sentient rights (was RE: Battleground God)

From: Emlyn O'regan (oregan.emlyn@healthsolve.com.au)
Date: Wed Feb 20 2002 - 17:36:48 MST


Anders wrote:
>
> Overall, an enjoyable little website. There should really be
> more sites
> like this for other questions (right now I'm reading a book about the
> animal rights movement, and it has some interesting examples of how
> tricky the issue of deciding what beings have rights and on what basis
> is; it would probably make a good "battleground ethics" setup).
>
>

How bizzarre... I am reading "Animal Liberation" by Peter Singer at the
moment. Same issues. Same book?

I think that the ethical questions raised have are very strong in the
context of transhumanism, moreso than other philosophies, in that we support
morphological freedom, and thus must regard where we are now (human) as t(i)
(where i is some positive integer) in an iterative process. This implies far
less weight given to current qualities of humanity in determining who is
covered by concepts such as the Principle of Equality... any criteria based
on current human abilities must look entirely arbitrary. Thus with respect
to beings with below human levels of intelligence, which are otherwise
rather similar to us (eg: mammals), it is difficult to see where lines could
rightly be drawn to grant us rights but deny the same to them. After all, in
a context where we are talking about becoming SIs, etc, the difference
between a human and, say, a dog, is negligable.

Thoughts?

Emlyn

***************************************************************************
Confidentiality: The contents of this email are confidential and are
intended only for the named recipient. If the reader of this e-mail is not
the intended recipient you are hereby notified that any use, reproduction,
disclosure or distribution of the information contained in the e-mail is
prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please reply to us
immediately and delete the document.
Viruses: Any loss/damage incurred by using this material is not the sender's
responsibility. Our entire liability will be limited to resupplying the
material. No warranty is made that this material is free from computer virus
or other defect.



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 13:37:40 MST