Posted by Mike Berro on March 12, 1998 at 10:26:01:
In Reply to: Re: To Live Forever -- Cloning and the Hero posted by Suan Yong on March 12, 1998 at 08:28:06:
: The question (IMO) boils down to whether we have a "soul" (for lack
: of a better word), and whether a `brainless' clone would still have
: a "soul", and `deserve' to live... (for that matter, do animals have
: a soul? how about a fetus?) I think science's next big goal should
: be to discover what (if anything) this "soul" is that makes us tick.
Suan,
Robert Sawyer addressed this very issue in his book THE TERMINAL EXPERIMENT (Nebula Award 1995.) The premise is that someone has come up with a method of empirically detecting the soul. It's not Vancian by any means, but a good read.
Personally, I can see why Vance has been embraced by many Libertarians, although I'm by no means convinced that Vance is one himself.
---Mike