Helllooooooo everybody! After a loooong hiatus dealing with finals from my school I couldn't think of anything that would relax me more than comming back to the site and throwing this question out there.

 

So when Cybertronians transform to their vehicular or animal forms, I've always had a question of just where their conciousness gets stored or does it move? Fighting a beast-former, if you were to knock one out I think their minds would travel to the secondary head right? Am I incorrect in thinking this? So for a vehicle, where do their intelligences travel to? Just where would their vision be mounted?

 

Just pondering and wanted to know if there was an explanation for this?

Would it matter?

Not really. It's just my curiosity getting the better of me and wanting to know what everyone thinks. ^_^

I always assumed their head (hidden in vehichle mode) is were their 'mind' stays. Ive also known many instances where a TF downloaded his/her mind to somewhere else in their body (eg: the Headmasters in rebirth or in other cases where their head was destroyed but they survived).

As for seeing in vehichle mode, maybe they have optics in their headlights? I dunno.

This is actually pretty interesting for discussion--I've always thought about it myself.

The quick answer is "Wherever is plot-convenient at the time."

 

We know that when Transformers get their heads cut off unexpectedly, the heads seem to retain the seat of conciousness. However, this can be voluntarily moved to the chest in the case of at least some types of Transformer, although it's something which has to be done conciously and probably takes longer than a second or two. Perceptor put his conciousness into his Universal Emulator at least once.

 

I'm sure there have been examples of Transformers who have had one head torn off and transformed to use another head - presumably they weren't carrying their primary conciousness in the first head.

 

Then there are cases like Doubleheader, Doublecross, and some references to Beast Wars characters which seem to indicate that the conciousness is 'split' between more than one head. Not to mention the tricky question of combiner teams, Duocons, Sky Lynx etc.

 

From a systems design perspective, it would make sense in military and robustness terms to have multiple conciousness nodes all throughout a body, keeping synchronised with each other. That way, when one part became detached, both the part and the main body would retain a copy of the personality and memories. Once reunited, the components would resynch with each other and effectively act as a single being again.

 

There might also be advantage in having at least one of these nodes (the 'laser core'?) heavily armored, so that if the main body was largely destroyed, it would act as a personality and memory 'backup' which could be used to resurrect the original Transformer.

 

The Allspark might also act as a kind of wireless version of this, taking personality backups through subspace or some such, which would allow Transformers to be retrieved and redownloaded into physical bodies even if they were completely destroyed. Presumably these mirrors have control over their own security access - otherwise, anyone could be forcibly retrieved and reincarnated against their will.

 

I would imagine, though, that if this distributed-personality setup were true, that some Transformer would have found a way to clone themselves into multiple bodies. Perhaps all the nodes (and any new ones) are linked via subspace, meaning that you'd effectively get a _single_ mind trying to operate multiple bodies.

Magmatron from Beast Wars split his consciousness between bodies when he went into beast modes. however severe damage to one part would have adverse effects on the other parts.

The quick answer is "Wherever is plot-convenient at the time."

 

We know that when Transformers get their heads cut off unexpectedly, the heads seem to retain the seat of conciousness. However, this can be voluntarily moved to the chest in the case of at least some types of Transformer, although it's something which has to be done conciously and probably takes longer than a second or two. Perceptor put his conciousness into his Universal Emulator at least once.

 

I'm sure there have been examples of Transformers who have had one head torn off and transformed to use another head - presumably they weren't carrying their primary conciousness in the first head.

 

Then there are cases like Doubleheader, Doublecross, and some references to Beast Wars characters which seem to indicate that the conciousness is 'split' between more than one head. Not to mention the tricky question of combiner teams, Duocons, Sky Lynx etc.

 

From a systems design perspective, it would make sense in military and robustness terms to have multiple conciousness nodes all throughout a body, keeping synchronised with each other. That way, when one part became detached, both the part and the main body would retain a copy of the personality and memories. Once reunited, the components would resynch with each other and effectively act as a single being again.

 

There might also be advantage in having at least one of these nodes (the 'laser core'?) heavily armored, so that if the main body was largely destroyed, it would act as a personality and memory 'backup' which could be used to resurrect the original Transformer.

 

The Allspark might also act as a kind of wireless version of this, taking personality backups through subspace or some such, which would allow Transformers to be retrieved and redownloaded into physical bodies even if they were completely destroyed. Presumably these mirrors have control over their own security access - otherwise, anyone could be forcibly retrieved and reincarnated against their will.

 

I would imagine, though, that if this distributed-personality setup were true, that some Transformer would have found a way to clone themselves into multiple bodies. Perhaps all the nodes (and any new ones) are linked via subspace, meaning that you'd effectively get a _single_ mind trying to operate multiple bodies.

 

 

This all sounds interesting and very plausable. So you're saying that the "laser core" would act kinda like a black box in an airplane. Interesting. And as far as the beast former losing their primary head, I think that's pretty much what I was thinking about more or less. Would the conciousness be moved or is it more wired throughout the Cybertronian body? I didn't think that it was an answer as simple as, as a friend was thinking, "Their conciousness is where their spark is" only because there may have been circumstances where the bots had to fight to win at all cost. A savvy bot could pull this off with enough timing and forethought. I was just wondering if it could be done. Thanks guys! :thumb

Consciousness isn't in any specific place. Their robotic brain would always be in the same place. To believe that robots would always have their brain in their head is ridiculous.

Consciousness isn't in any specific place. Their robotic brain would always be in the same place. To believe that robots would always have their brain in their head is ridiculous.

 

 

MMMMMMMMMmmmaybe you're right but I just keep thinking that the Transformers, even though being robots, are goverened by certain elements that most sentient organic beings are. Certain things that makes them more or less biological beings. I think I'm looking for what makes them similar beyond appearance to us as far as their engineering.