They were totally biological, which made less sense to me in both movies.
Oh, this thing's not a humanoid computer. It's a clone. You've grown these bio clones with superhuman abilities and artificially limited lifespans.
So... why would they not have consciousness? Did you take the consciousness out? It doesn't seem like it. Also, why not give these mutations to regular people? (Ghost in the Shell contemplates this, btw. Major is a brain in an experimental synthetic body, and they tell her that someday everyone will have one as cybernetics become more common.) That they can self-replicate like humans is a nice feature, but why not have inorganic robots in all those offworld colonies, given the scarcity of food, water, and air in space and the havoc radiation wreaks on cells?
It's like some colonial dystopia where a company can grow humans and own them as non-personed property rather than machines sneaking their way into personhood by degrees.
Or it's some hyperliteralist Searle shit where anything that isn't of the human species isn't a person. Instead of taking the path of least resistance and using human DNA to grow the androids, maybe they used some proprietary ersatz DNA, and since it's sufficiently different from natural human DNA the organisms it produces aren't seen as people even though they approximate them almost indistinguishably. Or maybe they're afraid. The androids are superior; if not for their artificially limited lifespans, they'd take over.
My take was that the artificially shorten their lives so that consciousness can't develop. That's the piece that, when you combine it with their powerful specializations, would enable replicants to take over. Until then they have the consciousness of a toddler at best and are easier to manipulate. By the time consciousness starts to dawn "accelerated decrepitude" kills them off naturally.
Oh, this thing's not a humanoid computer. It's a clone. You've grown these bio clones with superhuman abilities and artificially limited lifespans.
So... why would they not have consciousness? Did you take the consciousness out? It doesn't seem like it. Also, why not give these mutations to regular people? (Ghost in the Shell contemplates this, btw. Major is a brain in an experimental synthetic body, and they tell her that someday everyone will have one as cybernetics become more common.) That they can self-replicate like humans is a nice feature, but why not have inorganic robots in all those offworld colonies, given the scarcity of food, water, and air in space and the havoc radiation wreaks on cells?
It's like some colonial dystopia where a company can grow humans and own them as non-personed property rather than machines sneaking their way into personhood by degrees.
Or it's some hyperliteralist Searle shit where anything that isn't of the human species isn't a person. Instead of taking the path of least resistance and using human DNA to grow the androids, maybe they used some proprietary ersatz DNA, and since it's sufficiently different from natural human DNA the organisms it produces aren't seen as people even though they approximate them almost indistinguishably. Or maybe they're afraid. The androids are superior; if not for their artificially limited lifespans, they'd take over.