Great article by Michelle Hutichinson over at Practical Ethics: Creating Non-Human People. Blurb:
John Locke thought that what it meant to be a person was to be rational and to have a continuous stream of consciousness. In theory, an animal of any type could be a person. In that case, if we induced in a non-human primate enough awareness and human-like behaviour they would be a person. What would be problematic about doing so? One possible answer is that it might not be possible to tell when a primate became a person. However, that doesn’t sound like a compelling reason against a modifying a primate in a way which makes them more like a person. We could decide whether it is worse to treat a person as if they weren’t a person or vice versa, and then err on the side of caution in our treatment of the resulting animals. In that case, it might not matter whether we knew precisely which were people and which were not.
However, perhaps the writers of the report were not worried about the uncertain status of the non-human primates, but about the fact that whether they were in fact people, or just close to being people, it would be wrong to test on them. If that is the case, it’s experimenting on these animals which should be illegal, not producing them.
While no reason has yet been found to think that modifying non-human primates such that they are people is in itself wrong, various bad consequences might ensue. The awareness they gained might allow them to realise that they have been exploited, or increase their suffering in some other way (particularly if they were kept confined in the research facility). On the other hand, we usually think that our lives are greatly enriched by the awareness and understanding we have of the world around us, so perhaps theirs would be too.
- Neurodiversity vs. Cognitive Liberty - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Link dump: 2009.10.13 - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Limits to the biolibertarian impulse - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Link dump: 2009.10.15 - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Neurodiversity vs. Cognitive Liberty, Round II - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Link dump: 2009.10.17 - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Cognitive liberty and right to one's mind - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- TED Talks: Henry Markram builds a brain in a supercomputer - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- And Now, for Something Completely Different: Doomsday! - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Link dump: 2009.10.19 - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Oklahoma and abortion - some fittingly harsh reflections - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Pigliucci on science and the scope of skeptical inquiry - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Remembering Mac Tonnies - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Link dump: 2009.10.24 - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Link dump: 2009.10.26 - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- The Bright Side of Nuclear Armament - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Grieving chimps - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Elephant prosthetic - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Mass produced artificial skin to replace animal testing - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Dog gets osseointegrated prosthetic - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- NASA Shuttle-derived Sidemount Heavy Launch Vehicle Concept - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Link dump for 2009.02.02 - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Link dump for 2009.11.04 - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Link dump for 2009.11.05 - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- IEET's Biopolitics of Popular Culture Seminar - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Einstein and Millikan should have done a Kurzweil - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Affective Death Spirals - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Cure aging or give a small number of disabled people jobs as janitors? - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Would unary notation prevent scope insensitivity? - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Cure aging or give a small number of disabled people jobs as janitors - unary version. - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- At SENS4, Cambridge, UK - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- SENS4 overview and review - how evolution complicates SENS, and why we must try harder - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- SENS4 top 10 photos - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- My AI research for this year - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- My AI research: Formal Logic - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- My AI research: Category theory and institution theory - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- My AI research: The Semantic Web - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- My AI research: Features and Flaws of Logical representation - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- My AI research: Graphical models and probabilistic logics - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Hughes and More engage Italian Catholicism: Image caption competition - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Surprisingly good solutions, falling in love and life in a materialistic universe - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- What do you get when you cross slightly evolved, status seeking monkeys with the scientific method? - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Seeking the optimal philanthropic strategy: Global Warming or AI risk? - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Machine Learning - harbinger of the future of AI? - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- At the Singularity Summit in NYC - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Katja Grace: world-dominating superintelligence is "unlikely" - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Normal Human Heroes on "Nightmare futures" - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Anissimov on Intelligence Enhancement - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Yudkowsky on "Value is fragile" - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Response to Pearce - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Creative thinking lets you believe whatever you want - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Let’s get metaphysical: How our ongoing existence could appear increasingly absurd - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Linda MacDonald Glenn guest blogging in November and December - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Link dump for 2009.11.15 - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Call 1-800-New-Organ, by 2020? - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- IBM's claim to have simulated a cat's brain grossly overstated - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- John Hodgman pulls off Fermi Paradox schtick - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Deus Sex Machina - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- How Americans spent themselves into ruin... but saved the world - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- I am my own grandpa (or grandma)? - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Link dump for 2009.11.29 - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- The art of Tomas Saraceno - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Link dump: 2009.12.05 - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- The Harmonic Convergence of Science, Sight, & Sound - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Working on my website - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Transhumanism, personal immortality and the prospect of technologically enabled utopia - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- RokoMijic.com is up - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Why the Fuss About Intelligence? - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Initiation ceremony - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Birthing Gods - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- 11 core rationalist skills - from LessWrong - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- The best of the guests - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- The best of Sentient Developments: 2009 - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Link dump: 2009.12.15 - December 15th, 2009 [December 15th, 2009]
- The Utopia Force - December 22nd, 2009 [December 22nd, 2009]
- Avatar: The good, the bad and ugly - December 23rd, 2009 [December 23rd, 2009]
- Singularity Institute launches "2010 Singularity Research Challenge" - December 24th, 2009 [December 24th, 2009]
- Transhumanism as a "nonissue" - December 24th, 2009 [December 24th, 2009]
- Hanson on "Meh, Transhumanism" - December 25th, 2009 [December 25th, 2009]
- Merry Newtonmas from Transhuman Goodness - December 25th, 2009 [December 25th, 2009]