CLONING A HUMAN
WHERE METAPHYSICS MEETS SCIENCE
MAY 21, 2011. I apologize in advance for carelessly spraying around pronouns in this piece. When you’re talking about cloning, it gets confusing. Who is he and who is him? Who is I and who is me?
There is a popular notion that, if you cloned yourself, there would be another you.
What exactly does this mean?
In 2002, researchers at Texas A&M announced the birth of Cc, a cloned cat. However, the coat of the calico kitten did not match her genetic mother’s. This was explained as: changes occur in the womb (of the surrogate mother).
The point? Why would you say you’re a new you if the new you doesn’t look like you?
In science fiction, there are brain transplants to make the case. I clone myself, and then to cement the deal, I have my brain placed into the (scoured out) skull of the clone.
Then I’m him.
Really?
Here are few phrases extant in the English language:
“inhabiting the body”;
“you should take care of your body;”
“you’ve got to push your body through these two-a-day drills, if you want to get to the Super Bowl.”
Are these merely figures of speech?
The overwhelming chorus from scientists and modern philosophers is Yes.
The linguistic construction of you-plus-body is an archaic error founded on superstition, much like “may the gods protect you on your journey.”
We, with far more wisdom, realize there is the body and nothing but the body, and therefore…
It would appear that a successful cloning, along with the brain transplant, would produce YOU. It would be like moving into a new house, one that in every way was identical to the old one. A house next door.
Really?
Is your brain you?
Has anyone offered evidence for that, aside from saying, “It’s ridiculous to imagine otherwise”?
This is where the rubber meets the road, and the arguments on either side cease being academic.
At the moment when your brain is planted into your clone, are you there? Do you open your eyes and say, “Yeah, it’s still Fred. It’s me. I played high school football when I was sixteen and hurt my knee and had to drop out. Three days later, I was arrested for a DUI in Knoxville. I’d had seven beers. I live at 124 Green Street, and my bedroom, ha-ha, still has pictures of Playboy Playmates on the wall across from my bed. I majored in Communications at the U of Kentucky and went to work for my uncle in the waste management business. I can do a little algebra…”
Is that what happens?
You see, cloning you and cloning Dolly the sheep is a little different. Dolly can’t talk. She can’t say, “Well, they took my brain and put it here, but it’s still me.”
Of course, if Fred isn’t Fred anymore when they move his brain, they can cover that up if they want to. “Well, Fred is still disoriented. You have to realize this was an overwhelming traumatic experience for him. He has amnesia.”
But what’s the truth?
Did Fred move next door or is he gone?
Scientists and semi-quasi-scientists and pundits and other major blabbers step into the breach.
“The ‘you-ness’ is simply an impression ladled out by the brain.”
“The brain seeks to present a coalesced ‘I’.”
“You think you’re you, but really you’re just sub-atomic particles in motion. So whether, after the brain transplant, you think you’re you…it’s an illusion anyway. You were never you.”
“We are, in the infinite dance of particles, all One. Put a few coins in the collection plate.”
“Brain stores a holographic you-ness which may or may not transfer when the brain is moved. We need more funds for further research.”
And then we have this:
“Look, you guys said you could move me to another body, this perfect clone. But now that I’m here, I know I’m not me. I’m somebody else. This is supposed to be about IMMORTALITY, you morons! The continuation of me on and on and on. But I’m not me.”
The suit was thrown out of court on the grounds that whoever the plaintiff was, he wasn’t the aggrieved party, who for all practical purposes, was now missing in action. The wife could have sued, but she was satisfied with the copy…
I would be interested in this reaction: “Okay, you attempted to transfer Fred to this body, my body, by moving his brain. I’m not Fred. I have a whole set of memories which are clearly Fred’s, but they’re not mine. I inherited them. They’re of no use to me. It’s like lugging a whole bunch of comic books around. I’m…I don’t have a name yet. Call me Ishmael. You did a nice job with the wiring, and I feel reasonably healthy, but I’m not happy.”
A variation on that: the mysterious stranger, who did, in fact, inherit Fred’s memories, can’t talk. He’s in and out of coma. He’s sensationally messed up. He came into this world expecting, though not looking forward to, being born out of a womb as a baby. He was resigned to it. He’d been through it before. But instead, he missed a left turn and ended up in an infernal clone body. He has a whole load of memories that don’t belong to him.
This is where the smart money in Vegas is sitting. On that outcome.
Brain is not you.
You are non-material.
The ancient Hindus played around with this. Half the time they articulated it correctly, and half the time they lapsed into nonsense—the Big All, of which we are mere drops of energy. That sort of bad deli baloney.
The Tibetans, before their priests moved in and took over and installed the endless prayer wheel and the 100,000 prostrations and the mind-numbing candlelight suppers and the slave apprenticeships and the streams and streams of mandalas—before all that, they had it nailed. They knew.
They weren’t devotees of Universe, you see. They didn’t fall for that slippery jive. They elucidated the bottom line: universe is energy and universe is a product of consciousness, your non-material consciousness. Therefore, you can, in the long run, make pieces of it vanish and invent new pieces—instantly. You can move out of universe with all your bags and set up shop in the Void, if you want to, and from there you can travel to, or invent, whole-hog, other universes.
They weren’t playing around. They shoved in all their chips and didn’t care what anybody else thought. They called it like it was and is.
So, “Yes dear, we have to move your beloved husband Fred into a new body, his clone, and then all will be well,” is just whining cloying organ music in a funeral home.
Fred got the hell out.
He’s over the hill and into the trees, and judging by his life, it may take him some time to figure out what’s going on.
Maybe another few billion incarnations.
Or maybe he’ll be back as a psychiatrist, doling out the latest souped-up versions of Paxil and Prozac to unsuspecting teens.
But that’s another story, and by the way, it isn’t named karma…
Karma was the daughter of two hippies who lived in Mill Valley in 1969.
JON RAPPOPORT
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