Are Solaris “people?”

[Ailyene]

Pretty sure they are people.  For that matter Lotus and Ordis are people too.

Whether they are 'human' though is up in the air, I'm not even sure if even the Corpus are 'human' anymore either after millennia of modification and evolution.  Darvo is considered something like an uppity teenager at 105 years of age so they may be very different from us.

[xXx_mtv_xXx]

WHY are Solaris?

[EnderStar101]

Solaris are obviously androids, just look at DBZ. Case closed, disagreement shall be punishable by death.

[SilentMobius]

4 hours ago, LarryYourWaiter said:

When their heads get replaced with machines, are they not, at that point, robots with living tissue bodies?  Or are they still “people” with robot heads?

Heads aren't that important to sapience, brains are (as far as we know). Given that the Corpus use the threat of "brain shelving" and in a number of missions you stop Corpus agents going after Solaris United operatives physically then the Solaris seemingly must still have their organic brain local to their body.

There are five types of "Heads" that I've seen:

• The flat, hollow ones that Legs has that seems to be unable to hold a human brain, however everyone who has that head also has a replacement torso rig that could hold the brain
• The long rectangular-ish head that Biz has might be able to hold a brain, but even if not then the torso rig is still there
• The Head with integrated mask and helmet-like parts that smokefinger has, could hold a brain
• Tickers unique head, could hold a brain.
• Eudico's unique box-head, again maybe holds a brain but she has the torso rig as well.

I mean Steve literally said "These people are called the Solaris, they are a body augmented race of people" at Tennocon, that's pretty much word-of-god right there.

 

Edited November 15, 2018 by SilentMobius

[Lost_Cartographer]

They're people in that there's an original brain controlling them from... somewhere.

What I want to know is if they're voluntarily replacing their heads with toasters, or if Nef has ordained the practice?  I'm leaning towards the latter, just because the implications are far more wide reaching for the Warframe universe.  Also, they have a hard enough time affording to replace their flesh bits with mechanical equivalents, and I'm guess a head transplant ain't exactly free.

Edited November 15, 2018 by Littleman88

[Wiz3rd]

19 minutes ago, Littleman88 said:

They're people in that there's an original brain controlling them from... somewhere.

What I want to know is if they're voluntarily replacing their heads with toasters, or if Nef has ordained the practice?  I'm leaning towards the latter, just because the implications are far more wide reaching for the Warframe universe.  Also, they have a hard enough time affording to replace their flesh bits with mechanical equivalents, and I'm guess a head transplant ain't exactly free.

Afaik brain shelving is a forced practice when people go into debt, but Nef definitely charges them for the procedure itself, which results in higher debt. A vicious cycle of becoming more and more indebted.

[Toran]

Are there more game lore bits about them?

Hands down, so far Solaris are the weirdest thing in Warframe, reaching the same level of creepiness and pitifulness as the poor crew of the U.S.S. Cygnus (The Black Whole) when I saw the movie for the first time as kid.

[Sargathan]

Having raised the same question, my Loremaster reminded me that orokins already used a form of mind transfer. Corpus tech and ways of removing and replacing heads may not be too far away from that.

Examples given were:

 

Ordis and Cephalon Suda as seen/heared in Ordis recordings.

If you will, the mistake is drawing an analogy to tech we know and can relate to, while obviously there's plotmagic at work here.

Edited November 15, 2018 by Sargathan

[renleech]

I wonder why people haven't made the connection when the game lines mention "repossession". Haven't you read "Repossesion Mambo"? i highly recommend it.

This book (and movie) portrays a society where artificial organs(artiforgs) are a common product. And how laws were changed to keep people forever in debt. Told from de perspective of a collector. His job was to take back the artiforgs of people who stopped paying. And subsequent death was an acceptable outcome, since they decided to extend their lives artificially and law only protected people during their natural lifespan.

In warframe universe is even scarier, because even brains can be converted and not even natural bodies are protected from debt collectors.

 About if they are people or not, that's very subjective. Let's have an example.
Imagine a Solaris family of individuals A, the man, B the lady and C, the child. Consider A and B having the child while their bodies were full flesh. Probably C was made early, considering the reality of debt slavery where A and B would fatally be brain-shelved and have most of their bodies replaced by augment and cyberparts, some of them voluntary(anyone remembers the social dillema shown in Deus Ex: Human Revolution) because they have debts to pay and better jobs require augs.

 If i were a corpus plutocrat, i would consider them people, not because i have a good heart, far from that. People can take debts and be my debt-slaves, machines are just proxies and are not consumers and customers. In real life, this was one of the reasons slavery was considered obsolete. Well, if you see things by another perspective, slavery never ended, just changed. How many of us are slaves to debt today?

 I could be another type of plutocrat, who decided to exploit this ambiguity, consider solaris machines and do a hostile takeover, branding them machines and putting obedience safeguards on them just like proxies have (obey me or i'ill zap you). Doing this, the rest of the society would call me monster, some fellow plutocrats would attack me for denying them their precious customers, but who cares? I have my true slaves and they don't.

Am i being unreasonable?

Edited November 15, 2018 by renleech

[Blakrana]

Personhood, at least at present, is mostly a question of "are you human?" Yet when we look at speculative fiction, the capacity to replicate or create those same qualities we believe to be intrinsic to our species, are rampant. Be it various, alien forms of life that are similarly sapient as we are regardless of biological differences, or advanced artificially intelligent constructed life forms, we explore this question of "personhood" a lot.

So, for the sake of argument...the characters Odo, from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Data, from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Odo, as a Changeling, has no "brain" as we would identify it being, in his natural state, a liquid that can morph to any shape as desired. Nevertheless he is a sapient entity, capable of complex thought, emotional exploration and everything we would consider typical of a human. Yet, if the possession of a brain were a necessary function, then you'd deny Odo of his personhood, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Data meanwhile, is an android, with an artificial body, brain and all that entails. However, he nevertheless has a complex internal life, and simply seeks to learn what it is to be alive at all. Yet, if an organic brain is necessary to be human, then we'd have to deny his demonstrated capacity for sapience as sufficient grounds for being a person.

Both characters are capable of sapient thought and conduct, despite the lack of an organic brain. Are they less worthy of recognition as people, due to not having a certain human organ? By contrast, are those who've suffered brain damage, or undergone medical alterations to mitigate neurological disorders, less of a person than those who have not? We'd argue no, correct?

Ergo, if the Solaris are individuals who've had some form of technological modification to facilitate their work, are they that different from people who've had brain surgery? Why are they less qualified to be people, despite exhibiting both sentience and sapience, if it's less clear where they're retaining their brains compared to a conventional human being?

Furthermore why is being a person, conflated with being biologically human? The Sentient clearly demonstrate the capacity for individuals, such as Hunhow and Natah, yet, does their lack of a human brain make them less deserving of recognition as persons? Are Cephalons no longer people after their procedure to become such, be it as punishment in Ordis' case, or as an attempt to escape from the onset of dementia, in Suda's case?

Remember, we're working with a setting where transplanting a consciousness into another body is an extremely common practice, be it the Orokin and their Continuity rituals, or the Tenno operation of Warframe proxies. That the Solaris have/had some of their organic aspects replaced with hardier inorganic components is a lot less drastic.

Personally at least, I see nothing to argue against the Solaris' claim of personhood, especially due to the lack of any form of "you're not people" from Anyo. If they weren't afforded the rights of people, would they be capable of being debtors in the first place? To say a machine is indebted to someone, would in turn require that machine has the capacity to the same rights you'd afford a human, after all.

[hyperkayak]

Yes, they are.

The definition of "human" starts getting fuzzy when you can replace parts with inorganics, hell, even your BRAIN! People might be a better word.
They are still people.

Something more interesting is: how much flesh can you shed?

Can your platform be completely machine? How does the consciousness transplant work? Can they make copies? Not robotclones, but archived copies. Like a backup. Instead of going to sleep every day (new body sure as hell don't need it), you just 'save' for like 10 minutes and go on with your life. Boom. Immortality.

Does it work on void-touched?

[Erytroxylin]

I don't consider them people anymore. They are objects, machines, to me now. When you replace so much of yourself with circuits and machinery(take a look at legs), you're really just a robot with a programmed personality. 

The only human Solaris are the vent kids imo.

[SneakyErvin]

They still have their brain, it simply isnt located in their head anymore by the looks of it. So I guess they are both people and human still. Also where does the line go when something stops being human or person.

A person is really just an individual, it can be anything from a human to a creature.

A human is simply just a member of the human race if you go to the fringe meaning of it.

So really it shouldnt matter how much gets replaced aslong as whatever it is acts like an individual (person) or has been a member of the human race. Though it would likely be simpler to call them cyborg, augmented human or machineman.

[Erytroxylin]

11 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

They still have their brain, it simply isnt located in their head anymore by the looks of it. So I guess they are both people and human still. Also where does the line go when something stops being human or person.

A person is really just an individual, it can be anything from a human to a creature.

A human is simply just a member of the human race if you go to the fringe meaning of it.

So really it shouldnt matter how much gets replaced aslong as whatever it is acts like an individual (person) or has been a member of the human race. Though it would likely be simpler to call them cyborg, augmented human or machineman.

It does matter, because that is how definitions and taxonomy work. It's also the difference between needing a doctor and needing a mechanic. If you die because you walked too close to a magnet, you probably aren't human anymore.

Edited November 15, 2018 by Erytroxylin

[LarryYourWaiter]

This is an awesome discussion!

can I reach back and touch onto Odo and Data from Star Trek again:  Odo, despite not having a brain, is a living creature, isn’t he?  He was born, his consciousness has been shaped by both his nature and nurture.  He will grow old and die. He is a product of all his experiences just as you or I are. (Correct me if I’m wrong, I’m not a Star Trek expert.

Data, however, was created and is all machine.  I do not grant him the same status as I would Odo.  He is the product of invention of others.  I believe his choices would always be computational, whereas a living being’s choices can be irrational, unexpected and unreasonable - all drivers of evolutional change.  

If I can pull another sci-fi movie as an example - the Matrix - although it ended in a hot mess - had a neat point:  consciousness can not be fully measured and mathematically predicted.  There was always an anomaly surfacing over and over that did not fit the mathematical code.

[Ayures]

15 hours ago, LarryYourWaiter said:

When their heads get replaced with machines, are they not, at that point, robots with living tissue bodies?  Or are they still “people” with robot heads?

Their heads are in their chest/belly rigs. Vox Solaris is

Spoiler

Eudico with her chest open wearing a Nef Anyo mask.

 

Edited November 15, 2018 by Ayures

[Ayures]

doublepost

Edited November 15, 2018 by Ayures

[(PSN)reddragonhrcro]

13 hours ago, Cubewano said:

Depends on what your qualifications for being a person are. Technically I guess the Solaris people could be considered cyborgs, humans with technological augmentations that push them beyond traditional human limitations, but I don't view that as being entirely separate from ones person hood. 

Also lets not forget that human isn't the same as people or person. Human defines a race while people and person are used for description of races and individuals with high intelligence that are capable of making complex decisions. While some may question if they are human they still qualify as people and individual persons.

[notlamprey]

They're characters in a video game.

[LarryYourWaiter]

Ok, so we have some conflicting ideas of what exactly a solari is physically and these affect my take on them.

some are saying the brain is still inside the robot head or chest.  Some are saying the brains are in a stasis somewhere and controlling the body through a transference of sorts and some are saying the info from the brain has been put into the robotic head.  This last is the way I had thought it was.

if the brain is in the body or controlling the body, I am more comfortable calling them people.  I suppose I’m drawing the line at “living flesh brain.”

i get that in our universe, there are other beings than humans who would be classed as “people.”  But I’m not so sure anything with a robotic brain and programmed consciousness fits into that definition.

[Blakrana]

23 minutes ago, LarryYourWaiter said:

can I reach back and touch onto Odo and Data from Star Trek again:  Odo, despite not having a brain, is a living creature, isn’t he?  He was born, his consciousness has been shaped by both his nature and nurture.  He will grow old and die. He is a product of all his experiences just as you or I are. (Correct me if I’m wrong, I’m not a Star Trek expert.

Data, however, was created and is all machine.  I do not grant him the same status as I would Odo.  He is the product of invention of others.  I believe his choices would always be computational, whereas a living being’s choices can be irrational, unexpected and unreasonable - all drivers of evolutional change.

If the qualifying difference is the organic aspect alone, then it renders the point moot; the Solaris, in some capacity, have their brains and that fact is used to pressure them if they fail to keep up with their debts through the spectre of being brain-shelved. Some are more augmented than others, but all of them retain that one, unifying element which is used to keep them relatively pliant.

If it's a simple function of "well, they're programmed"...why would they be programmed to be capable of feeling disenfranchised? Why would they have any more to them than the necessary awareness to perform their jobs? Why, if they're not people, are they cyborgs than true robotic proxies? If you can create an entire workforce of mindlessly obedient drones, without any risk of resistance or concept of being exploited, why not do so?

Sake of curiosity, if one were to create an artificial intelligence and grant it an organic body, would that body entitle it to personhood without reservation? Even if it were incapable of passing the Turing Test?

 

[(PSN)reddragonhrcro]

6 minutes ago, Blakrana said:

If the qualifying difference is the organic aspect alone, then it renders the point moot; the Solaris, in some capacity, have their brains and that fact is used to pressure them if they fail to keep up with their debts through the spectre of being brain-shelved. Some are more augmented than others, but all of them retain that one, unifying element which is used to keep them relatively pliant.

If it's a simple function of "well, they're programmed"...why would they be programmed to be capable of feeling disenfranchised? Why would they have any more to them than the necessary awareness to perform their jobs? Why, if they're not people, are they cyborgs than true robotic proxies? If you can create an entire workforce of mindlessly obedient drones, without any risk of resistance or concept of being exploited, why not do so?

Sake of curiosity, if one were to create an artificial intelligence and grant it an organic body, would that body entitle it to personhood without reservation? Even if it were incapable of passing the Turing Test?

 

Agree, to me a person and people can be even artificial life-forms like robots, but that would depend on how advanced the AI is.

Well Star Trek surely is something great to watch in this case since it deals with such topics.

Edited November 15, 2018 by (PS4)reddragonhrcro

[Vox_Preliator]

There are entire branches of philosophy dedicated to pondering this question.

That said, I'm pretty sure they'd prefer to be considered people if we asked, and they aren't AI or robots, they were all originally wholly human, if I'm understanding the backstory.  I think they all have an organic brain somewhere that is controlling the body with which we interact.

[TheGrimCorsair]

16 hours ago, Firetempest said:

That's up to philosophy.

Transhumanism is the idea we will evolve beyond our current physical and mental limitations with science and technology. 

Games like Soma, Deus ex, soon Cyberpunk 2077. They deal with it more.

Soma is likely closest to the Solaris problem. 

 

It's also kind of a huge over-arching, all-encompassing theme to Warframe.

[Omnimorph]

17 hours ago, LarryYourWaiter said:

When their heads get replaced with machines, are they not, at that point, robots with living tissue bodies?  Or are they still “people” with robot heads?

Well that's the question, isn't it?  And it's very cool that DE is asking the question in the context of a game.  Nice, thought-provoking theme.

There have been numerous philosophical thought experiments down the years that try to figure out at what point a thing ceases to be the thing it was, and becomes something else, by notionally replacing the components of things brick by brick.  (Plato's "Ship of Theseus" example is the oldest, then right down to today there are philosophers like Derek Parfitt who have explored the topic in relation to selves, what constitutes being a self, etc.)

I think we intuitively feel that there's some fuzzy line across which we could say we aren't human any more, and it most probably has to do with whatever we think of as our core selves - our consciousness, our mental contents, our creative actions, etc.  If at some point cumulative substitutions start screwing those over, then we know we've gone too far.

It's a nice touch to have so intimate a part of one's body be the thing that's kept in escrow in the lore world - that does seem to be a part that we're particularly fond of and think of as "me."

Edited November 15, 2018 by Omnimorph