Regarding Erek's thought though, isn't he an android? I thought his thoughts=programming? I mean is he actually sentient? I don't think robots and androids are actually alive and sentient, but correct me if I'm wrong.
It's really funny you should ask that. Before continuing to use the word sentient, read at least enough of my rant here:
http://animorphsforum.com/forum/index.php?topic=5410.msg443162#msg443162 to make sure you know what you mean.
In any case, even though what you actually meant was "is he actually sapient" your question would be just as valuable if you did actually mean "is he actually sentient?" and either way I would say that yes, he definitely was sentient and if you believe that he was not sapient then you might just as well believe that humans are not sapient. Now I'm not trying to 'correct you', but suggesting you may need to reexamine your thoughts on what these meta-cognitive things like sapience or sentience really are; and if they do actually necessitate life to actually be cognition (or 'thoughts').
No, he is not alive, but life is not a prerequisite for sapience, sapience merely requires roughly human level intelligence or better; it describes the ability or 'wisdom' to make judgments (with intentionality) based on that intelligence. Now I understand your belief that for a robot its "thoughts=programming" and well, frankly sci-fi has concerned itself for quite some time with exactly what it takes for one to consider a robot to be its own person (as having sapience is recognized by many to be sufficient to bestow 'person-hood' on any non-human; for example we would say that Andalites are people even though they are not human because they are sapient) but the level of thinking displayed by the Chee is certainly sufficient for sapience.
So I see that you would argue "Well, it is not actually making those judgments and its intelligence is not true intelligence; both are just programming taken to enough really abstract levels to make it
appear to be making decisions in the way that a person would, but it is all just programming." But to say that, you could just as easily say:
"We humans think we have free will and are our own, independent person making decisions, but consciousness itself and everything we think is us is merely an illusion; everything we do is predetermined by all of the physical and electrical properties of our brain which are nothing more than immensely elaborate computers responding according to the laws of physics to given inputs from the nervous system in the same way a robot would. We do not actually make judgments based on intelligence, it is all just the physical 'programming' of our brains and the rest of our bodies, built by nature."
Or to put it another way:
"Everything that has ever happened or will ever happen in this universe has been predetermined from the beginning. All matter and energy move and operate according to the laws of physics. Whatever happens to 'us humans' has been predetermined, and our responses and actions have likewise been predetermined by the specific physical and electrical state of our brains; such that if someone knew with enough detail how all of physics operated and knew enough about the entire universe at any given time they could predict everything that will ever happen, including their own reactions to this knowledge. We are nothing but complicated robots built by the physical properties of the universe being played out over time"
So yes, in that sense you could argue that a robot is not sapient, but in that sense neither is a human or anything else within this universe, removing all meaning from the word. I myself prefer to believe that robots dream of electric sheep.
