From: E. Shaun Russell (e_shaun@uniserve.com)
Date: Sun Nov 22 1998 - 01:18:34 MST
Dan Fabulich wrote:
>
>Now, here, people have falsely applied Identity of Indiscernables to say
>"Yes, definitely. If the I.o.I. principle is true, then the two copies
>are the same person." Well, again, this requires us to assume that there
>is a "person," a "consciousness" off in Plato's heaven, of which the two
>copies are instances. We have two instances, obviously, but so long as
>they're both instances of the same person, it should be fine if one of
>them dies. The true form of you exists so long as one of your copies
>exists.
Whoa there. Your post was great until this point. As you say, the
two identical twins are indeed *two different humans* with the same genetic
makeup. However, as soon as awareness (in any capacity) occurs, the
cognitive processes become --as John Clark said in his initial post--
slightly different than each other. Therefore, to kill one would mean
killing a being that is not *identical* to the other. However, the level
of consciousness of each twin *would* be almost identical to each other and
would ultimately mean killing a being that is conscious. So truly, the
question of ethics surpasses the genetic feasibility...it becomes a
question of killing something that is conscious. True, the level of
consciousness of a newborn (or two...four is right out!) would be nowhere
near as complex as a mature human, but it would be conscious nonetheless.
So the next question is this: how developed must the consciousness be
before the killing would be considered murder?
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E. Shaun Russell Musician, Poet, ExI Member
==============================> Transhumanities editor for Homo Excelsior
Kineticize your potential. http://www.excelsior.org
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