h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

... Just starting out the forum! I've not much to say right now ... I'm tired and wanna go to bed! But anyways the forum is here, for whomever wants to put something in it!

Ditto on the tired and wanting bed part, but I wanted to bookmark this so it didn't get lost in my vast backlog. Back soon!

Hiya! Sorry for not responding sooner ... things are rather hectic over here. But I think we should start with this what you said last time :

"One thing I wondered was this: sure, it is possible to replicate a *physical* being through cloning. But are we playing "god"? Is is possible to produce a living thing with a SOUL? Does the process of cloning result not only in live birth, but also in ensoulment? Imagine if this were not so... a species or race, or even a small subspecies or subgroup of living things that exist but are completely soulless and *not* part of the "collective unconscious". Okay, maybe I've read "The Boys from Brazil" a few too many times, but the idea still scares the shit out of me. Maybe in animals, it wouldn't be so bad- I think animals have souls, but not a "conscience", per se. They've no need for one. But what would happen if we started cloning humans, humans with no souls? No conscience, no emotions whatsoever, no spirit, no heart. No free will. It'd be like "The Village of the Damned", or "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". or am I just being overly paranoid again?"

Can I just ask first of all ... when you say 'conscience', what exactly do you mean?

Hmm. I'm not sure, exactly. I'm sure that my idea of a "conscience" differs greatly from that of other people.

I usually think of a conscience as an inherent moral or ethical barometer, that thing inside of us that, laws or no laws, tells us what is "the right thing to do". The thing which enables us to use reason rather than instinct sometimes, when making decisions or reacting to our environment.

The reason I say animals haven't really got one, is that animals don't really *need* one. But humans have learned "conscience" over time, it helps us to live together peacefully and productively. and it seems to be rather deficient overall in most humans these days.

I guess you could say that my idea of "conscience" is an ideal of humanity, empathy, compassion, and love for all living things, and for humans to stop seeing things as existing as a convenience to, or an extension of, themselves, but to see themselves and all life as part of something vast, beautiful, musterious, and eternal.

Argh- I'm rambling again!!

And I'm also typing very, very badly. musterious= mysterious.

OK Psychocandy thanks for describing to me your concept of 'coscience'! And anyways you're not rambling! And even if you were rambling, so what? In any forum of mine you have 'a licence to ramble'!! Me, I have a 'parallel-processing' mind and I have no difficulty keeping track of several separate threads at once.

To get to the cloning: here's my current take on the issue.

We cannot create 'life' in a lab by scientific methods. Life can only come from life (at the mo that is ... this is not about the initial origin of Life, but about life and its reproduction *now*). There are several different ways of cloning, but all of them involve the molecule DNA (or maybe sometimes RNA) and a living cell. The living cell comes from somewhere but it *starts out* fully alive and the life of the cloned organism is simply the perpetuation of the life of that original cell. In that sense, cloning is not the *creation* of life, but the perpetuation of one form of pre-existing life.

I can go into more details here, if necessary.

But anyways, because cloning is not really the *creation* out of nothing of a new, living entity, in my view, there is no reason to think that a cloned individual will be fundamentally different from beings that arise more 'naturally'. But what you say about a 'conscience' may come into the equation somewhere. I'd like to say more about that, as well as about the way in which (in my view) a mind starts out ... and also what a 'soul' might actually be ... but for now can I ask about 'The Boys from Brazil' ... I don't know it, so could you tell me something about it or who the author is so I can look it up online? I do know about 'The Village of the Damned' and 'The Invasion of the Body Snatchers' so no need to explain that!

"The Boys From Brazil" is a novel by Ira Levin ("Rosemary's Baby", "The Stepford Wives", et al) about a plan to resurrect the Third reich by cloning Hitler. Freaky stuff, really. They made a film out of it, which I haven't actually seen.

I understand that the process of cloning ivolves the perpetuation of life from an already existing life, thank you for explaining that. I am very interested in hearing your thoughts on how the mind starts out and how a "conscience" is formed. I wonder about that, and how it might come into the equation. Perhaps perpetuation human life through cloning mightn't be much different from in vitro fertilization. I don't know enough about either procedure to really form an informed opinion, and I dislike forming opinions out of ignorance on the subject matter! If you know more about either, I'd love to hear them explained more clearly.

Thanks for the "license to ramble"! It's a relief to know that some people can follow my tangential thought patterns and streams of consciousness.

Thanks for the info about 'The Boys from Brazil'! Now that you say that, I remember having heard *of* it. But not read the book ... I'd like to read the book, if I can get my hands on it.

Anyways I'd like to say something about the processes of cloning and in votro fertilization ... but first I'd like to say something about how minds, souls, and consciences might be formed. This is *extreme* conjecture right now ... it is only my own subjective ideas, based on insufficient evidence!! I'm using a heck of a lot of 'intuition' because there simply *are no* cold hard facts. But for what it's worth, here goes.

First of all I believe there must be a kind of 'proto-mind' that is inherent in all matter and probably energy too. In fact, it might be possible to see matter as well as energy as being different manifestations of this universal proto-mind. And, apart from matter and energy, there may be other manifestations of the proto-mind as well! But anyways ... mere molecules will therefore have their own proto-minds even though we consider them to be 'dead matter'.

Now even rocks and individual molecules have these proto-minds ... but in 'dead matter', the proto-mind doesn't rise to any higher level ... it doesn't become conscious, or self-conscious, it merely exists as a *potential* for consciousness ... or, perhaps, carry the elemental units from which consciousness is constructed.

Just a quick aside here ... I think that maybe *photons* could be seen as the elementary carriers of consciousness. You know what a photon is, right? It's a 'particle' of light. Photons are involved in almost all reactions inside atoms and molecules, and the transfer of energy and information, and so they could be ideal carriers for mind-like properties ... and in that sense I feel that they should have elementary mind-like properties of their own.

But anyways, whether it be photons, or something else, there has to be *something* in the Universe that carries the elements of consciousness, and I feel that this has to be present in all of matter and energy ... this proto-mind, with the potential for 'higher' minds to arise from it.

Now in any living being, the elements of the 'proto-mind' become organised into something complex, a complex Whole, and this Whole ascends one step upwards on the scale of 'Consciousness/Mind'. In its most rudimentary form this is still a very primitive 'mind' with only a very crude 'awareness' of things. This sort of 'Mind' will be present in single-celled animals and plants ... and in fact this sort of mind might also be present in the individual cells of our own bodies ... for instance, in our white blood cells, that in many ways act like little 'animals' inside us with wills of their own. It may even be the case that components *inside* single cells have their own minds of this kind. Maybe the cell nucleus has this kind of elementary mind, and the mitochondria have their own, different minds, and so too for some (but probably not all) of the different 'organelles' inside our body cells.

OK I'm just quickly going to post this ... I will continue in the next posting, please be patient ...

Very interesting thus far, Willem! I hadn't thought of it from that very small scale upward, only say from "Consciousness/Mind" upward. I can see that even a cloned life form would have inherent energy, being made of matter. Fascinating stuff, to think from the very tiniest thing that exists on upward instead. I'm glad you are so intelligent, and are happy to explain this stuff to me.

I also wanted to add, without breaking your train of thought too much, that when I spoke of "ensoulment", I wasn't referring to it in the religious sort of sense whereby "ensoulment" is "bestowed" by god (in the biblical sense of god breathing life into something or anything along those lines), and only upon human beings. I do believe in a cosmic Whole, a collective "Consciousness/Mind", and do not feel that we would be "playing god" by creating life through cloning.

I just wonder at what level the inherence of things such as "conscience", complex and/or abstract thought, begin to take place in a living thing. These things don't *seem* inherent in what you refer to as "dead" matter. I guess what I am wondering is a question which no-one can really know the answer to- exactly what is it that makes living things "alive". By alive, I mean not just existing or containing energy and cell activity and the like. (As an aside, I do think at times that body cells *must* have "minds" of their own... mine do some pretty squirrelly things sometimes!) But what I mean by "alive" is sentient and capable of thought and feeling. Would cloned humans function similarly to "lower" life forms, such as amoebas and stuff, or would they be capable of all of the higher life processes that humans and most animals are?

Thanks for being interested in this, Psychocandy!

Sorry for not having continued posting sooner ... I didn't have any more time that Sunday, and this week I've not much time either. I have a lot on my plate ... which is good! I'll report on my latest activities this Sunday.

When I have a bit more time, I'd like to speculate on how 'elaborate' minds can be built up from the 'primitive' or primal mental elements ... and how it can happen that these elaborate minds could become linked into a single 'Global Consciousness'. I'll also say why I believe such a Global Consciousness is a *necessity* for the existence of any minds at all. But anyways I just have a little bit of time tonight so I'll just quickly say a few things. The long speech will have to wait for Sunday!!

I know you don't believe in a traditional concept of 'God' and neither do I ... but in my view the Global, or Collective, Mind takes the place of God and may even have some of the attributes sometimes ascribed to the being(s) called God in various religions.

My own concept of the Global Mind is the 'storehouse' of all mental concepts as well as the 'record' of all of known and knowable history, and also, it transcends time and space, matter and energy (which is another aspect that exists to a greater or lesser degree in individual minds.

The Global Mind also dictates the potential for mental development of any individual mind. Individual minds can grow, can become more elaborate, can 'raise' their own consciousness, to encompass more and more of the Global Mind, and the Global Mind itself becomes more elaborate as a result of this 'growth' of individual minds.

Each of us, through the course of our histories, grow in mental capacity. The things you mention, like the conscience, the capacity for abstract thought, and so on, arise at various stages during the process of growth.

As far as I am concerned, clones will have as much *potential* for mental growth as 'normal' people. Whether they realise this potential, however, will depend on their paths of development, and the process of cloning may alter this, from that of 'normal' humans. I'd like to talk about that in more detail in my next posting. But I have to say goodbye for tonight, just ran out of time!