No, but I do have larger than average brow ridges. I take after may great, great, great,…, great grandpa Thog. He was disowned by his family for marrying a Sapien gal. Mixed marriages. Oy vey!
Oh yeah, the fellow who invented the rock. Famous guy!
Yep, and the first thing his best friend did was hit him over the head with it. Started the famous feud between the Thogs and McCogs.
“Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.”
-Sigh.
No; he’s a slave.
Volunteer mother my ass. She is a volunteer slave owner. Mothers do not not allow “occasional non-intrusive observation” of their child.
What we have here is a being snatched right out of history. Possibly pretty human-like, but distint enough to require very special handling. We are not going to hold him accountable in the sense that we hold ordinary humans accountable. We are not going to jail him for misdeeds, for example. We are going to park him back in the lab, in confinement, if he doesn’t behave.
Functionally, he will be a slave. That is, he will have captors who hold him to a standard of behavior defined by those captors. Should he violate those standards, he goes back into physical capitivity. There’s no way he’d be treated like a citizen. He’d be treated like a lab animal, except that he’d be mostly human. That’s how we treat slaves.
If Mom can’t handle him, he’d be institutionalized, for sure, in a lab. And that institutionalization would be on account of his failure to behave safely, even if that behaviour is in his genes. We’re not talking about a retarded individual. We’re not talking about someone with a developmental disorder. We’re talking about someone who is just who he is.
The chances that Mr N turns out to be gentlemanly are not good. The chances we’ll treat him like a captive slave are high.
Here’s a parallel ( I think). Back in the days of early exploration it was common to grab a specimen from another culture and truck him back to europe. Sort of like a zoo animal, but with people instead of animals. For example, right now I’m reading Laurence Bergreen’s account of Magellan’s circumnavigation. When they got to South America, they grabbed a couple of the Tehuelche at Port Saint Julian and kept them as specimens to take to King Charles.
I see no ethical difference between grabbing a Neandertal from his foreign land 30K years ago, and grabbing a Tehuelche Indian as a specimen. Both are slaves. Both are taken from their homeland and transported to a world completely strange to them, completely at the mercy of their new captors; neither free to live the live for which they were evolved, nor able to escape the life to which they are now bound.
You may have this idea that you’ll just find a sweet adoptive mom to raise this kid with a few scientists looking in occasionally, and then release him to his own adulthood. If he’s retarded or has behavioural issues, why we’ll just deal with him like any other problem child. I assume this means imprisoning him or insitutionalizing him.
Bullshit. There is no chance he will be treated like a problem child. He’ll get returned to the lab, where he’ll be held captive, like any other lab experimental animal that cannot be euthanized for one reason or another. Except that, since he’s human, what he really is, is a misbehaving slave going back into chains.
Even if he turns out to be well-behaved, he’ll just be a well-behaved slave; never free of handlers. You can’t turn loose someone who cannot be held accountable for his actions by law, and there is no chance this laboratory experiment will ever be considered to be legally accountable for his actions.
He might be a well-behaved slave or a surly one. He might have good masters, or ones that tire of the efforts to keep him happy 24/7 and just lock him up. But either way, he’s a slave and we are the masters.
If he is genetically predisposed to be unable to function in human society, then he’s not human and he can’t be a slave.
You think you couldn’t enslave an intelligent alien?
You should probably rethink that.
That’s ridiculous.
Take the Patagonian giant enslaved by Magellan as a zoo specimen for Chuck.
Here’s a guy who’s had 15 or 20,000 years to become a Tehuelche Indian. His genes make him very good–perfect, even–for that time and place. Now you clap him in irons and truck him off to Europe, where he’s the Attraction of the Day.
He’s human, but his genes are genes for Tehuelche Indians, long evolved from genes for King Charles and his peeps over in Europe. Whether a baby Tehuelche would fit right in and adapt to western european culture is total speculation. Maybe; maybe not. And the more with Mr Neandertal, who’s had a few hundred thousand more years to evolve. He is human too–maybe even close to anatomically modern human; maybe archaic human. But just because his genes may be different enough to keep him from fitting in does not mean he’s not human and can’t be a slave.
Still, I admit that if you are convinced he’s not human, and that it’s OK to euthanize him (assuming you are OK with euthanizing non-humans) then it is at least ethically consistent to treat him as an animal, even if your understanding of what is human is wrong.
(I think a few people got into some hot water in the past over a similar attitude toward populations they thought weren’t quite humans, but from an ethical standpoint, at least such an approach is consistent.)
Great user name. You see no difference because you’re being obtuse. You and nearly every other detractor in this thread are completely discounting that nature vs nurture breaks heavily on the side of nurture time and time again. If we were debating grabbing a neanderthal on a flux capacitor-fueled road trip with Doc Brown, yeah, you’d have a point. But we’d be raising baby N as a human, so he’d wanna walk like you.
There’s over 7 billion humans now. For every potential negative behavior posters have listed, we have millions of humans just like that, and the Earth still spins. What if he’s asocial, retarded, too strong for his age, too strong period, violent, rapey, pervy, etc? Answer: he’d fight right in at every school I ever went to, because these are all common human behaviors for better or worse. But keeping in mind the all important nurturing aspect, even if his throat’s soft parts are not capable of a full range of speech and he has to sign, I’d wager he could get a business degree from a state college (and might even surprise us and rape fewer women than his peers).
I don’t know what a mythical being has to do with a flesh and blood one.
You are postulating that the Neanderthal is genetically predisposed to be unable to function in our society. And just to be clear, we’re not talking about an adult who is fully acculturated to a different culture.
If that is the case, then the being is confined or otherwise quarantined for his own good of our own good. No one is extracting labor from him, and he’s not a slave.
I said in my very first post in this thread that the Neanderthal might have to be a ward of the state. If he can’t function in our society, then it’s our duty to protect him and allow him to live his life to the best of our abilities. This is not something that hasn’t been done hundreds of times already. It’s just a being that is a lot closer to us and so should be all the more easier for that.
You are correct: I discount things that are plain and simply untrue.
Honestly I am somewhat shocked that there are still people arguing the nature:nurture debate. Biological systems are a complex interplay between genes, gene products, the environment, and environmental effects including epigenetic ones. We have systems that are evolved (and continuing to evolve) to develop within certain environments and expectant of certain inputs. Sorry, no particular environment would have made me into a concert violist or granted me the physical and specific cognitive skills of a star quarterback. You could deprive me of the inputs that my systems are evolved to expect and deform my development (raise me without true peer groups, not give me the sorts of stimulation I need or overwhelm me with stimulation I cannot process), and you can deprive me of the environment in which my talents, whatever they may or may not be, have a chance to be nurtured, or within which they have no value … all things that likely you’d be doing our poor Neandertal slave child … but you cannot give me abilities that I am not granted the wiring for.
You propose doing something cruel to a fellow human in the name of your selfish desire to have your curiosity satisfied, justified by a naive belief in the blank slate uber alles. John happy to declare him not human if he turns out to be human different than us and comfortable with the option of imprisonment and isolation if it does not work out. That is a risk that John is willing to take … so long as the risk is one imposed on the one who had no say in the matter.
IHey, I was eating a sandwich when I posted that. give me a break.
Who has any say in whether he is born or not? What genes he inherits or which family he is born into?
I’ve not said anything a blank slate, but have simply observed that the lion has been able to literally lie down with the lamb when socialized together.
We don’t go into this blindly. We don’t follow a predetermined path in raising our Neanderthal baby, but we use the intelligence that is ours to watch and observe, and play the kind of give and take between parent and child that has played itself out over a billion times in our own history. We nurture the child as he grows, changing our approach as we learn.
One thing we don’t do is cower in the shadows of ignorance, afraid to take a few risks that should easily be within our ability to understand and deal with. This is not some alien race for outer space or some mythical giants out of Medieval folklore. These are beings we shared the same territory with for over 10,000 years, and who are the ancestors of most of us living today. I think we, and they, can handle it again.
Sure they do- this happens all the time.
A ridiculous comparison. This baby will be raised in the modern world, and the modern world will be the environment he/she is used to. He’d be no more able to thrive in, say, the Ice Age, then you or I would- and he’d be as suited to our world as anyone born today. If he/she’s raised in a Tokyo skyscraper, then that’s where he/she will feel most comfortable.
There are bound to be some differences in the way he/she thinks. But Neanderthals thrived in groups of people, cooperated to survive, took care of their sick and injured, made and used complex tools, etc. There’s a chance we’ll be creating a sociopath, but there’s no reason to believe the chance is any greater than when every baby is born under other circumstances.
So (as a possibility) we impregnate ten volunteer mothers (with spouses) with ten Neanderthal babies. Perhaps they already have older children. We set them up in an apartment building or neighboring houses, in secret. Their peer group is largely each other. They can be home schooled all together, if we wish (or if we have reason to believe they are a danger to other children), or they can go with other children. The children will probably look a bit different, and they might stick together, but why would we believe that they couldn’t adapt to modern society, just as millions of special-needs children adapt to modern society (with varying degrees of assistance)? They’ll be different, sure- but raised with TV and internet, they will watch TV and surf the internet. They will have favorite movies and music, they will love cheeseburgers and fries, and they will love football and ice hockey (perhaps). The men may all grow up to be linebackers or MMA fighters- they may be that strong. Or they may become researchers themselves.
Legally, the researchers have no rights but what the parents grant them; let’s assume the researchers provide for the families’ living expenses in exchange for periodic observation, though the parents are free to leave with their children at any time. Legally, by the way, I don’t see how it could possibly be done any other way- researchers don’t have the right to imprison children or adults. If the parent is unable to manage the child, then the state takes over, just as with any other uncontrollable child.
Why would we believe they would be so different that, even raised among us, they could not relate to us? We know that Neanderthals are already a part of us, genetically. Raised among us, we will be what is normal to them. Our lifestyle will be normal to them. Our food and culture will be normal to them. The fossil record shows that they lived and cooperated with each other to survive; now they will live and cooperate with us.
So your argument in defense of the ethics now boil down to:
that a child never has a choice in being born or not or what their genes are so anything goes
and
if we do not know something anything other than rushing in is cowering in the face of ignorance.
Well the child may not have a choice about being conceived but the prospective parents do. And I have enough respect for ignorance that I am willing to cower sometimes rather than subject someone else to an inordinate risk for my benefit.
It is nice that you think that the “few risks” are worth imposing on someone else for your and my benefit because you believe, with your best guess, that we can wing it just fine and that the kid would develop in what is for his genome a very strange land just dandy. And that drastic quench is willing to wager someone else’s life on is belief that (s)he’d be able to fit in and do just fine. And if (s)he doesn’t? No big deal. Imprison the Neandy in protective custody. If (s)he cannot function as a modern human then (s)he is not human and has no rights anyway …
That however is not the basis of sound ethical decision making.
On preview: iiandyiii, you have confidence that Neandy would do fine and do not think there is any risk. I submit you have no basis for that belief other than a fantasy of what they must be like and that it is unethical to impose that fantasy onto someone else.
What racist bullshit - infant humans from one culture are perfectly capable of being raised and successfully adapting to a different human culture than what their ancestors practiced. The biggest problem is the surrounding society being prejudiced regarding a different appearance, and these days raising the kid in a multicultural, large urban area should take care of the worst of that.
Now, Neatherthals might or might not be capable of such a feat… we have no way to know. But from what evidence we have they lived in social groups not much different than our ancestral hunter-gatherers, apparently had some sort of language capability, cared for their elderly and injured, and were capable tool makers and users. There is also now evidence we even interbred with them (most humans in the world today are 2-5% Neanderthal according to recent science) so they probably aren’t that different than us. Arguably, they were not a separate species but rather a sub-species with better adaption to cold conditions than more tropical humans. These days we don’t claim the Inuit are a separate and incompatible species with the Koi-San even if the Inuit have several adaptions to the Arctic (short, compact torsos, proportionally shorter limbs and smaller hands and feet) that the Neanderthals also had but the Koi-San don’t.
A Neanderthal would probably look a little odd, but not tremendously so. They’d probably be assumed to be some sort of Caucasian (they were pale-skinned, some were red-haired). There’s no reason to think they were any less intelligent than us. There are a lot of ethical concerns with resurrecting them, but it’s unlikely they’d be the helpless, maladjusted thrall you seem to think they would be.
A lot of speculation. Suppose it turns out Neanderthals are covered in thick fur, like other mammals adapted to the cold? We don’t really know. Hair doesn’t fossilize.
And no one has yet addressed the liability issue. If you, as a scientist, release a Neanderthal into the world and he turns out to be super strong and prone to violence, guess what? You are going to get sued every time someone gets hurt. And if your solution to that is to keep the Neanderthal in some sort of captivity, then you have the ethical problem of having essentially created a slave.
Highly unlikely, since they made clothing.
As for liability, this thread is about Ethics. The Legal Dept is down the hall.
Sorry; mea culpa for not being clearer.
The “Patagonia giant” that Magellan swiped and enslaved was a real-live Tehuelche indian. He ended up croaking on Magellan’s boat as they crossed the Pacific, but he was not a mythical creature.
I am not postulating that a Neandertal could not function. I am postulating that we do not know if he can. We are creating an individual with a known significant variant in his geneset. We don’t know what that makes him functionally, but we do know he’s pretty close to us, yet not one of us. He will certainly not be held to human legal standards or human behavioural standards. If he doesn’t work out in society, we are not going to imprison him. He’s not a variant of an anatomically modern human with crappy genes. He’s his own category. He might be behaving perfectly normally for his (sub)-species. We are not going to put him a rehabilitation center. So that’s why I propose the litmus test of willingness to euthanize…from an ethical viewpoint, you have to decide if you are willing to euthanize him if he’s wretched due to his inability to integrate.
It’s not a predictable thing, right? The guy might end up helping us out with the Theory of Everything, or he might end up insanely happy chewing on his toenails in a fake zoo forest that is his version of The Truman Show.
The ethical dilemma that arises depends on what to do if he turns out unhappy. This is true of any enslaved human, such as the Tehuelche Magellan swiped. If he ends up being tickled with the new digs, there isn’t much ethical dilemma about what to do with him at that point. If he ends up being wretched in King Charles’ court, it’s unethical (in my paradigm) to euthanize a human. So if we’re OK creating the slave in the first place, we still should decide in advance if we are going to euthanize him should it not work out.
It’s just silly to pretend the Neandertal will get parked in the category of humans who don’t work out. People who think genes don’t make a difference watched My Fair Lady (or Pygmalion) once too often. This is a created scientific experiment completely at the mercy of his masters–us. This is not a procreated modern human for whom processes are already worked out when they turn sour.
Why on earth not? Neanderthals lived in groups and took care of their sick and injured. They must have had some of the same basic societal taboos against murder and casual violence that modern hunter-gatherers do just to survive in groups, so we know they’re capable of not murdering or exploding in random violence on a whim.
Fine, so don’t enslave him. No slavery. He’ll have the same rights as any of us. There’s no legal way for a person to be born in America without these rights.
They aren’t “new digs”- they’ll be the only “digs” he’s ever seen or known. He won’t be adapting, any more then every baby has to adapt to the world outside the womb.
I find it difficult to believe that, however different a Neanderthal may be, he won’t be within the spectrum of human behavior that we as a species have already seen. There’s nothing he could do that hasn’t been topped by some human at some time. However dangerous he might possibly be, there have been more dangerous homo sapiens. However smart or stupid, there have been smarter or stupider homo sapiens. However unable to grasp language or writing, there have been homo sapiens with even weaker grasps. Except for, possibly, anatomical things like physical strength, there isn’t a human capacity that he won’t fall somewhere on the spectrum of people that have already lived among us.