Breaking the Species Barrier

[Kazuaki Shimazaki II]

Originally Posted by Skybird

I tend to oppose genetical experiments with the human genome, being realistic enough at the same time to know for sure that experiments considered to be a taboo nevertheless will be carried out, and are being carried out right now, and that the general trend is towards genetically designing the babies that parents do desire. Legal rules and laws will not chnage that, and where it is not considered to be legal, it will be done illegally, or in other places where it is legal.

However, an even greater taboo is the creation of human-animal hybrides.

At the same time we live in a world dominated by the species of homo sapiens, whose reign over the planet kills plants and animals in apocalyptic dimensions and is on it's best way to devastate the biosphere to a degree where it cannot support many higher life forms anymore, including man.

This is due to the separation that many of man's ethical system make between man and the rest of nature, and man's life being so much more worthy than life of animals.

Actually, if you figure Dawkins' got a point (I do in general, BTW), then it is far from clear that our current problems are because we are homo sapiens. In fact, it is likely if some other family evolved to be "as top dog" as humans are now, they would probably wind up handling Earth the same way we do.

According to Dawkins (in case you hadn't read some of his works), things like altruism and human ethics are not a sign of us "getting over" our animal base instincts. Basically, being appropriately nice to others pays off in higher reproduction chance and is thus favored from an evolutionary perspective.

If that's true, then it follows that the elitism is also favored in an evolutionary sense, and is likely to be present in all species ....

It should have become obvious that we are in need to raise our respect for the rest of natural creation, since it is our lack of respect for it that makes us destroying it so carelessly. The creation of human-animal hybride lifeforms maybe is a way to produce that additional respect, and to change man's thinking to abandon his murderous egocentrism and to include the interest of other life on planet Earth in our thinking as well.

... following from the above, should humans somehow create succesful human-animal hybrids, we will be very hard pressed to treat them as equals. We had such problems treating people with different skin color with relative equality (thanks to our elitism) that we are much more likely to treat them as "almost animals" rather than "almost humans".

Also, thanks to the above, should we somehow start seeing them as "almost humans", it hardly follows that we'll see other animals as equals. The worst is that our newly founded human-hybrid species, due to what is explained above, is likely to treat animals (even animals from his own family or genus - say dog-man and a dog) the same way we do today.

In short, given human nature, I have serious doubts Dawkins' idea would work.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Kazuaki Shimazaki II

Actually, if you figure Dawkins' got a point (I do in general, BTW), then it is far from clear that our current problems are because we are homo sapiens. In fact, it is likely if some other family evolved to be "as top dog" as humans are now, they would probably wind up handling Earth the same way we do.

According to Dawkins (in case you hadn't read some of his works), things like altruism and human ethics are not a sign of us "getting over" our animal base instincts. Basically, being appropriately nice to others pays off in higher reproduction chance and is thus favored from an evolutionary perspective.

It is not just Dawkins saying so. And yes, I have read Dawkins before, although more his approach on religious issues.

If that's true, then it follows that the elitism is also favored in an evolutionary sense, and is likely to be present in all species ....

So what? Does this free us from the need to think beyond our own egpoist interests - in our own interest and that of others as well? No. Maybe what differs us from not as highly conscious, self-reflective life forms is that we are also driven by biological drives and insticnts - but have the mental and cognitice ability to reflect on them, think about them, and decide for a behavior that frees us from being driven by them.

But indeed your conclusions has been concluded by scientists who observed a group of chimpanzees and reported about obvious altruistic and social behavior in that group, and then arguing that it seems to benefit the climate inside the group as well as the surviving chances in competing with the potentially dangeorus environment. It was reported in the n ewspapers, I think in the first half of last year, I'm not sure on the exact date.

... following from the above, should humans somehow create succesful human-animal hybrids, we will be very hard pressed to treat them as equals. We had such problems treating people with different skin color with relative equality (thanks to our elitism) that we are much more likely to treat them as "almost animals" rather than "almost humans".

That may be true, but it is part of the idea: so far our ethics is centred on humans only, and the rest of ature we consider to be existent only for serving our interests. As long as we do not realise that other life/nature has interests as valuable and worthy as our own, we will not respect it, and continue to destroy it, even to the level where we damage ourselves mand eventually comit suicide by not stopping it. If there would be chimeras and hybrides, the dominance of the human cell in our ethics, would need to come to an end, and would see a relativisation. If the human quality then would be present in other life as well, and in a manner that would be condered as highly sensational, spectacular, it eventually would succeed where anti-racism based on skin-colour alone has failed.

Also, thanks to the above, should we somehow start seeing them as "almost humans", it hardly follows that we'll see other animals as equals. The worst is that our newly founded human-hybrid species, due to what is explained above, is likely to treat animals (even animals from his own family or genus - say dog-man and a dog) the same way we do today.

That remains to be seen. It is not about seeing animals as equals-.The cow on the meadow obviously is not intellectually as potent as humans are, and thus is not helped by being adressed by an ethical advisor, a philosopher and a lawyer on human-animal rights. What it is about is to change our attitude from "nature is there for us abusing it as we pleases", to an attitude of respect, and understanding that by destroying nature, we destroy not only all life on earth, but ourselves, and that it is not all centred and focussed on humans, but that we are just little part in something that is incredibly bigger and more complex than we have understood so far.

Or in short, it is about moving away from a human ethics of maximum egoism to ethics of respecting life in general without favouring human life alone. We consider pourselves to be the crown of evolution, but our behaviour shows that we are not. In fact we behave and cause consequences as if we are the most lethal pest there ever has been. Cponsidering the speed and ammount of species extinction and destruction of natural environments, the appearing of the species homo sapiens on planet earth only compares to the consequences caused by some of the most severe cosmic and geologic destasters in earth's history that have brought life on Earth to the edge of exticntion. we are like that meteor that is said to have wiped out the dinosaurs, we are like that global intoxication of the atmosphere with methane that has killed all life on land and in the sea at one time and caused the deep sea below 5000m to have a mean temperature of 16° and more.

Crown of evolution? More a drug-induced hickup of evolution that had a bad day when designing us, I would say. We seem to be the most destructive life form there ever has been on this planet.

[porphy]

Skybird

So what? Does this free us from the need to think beyond our own egpoist interests - in our own interest and that of others as well? No. Maybe what differs us from not as highly conscious, self-reflective life forms is that we are also driven by biological drives and insticnts - but have the mental and cognitice ability to reflect on them, think about them, and decide for a behavior that frees us from being driven by them.

Yes, some years ago I read the book The Expanding Circle: Ethics & Sociobiology by another well known and sometimes very criticized philosopher, that is Peter Singer. It was the in the heydays of sociobiology debates, and it came to my mind while reading the Dawkins article.

Interesting book that combined views from biology, sociology and human capacity for reason to form the conclusion that the expanding circle of human ethics is bound to get bigger. Ethics expands from a base of biological motivations, but is not exhausted by them or possible to reduce to selfish genes. Rather the opposite, according to Singer, ethics and altruism is bound to progress when we recognize it has a a rational component.

Something like that, as far as I can remember. Could be a decent read for anyone interested in the relation between human value, reason and nature, skipping the boring and confused literature of ethics as biology and genetic selfishness. (or the even more empty view of psychological selfishness as universal explanation)

cheers Porphy