence of Helo’s impetuousness and ability to not always be the smartest cookie, his decision was still the morally correct one), but it is the moral one.
Missmuffet and Emily make me think about something Cavil said (in season 4) about the cylons being nothing more than mechanized copies.
What do we mean when we say that the cylons are copies? Because I think we have a wide (and over time growing wider) variety within models, so when do we get to the point when they are individuals before they are copies? And if they are copies, then who is the original (which tangentially makes me think about Judith Butler talking about why we think of homosexuality as a “bad copy” of heterosexuality, i.e. why is one the “original” behavior… I know, unrelated), and is there ever a way for us to know?
It also (and again, tangentially) makes me think of Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, (if humans are the original and cylons are the copies…) but that’s something much bigger and really not answering the questions that PhilosopherJedi posed, so I’ll leave it there for now and perhaps talk about it another time.
I don’t think it has to do with Helo being dumb, I think it has to do with him acting out of too much emotion…or is he acting out of to much emotion? I’m going to say um…I see both sides of the issue :). But, just so you know , your arguing my exact point hehe
I think you raise an excellent point about Helo acting out of too much emotion. Tamoh Penickett’s performance is not one I often think of as overtly emotional, but Helo is a very emotional character. (I was going to say he was a Dyonisian character, thus hoping to impress PhilosopherJedi into giving me a book deal–cause you know he has that kind of power, right? heh heh–but he really doesn’t seem to fit that mold either.)
Maybe it wasn’t emotion as much as a very strong “mroal center” by moral I mean he has a very sves is right and wrong. It doesn’t come to him so much of an emtoion, but more of logic
I think there is more going on in his brain then what alot of people give him credit for. I think that is whyhe is my favorite character on the show, at this point. By that I mean he is still loyal, but he doesn’t sell his soul and just go where the wind is blowing. He might not always be right, but you knwo where he stands, and 'd walk into battle with him anyday.
I’m sure if the show ever suggests that Adama did the “right” thing by trusting the fate of the fleet in Starbuck’s hands. In fact, the entire series is full of people making all sorts of dubious choices under stressful situations. Some of them turn out to be “correct” choices, but accidentally guessing “correct” answer doesn’t not mean you were “right” to make that choice. This is but one example of people (humans and cylons alike) acting incredibly human under tough circumstances, displaying mixture of desperation, selfishness, betrayal, love, sacrifice, utter stupidity and trace of nobility. And I’m sure there’s a bunch more of that in the coming episodes.
Glad to be back, Armando! Yes, I’ve been busy teaching and writing on sci-fi-related stuff – and also watching ‘Star Trek: Voyager’ instead of BSG. But now I’m back full BSG mode for the next 11 weeks until the finale!
Here’s the next question of the day:
In “Six of One,” Cavil wants to rid the Raiders of their capacity for higher-level thought and autonomy. Natalie responds by removing the inhibitors that prevent the Centurions from possessing the capacity for higher-level thought and autonomy.
So, did the Centurions always have the capacity for higher-level thought and autonomy, and thus were unjustly inhibited in exercising this capacity by the others? Or, were the Centurions just fine in their inhibited state and, if anything, Natalie may have done them a disservice by allowing them to become aware of their servile state, which was obviously upsetting to them?
I think its a bit arrogant to say that the Centurions were just better off as slaves because they were just kept from knowing any better. Taking a thing or persons knowledge is more liekly so tha tyou can protect themselves, therefore the “its for your own good” or 'theri better off being left dumb" argument never appeals to me.
Just to be clear, I’m not saying that the Centurions were better off as slaves who didn’t know better. I’m just putting the question out there – philosophizing!
My initial response was with Emily - how could the Centurions need an inhibitor if they didn’t always have the capacity for higher-level thought and autonomy? And then why do the humanoid models have the right to decide what level the Centurions are functioning at?
That isn’t to say that there aren’t those who (like Cavil, Simon, Doral, and Boomer) see the Centurions and Raiders as nothing more than tools that have a specific design function that should not be exceeded. I just don’t buy that a living being, be they humanoid Cylon, Centurion, or Raider, be limited in their natural being or opportunity by someone else.
Yeah, but the interesting thing here is that (presumably) the inhibitor was part of their design. They never had the higher-level thought. So it wasn’t taken away, it just was never granted to them, until the Threes et al. fiddled with their brains.
Simple linguistic analysis: An “inhibitor” functions by inhibiting something, which entails that there is something to inhibit – in this case, the Centurions’ capacity for higher-level thought and autonomy.
