Would you kill a human with no conscience to save one with?
- Tazo
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Would you kill a human with no conscience to save one with?
In a sense, I am asking what makes a human being. If it the organs in their body or something more? Does taking this being's heart count as murder? If the scientist saves the woman, are they a murderer or a savior?
- LuckyR
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Re: Would you kill a human with no conscience to save one with?
Interesting questions. Some of this is known, some unknown. It is known that parents (in this case the mother) can ethically bring a child into the world, partially, and perhaps wholely, to provide donor "organs" for a family member. It is also ethical to harvest organs from a braindead individual that results in the death of that individual. Classically the individual would have to give consent to this before they were declared incompetent, though for minor children, the parents, say the mother, would give this consent. Since all of the above is ethically justified, the practice would not be murder, thus the surgeon would not be a murderer.Tazo wrote: ↑March 27th, 2021, 8:22 pm This is a very theoretical question based entirely on made-up situational elements. In this situation you are given a mother who needs an urgent heart transplant (I am no scientist, so I apologize if this it completely unrealistic). In this made-up world, scientists have created test-tube babies with no conscience, as in... they do not think for themselves nor do they want or dream. One of these beings can give the mother a heart. Is it just to preform the procedure? Is taking from a being with no thought the same as killing a chicken to eat and survive?
In a sense, I am asking what makes a human being. If it the organs in their body or something more? Does taking this being's heart count as murder? If the scientist saves the woman, are they a murderer or a savior?
The unknown is the feasibility of creating a baby without brain function on purpose, in this case to provide organs.
- Pattern-chaser
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Re: Would you kill a human with no conscience to save one with?
As far as I know, chickens think. Not like we do, but thought is thought, I think. I imagine that a human completely without thought would need to be placed on life support machinery to preserve its existence. In this case, the issue is surely whether humans without thought could or should be created?
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Re: Would you kill a human with no conscience to save one with?
You're talking hypothetically about non-sentient beings, which by no stretch of the imagination could be considered human beings. It is no different than developing specific human organs and then transplanting them to a human being.Tazo wrote: ↑March 27th, 2021, 8:22 pm This is a very theoretical question based entirely on made-up situational elements. In this situation you are given a mother who needs an urgent heart transplant (I am no scientist, so I apologize if this it completely unrealistic). In this made-up world, scientists have created test-tube babies with no conscience, as in... they do not think for themselves nor do they want or dream. One of these beings can give the mother a heart. Is it just to preform the procedure? Is taking from a being with no thought the same as killing a chicken to eat and survive?
In a sense, I am asking what makes a human being. If it the organs in their body or something more? Does taking this being's heart count as murder? If the scientist saves the woman, are they a murderer or a savior?
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Re: Would you kill a human with no conscience to save one with?
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Re: Would you kill a human with no conscience to save one with?
It it your premise that the test-tube not only have no sense of right and wrong, but no consciousness at all? It's a question that has been raised regarding clones - as in, "What if everyone had a mindless twin stashed away in a vat, in case they need spare parts?" Then they are not persons, but organ-banks.
I think that performing such an operation would be even more routine than working in a slaughterhouse (killing innocent animals that clearly do think, feel and desire to escape) or, as the same doctors must have done, experimenting on innocent animals to learn the procedure, or executing convicted murderers (most of whom, even if they don't show remorse, make every conscious effort to avoid that fate) or bombing enemies about whose guilt or innocence one knows nothing at all.Is it just to preform the procedure? Is taking from a being with no thought the same as killing a chicken to eat and survive?
If doctors, butchers, soldiers and executioners are not hampered by empathy for the self-aware beings they kill in the service of their fellow humans, I can't imagine them hesitating at a human clone.
Personally, I could not do any of those things. However, I am very much troubled by the work of research scientists, butchers, soldiers and executioners, yet would not object to organ-clones and more strenuously than I do to abortion.
OTOH, if there were less wasteful*, less graphically disturbing** options, I would certainly prefer to explore those before I supported a major initiative in cloning technology.
* Most of each body would never be used: you'd have to keep them hydrated, nourished, housed and protected for 60-70 years. Granted, they'd have a small ecological footprint, but how many would you need in a society that didn't cater exclusively to small elite class? Once all the high-demand organs had been harvested, the body would have to be recycled. Overall, a huge undertaking!
** Because most of us have very strong identification of body and mind as a human unit, like ourselves. I wonder about the psychological effect of producing, tending and mutilating these creatures, both on the health-care community and the society at large.
For both of those reasons, it would be far more efficient and less problematic to clone organs without the bodies - vats full of hearts, kidneys, lungs, livers, glands, in an assorment of size and age.
I'm less concerned with drawing distinctions between self-aware species than reconciling self-aware species.In a sense, I am asking what makes a human being.
It is the interaction of organs - notably a brain and its life-support system - to produce a conscious entity.If it the organs in their body or something more?
Obviously not, since the legal question will have been decided before the technology was made available.Does taking this being's heart count as murder?
Just a surgeon, doing a day's work.If the scientist saves the woman, are they a murderer or a savior?
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Re: Would you kill a human with no conscience to save one with?
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Re: Would you kill a human with no conscience to save one with?
All the horrors you can imagine are already being done, and have been done for several thousand years.
Just look at what people actually do, every day - to other humans and to other sentient species - and analyze why they think, or at least say, that it's okay to do those things, and how they designate acceptable victims.
- Pattern-chaser
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Re: Would you kill a human with no conscience to save one with?
I would say it's morally wrong to destroy any entity, living or not, without a good reason. I destroy the creatures I kill to eat, but I don't casually destroy trees or sculptures (etc) as I walk past them; that would be morally wrong, IMO. Do you have a justification for killing entities that are of 'lesser' consciousness?
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- Pattern-chaser
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Re: Would you kill a human with no conscience to save one with?
No, you feel pain when I stick a pin in you. What you feel when you have somehow lost $1000 is capitalist angst, not pain. Given that Capitalism is the state religion of your country, I accept that your upset could be significant, but I think calling it "pain" is going too far.
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- LuckyR
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Re: Would you kill a human with no conscience to save one with?
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