Flesh is Weak vs Soulless Sentience is Enemy

[Kilofix]

So I'm reading the Mars Trilogy again and was wondering if there is any fluff that defines the "line" at which the replacement of organic components constitutes the loss of the "soul".

 

This is where the Mechanicus' creed of "The Flesh is Weak" comes into conflict with "The Soulless Sentience is the Enemy of All".

 

Would just a brain still entail a soul in the Mechanicus' view? I'm thinking yes?

 

What about just imprinted memory patterns in a non organic machine? I'm thinking no?

 

What about something more odd like a fully cybernetic brain but organic heart?

 

Just curious.

[Father Mehman]

In Gunheads, we see a non-organic imprint of a Tech-priest and there is no problem. It was his brain. Anyway, the two other Tech-priests remark that they are going to take him back to Mars and blah blah blah. I'm not going to ruin the story.

In Dark Adeptus, there is a character that is inside a cogitator/has no body. They are also going to take "it" back to Mars because he has become one with the machine.

This is the way I see it: if the consciousness originates from a human, it doesn't matter what form the body, or medium, takes. Basically, I don't believe there is a line. Like with the Inquisition, an Inquisitor could denounce another for being over their own personal opinion of where said line is about Radicalism, but it doesn't matter to the Inquisition as an order or as an idea.

Whole wars have been fought over this idea, in 40k and in our own historic and modern world. 40k's wars are about Puritanical ideas versus Radical ideas and our real-life wars have been fought over "my geographical god is better than your geographical god."

Maybe that makes sense !

[CommodusXIII]

Knights of the Imperium also features the soul of an ancient tech-priest housed in a computer bank.

 

I think the general line is:

• If the sentience was once human, it's holy.
• If the sentience was created by a human, it's heresy.

So servitors, Thallax, and memory engrams fall under the first category.  Iron Men fall under the second.  Machine Spirits, battle automata, etc. all skirt the second as they're not truly sentient - though advanced versions (like those housed in Titans) are very close.

[BassWave]

Then why was everyone appalled by the machine that had multiple brains in priests of mars. They acted like it was a souless machine, but clearly it operated off the gestalt consciousness of the brains. Am I missing something from the other two books?

[Kilofix]

Then why was everyone appalled by the machine that had multiple brains in priests of mars. They acted like it was a souless machine, but clearly it operated off the gestalt consciousness of the brains. Am I missing something from the other two books?

That's what actually started me on this thread. But I suppose, as Commodus and Mehman suggest - the original basis of Galatea was a machine despite the brains that were added later.

[CommodusXIII]

It also varies a bit from author to author, and story to story.

 

Several Knight Freeblades are rumored to have no Pilot, and are said to be autonomous Machine Spirits. This would technically be heresy if true, and it's an uncomfortable subject. At the same time, those individuals are still heralded when they appear.

 

My Eisenhorn canon is a bit sketchy, but one antagonist is the mind of a heretic bound in a cogitator. He was already a heretic, but this unnatural act was still seen as heresy in and of itself. However, a similar character in Knights of the Imperium is lauded as a saint, despite being in a much worse mental state.

 

As with most things in 40K, the line between good and evil, holy and heretical, are very much blurred. The fun comes from exploring these grey areas.

[BassWave]

It also doesnt help that humans can be very hypocritical, especially the mechanicus. Knowing whats heritical and what isnt is very difficult.

[MajorNese]

Mechanicum suffers from the Inquisition Syndrome: If someone else does it, it's heretical. If they do it, it's either a necessary evil or just misunderstood. Difference to the inquisition is, the AdMech's rules are derived from religious dogma. It can be seen heretical to build something new, with no logical reason why it should be bad, and some "venerable" old tech can contain dangerous AI stuff. Those who throw off dogma often do so to follow dangerous research, and therefore have no gods or masters, like Telok.

 

In case of Galatea, the abominable part was that it (seemingly) originated from a borderline intelligent machine spirit and no human spirit, and consumed its techpriest "masters" to boost itself. Having the cogboys lowered in the food chain is of course against AdMech principles, as a machine spirit shouldn't even be capable of true learning and evolving.

[Battybattybats]

Remember that Knights and Titans take on the memories and personalities of past pilots and transfer some of that to new pilots. So a Knight acting by itself would be the accumulated souls of previous pilots controlling the machine, so that would be a holy machine spirit, not heresy. Because it retains that human component.

[CommodusXIII]

Titans form distict personalities, though ghosts of tne former Princeps also remain.

 

Knights... are a bit stranger. By the fluff, their Machine Spirits are not supposed to be sentient at all, but rather an aura of sorts formed by the emotions of previous pilots. That some eventually become sentient appears to be worrying to factions in the Mechanicus. Because they didn't cause it, and they certainly don't understand it, many of them fear it. Autonomous Knight Machine Spirits are a result of gestalt human emotion, but not the consciousness of a human, so it's still a grey area.

[RandomMarine]

The grey knight trilogy had a dead tech priest that lived on inside a archetype data system and could posses servitors.