[ExI] Iain M Banks' Culture Novels [WAS Re: Usages of the term libertarianism]

[Stefano Vaj]

On 22 May 2011 16:42, Richard Loosemore <rpwl at lightlink.com> wrote:
> This is an interesting scenario, but there are elements of it that need to
be clarified before it can be answered.
>
> You are positing extremely humanlike creatures, I assume?

No, just marginally genetically modified clones, as in the mentioned movie (
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0399201/), who are in principle neither more nor
less humanlike than their originals.

>If the creatures felt no pain whatsover over the thought of being
harvested, and the thought of losing all of life's other pleasures, and if
they would be increasingly miserable -- desperately unhappy -- if they were
prevented rom realizing their life's goal, then it would be immoral to force
them to suffer in the name of saving them.

I am not discussing here the "morality" or not of slavery, I am simply
discussing its definition (and consequences).

> However, I suggest that the real answer to your question is that you have
created an artificial situation of no relevance, specially constructed to
mix TWO people into one body.  In effect, these creatures contain both a
hedonist like us, and a harvest-suicider ..... two people with two different
(and potentially conflicting) sets of desires.
> So the difficulty in answering the question is not about whether it is
ethical to create creatures that genuinely and completely desire to do
something that is valuable to us, but a question of whether it is ethical to
create creatures that have mixed motives, in such a way that the creature
suffers as a result of conflict between the two halves of themself.  To that
question I answer an emphatic NO.  It is of course not ethical to create
mixed beings in this way.

Hence, given that human beings currently do have mixed motives, and happen
sometimes to be happy, sometimes to be frustrated by their being sacrificed
for non-hedonistic purposes, ordinary human reproduction is basically
unethical.

> But that does not impact the morality of creating creatures that do not
experience any conflict.

Not all (devoted) slaves in history have actually experienced such a
conflict. In fact, I believe that Max More himself has quoted the famous
Nietzsche's ironical say about John Stuart Mills utilitarianism: "“It is not
the Man does not strive for pleasure; it is the Englishman”.

> And, similarly, it would be possible to create entirely non-sentient
creatures that produced organs for donation (something on the level of an
oyster or jellyfish), so it would be immoral to escew that path in order to
create fully sentient human beings.

Why this would be the case in your view, if the relevant "fully sentient
human beings" are satisfactorily programmed to avoid such conflicts, by
their breeder/genetic engineer, or even by more trivial and time-honoured
brainwashing?

> Humans have never been "designed" to want slavery.  It was imposed on a
creature whose fundamental design was 100% the same as before (desiring
freedom).  You distort reality here by comparing real slavery to the
hypothetical situation I proposed.

This sounds like a personal projection, and Aristotle for instance would not
agree with you. Humans have been culturally programming and designing
themselves for millennia, through selection and education; and their ability
to do so, at both a genotypical and phenotypical level, is only going to
increase. But even today, and as a consequence of the above, many humans
appear not to be designed to "desire freedom" much more than your average
dog.

And if you were not persuaded with regard to current humans, you would just
have to remember the Russian project which developed a species of domestic
dog-like foxes in less than forty years without resorting to any genetic
recombination, just by way of selective breeding. The idea that the "Nature"
is going to prevent Brave-New-Worldish developments is on a par with
trusting God to do so.

In conclusion: is it possible today to have slaves who would not be such
according to your restrictive definition (what Aristotles call "slaves by
nature" as opposed to "slaves by convention")? Yes, and it is even quite
easy. Is it desirable? I do not think so.

--
Stefano Vaj
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