The Absent Philosophy of Vulcans

I have been watching Star Trek recently. Long-story short, even though Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is my favourite Star Trek show, I realized that I haven’t actually seen the ending. But, before watching that, I also realized that I hadn't actually seen the ending of some of the other shows we own, including Star Trek: Enterprise, and since that comes "first" in chronological order, I decided to catch up with that, first, then I watched Star Trek: Discovery.

I mention all of this because after watching all of Star Trek: Enterprise, most of Star Trek: Discovery, and now I'm half-way through Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, I rediscovered and reconfirmed a conclusion that I came to a while ago:

Vulcans are Completely Illogical.

For those of you that don't know——or do know and would appreciate a refresher——Vulcans are a fictional species of aliens in the Star Trek universe, who have some mild alien characteristics such as angry eyebrows, pointy ears, green blood and stupid haircuts. But their main facet is that, socially, their entire culture is dictated by an adherence to logic, and consequently the avoidance of emotions.

To a Vulcan, to be logical is to be unemotional and to be emotional is to be illogical.

This is an interesting character trait and whilst I am going to spend the majority of this blogpost explaining why I hate it and it's stupid, I want to start by saying:

Writers are not Experts. One of the reasons why Vulcans aren’t logical is because the people writing the show are not logicians or philosophers. Personally, I think that this is a disregard for narrative responsibility, but I also understand that not everyone has my views when it comes to authorial ethics. So, it's understandable that a regular TV show whose goal was one of "social allegory" got stuff wrong sometimes, since with this science-fiction show, their goal wasn't science, but fiction.

They don’t know everything about science, nature, chemistry, physics or, of course, philosophy and logic, so they make mistakes sometimes. Most of the time that doesn’t matter, and sometimes it does.

I’m not here complaining about Vulcans because I think it’s “bad writing” or “bad acting”. Whilst I freely admit that I am of the opinion that the show would be better if the Vulcans actually were portrayed logically, I’m also aware that it’s because I’m a persnickety, little pedant. I don’t “hate” Star Trek because Vulcans are illogical, I just find it mildly annoying.

And hey, maybe you don't even understand what I'm talking about. Maybe you've seen Star Trek and think that Vulcans are a pretty logical bunch, which can be both a benefit and a detriment. Well, allow me to explain why I disagree. To begin with, I not only consider myself a philosopher, but I had two years of "Philosophy and Reason" in school, including formal logic, religion, philosophy and debate, as well as over a decade of continued self-directed learning to consolidate my own philosophies and beliefs. So, I'm not simply coming at this as a Star Trek Geek, but a Philosophy Nerd.

All that said, allow me to explain this, as logically as I can... But my problem is threefold:

1. Vulcans are Bad at Logic.

First things first, from the many shows I have seen, Vulcans are rude. In Enterprise, T'Pol often speaks ill of humans, to their face and she isn't alone. In Star Trek: Voyager, the main emotion that Tuvok displays is one of annoyance. And there are few Vulcans on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, but those that exist are either socially inept or deliberately antagonistic. Whilst I don't enjoy the original series, from what I've seen of Spock he often displays a whole lot of arrogance.
And for the record, I'm not talking about being blunt, or matter-of-fact. Vulcans often regard emotions as trivial and unimportant, but worse they often talk down to people. Sometimes outright belittling others for failure, dismissing someone for being inadequate, or acting passive-aggressive to anyone that doesn't agree with them.

I feel it's self-evident that being rude to your workmates is illogical, but allow me to provide evidence just to illustrate my point. If you insult or antagonize a coworker, they will have an emotional bias against you and so working with them will become more difficult. I am sure that Vulcans believe they are superior, but constantly saying that to other people makes no sense unless you're insecure (an emotion, *gasp*).

Also, in several of the shows, the Vulcans are presented as having deeply held beliefs of spiritualism and tradition——to which, first, I am simply going to mention the word 'RELIGION'; casually place it beside the word 'LOGICAL'... stare at the two confused for a moment, before pushing them aside dismissively and moving on.

I am willing to forgive some of the spiritualism because, although souls don't exist in real life they do in Star Trek (Vulcans call it katra and store it in people and stones; Starfleet calls it bio-neural energy and it can control people when it is detached from a body, etcetera...). So, unlike in real life, spiritualism is "accurate", but, their adherence to tradition makes no sense as tradition is a custom or belief repeated for its own sake because of either appeal to popularity or history, both of which are fallacies. I'm talking about rituals like "those who enter the temple must accept the gift of the stone of J'Kah" or "if a Vulcan female doesn't want to be married, she must choose a challenger to fight her intended husband to the death". Or, things like the pon farr, apparently Vulcans go into "heat" every seven years and must deal with this through sex or violence.
That in and of itself is an interesting plot point and that's fine, but the Vulcans consider this whole experience shameful and embarrassing... it's considered a cultural taboo. But, WHY?! Sex is necessary for the propagation of the species, it's not logical to keep such a thing secret. But more importantly, taboo is an entirely emotional concept, because the whole idea of taboo is "we don't talk about this because it makes us feel uncomfortable", even though COMFORT is an EMOTION!

Some of this is from one-off plots that make for an interesting story, and cares little for canon, but one potential explanation is that some episodes explain that Vulcans aren't actually emotionless, they're actually kind of "emotionful". They have deep, volatile, passionate emotions, but because these strong emotions lead to civil and global conflict in their history, the Vulcan society reformed itself around the ideals of logic and purging of emotion.

You might think this resolves the issues I'm pointing out, but I'd argue it only explains a few, whilst creating myriad more issues. The fact that all Vulcans are constantly feeling emotions, but suppressing them, means that it makes no sense any time that a Vulcan acts "confused" with the emotions of others or lacking in emotional intelligence. If anything, they should have high emotional intelligence and awareness, because Vulcans should have felt ALL of the emotions in order to deal with each one as it arises.

This can explain some of the traditions/taboos and rituals, as these are just examples of the Vulcans failing at suppressing their emotions. That makes sense, people fail sometimes... but I still hate it for a reason that matters a lot to me, but it's admittedly my weakest point of argument: I think that this is simply less interesting.

"A Culture Dictated by Logic" is damned fascinating, when I heard about the idea, I was intrigued to see what kind of world Vulcan was, and how they operate as a society. But then they just repeat the exact same stuff every other culture has——religion, weird marriage practices, hierarchical political structure——but they occasionally mention the word 'logic'. But it just makes it lame. So much of our society is dictated by emotion, and it's so illogical that stand-up comedians will never run out of material for joke about "look at how stupid this thing we do is". Don't get me wrong, I also like laughing at how stupid we are... but imagine what a society would be like that never made illogical mistakes.

Consider this... I was interested when I saw that Vulcans have "arranged marriage" because whilst I think it's outdated on Earth, in a long-lived culture that downplays emotion and only gets horny once every seven years it made sense to me. But, when I then learned that wives "belong to their husbands" and they "fight over them", that just ruined the whole idea. Objectification isn't logical, it requires superiority and dehumanization (devulcanization? ...I think that happens to rubber), philosophies built on hatred. And then, there's taboos against extra-marital affairs.

But, extra-marital affairs are only wrong because they can harm the social cohesion of a couple and hurt people's feelings. But Vulcans aren't meant to be driven by their feelings... surely genetic diversity is more important than "but T'krell fucked Surlak". If anything, the only purpose of marriage, or any form of socio-sexual pairing on Vulcan, would be to limit inbreeding.

Heck, why even have marriage at all? That's just anthropocentrism, so what if on Vulcan "marriage" was just "mating" which began at conception and lasted during adolescence whilst a child requires milk and direct parenting, and fathers support mothers who must nurture and nourish the child? Then, once they start going to school all adults in that town became responsible for children (just as they are responsible for each other). That makes logical sense to me, since there's no need for familial ties after their biological needs are met, and a logical society would see the need to support all children, regardless of their parentage.
I am not saying that it should be that exactly, but that is just one example of potentially thousands of ways that a society would be changed by operating with logic and without emotion. Wouldn't that be more interesting than "exactly like us, but with pointy ears and dramatic plotlines"?

2. Vulcans represent Logic Incorrectly.

Vulcans often don't succeed at their ideals, but that is understandable, right? After all, there are many human societies that strive towards goals, but fail. Social media was designed to make it easier to keep in touch with people and have fun, and now people feel more isolated and stressed than ever. Hell, the notions of Capitalism were initially proposed to help the poorer people and to give the average citizen more freedoms, yet instead it's hobbled social mobility, raised income inequality, gutted social benefits programmed and, ultimately, lead to more sickness and suffering.

But here's the problem. Sometimes Vulcans are bad at logic, sure. But even when they're "good" at logic, they're bad at logic. Let me explain...

It all started with Star Trek: Voyager, because I hadn't seen the original series at that point. This was the first time I'd watched a show with a Vulcan as part of the main cast, so I thought that Tuvok seemed like an interesting character.

Occasionally he had some useful insight, but I noticed that on many occasions, he was outright rude, as discussed above, but I managed to justify that. My headcanon was that Vulcans aren't as good at suppressing emotions as they say they are and I moved on. But then I started to notice that even when Tuvok displayed his logical aptitude, he was still, often, proven wrong. Heck, the show even seems to delight in showing that Vulcans are wrong. I will always remember (because it annoyed me that much) one particular scene that illustrates all of this perfectly. You can watch the actual clip here (assuming Paramount hasn’t taken it down), but I want to talk about it in detail, so I'm going to transcribe it below:

in one episode of Voyager (Season 2, Ep.6: "Twisted") an “inversion field” is causing the ship to distort and we are told that it is causing rooms and corridors to rearrange, and partway through, this scene occurs...

[VOYAGER, corridor, Interior] In this scene TUVOK, a Vulcan, and CHAKOTAY, a Human, are heading towards the Bridge but are lost, due to the distortions. TUVOK and CHAKOTAY walk to a T-intersection in a corridor. CHAKOTAY attempts to continue walking, but TUVOK stops at the intersection.

TUVOK
(gesturing) I believe we should go this way, commander.

CHAKOTAY
(confused) Wh-what makes you say that?

TUVOK
If we are indeed trapped in some sort of labyrinth, then the logical course is to systematically eliminate all routes which do not lead us to our desired destination. The route that remains will be the correct one. Since we have been making a series of right turns, we should continue to do so, until we are certain that this path is not the proper one.

CHAKOTAY
(scratches ear) There’s a flaw in your logic.

TUVOK
How so, Commander?

CHAKOTAY
You’re assuming there’s a logical pattern to this maze we’re caught in, but so far I haven’t seen any evidence of that. 

TUVOK
Even within chaotic systems, there is a pattern of limited predictability.

CHAKOTAY
By the time we figure that pattern out, these distortions may have completely overrun the ship.

TUVOK
That is a possibility.

CHAKOTAY
The important thing is for at least one of us to make it back to the bridge. So, why don’t you go your way, and I’ll go mine, that way we’ll increase the chances that one of us will be successful?

TUVOK
As you wish, Commander.

The two separate, and we follow CHAKOTAY as he walks down the corridor. Moments later, TUVOK re-enters the corridor, ahead of Chakotay, from the right, both shocked at their convergent paths.

CHAKOTAY
Tell me something, Tuvok. What does your logic tell you about navigating a maze that’s constantly changing shape?

TUVOK looks around in speechless confusion.

This pisses me off for several reasons, so I'm going to break them down, one by one, in order:

1. There is a flaw in Tuvok's logic, but Chakotay doesn't find it. If you are indeed in a labyrinth, then eliminating wrong paths will necessarily find the right one, that's a logical certainty.
   The actual flaw in his logic is his premise that they are, in fact, in a labyrinth. If instead they are in a trap, or (since this is a natural phenomenon) less a hedgemaze and more a bramble patch, then there's no reason to assume that there is an accessible path to their goal, this could be inescapable.
2. Chakotay's "flaw" is even more flawed. He uses two fallacies, both anecdotal evidence "so far I haven’t seen any evidence of that" and a clear argument from ignorance to claim that the maze could be irrational, but I'd argue there's plenty of evidence that there's some logical pattern:
   i. The effect is a natural phenomenon, so it is bound by natural law.
   ii. Physics and Time aren't noticeably distorted.
   iii. The corridor flows "cleanly", as there's no sharp divisions and it doesn't flip upside down, so there's some consistency behind this effect, it's not irrational.
3. Thirdly, Tuvok's reply is also certainly correct: you can find some order in chaotic systems——that was, in fact my point as to why Chakotay was flawed.
4. In response, Chakotay uses another fallacy, an appeal to emotion, effectively arguing: "We may run out of time before you find this pattern, and die!"
5. Chakotay doesn't actually explain what methodology he is using. He simply says "you go your way, and I’ll go mine" without explaining what "my way" means, which is a fallacy since he's conveniently forgetting that they might die if they try it his way too. I believe this is the fallacy of "incomplete evidence", he's ignoring the evidence that he, too, is probably wrong!
6. When they part and eventually re-encounter one another, Chakotay asks "What does your logic tell you about navigating a maze that’s constantly changing shape?", and then Tuvok acts completely flummoxed, but I don't see why.
   

   [Author's Note: Arguably, Tuvok's path was better than Chakotay's since he reached the next intersection faster. But this was just bad choreography, Tuvok should have walked in from the left, because then he would have had to turn right, and walked into Chakotay's path backwards, showing that his method had sent him the wrong way (and proving that the maze is actually illogical).
   But even if you had changed the script so that their re-encounter was truly illogical, Tuvok should not have acted so shocked.]

   See, Tuvok's "keep turning right" idea is actually a maze-solving algorithm, called the Hand-on-wall Rule, and it does work, but only on "simply connected" mazes where the destination is on an exterior wall. It clearly wouldn't work for a shifting maze, but... there are several maze-solving algorithms. So the answer to Chakotay's question isn't to stare around, dumbfounded. It is to use something like the Pledge algorithm:
   "If the shape is changing, then we cannot rely on this method to navigate. Instead of following a turning rule, we should treat the bridge like North on a compass, and divert from that direction only to bypass obstacles."

Some of this is because of bad writing, especially that fallacy cascade from Chakotay, but writers don't see scenes like this as a flaw, but a feature. Like I said in the beginning, Writers are not Experts, so they don't understand logic properly, but they are using scenes like this to prove that emotion is superior to logic.
This is known as the Straw Vulcan trope. If you're unaware, simply put, writers feel like logic is cold and heartless so they are biased towards supporting the way they choose to live by showing how emotion is better than logic...

However, due to the Dunning-Kruger effect, they are incapable of recognizing just how wrong that belief is. Logic, Reason and Skepticism are some of the best means of problem solving that humanity has devised. The only way to prove that logic fails is by failing to have logic, or by allowing luck and happenstance (i.e. writer appeal) to give logic an unfair handicap, and put emotion on top like a putting a paper crown on your head and declaring yourself king.

This is what I mean when I say that I think the show would be better if the Vulcans actually were portrayed logically, because the only reasons these Vulcans fail is because the writers don't know just how incredible a lifelong logician would be!

It would mean that every ship would have a Sherlock Holmes style thinker, who would be able to provide great insight into any problem they face.

Now you might think this would make the show "boring" because then the Vulcan would solve every problem. I think that the reason why Spock was half-Vulcan was because the writers thought having a full-blooded Vulcan on the ship was overpowered, so they watered him down to make him error-prone. But I think this misses the reality that logic is reliant upon Data (not the android trek nerds, I mean information!), Logic can work a lot like mathematics, it's theoretically perfect, but in practice if you put in the wrong numbers, you will get the wrong answer.

So, consider if you had a Vulcan Ensign who had a lot of logic, but zero experience. They would be able to provide perfectly logical solutions, but because they don't know how most things work, they would have to rely only their peers to collect enough data to make a sound deduction. Tuvok provided a perfect example in that scene above. His logic was perfect, absolutely sound, a maze-solving algorithm would solve any maze... but they weren't in a maze. He relied upon a false premise. The rest of the scene is bullshit, but Vulcans aren't magic solution-generating machines. Any Vulcan is prone to such mistakes, you don't have to break logic to prove that, you just need to throw in a little "human error" ...so to speak.

3. Emotions are Logical

I'm not actually writing this piece because I want people to write better Vulcans on Star Trek. That would be nice, sure, but I'm writing this because I personally feel like this is a symptom of a much larger issue... that is the misrepresentation of an ideology. And not just any ideology, but logic and rationality. There are several beliefs and ideologies that I consider vital to my personhood. They not only define who I am, but improve my life immeasurably. Those are:

Absurdism (an extension of Nihilism); Atheism (agnostic atheism, to be precise); and——most relevant to today's post——Skepticism (an extension of Rationality).

Yet, for some reason, all three of these are often misrepresented in culture and media.

I won't go into all of that, because I think there are enough Atheists fighting the good fight to show how religion is not a force for good. Also, whilst it annoys me I understand the Nihilism thing because there are some denominations of Nihilism that I find distasteful.

But I will focus on Rationality, because I feel like it is the least deserving of this misrepresentation. See, Vulcans create this false dichotomy of emotion/logic. You either have emotion or you have logic. In fact, the highest form of logic that Vulcans seek is the purging of even vestigial emotions, so that all that is left behind is logic.

But even when the character isn't Vulcan... when a character is a scientist and shown as being "so focused on science that they become cold and inhuman", or when dealing with computers——hell, I have a whole blog post explaining how people misunderstand the actual threat posed by computers, robots and artificial intelligence. But the reason why people fear computers is because they have logic without emotions... But that is literally impossible!

Because of the Is-Ought Problem.

First discussed by Scottish philosopher David Hume, the Is-Ought Problem is simply this: You cannot draw ethical or judgmental conclusions from purely factual arguments.
Or, to put it another way... it is impossible to make a claim about what you "ought" to do, if all you are stating is what "is"; hence, the name.

It may seem really silly, but I need you to follow me for this example, because it's vital to understanding this philosophical concept.

If ALL YOU KNOW is:
1. Your Dog is sleeping on a pillow, AND
2. That pillow will explode in 30 seconds and kill that dog.
What must you do?

You may instinctively say "Well, I'd save them!", and that's a noble desire, but it's impossible, because why would you do that?

Obviously it's because you don't want them to die, but that's something you know, meaning in that scenario:

YOU KNOW:
1. Your dog is sleeping on a pillow
2. That pillow will explode in 30 seconds.
3. You don't want your dog to die.

In order to change this situation, you need to add another premise. But not just any premise... you didn't add "the pillow is made of cotton", or "the dog is snoring softly", you didn't add any more descriptive, factual statements, because none of those help to save the dog. You needed to add in a statement about desire and goals.

This is the Is-Ought problem. No matter what "IS", the only way you can rationally reach any decision to act is by adding in a separate "OUGHT", Is does not create Ought. This is important in understanding philosophical arguments relating to ethics, but it is important also in understanding logic in general.
Because to me, the Is/Ought Problem is really the "Objective/Subjective" problem. You can make as many objective statements as you want, but in order to inspire action you need some subjective quality.

Because "ought" is inherently a subjective trait. Objectively, what "Is" is simply what is, it exists. In order to change that, you must have what is and a desire for it to change. Some desire, some want, some drive...
And desire? hey... that's one of them there "emotions", isn't it? Even if you pretend it is not "desire" but simply a preference, a predilection, then I would point out that it is impossible to prefer to do something that you have no desire to do, because these words are equivalent, at least in an emotional, subjective sense.

If a Vulcan genuinely purged all of their emotions, what would happen next?
Honestly, I think they would die. Why would they continue breathing? They may breathe thoughtlessly, many do. I'm sure they would sleep if they managed to live that long, because that's often not a conscious decision, but why would they continue eating?
See, without reason, you would have no need, desire, or intent to keep on living. Yes, it would "hurt", but if you have no desire to stop feeling pain, you would die.
It's not even suicide, as you wouldn't "want" to die either, you'd simply not enact any of the necessary actions required to live, since you'd have no reason to.

At least if they died then they would have achieved pure, emotionless objectivity because a dead body is the object we become when our subjective experience is lost.

That is the only logical conclusion to a strict, emotionless, logic-centric existence.

So, the key reason why Vulcans are not Logical is because they continually espouse this belief that they ought to purge their Emotions and become purely Logical. However, the desire to be logical is predicated on a preference for logic over emotion, which is a paradox as preference is inherently emotional.

Especially because they don't simply tout logic, but "reason", even though reason, rationale and rationality are all predicated upon having some goal, some desire, or some principle that drives your decisions, which requires more of those pesky, subjective values and desires.

I think, for Star Trek, this is an easy fix. Vulcans shouldn't want to purge emotions, they should want to purge bias. By definition, by having reason they have some desires and goals. And perhaps Vulcans (being emotional) decide to suppress and do everything they can not to act upon emotions, as this would bias themselves and others. However, because society and ideology is complicated, perhaps some Vulcans go so far that they try to eliminate "opinion", leading to this potentially catatonic state of emotionless, objective logic, which some tout as the highest calling of a Vulcan and others see for the stupidity it is.

- - -

I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and Until Next Time, as you can see there is so much potential here. It was lost because it was written by writers, and not by philosophers. And for someone like me that's both, it leaves me wanting more. Because I believe that there's very few situations you can write yourself into that you can't write yourself out of. That is, of course, assuming that a solution is something you desire.
In any Case, I am left with only one conclusion:

Vulcans ⇒ ¬Emotional
Logical ⇒ Emotional
∴ Vulcans ⇒ ¬Logical