Soul, Self and Secular Ethics

First principles, from a philosophical, a priori point of view

Data held in ‘organic’ living beings is destroyed as the cells are – making it impossible to transfer data.

In computerised forms – data can be transferred, carried around, edited and uploaded into any number of machines, computers, memory sticks, data storage.

Organic life forms take a long time to grow, mature and learn. Data is hardwired in as we go.

Can a machine undergo the same process by programming, or will it take as long to learn as we do?

Can a machine have a sense of self? If it does, is that a will to stay alive? What is ‘alive’ anyway? Is everything a ‘life’ does, for a purpose? i.e survival, growth, procreation…

What are the moral issues (secular ethics) involved in the creation of a sentient being? Is it analogous to bringing a child into the world? Does it have the same rights/responsibilities as we do? What therefore is the difference between us and other animals/life forms (and the new sentients)?

I am totally in agreement that we as humans are just another life form. We aren’t special. We evolved, and we evolved as one of the most advanced in terms of intelligence and thought capacity. This is due to many (physical) factors – enlarged frontal lobes, giving temporal sense, capacity to adapt, tool use, etc.

Looking at ‘life’ in general, in all it’s forms – the generic ‘life force’ appears to be, to the observer, to procreate, and ensure that your genes carry on through time and space. This is linked in with evolution, which is a process which over many generations of gene mutations means that the best adapted life forms survive. It is entirely random and unplanned, but that seems to be the outcome, and of course it is an ongoing process. Some life forms (sharks, for instance) are said to be at their evolutionary dead end, as they are as perfectly adapted to their environment as they can possibly be. To this end, they have not shown any significant evolution for millions of years.

Why? A question which may be impossible to answer, and perhaps one of those which tends to push thinking beings towards the ‘easy option’. God.

So is that our essence, the core of our very function? To keep our genes travelling on, assuming they are the best ones, and staying alive at all costs until this can be done? On a personal level, I’d have to say no, but as a species we have done everything we possibly can to become the dominant life form on the planet, to control all we can, and to procreate to rediculous and potentially unsustainable levels. As a species we want to survive. At any cost.

As a species we also have a thirst for knowledge, a will to understand and atomise every last part of the world and the universe. We think we know what the very first few milliseconds of the universe’s existence were like. We want to understand everything. Perhaps because we have become so successful at life itself, our evolutionary path has gone down the road of intelligence and understanding as the most ‘successful’ route.

Now we want to create life. Life from no life. Life from scratch. Proof that life from scratch is no different than life coming about from millions and millions of years of evolution. It doesn’t take long for a planet with simple life forms on, given the right conditions, to evolve and grow to a state of containing complex life forms. It has happened in Earth’s history more than once – catastrophic events leading to the destruction of most life on the planet, leaving an almost ‘blank canvas’ on which to let Nature work. In approximately a million years, the planet can get back to an equally, if not similarly, complex state. So why not create an intelligent sentient life form in a really quick and easy way?

“Instant life. Just because we can. (Comes in a can)”

Where does the ethics come into creating sentient life? In my view, there are many aspects which need to be explored. The first one is concerned with the idea that there appears to be a general need to know ‘where’ you come from. Many people who were adopted try to find their birth mother, for instance, and there are decreasing numbers of egg and sperm donors for fertility clinics, as laws about anonymity are relaxed. What is this desire? If you have been brought up by a good mother and father since birth, they are the only parents you have ever known, and then you find you were adopted, would you want to find your ‘birth parents’ or at least know who they were? I would, and there seems to be a very strong psychological or biological factor here, which makes it important for us to know ‘who we are’, and ‘where we came from’.

The creation of a sentient being would be somewhat different – would it have a mother or father? Would it need to know where it came from? Would the psychological aspects of this cause it harm or distress?

Presumably a sentient being could not be created ‘whole’ – it would need time to experience life and learn from every unique experience, thus making it a unique and single life form. Where then, does the programming stop and the learning and experience begin? How far are these beings the same, and at which point do they start to become different, unique?