ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with the Borg, a collective entity introduced in the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation. The Borg is composed of biomechanical life forms with limited individual agency. The Borg is a fearsome threat because it assimilates societies and civilizations. The more immediate threat in our universe is that we ourselves will turn into the Borg. Resisting that tendency requires active reflection on rationality and efforts to support reasons and persons. The importance of personhood is illustrated with two legal cases. In 1879, the Ponca chief Standing Bear was found to be a person within the meaning of the law and thus entitled to determine where he would live. Nearly five centuries later, the android Data is likewise found, in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, to be a person with the right to make his own choices. An episode from the original Star Trek then illustrates the centrality of truth and justification. The alternative to the Borg is a world of persons and reasons.
