Now, assume that we will, sometime in the future, have the ability to breed real, physical human beings that did not have the mental capacity for consciousness. Also assume that we know what consciousness is, and know that these beings do not have it. They would not know of any world other than work; the would experience hunger, thirst and fatigue, but would not experience love or hate or their own consciousness.
Would it be immoral for us to breed them specifically for work in factories (ala Brave New World)?
Maybe, but I can’t see how they could possibly be more efficient than mechanical robots who don’t feel hunger, thirst or fatigue (well, except metal fatigue).
You’ve proposed an interesting hypothetical, but I can’t see it happening.
IMHO, the human form is sacred. So yeah, I’d say it’s immoral to even create such beings. It would also be immoral to enslave and demean humans, even if it didn’t bother them. (S & M aside, of course ) It’s an offense against humanity. (Again, IMHO).
Not to mention it would be immoral to deprive sentient humans factory jobs just because slaves are more convenient, complain less or are cheaper. We don’t allow employers to import illegal aliens to work for below minimum wage, either.
It would be immoral if you created these human beings by going around the world, picking out the least intelligent members of our species, sticking them in a room and telling them to make some babies. I don’t think it would be immoral to create them some other way, though… no more immoral than breeding animals for work, anyway. Although, as Bryan said, there wouldn’t really be a point if you could just use robots instead.
I’m waiting for Chumpsky to drop by and declare that in the minds of the depraved evil American imperialists, the Chinese children working in the sneaker factories are already robots.
Actually, Bryan you make a good point.
I suppose it could still be seen as slave labour.
You only suss your own conscience by knowing that they themselves don’t mind, because they’re not conscious.
I think that this sort of thing has already been tried, and found wanting.
That is, define some subset of the human race as being “sub-human” in some fashion, then use that definition to justify specific treatment of the subset. Your definition is “did not have the mental capacity for consciousness”.
A lot of people would probably find the treatment objectionable, regardless of whether they could provide rational reasons for their objection or not.
For example, say there’s some guy that enjoys eating human flesh. Is it okay for him to eat brain dead people? Babies born without brains?
I think there would be sufficient moral opposition to the concept to render it impractical, without any consensus being formed about why the concept was immoral.
[sidenote]
There was a Piers Anthony novella in 1968 called “In the Barn” that dealt with this subject. Needless to say, it was very disturbing. But the justifications put forward (in the novella) were difficult for me to rebut when I first read the thing.
[/sidenote]
I have a problem with your assumptions, because I’m pretty sure that no matter how long our race survives, there’s always going to be some smart lawyer able to make a good case that we don’t know (we CAN’T know) that these creatures will always lack the potential for acquiring a scintilla of human consciousness, and that therefore we must err on the side of caution in declaring them non-human. The degree of knowledge you’re talking about here means, in effect, that WE would be superhuman at this point and, threfore, kind of invalidates your OP, IMO, which only applies to “us.”
Alright then, would it be moral to breed some other animal, (say apes) to become the drones conjectured in the OP? I mean why futz with Human DNA when monkeys effectively have two sets of hands and are stronger? Would it be wrong to manipulate thier DNA to make slave workers?
Well, animals have been trained into doing factory jobs. I can remmeber reading a blurb in Ripley’s about birds trained to spot defects in workmanship of manufactured parts. They pecked one window if the part was okay; another if it was defective. With suitable food rewards, the birds apparantly got very good at it.
But any animal labour, or human labour that doesn’t require reasoning, will inevitably be replaced with mechanization whenever possible. Machines don’t require food, rest, heat, fresh air or waste elimination.
With genetic engineering, it might be possible to breed subhumans, but who would want them? It’s certainly not a valid reason to limit genetic research.
I don’t have a moral issue with it, but I agree with Bryan Ekers in that it would generally make more sense to build mechanical robots.
I suspect a more likely application for humans modified in this way would be for spare part surgery.
I see the point that Fear Itself makes, but I don’t see how it differs from mechanisation in general, which we tend to accept. Also we may not allow illegal aliens (by definition), but we certainly allow and even encourage legal immigration as a means of providing a cheaper workforce.
I hate to nitpick, but this is my great linguistic pet peeve, probably because it’s perpetrated by Star Trek: “Sentient” means “Having the use of senses,” not “intelligent or conscious.” Tuna, ants, mice, budgies, and earthworms are all sentient. Sentient =! Conscious.
But legal immigrants are entitled to all the protections of the law, including minimum wage, workplace safety regulations, the right to unionize and the right to quit and work elswhere. Presumably, the only advantage to breeding a drone workforce would be to avoid these regulations.
Let’s disregard the effieciency of it for now, and just focus on the morality of it all, however inefficient it may be.
I suppose you could consider whether or not it would be immoral to breed humans just for the body parts. You would keep their bodies alive until the organs had matured, but they wouldn’t have the brainpower to establish their own consciousness.
How about a store manaquin. Is that sacred?
What about a computer generated image of a human?
What about a cloned human heart or liver?
How about a cyborg human with an electronic brain?
Anyhow, I find it dificult to believe you could create a human with the mental capacity to operate a factory machine without any form of conciousness. After all, it must be able to make some sort of quality assessment of the parts it was assembling.
Also, it isn’t like working in a factory is THAT bad. It isn’t my chosen profession but plenty of other humans do it.
Why not make the question more dificult? Have the clones denonate unexploded mines or something.
seriously, immoral? yes. Brainless human beings are NOT like oxen or draft horses, they are human. If it is OK to breed mindless workers, then would it be OK to just lobotomize workers into being mindless?
I’ve always thought of most Americans as well cared for domestic animals. Thats why they allow their “masters” in Washington DC to pass illegal laws like “FICA”, and “medicare”.
) It’s an offense against humanity. (Again, IMHO).