The captain beckoned. "Commander LaForge mentioned to me that you were looking for a new activity to take up in your spare time, mister Data."
He nodded. "That is correct, sir. Painting and playing the violin - as well as card games and diversion in the holodeck - are satisfactorily stimulating, but I would like to learn more of typical human pass times. Commander Riker recommended that I spend more time interacting with 'the fairer sex', but I do not feel that that would be a constructive use of my off-duty hours. Although important to humans, I do not find copulation to be-"
"Commander Data!" the captain interrupted. He cleared his throat. "If you are still looking for suggestions, I have some choice texts that you might benefit from reading."
Data looked almost regretful. "Sir, if you are referring to the complete Shakespeare folio you mentioned before, I must inform you that I have already read it."
"I thought you would have done. No, I have something else in mind. Take a look at this." He passed a stack of books to Data, who looked through them.
"'Nichomachean Ethics'... 'Meditations on first philosophy'... 'Existentialism is a humanism'... Sir, it would appear that these are texts on Earth philosophy."
"Indeed, mister Data. A truly exhilarating topic. I think you would enjoy these."
He nodded seriously and held the books to his chest. "Thank you, sir. I will read them at my earliest convenience."
Later that evening, he began.
Cogito ergo sum, said Descartes - I think, therefore I am. Though all impressions might be illusory, one could be certain that one existed merely by exhibiting conscious thought. That is, even if a malevolent demon were deliberately giving the senses false stimuli or changing the world at will, one could still be sure of one thing; if there was no mind at all to formulate thought, the questioning of one's own existence could never have happened. Therefore, thought proves being.
Data liked the idea that it was certain that he existed thanks to his active mental processes, but the thought that all of his sensory readings could not be trusted was a little disheartening. He ran a full diagnostic check to ascertain all were functioning properly, and then thought for awhile, taking a muted satisfaction in the fact that he did, in fact, exist - and that he was, in the means and proof thereof, identical to any organic being.
The Plato's Cave allegory was an older, more complicated explanation of why perceptions of reality might not be correct.
It went like this: a group of people were tied up in a cave, unable to move, facing the back of the cave. They had been this way forever. As they watched the back wall, figures would pass the mouth of the cave and cast shadows, and the people could only see the shadows and therefore assumed that they constituted reality. This was the main idea of the theory, and showed why senses could not always be trusted; without a point of reference to a higher reality, one would always assume that what they saw was all there was.
The allegory continued. If one of the people were released from the cave and brought into the 'real world', they would at first be unable to see in the dazzling sunlight and would want to return to the cave and deny the truth, that all their previous experiences were not truly real. But when used to the outside world, if this person returned to the cave to guide others to the world beyond the cave, the others would refuse to go and call the stories mad. And indeed, the returning person's vision in the darkness would be worsened from their time in the light, making them appear foolish.
This made sense with regards to humanity's resistance towards changing their understanding of topics, Data thought. It was certainly a curious way of looking at the world.
Determinism was the idea that all is predetermined; no being has free will even if the illusion of it exists. Data put the book down, decided to stand up, and stood up. Then he decided to sit back down, and did so. He repeated the process several times to be sure, and came to the conclusion that the theory must be mistaken.
The idea of Laplace's Demon argued that free will was a figment of the imagination, a fiction accepted by human life forms only because they were too limited to see the colossally elaborate patterns and algorithms that controlled events. It was true that the universe was an incredibly complex place, and Data had to admit that he knew, relatively speaking, nothing at all about it. The theory was startlingly reasonable. He stood up again, and wondered if he might have chosen to stay sitting, and why he did not do so, and considered the fact that he could never really have done anything other than choose to stand up, since that was what he had done.
Leibniz' theory was, Data thought, rather odd. The world was made up of 'monads' that changed as concepts passed though them, all directed by one supreme being, or God. Nothing concrete existed outside of the monads (save presumably God). Only they were real, making up the world much in the way that images on a screen were the result of rapidly fluctuating colors on pixels rather than any real movement of a cohesive object. But all sensory functions perceived incorrectly what the monads expressed, anyway. Data reread the Enterprise's files on atomic theory and privately felt that monads were a good example of Francis Bacon's Idols of the Theatre, falsification brought about through the overly-complicated thought systems, not based on any real experience, that the academic world could spawn. But he did wave his hand slowly before his face a few times to see if he could somehow discern if it existed as a distinct physical form or not, and ran another full systems check.
Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative brought a refreshingly logical take on ethics. Anyone capable of reason could reach a series of maxims, the Categorical Imperative, that determined moral behavior. All maxims were universally applicable to every situation, with no exceptions - one ought only to act in such a way that their actions could determine universal law. So, if one arrived at the conclusion that 'one should never lie', then one should never lie, not even to spare another's feelings. The introduction of exceptions to the rule was the beginning of the end, and anything less than absolute morality was a step on the path to complete ethical chaos. As another point, one should always treat another person as an end in itself, never as a means to an end.
Data found this ethical system highly satisfactory. It was clear and simple, devoid of ambiguity and doubt. It was compatible with his own ethical programming in that it was all about rules - no shades of grey, no questions, no uncertainty. Data liked the Categorical Imperative approach to morality. It was a fitting theory from which to derive systems of law.
He mentioned this in conversion with Lieutenant Commander Petrovich of the U.S.S. Atreides. As a Law officer, he agreed, but gave a little grimace at Data's high praise. He pointed out that Kant was famous for stating that he would not lie even to a murderer seeking his friend. That sort of moral rigidity had led to problems in many societies, the commander said.
Data had not considered that side of things. Perhaps there were situations where it would be necessary to lie, cheat, or even kill to truly do the right thing. Now that he thought about it, this idea was fundamental to the Federation's policies; violence was sometimes deemed necessary depending on the circumstance, and a course of action was always decided by analyzing a given scenario, rather than adhering blindly to a preordained set of rules, logical though they might be.
Apparently consistency was not the greatest good. Data left feeling slightly disillusioned.
With this new understanding 'under his belt' (he reminded himself that this was, in fact, not an innuendo, despite the frequency of comparable phrases in the aforementioned category), Data was wary of Stoicism. This philosophy, developed in ancient Greece, was based on the idea of Ataraxia, a concept which, according to Ensign Kkl'ax, meant, "chill, man." Data looked this up in the Earth slang and colloquialisms bank and was met with many intriguing references to 'Hippies' of the mid-to-late 20th century and 'stoners' from that time onwards. These 'stoners' had nothing to do with medieval-era methods of public punishment, Dr. Crusher promised. Data determined that this specific thread of investigation was largely unimportant, and continued reading.
True stoics practiced non-interference and passivity, coupled with a firm belief in the superiority of a simple life free of worldly comforts and the importance of suppressing emotional responses.
Trying to think objectively, Data considered. Though a theoretical universe inhabited only by stoics might function ideally, one single way of thinking could never be unanimously subscribed to by all intelligent species in real life. Cultures practicing the complete passivity advocated by the philosophy could be taken advantage of by outside influences with a more proactive credo. The stoic ideology discouraged fighting back against injustice.
This made him think uneasily of the Prime Directive. The argument had been made throughout history that non-interference could be unethical if it meant ignoring suffering; Starfleet's lack of intervention in the brutal Gwarg-Praxyon conflict on Arrakatan was an inflammatory issue in current Earth politics, Data remembered.
He briefly accessed his memory files on Sarjenka, recalling with a certain contentment that the Federation was not entirely stoic.
Three o'clock was, according to Jean-Paul Sartre, always either too late or too early for anything one wanted to do. This seemed unreasonable to Data, as each space in time was not fundamentally different from any other. Although, it was possible that humans experienced time differently from him, since he could recall Lieutenant Commander Geordie LaForge and many others commenting at one time or another that it apparently 'felt' like a different day of the week than it actually was. He mentioned this briefly to the captain, who assured him hurriedly that the quote was quite trivial in regards to actual existentialist theory, before going off to meet the ambassadorial envoy from Chrono Epsilon. Data read on.
Existentialism focused on the importance of the individual. Existence precedes essence meant that everyone existed as a physical being before they existed as a true person with an identity. The idea was that each individual defined both reality and himself through his choices and actions - there was no immutable quality in anyone that they did not make for themselves. Furthermore, personal integrity and the concept of 'radical freedom', or taking responsibility for one's actions and acknowledging the fact that each person did have free will and chose what to do - rather than being forced into decisions by circumstance - determined right. All of this was a hard pill to swallow (Data congratulated himself on the accurate usage of colloquial language) for someone who had been programmed by human hand and mind to be the way he was. But then, maybe that way of thinking was bad faith, the blaming of outside circumstance for one's own decisions. Perhaps his programming was not holding him back, it was only an excuse. And wasn't it true that he had made choices that defined him as a person?
He had never considered the fact that his programming might not be a constraint after all. He had taken it for granted that aspects of his existence were controlled by it, unchangeable as the number of particles in an object or the atomic weight of gold. He had blamed it for his shortcomings in the fields of social interaction and plain-and-simple emotion (just look at Lore! His programming allowed him to integrate!) as well as crediting it with his superior decisions with regards to morality.
In the end, Data decided, his brother was, in fact, living proof that their programming wasn't immutable. Lore had had ethical programming, too, and look how he had turned out.
Data looked around his room. He picked up a small plaster figurine that Wesley had bought for him in the tourist station at Pirra IV and examined it. Wanton destruction of property, Data figured, was definitely discouraged by his ethical programming.
He threw the souvenir at the ground as hard as he could.
He picked up the pieces carefully and placed them gently back in their former place on the shelf. Now certain that he was indeed capable of ignoring his ethical programming, he resolved to take more pride in how closely his followed it in the future.
Nihilism was the idea that nothing had any meaning, and no one any purpose. If he had been capable of emotion, this theory would have made him feel sad. Just because he had not found definitive meaning yet did not mean it did not exist at all. He hoped that Nietzsche had not given up on the world entirely, and maybe changed his mind late in life and just forgot to tell anyone.
Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation introduced the idea of the hyper-real, social constructs grown more real than reality itself. Initially confused, Data looked into the social climate on Earth in the hundred years before and after the time of the work's publishing, and realized that the theory must have been frighteningly accurate due to the fanatical consumer-corporatism that plagued the world at the time. He asked Lieutenant Hussain, an expert on 20th-to-22nd-century Earth history, for clarification. After explaining the theory to her, she came up with the example of apples - at the time, bioengineering allowed corporate fruit farms to produce apples that looked more delicious and ripe, so that more people would purchase them and companies could gain profit - but these fruits were actually less flavorful due to the genetic tampering. Another instance was that of exercise wear; people were so obsessed with the aesthetic of fitness-related wares that the image they created became more important than actual physical activity. Lieutenant Hussain laughed and said she was glad that Earth was able to break away from that poisonous Capitalism, and wondered wistfully how they could have ever been so backward, and expressed relief at the fact Beaudrillard's theory no longer applied. Data ordered an apple from the replicator and looked at it for a while.
"So, you finished them all? What did you think?"
"It is strange, sir. Unlike in the fields of science and mathematics, a new mode of thought does not invalidate and old one or render it obsolete, but merely serves to further complicate matters as there are currently no ways to prove or disprove any individual theory."
"True enough, mister Data." He paused. "Did you have any favorites, though?"
"It is a fascinating field of study, sir," he said. "But I do not feel qualified to subscribe to any specific ideology."
The captain laughed a little at that, and Data did not understand what was humorous; but he did not offer any query and the captain gave no explanation.
"That will be all, mister Data."
"Yes, sir." He rose to go.
"Sir-"
"Yes, Data?"
"Why is it that humans are so uniquely fascinated with questions pertaining to the factors of existence?"
The captain smiled thinly. "Philo, sophy, mister Data. 'Love of Knowledge', in the ancient Greek."
"I know, sir," he said. "I am fluent in all earth languages, extinct or otherwise. But I do not understand how anything that is uncertain, even if it broadens the mind, can be said to be 'knowledge'."
He scratched his head. "Well, perhaps it is more the love of learning. Or the love of thinking, for its own sake."
Data nodded. "Monsieur Descartes would certainly agree that there is use in that."
The captain laughed again, and though he again did not understand, Data let his mouth quirk up in a half-smile.