[ExI] Let's play What If.

[Ben Zaiboc]

Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj at gmail.com> wrote:
 
> BTW, speaking of essentialist paradoxes: take the cloning
> operated by
> provoking a scission in a totipotent embryo (something
> which obviously
> does not give place to two half-children, but to a couple
> of twins).
> 
> Has the soul - or, for those who prefer to put some secular
> veneer on
> such concepts, the individual's "identity" - gone extinct
> in favour of
> two brand-new souls? Has a new soul been added casually to
> the one
> twin remained deprived of it? Has the original soul
> splitted in two
> halves?
> 
> What about saying that the question does not have any real
> sense?


The question doesn't have any real sense, but the significant thing is why.

The reason is that a blastocyst has no central nervous system.
No CNS, no thoughts.  No thoughts, no identity.  No identity, no 'soul'.  QED.

AFAIK, any scission in an embryo far enough along to have a CNS would kill both halves (Or if not, each half would have only half a brain, which would be an interesting (though probably tragic) scenario).

A more realistic version of your question would be: What is the situation, identity-wise, with someone whose Corpus Callosum has been cut?  Are they two distinct people now?  Or are they one mentally disabled person, with a fragmented mind?


BTW, I find your turn of phrase: "the soul - or, for those who prefer to put some secular veneer on such concepts, the individual's 'identity'...", a little odd.  Why a 'secular veneer'?  Is secularism not the default position, in your opinion?  I'd have expected you to say "the identity - or, for those who prefer to put some supernatural veneer on such concepts, the individual's 'soul'...".


Ben Zaiboc