Is Data Human? The Metaphysics of Star Trek by Richard Hanley

Data is the character on Star Trek who most often struggles with what it is to be human. But why does he want to be human, and would being human make Data better or worse with regards to how he is? For that matter what *is* being human? What does it entail, and who and what can be human?

Metaphysics literally means "beyond Physics", so that Metaphysics studies everything but physics, so dealing with the questions of what is it to be human, what makes us human, and what is a person fit right under its purview.

Richard Hanley also looks at the questions of a soul, and whether one is necessary to be human. Since a soul cannot be split in two, this would beg the question of whether humans split by a transporter function had a soul. Did one of them get it? Neither of them? And if one of them did get it, which one? If the two split people were never rejoined, which is the soulless one, and how can we tell?

Worse still are Tuvok and Neelix, which the transporter joined into "Tuvix". In this case, does this conjoined entity have two souls? One? None? And if it only has one soul, which one of the originals lost his? As you can see, sometimes Star Trek can be death to the notions of fundamentalist believers vis a vis a "soul".

But that certainly isn't all that is discussed in this book. It takes on logic versus emotions, and which is better, What makes someone a person, and how can Starfleet tell when they have found intelligent life, if it is very different from themselves? And are their universals in cognition and linguistics?

Artificial life also comes under the test as Hanley discusses what past philosophers have thought regarding artificial life and artificial intelligence. Data, exocomps and Nanites are examined along with the Turing test and various other tests of artificial intelligence and reasoning.

And those are just a few of the many questions pondered in this book. Everything from "Is the You who is beamed down to a planet really the You who started the Journey?" to "Are we still the same person if by fiddling with the transporter, we could fix the physical... or the mental things we didn't like about ourselves?" "Would we still be the same people afterwards?"

If you are like me, and like most people, the idea of philosophy and metaphysics makes your eyes cross after a certain point. And yeah, reading the book for too long a time did make a sort of "mental exhaustion" set in, but the book made it easier to grasp many of the ideas by relating them to Star Trek.

For instance, by using the TOS Episode "The Enemy Within", they illustrate the left brain-right brain dichotomy, and what happened when researchers cut the corpus callosum, a bundle of nerves the connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain. The side effects were somewhat like the disconnect between good, ineffectual Kirk and Bad, active Kirk. In fact, author Hanley suggests rather than the divide between "Higher" emotions and "Lower" emotions, that the good Kirk/Bad Kirk would more likely be between left brain and right brain, as it is more likely that such a divide could happen than between kinds of emotions. Hanley suggests that since most people are right-handed, it is the left brain that rules, and that "Bad" Kirk was the right side of the brain, unwilling to be controlled by the left yet again.

In the end, "Is Data Human" leaves us with as many questions as answers, and oftentimes the answers only lead to more questions. As questions to ponder, its a fascinating look at what makes us human, but most questions, we, ourselves, must answer. I recommend this book as a look into the pressing questions of the Star Trek Universe, but we, the readers, must look within ourselves to provide the answers.