# Would it be immoral to breed insentient factory workers? (Consciousness - Part II) **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 24, 2002, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-immoral-to-breed-insentient-factory-workers-consciousness-part-ii/144675 "2002-12-24T04:03:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![cart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3ec8ea/32.png) [@cart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cart)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2003, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-immoral-to-breed-insentient-factory-workers-consciousness-part-ii/144675/41 "2003-01-03T19:14:19Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by keira \* > **I believe the moral kneejerk reaction to the idea of breeding drones comes from the story everyone’s thinking about, but not really writing… about Plucky, the bright little drone bred for slave labor, told all her life she didn’t have consciousness, but one fateful day she happens across some inspirational little message, and decides she has a soul. Even if she really doesn’t have a soul, she believes she does, and she makes heartbreaking appeals to her evil drone slavemasters to let her go free. Or maybe two drones fall in love. Spielburg directs.** If this film is ever made, we’ll all know who to blame. 😉 To be honest, I was thinking of the non-Spielberg version, where the consciousness detectors required by the quality control procedures reveal that 90% of “normal” humans are also consciousless. ---
**Author:** ![Ramanujan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/51bf81/32.png) [@Ramanujan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramanujan)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2003, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-immoral-to-breed-insentient-factory-workers-consciousness-part-ii/144675/42 "2003-01-03T19:58:34Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by cart \* > To be honest, I was thinking of the non-Spielberg version, where the consciousness detectors required by the quality control procedures reveal that 90% of “normal” humans are also consciousless. why not make it a bit more profound and say all humans? that would be an ending i agreed with. of course, that begs the question of how we come up with conscious detectors, and what exactly is conscious that they can measure. and of course, the question that needs to be answered before we can really make any assessments as to the moral value of consciousness, namely: what is consciousness? ---
**Author:** ![Iamthat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Iamthat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iamthat)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2003, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-immoral-to-breed-insentient-factory-workers-consciousness-part-ii/144675/43 "2003-01-03T23:20:44Z")
Yes and since we don’t know what consciousness is we also do not know nor can we prove whether other humans have consciousness. One consciousness cannot know another without turning it into a content and knowing it as such which is not to know it for the consciousness that it is. That’s why some say there is only one consciousness, as two consciousness’s cannot interact. We make assumptions of the existence of consciousness in others based on behavior, i.e. X has similar behavioral patterns to me therefore X has or is consciousness as I am. But it is a guess. An assumption in this thread is that consciousness is an attribute or characteristic of an entity and not the entity itself. If **consciousness** is the entity and we create a worker with consciousness we have created an entity. But again, how would we know it had consciousness? Consciousness also exists outside the realm of cause and effect; it is not a link in the process. This entire manifestation could all happen without being observed…apparently. ---
**Author:** ![Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ac8455/32.png) [@Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bippy_the_Beardless)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2003, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-immoral-to-breed-insentient-factory-workers-consciousness-part-ii/144675/44 "2003-01-04T01:44:24Z")
On a slight tangent from the OP. We commonly consider animals to have less rights than Humans. If we also conject that consciousness resides within the brain, then would it be moral to produce brainless humans, and by surgery transplant into them animal brains. Would these ‘chimera’ have the same rights as the animal from which the brain is derived? Also a completely brainless human, kept allive through an electric hind brain (regulating heart beat, resperation etc.) be any less moral as a sex toy than would be a vibrator? Cheers Keithy ---
**Author:** ![Ramanujan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/51bf81/32.png) [@Ramanujan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramanujan)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2003, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-immoral-to-breed-insentient-factory-workers-consciousness-part-ii/144675/45 "2003-01-04T03:34:17Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by keithmac \* > On a slight tangent from the OP. > We commonly consider animals to have less rights than Humans. If we also conject that consciousness resides within the brain, then would it be moral to produce brainless humans, and by surgery transplant into them animal brains. Would these ‘chimera’ have the same rights as the animal from which the brain is derived? from my point of view (with a cognitive science background), it would be very interesting to see how an animal brain would develop with the stimuli of human senses. would it be a slightly dumber human? would it be a new thing altogether? i don’t think there is any way to predict that, so its rights would be hard to enumerate, but it would certainly be interesting to see what happens. ---
**Author:** ![BMalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e274bd/32.png) [@BMalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMalion)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2003, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-immoral-to-breed-insentient-factory-workers-consciousness-part-ii/144675/46 "2003-01-06T15:25:28Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Ramanujan \* > **does the thermostat desire the room to be cooler when it stops the heat?** > > Don’t be silly, that is a mechanical operation. > \*\* it ought to be obvious that a fertilized egg is not a human, \*\* > > I disagree. > **the difference is, when the baby is grown, you are taking away something that it already has. a conscious baby has the right to maintain its consciousness, by virtue of its humanness…** > > It’s what? when did ‘it’ become human, at birth? when the cord was cut? why not 1 minute before? how about 5 minutes? 1 hour? > \*\* an unconscious creature cannot be said to be human, lacking one of the most essential attributes of humanness, and therefore has no such right. the baby in its conscious state is already valuable to someone (mother, father, et al), so saying that the baby wouldn’t know it once had consciousness after it was removed is a moot point; others will know and care.\*\* > > \*\* mentally handicapped people still have consciousness. \*\* > > cite? > \*\* they have enough human attributes that we still call them human. also, the lack of intentionality in their production causes sympathy toward their plight. that sympathy would be bypassed by intending the offspring to be unconscious. \*\* > > Which would be immoral in my opinion. > > \*\* as for a person in a coma, he would generally have had a life before he went into the coma, and have people around who remember what he was. so he is also of value to others. also, there are no guarantees that the coma is going to be permanant. so there is no basis for comparison there, either. \*\* I’m talking about the person born into a coma, not as the result of an accident. I’m talking about permanent brain damage from birth. These unfortunates are still human even though we perceive no attributes of ‘sentience’ or ‘consciousness’, and so, we treat them as human beings. I believe that humans were made in God’s image and that human life is sacred. I believe that it would be wrong to breed mutilated human beings to be slaves. If you think that it would be ok to do any of this then you have a different definition of what is human and/or a different definition of right and wrong. No offense meant, I just have a hard time understanding how the idea of a ‘human drone’ being morally ok comes from. ---
**Author:** ![BMalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e274bd/32.png) [@BMalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMalion)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2003, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-immoral-to-breed-insentient-factory-workers-consciousness-part-ii/144675/47 "2003-01-06T15:35:26Z")
Sorry about the formatting mess.:o ---
**Author:** ![Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ac8455/32.png) [@Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bippy_the_Beardless)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2003, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-immoral-to-breed-insentient-factory-workers-consciousness-part-ii/144675/48 "2003-01-06T16:47:51Z")
Following on from **Ramanujan** ’s thoughts about an animal brain subject to human sensory input. I would strongly doubt the brain would improve in cognitive functionality mearly due to access to improved senses, as I would expect the animal brain to be pretty close to optimal for processing its natural sense inputs, and new apparatus would be unlikely to help. Also in installing an animal brain into a human body sensory imput devices such as eyes and inner ears would probably need to be included with the brain. Anyway the animal brain implant is most likely far away in technoligy if not impossible. What may though be feasible in the near future would be to make use of dormant parts of the human genome to create chimera with Human boddies but Lemur brains. Would such a being be suitable for organ / spare part supply, would it be moral to do such a thing. And how does such morality compare to the morality of breeding Pigs with Human hearts for surgery, which I believe is allready taking place (though I have no cite, having read about such development some time back). Cheers, Keithy ---
**Author:** ![Ramanujan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/51bf81/32.png) [@Ramanujan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramanujan)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2003, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-immoral-to-breed-insentient-factory-workers-consciousness-part-ii/144675/49 "2003-01-06T18:20:28Z")
> [@](#): > > _Originally posted by BMalion_ > Don’t be silly, that is a mechanical operation. what is so nonmechanical about the human brain or body? and for that matter, why does the drone need consciousness to perform tasks when the thermostat doesn’t? > [@](#): > > when did ‘it’ become human, at birth? when the cord was cut? why not 1 minute before? how about 5 minutes? 1 hour? whenever we can look at it and say, by whatever means, “that is human.” i don’t know why people need exact times for this. > [@](#): > > I’m talking about the person born into a coma, not as the result of an accident. I’m talking about permanent brain damage from birth. These unfortunates are still human even though we perceive no attributes of ‘sentience’ or ‘consciousness’, and so, we treat them as human beings. do they have sentience? we don’t know. does anyone else have sentience? we don’t know. we attribute these qualities to them because they appear human. again, these are people borne of people, they have mothers and fathers. other people care about them, whether or not they are mentally deficient, or comatose. there’s still no basis for comparison. > [@](#): > > I believe that humans were made in God’s image and that human life is sacred. I believe that it would be wrong to breed mutilated human beings to be slaves. for a point of reference, i don’t believe that god created man in his image (it seems a bit too proud for my tastes). i don’t think it makes any difference, though. i think you can maintain your belief in the sanctity of human life, provided you have a nice clear definition of what “human life” is. as far as i’m concerned, consciousness is a big part of it. there is no sacred quality about a finger, for instance. so why is something that is made out of the same stuff as a finger, stands 6 feet tall, and has the ability to do work sacred? the idea is, if we cannot call it human, and i argue we can’t call these “meat robots” human, we need not necessarily attribute the same sanctity to its life that we attribute to human life. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-immoral-to-breed-insentient-factory-workers-consciousness-part-ii/144675.md?page=2)