Some Things to Consider. . .
 

     What exactly will we do with the power to clone? If we are striving to achieve an ideal, on what is that ideal based? Can we achieve a complete mastery of physical laws? What happens when we overcome our limitations? If we ever reach a point of material efficiency, will we have the ambition to follow intellectual, spiritual, or moral pursuits? What are natural boundaries and what do they mean to us? What will historians say when they look back at us? Will they think that we are more confused than previous cultures? What does it mean to play God? If there are no effective natural limitations, are we effectively God? If there are no natural limitations in practice, are we God in practice?
 

 Highlights from the Last Meeting. . .
 

    Artificial insemination is a common medical practice. The rights of the babies from this procedure are the same as for any other human being. By analogy, clones would have the same rights as well. But there are some differences. One is that the DNA is only coming from one parent. Another difference is that the baby conceived through artificial insemination is still created for purposes of parenting and family; the clone is economic and utilitarian.

    If we could grow a set of organs, at what point would we say that it is a person? If you remove the brain or alter the cells before it starts growing, is it still human? Our modem self would equate what makes us human with our brain. If we base personhood on reasoning ability, how do we account for temporary loss of reasoning ability? Can you stop being you and then be you again? Can you be you with the potential to be you? Can you be yourself to yourself and not be yourself to others? When people have strokes and lose their reasoning capability, are they not themselves anymore? Are they human? Can (should) we decide to use the parts?

    What will happen if we can biologically alter things? Are we better disposed to decide what is good than nature is? We are creating lives for purposes. For example, we might create people with gills to help alleviate our population problem. But even if we cannot define what it means to be a better human, our culture has ideas about it. Would we really want to produce superior people? They may be more efficient, faster, stronger, and more intelligent, but we cannot control how they think. What if they turn out to be bad? They will think that they are superior, and they will have the numbers to prove it.

    What we don't know doesn't bother us as long as we are able to manipulate our environment. What constitutes "playing God"? Man seems to most want the powers to kill, to expand, and to create. Socrates reminded us of the human limitations of knowledge in the service of the gods (divine).

    Reminding us of limitations is his way of affirming a place for the divine (that which is beyond our limits). But if we have no limits to our knowledge then it follows that there is no "beyond," and thus no place for the divine or supernatural. What would be the difference between a natural order and the order that we create? Our artificial world would be based on economy.

    Cloning, however, is not creating life; it is copying it. But what about when we are able to manipulate the "copies"'? To create new life all we need to do is create a new species. But how is this different from what we did to the wolf? Were we playing God by creating the toy poodle? The difference is that we were still operating under the constraints of natural limitations.

    Is the question of what is human necessarily related to what's natural? Do we still have a sense of what is natural? We are altering ourselves and our environment and world. We could not have created artificial people first- first we created an artificial world which we have had to master, and through that world we are separated from one another.

    Natural connexions with one another and human contact are minimized in our world through our technologies. It may seem that we have more contact with one another on a wider scale, but that is an illusion. Once artificiality is accepted, it is more easily applicable to humanity. It may sound like a diabolical plan, but it is more likely to be seen as a series of logical consequents of the pursuit of progress.

     Originally, reason and rational powers were used to free us from nature and to distinguish us from animals. How far do we go to liberate ourselves from nature and natural limitations? At what point do we reach a threshold where the use of a certain type of reason becomes a threat? Can too much use of reason be self-destructive? Reason may become a constraint rather than something that we use for liberation.

    Can we have complete mastery of physical laws? Even if we can, the answers to the question of "what is" cannot help us to know what "what is" means. We can do all sorts of clever things with a rock without knowing what the rock means.

    What does it mean to break natural boundaries? Do we really still have a sense of natural boundary? Our life span used to be 30, now it is 70. These boundaries are not limits; they are expandable. We cannot change the laws of nature, but we can, with increasing efficiency, avoid constraint by them. One way to conceive of freedom is freedom from something. What happens if we reach the point of not having anything from which to strive for freedom? What would our reference point be, and how would we find meaning in a world without limitations?

    Is Artificial Intelligence another version of cloning--a recreation of ourselves in terms of our reasoning ability in mechanical matter? Could you explain morals to an artificially intelligent machine? (We can't even explain morals to each other!)

    There is always tomorrow--but what if there is no tomorrow? What does the realization of mortality change about a person's perception of the value of life? Does it augment or detract from that value? Is our temporal limitation necessary to a quality existence as a human being? Why or why not?

    Hypothetically, were we to overcome our finitude, what would time mean? How does the inevitability of our death affect how we view and interact with other human beings? Does it mean that we should value them more because we may only have them with us for a short time? Or does it mean that we value them less because our evanescence prevents us from assuming permanence in mortal relations? Why is permanence important to us? Is a person who believes in the eternality of the soul necessarily better able to handle and/or value mortal life than one who does not?

    We all have different views of what death means in terms of our lives. What do we do with the comprehension of inevitable mortality? Ignore it? What is the price of prevarication? If we are making a conscious effort to ignore it, are we not acknowledging it? If we do face death, it could help us to use the time that we do have, making every second count. But what does it mean to make our time count? Do we think of this in terms of what we can do for ourselves or in terms of our contributions to others? If we only live for ourselves, can it really have meaning? Why?

The Philosophical Debate
Meeting Schedule for
Spring Quarter
(All meetings will be held in Gamble
Hall 106 at 8:30 pm)

 May 7 & May 21

Deadlines for submissions to
The Philosopher's Stone

May 9 & May 23