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

[Richard Loosemore]

Stefano Vaj wrote:
> 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.

Non sequiteur.

>  > 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”.

Not true.  I am talking about "slaves" that either do, or do not, have 
the intrinsic mental machinery required to experience desires that 
conflict with a subservient desire.

I am not talking about whether humans (who all basically have the same 
design, hence the same machinery that makes them instrinsically desire 
to be free) can SOMETIMES resolve the situation by accepting their lot 
and being more or less happy.  That is contingent.


>  > 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.

I am making the statement on the basis of an understanding of the 
psychological mechanisms involved, not personal projection, and 
Aristotle's understanding of psychology was distressingly weak.

Your statement, on the other hand, does indeed look like folk 
psychology:  as far as we can tell at this point, the motivation 
mechanisms have different strengths, but in normal humans they are all 
present.  They do not come and go as a result of cultural evolution.


> 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. 

There is absolutely no scientific evidence to support that statement.



Richard Loosemore