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

Well, my answer to that would be that all this conversation is mainly theoretical anyway, so can't you take the soul to be theoretical as well?
Aah well, see ya Ztik!

I have to agree that people getting a new hairstyle recreationally are scary, but even they have souls...
I believe in souls, but don't know if souls really exist. That's what believing is all about. Thinking something without knowing it for a fact. There must be something there that makes a difference between sentient beings and non-sentient beings, but what?
How do we make the intuitive choice between judging something to be the one or the other? Don't know, it's intuitive.
That's why it's so theoretical.

BTW: I'm allergic to cats, and not to dogs. That's probably why I'm a dogperson...

Thankyou for putting so eloquently what I was spluttering over!

But me? I'm a cat or dog person, not a caged animal person, cos I own a chinchilla at the mo (inherited from my sister when she moved into a no-animals flat) and don't have the time, it's just not fair on the animal is it?

Wow? What did that have to do with the price of chips?

Sorry, kirps in tangent mode again!

Mmm tangenty.
Cats are nice.
My cat's sitting on me and purring right now.

Hmmm.

It gets fussed over, free food, warm bed and (when necassary) medical attention.
Maybe trying to make a definition that fits animals into the unintelligent catagory is going the wrong way about this...

A soul isnt something you own or have its what you are, we are all living souls. So if it lives an breaths then i guess it is also a living soul. I dunno im confused now......

if anyone has a soul then a clone has one as well

IF . . .being the operative word

We can safely assume that a clone would have the same inalienable rights other people do. Origin is not an issue here. Wether or not someone was conceived out of two people or from the DNA of a living person should not matter in this.

Same on the more 'touchy-feely' level: if one has a soul, the other does as well...

I was recently reminded of something. Someone said once, that people put labels and definitions on things they cannot understand. If that thing we can't understand gets a really scientific name, we tend to think "Oh well, someone thought about it and even came up with a name. It must be researched then". By putting names and labels and stuff on these things, we claim a kind of onwnership on it. We make it our own, just to be able to live with the concept, without having to think about it. The concept of souls is rather like this. We don't know what a soul is, and don't even know if such a thing as a soul exists. What do we do? We put a name on it, think about it and conclude "hey, a nice name, we all think it exists, so it must exist. Problem solved".
Not really, we just put it on a shelf to be sorted out later by someone with a bit more brainpower and/or imagination.
True, or have I shocked you people too much with this?

Real question, do clones have human rights?

Is cloning just meat, or the intent to justifying slavery.

Of course a human clone would have human rights!

'Is cloning just meat, or the intent to justifying slavery.'
Slavery? Aren't we getting a tad sci-fi here?

Ste

The War of the Clones? The latest StarWars movie?

How 'bout this: If it were possible to create not a clone, but a sort of copy of a living person, that was not exactly alive, but in a sort of coma... Would it be allowed to use that copy to harvest organs? If someone has a faulty heart or liver. Could it be justified to take the liver or heart out of that copy and use it on the living person?
Or even if the copy was to be a living being. Would that make a difference?

On the other hand, I would not allow anyone to use a clone based on my DNA to be made a slave. That clone has my characteristics. True, upbringing makes a lot of difference, but in a way, that clone is me under different circumstances. I could have ended up like that. I wouldn't want to be a slave, so I wouldn't allow the clone to be one.

to answer that question we should of course first answer another: 'do normal conceived people have a soul?', if so are people the only ones who have souls or do animals have souls as well, like dogs or cats or mice...we could go all the way back to the amoebe here. Were and When does the soul appear?

I vagely remember an article in New Scientist about the conscious and the subconscious. The core of the article is that what we do is not what we 'the conscious' chooses to do but that everything is orchestrated by the subconscious. the conscious is only created so that we have a feeling of individuality that lets us survive in the world. it is as it were a contact medium between our true selves (the subconscious) and the world out there. If this is the case, what could we then define as soul?

Question is why clone? Why the expence? what's the pay back? Is it to justify slavery, create organs for transplant? Does human clone have human rights? The soul issue is associated with rights to humanity.

I'm just wondering about this whole organ harvesting idea...

(1) Assumption
It is okay to create a clone and harvest organs from it

(2) Assumption
A clone is perfectly identical to its human counterpart if it was created at the same time as a human birth

(3) Conculsion from (2)
clone == human

(4) Conclusion from (1) and (3)
It is okay to create a human and harvest organs from it

(5) Implication introduction (1) (2) and (4)

If you accept that clones are identical at the point of birth and you belive that clones can be grown to harvest organs then you must accept that humans can be grown (or born no difference to my mind) purely for organ harvest.

[Guess who has an exam on first order predicate logic coming up]

Now I'm not saying that means you can't use clones for organ harvest. There is an argument that it would be okay to create a human for this purpose - he/she could be drugged so that it felt no pain and was unaware of the world. To all intents and purposes he/she doesn't exist, except that he/she can be used as a bank of organs for saving* lives.

I'm not sure how I react to that. Theres a part of me that THINKS its a good idea, but another part which FEELS its an atrocity. I need time to conisder the issue.

Thoughts?

* - I use the phrase because this is a seperate point: I never understood how you can save a life. So far as I am aware you can just extend it.

Well said Gaffer, and the sooner people people realise this the better it will be for any future clones.

Well probably at the time of creating a clone,the original and its clone might be identical in all respects.But thats just for that instant of time.A soul is not a quantitative entity.It is brought into existence along with life and since life might have different things in store,souls of the clone and its original shall emerge as two different entities.Even at the time of creation the situation faced are different.So on second thought both shall possess different souls altogether.

Clearly, if a. souls exist, and b. clones have souls, the clone has a different soul than the original person. The reason? The original and the clone are two individuals. No problems there.
The thing is, where does a lab experiment become a person? Let's say we get a clone somewhere in the world. Let's even suppose it's flawless, no terminal diseases from faulty DNA and such.
The clone can function as well as any other person. There are no signs that tell the observer this person he is looking at is not born out of parents, but out of a cell from a different person.
I should think that all descriptions and human rights go for the clone.
But what happens if the scientist doesn't want this and decides to introduce a major flaw in the DNA? For instance, one that makes the clone for all intends and purposes a human vegetable?
Not clear. Humans that get into a coma and are a human vegetable, do have inalienable rights. We can't decide to terminate that life, although here in the Netherlands we do in some cases. A major issue in that decision wether or not to euthanise the person in a coma is the opinion that person had at the time he or she was in full possession of mental functions. Not a hard fact, when is anyone in full possession of mental functions when faced with the inevitable?
A clone that is in a state of coma from the moment of existence clearly has had no chance to express an opinion. Can any other decide wether or not euthanasia is an option? Because harvesting organs would result in death. In an invasive way. Letting a patient die from dehydration (or not operating or administering life extending care) is passive euthanasia, and is used all over the world, also in places where euthanasia is not allowed. But active euthanasia?

Not easy questions, nore are the answers easy. But comments would be nice...

Well before dicussing about the legality of euthanising clones,lets focus on the fundamental rights that a clone should deserve.All of us to some extent are clones of our parents,but they dont control our existence(it does happen here in India to a large extent)at all.Similarly a clone too cannot be subejected to any sort of boundation by its creator.Any means to suppress intelligent life would give way to a rebellion , history can prove this.So any sort of exploitation of clones would lead to the same consequence.

To someone who does not believe in an afterlife what is a soul? I think that all there is a personality or genetic/chemical traits individual to every creature.
We experience a sense of self which can be attributed to a spiritual soul or to the biological self created by our body.

If a soul is the living part of a person then what would be 'inside' a clone with no soul who in every respect appears as perfectly human as any other?

"I think that all there is a personality or genetic/chemical traits individual to every creature"
Where does the personality come from? Do you think that it is purely chemical or do you belive that there is something else?

Ideologically speking I support euthanasia. The only reason that I wouldn't want to see it implemented is that it is a form of legalised murder, any euthanasia law could be manipulated to allow legalised killings. I'm not entierly sure how this works but I've spoken to several law students and two lawyers on the topic and this was the general concencious.

Organ harvesting...nice idea...we already recycle our dead to this end...is it okay to create someone purely for this end...if no suffering is involved I don't see why not.