Does Data have emotions?

[CABAL]

Pretty simple. Do you think that Data has emotions without his emotion chip? I can see arguments both ways, but I'm curious to see what others think about it.

 

[Terra_Inc]

I don't think so. From a purely technical standpoint, I think he may perhaps have some similar systems to appraise his environment and his own state (considering many emotional functions, such as fear and disgust, are important for survival and not something you would want to be completely without), but I don't think that those would be linked in any way to any form of emotional perception. When he uses the chip for the first time, he is clearly overwhelmed by the emotions it produces, so we can say there are at least some emotions that are new to him.
However, I want to mention that it may be possible for him to have learned emotions, provided the neuroplasticity of the positronic brain is sufficient. If the technology that allows him to feel emotions fits into a little chip, there should be no reason why a sufficiently advanced learning machine should be unable to emulate its functions.

The question is, why in Asimov's name it took Soong so long to build an emotional subsystem. I mean, today we already have humanoid robots with complex emotional behavior. If the field of robotics has advanced far enough to build an android like Data, this should really be one of the easier tasks.

 

[OpetJa]

Sadly, IMO Data can't have emotions without chip...Data is like Terminator without emotion chip...He can smile but that doesn't come from heart or soul... E.g. this video

 

[CABAL]

Sure, we never see much in the way of strong emotions like anger, but he is very curious and displays a seemingly emotional desire to become more human, a goal that has very few logical advantages and plenty of disadvantages. He also seems to have a kind of affection for his crewmates and admits that he misses people that he has grown used to when they are gone, even if it's not exactly the same.

He may not have human emotions, but I believe he may have a sort of alternative derived from his programming rather than from evolved instinct.

 

[LordChicken]

Sometimes I feel while watching he might, but then ignores it.

 

[Zelph]

I think he might, as Cabal pointed out. He seems to possess a sense of curiosity as well as longing. A desire for conformity might be able to included as well, but that could be a artifact of his programming.

Who knows though? I like to think that Data would have developed them anyway, without the emotion chip. I kind of take a 'Ghosts in the Machine' approach there.

 

[starbuck]

I feel like he has the emotions, but there is no way for him to express it or act on it. It's like if a computer gives a signal to make a sound, but there is no speaker. This would make sense if the emotion chip didn't come with the emotions on it, but it could interpret the signals so Data could perceive them as emotion.