88a4e8e1   
   From: buffhunter@my-deja.com   
      
   In article <44fb05b4-d809-4afb-9c08-   
   5b11d1143ff5@r1g2000yqj.googlegroups.com>, jrs9@columbia.edu says...   
   > Our episode nods its titular head to the great mind-body dualism   
   > debates of modern philosophy.  Can mind be separate from body?   
   >   
   > In the anime Ghost in the Shell it could.  Section Nine, with our   
   > beloved Major, was largely staffed by people with full prosthetic   
   > bodies.  Somehow that futuristic society had found a way to download a   
   > person's essence into those artificial bodies and they functioned   
   > mentally just as they had in their physical bodies.   
   >   
   > So far in Caprica that has not yet happened.  People create avatars,   
   > or create e-beings or cylons with artificial mental essences.  The   
   > writers though took the debate in an interesting direction in one   
   > instance by having it played out in an artificial mind and body in   
   > cylon-Zoe.   
   ---   
   It did explore the nature of existence. The Dog sure picked up on the   
   fact Zoe was in there. It made no distinction from the real Zoe who   
   died and the "living" replica conscious in the U-87. It also had a   
   bit of a foreshadowing in that Zoe had an impulse to kill her own   
   father, just like the Cylons will turn on their own creators.   
   >   
   > And what are the humans getting out of living good chunks of their   
   > lives as e-minds only in New Cap City?  It would seem to suggest that   
   > minds without physical bodies don't amount to much of a society.   We   
   > have not seen what the overall meaning of the game is, although we   
   > were given a hint of it by the Joel-Gray-Cabaret MC in the club, but   
   > if the game ultimately does give people a meaning most people are   
   > having almost no chance of even knowing where to look for it.  A body   
   > is needed not only to house the mind but to show mind its limits.   
   ---   
   I believe it is a mirror of today's feelings of the internet games   
   that is all, not reflective of the rest of society anymore than World   
   of Warcraft or any other massively multiplayer online role-playing   
   game (MMORPG) is in ours. It is very popular but the vast majority of   
   people aren't playing it. Caprica's version is simply more immersive.   
   Perhaps 25-50 years from now we will have the same technology. I hope   
   I live to see it.   
   --   
   ----->Hunter   
      
   "No man in the wrong can stand up against   
    a fellow that's in the right and keeps on acomin'."   
      
                  -----William J. McDonald   
              Captain, Texas Rangers from 1891 to 1907   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)