Zero regards a captured biped and reflects that it is not a unit but an entity:
"Somewhere behind that glass and horrible tissue, a brain peered back at him." (p. 232)
A brain. Of course, this is just an English word used by the narrator just as "Zero" is not really Zero's name. Nevertheless, the word establishes for our benefit that Zero's kind have an internal organ which they identify as the seat of thought. Zero is coming to accept that his captive also thinks whereas Seven remains uncertain:
"'Despite our previous conversation... I cannot bring myself to believe quite seriously that these are anything but motiles or artifacts. Very ingenious and complex, to be sure...but aware, like a person?'" (p. 233)
Just before this, Seven has questioned whether the alien biped is conscious. I have come to realise that "consciousness" and "awareness" are synonyms, therefore that neither can be used to define the other, although these and related words can be used with slightly different nuances. If Seven thinks that the biped is not conscious/aware but instead is either a motile or an artefact, then apparently he thinks that motiles are not conscious/aware whereas I had thought that they were the equivalent of animals. According to Seven, only persons are aware. He agrees with Descartes.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I wonder, tho, if an intelligent von Neumann machine would be more likely to think of his "brain" as a "central processing unit," like the CPUs we have in our computers. Using "CPU" might have been a bit better than "brain" here.
Ad astra! Sean
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