X-Message-Number: 5572
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 1996 09:13:16 -0800 (PST)
From: Joseph Strout <>
Subject: Clones, Identity, and the Church of Man

On Fri, 12 Jan -1, CryoNet wrote:
In Message #5563, Dwight Jones wrote in reply to Bob Ettinger:


> > If Mr. Jones only wants his DNA preserved, and would be satisfied with a new

> > "instantiation" as a "clone" of himself--as his message seems to say--then 
he
> > has made assumptions about the nature of identity and criteria of survival
> > that are not warranted by available evidence.
> 
> What evidence? The Church of Man takes the view that your clone is you, 
> if only because two pieces of chemistry with 6 billion identical parts 
> (DNA) cannot be anything but identical.

I would think this sufficient reason to question the wisdom (not to 
mention knowledge) of that Church.  If personal identity is defined by 
genes, then identical twins are the same person.  If you have a twin 
brother, then you should be able to calmly kill yourself, since you live 
on just as well in him.  (A clone, of course, is exactly a twin brother 
or sister, no more or less.)  My father and uncle in law are twins, but 
I'd really rather you didn't kill either one of them.

This is a very interesting viewpoint.  I've been doing quite a bit of 
reading on personal identity in the last couple years, and this is the 
first time I've ever heard anyone, from a religious OR secular viewpoint, 
seriously suggest that identity is defined by genotype.

> That is evidence, what evidence do you have that these idividuals are 
> different?

The evidence is overwhelming.  For example: one answers to "Bob", and the 
other to "Tom", therefore they are different (and I'd say that's a pretty 
important difference, too).  One's an engineer, the other a business 
manager; each can do things the other can't do.  One sleeps with Martha, 
the other with Betsy.  The list goes on and on...  [names were changed]

> The key question: would nature and evolution regard them as 
> different or as the same phenomenon in two iterations?

No, the key question is: WHO are they?  If you make a contract with one, 
must the other honor it?  If one commits a crime, do we lock up them 
both?  If you're baptized into the Church of Man, is your twin brother 
also saved?  If he sins, do you confess?  (Please excuse my ignorance of 
your Church's customs: I mean no disrespect, but only to illustrate a 
point.)

It appears that your viewpoint arises from an emphasis on genetic 
evolution.  But as you pointed out, the human gene pool has not changed 
significantly in ten thousand years or more.  Yet in that time, human 
*culture* has evolved tremendously.  Not just in technology, but in 
religion, philosophy, arts, language, mathematics, etc.  

To me, this is no mystery: when a species reaches a level of intelligence 
and communication where information can readily be passed from parent to 
child, and from family to family, culture is born.  Cultural evolution 
quickly outpaces genetic evolution, though the driving forces are the 
same: customs and knowledge which increase reproductive success are 
selected for; detrimental customs (such as incest) are selected against.

Genetic evolution brought us to a key threshold many thousands of years 
ago; cultural evolution has brought us the rest of the way.  So it would 
seem that nowadays, genetic makeup is not what we need to preserve; our 
identity is much more defined by what we have absorbed from culture: 
ideas, skills, knowledge, habits, personality traits.

What say you?

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
|    Joseph J. Strout           Department of Neuroscience, UCSD   |
|               http://www-acs.ucsd.edu/~jstrout/  |
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