Sun 12 Jan 1997 19:52
[limits2.doc]

Rebecca, It was incredibly cool for me to be able to talk to you about that potential experiment and the ethical problems of it. If you can help me out on that human genome project ethical dilemma, I could use some help. What did you say about it again?

I want to thank you so much. I hate that that last email might seem ungrateful or uncool. Thanks so much for copying your I.D. and signing the being group form. I'll print out a new copy of Maslow's Self Actualization stuff before I see you again.

I'll include what I wrote about ethics in one of these emails. I have revised it yet and it needs revision, especially the last part, but maybe you'll read it (will you?) and better be able to criticize it. Though you already found some problems with the idea I had in mind. I want to work on that now.

I think the experiment I was talking about was an extension of thinking of a world in which there were people who had consented to be in psych experiments in which they would not know if they were living their own lives or participating in someone's experiment {by the way, I wanted to let you know that D. Barash has popped up in another of my books- the research methods one this time. He was observing male and female pedestrians crossing the street with and without children some time before 1978. He noticed that males always scanned the street more than females before crossing when together with females even when children were present. As an ethologist (one who is interested in the evolutionary basis for behavior) he hypothesized this increased scanning behavior in males was related to the behavior of male monkeys who serve as lookouts for their monkey tribes, while the female monkeys do not serve as lookouts. Finding D. Barash is like finding Waldo, it's nice to find him, and he's sort of funny}

Anyways, and the people would have consented to be studied and they would have been aware of what they consented to. But, as I think of it, these people's behavior could be affected by the belief that they might be in an experiment, but I think the effect would be very small.

And then I started thinking about the experiment I was talking about. Unfortunately it is ethically flawed according to the ethics I wrote, not to mention the ethics you feel. You also pointed out that it is not an experiment, and so may be of dubious value. This is something I will think about later. What exactly would be the value of doing something like that, or would it just be cool to do? What exactly merits the energy that would be put into such a thing? This is something I need to work on.

But this idea felt so cool, I went on an asked what are the "ultimate" experiments? Of course, these aren't really experiments, I need to think about what is so cool about them. Some other things I thought of- creating the beginning environment so that what biologists would call life could form from that beginning environment and being able to see how a functioning cell could come from that.

Or like the physicists do- start with the most basic stuff and put it in an environment where it creates stuff like the atoms, or something like that. Create a whole universe.

I see I need to think more about the nature of these activities. They are not experiments, but creations.

---summary--(written after all that follows the next set of dashes)

Ethics are a societal phenomenon, evolved over time to protect the interests of individual members of the society and the interests of the society itself. Anything can be ethical or unethical depending on the determination of the society. There are no basic human rights which transcend time. One only can be not obligated to follow an ethical system if one is able to maintain one's self in an environment where one recieves no benefits of society membership. One can never be in such a situation. Every human is born a part of a society of greater or lesser ethical development (greater development means covering more conditions), and receives advantages of societal membership simply by being concieved. One can only work to change the society of which one is a part.

---

What you accepted implicitly, and what I stated at the beginning of my "behavioral limits" was that our ethics apply only to our species. Why is this?

I think it has to do with basic motivations, like I assumed a fetus has a basic motivation to survive, meaningfully. Our species has a motivation to survive and protect itself which comes before its concern with other species. Likewise it is not unjust for a human to kill another human if the other human is threatening its immediate survival. Nor is it unjust for a family to defend itself from a human trying to destroy it. It seems to me ethics comes from this idea. We hold certain abilities of freedoms of our own to be so important that we protect them with ethics. It is not ethical to kill a human with out its assent, but by trying to kill you it gives you its assent to kill it. These are the implicit rules we work with.

While I don't think fertilizing a human egg with human sperm in some primate and having the primate raise that human violates any of these basic freedoms we seek to protect, observation without consent certainly does.

I thought I had a way that would make this whole thing more appealing to you- if the environment of genetically reconstructed neanderthals (raised by primates) was somehow altered so that they evolved in to humans, would this whole business be O.K.? No, because we would still be violating these basic rights of a member of a human species if we observed them without consent.

So the only way we could observe these things is if they somehow evolved into a different species. Species are groups of organisms that can interbreed. Maybe humans and neanderthals can interbreed, I don't know. What exactly is the nature of a species? Why is the species distinction important or relevant? Do we assume that members of pre-bronze-age human tribes have the same rights as we do because they have the potential to be the same as we are? Don't fish have the potential to be the same as we are, given a few generations? Maybe that is the idea. If a baby neanderthal can develop the same capabilities as a human given our environment....

The purpose of ethics is to ensure that people who could have power over other people using their knowledge and technology use their knowledge and technology as they would not mind it being used on them. Observation is out of the question... If the organism could never be capable of using the knowledge and tech of the more powerful on the more powerful, our ethics do not apply to our relations with that species. Like you said, you don't mind abortion because you would not mind if you had been aborted. I don't think that quite works though. Is like saying you don't mind vaporizing another person because you wouldn't mind being vaporized right now. How could you mind? You wouldn't even notice. I don't vaporize other humans because I don't want to be vaporized.

The assumption I make is that the developing human organism must meet certain expectations if it is to be allowed to live. Just as a human in this society must meet certain expectations if it is to be allowed to live free.

Fetuses are incapable of aborting humans which is why they can ethically be aborted. Babies are incapable of killing which is why they can ethically be killed? Pre-adolescents are incapable of grounding their parents which is why they can be ethically be grounded. Adults are incapable of imprisoning the state which is why they can ethically be imprisoned.

The deal is, we do not want our own babies (babies who can be expected to be able to support themselves independently) to be killed so we make it unethical for us to kill babies, or children. This is a function of the societal view, it is not inherent in the structure of a species ethics that babies be protected. But we may choose to do so in our own society. So we have.

We make it unethical to destroy cultures we could destroy because we do not want them destroyed. We make it unethical for us to murder because we do not want people to be murdered.

so we evolve a human species from primate raised neanderthals and let them be. is this unethical?

We don't observe them because we don't choose to be observed ourselves, even though they could not. We don't kill babies because we choose to protect our babies. Our society has not yet chosen to protect fetuses, maybe because it cannot, but more likely because people in general do not choose to. {actually, apparently our society protects fetuses in some ways because they cannot be used for certain things.}

Outside of a society are there any ethics? What are the limits of a society? Can anyone ever be outside of a society, or are we born with one? When do we come to be recognized by a society's ethics? when others can benefit from our adherence to the ethical system. It does not matter if a baby is unethical or not. A baby cannot be unethical.

We have determined in our society children should not be without certain developmental advantages, like learning how to read english. To allow a child capable of learning english to grow up without learning english, people in general in our society have decided is unethical.

Can a sperm and egg from this society be taken and placed in a situation where a different ethical system will apply to it after conception, or no ethical system at all will apply to it?

hold on a second.

{actually, apparently our society protects fetuses in some ways because they cannot be used for certain things.}

 how do we decide to protect fetuses in certain ways or protect babies in certain ways? We have a government with politicians. If there were significantly more value to not protecting babies than protecting them, and the  governing body expressed this opinion, babies would not be protected. The ethical opinion is a function of the society.

Are there no basic human rights outside of a society? no there are none.

Back to my attempt to get out of society. Unless society could be convinced such a thing (implanting a sperm and an egg in a place where it will eventually be subject to no ethical guidelines or different ethical guidelines from our own) is not unethical it will be unethical, and generally there will have to be some significant advantage to changing the ethical system. What if the matter has not been decided? Such an act is not unethical unless people capable of doing it decide it is, and persuade the ethical institution of the society to accept their decision. You cannot decide an act is unethical without being capable of doing it? That's right. We are capable of putting a fertilized human egg in a primate. We can call that unethical. But not -- oh this doesn't matter We can declare research activity involving human genetic material which has not been reviewd by a review board to be unethical.

To what extent is a person required to follow the ethical system of its society? As long as the person is a part of that society. Can a person raised in a society ever no longer be a part of that society? Yes, to the extent that the society provides some way of recognizing its members and provides them a way to lose their citizenship for example. A person is required to follow the ethical system of a society as long as they expect to benefit from it. If one assumes all power over all others, one is no longer subject to an ethical system. But we find it is not to our advantage to encourage such situations so we don't.

So to no longer be a part of this society I would have to forfeit all advantages of the protection of its ethical system. If the study I proposed is deemed worthy by me, the only way I could ethically do it is by insuring that the system I live within considers it ethical, so I must show that it is a worthwhile thing to do, and, in truth, I have not shown this at all. How would such an activity improve our present situation? I can't say that it would.

Thanks for listening.
Colin

.