Avatar and philosophy

So my proposal to the forthcoming Avatar and philosophy volume was accepted!  Just like all my other official publications, its on ethics.  Specifically, what we can learn about our treatment of animals from the Na'vi. 

But I want to write about something besides animals and ethics here...  So if you haven't seen Avatar yet, and you don't want it spoiled, stop reading now.

So Jake at the end of the movie undergoes permanent relocation into his Avatar by a tree (it looks way better in the movie than this makes it sound).  Is Jake dead?  One might be inclined to say that his body is dead, but Jake isn't.  This presupposes a couple of things.... That Jake either has a soul that now inhabits his avatar, and that is why he is alive, because his soul is still around.  Or that Jake's consciousness/identity continues to persist in the avatar, and that is why he is alive.

If its the first, that Jake has a soul, then nobody really ever dies, assuming souls are the traditional immortal entity.  So we're just wrong when we say that ANYONE dies.  I think this is a little far-fetched, not to mention metaphysically problematic.  But the other alternative is just as problematic...  We could argue that Sigourney Weaver's character is not dead, just inside the aforementioned tree (I'm betting that in the future sequels [Cameron has already said he envisioned a trilogy] that she comes back via the tree).  Or we could argue that people who lose their memories or have a break in their consciousness (coma) have died and returned to the living.

It is easy to talk about biological death, but its much more difficult to talk about death of an identity...  Do identities die?  And isn't that what we normally talk about when we talk about people?  When I think of my wife, I'm not thinking of my wife's body.... I'm thinking of her identity.  Are they one and the same?  I don't think they're the same, but I find the problem of personal identity maddening on almost every level.... I guess thats why I'm so attracted to identity puzzles.

Are Neanderthals Human?

So I was reading this article today about cloning neanderthals.  I'm not terribly sure its a good idea to clone neanderthals mostly because of the harm it would inflict on the undoubtedly hundreds of failed clones.  But thats another blog post for another time.  What got my interest piqued was this:

"I think there would be no question that if you cloned a Neanderthal, that individual would be recognized as having human rights under the Constitution and international treaties," says Lori Andrews, a professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law. The law does not define what a human being is, but legal scholars are debating questions of human rights in cases involving genetic engineering. "This is a species-altering event," says Andrews, "it changes the way we are creating a new generation." How much does a human genome need to be changed before the individual created from it is no longer considered human?

Neanderthals are not human (scientifically).  So why would they have human rights?  Well the answer is easy, because the set of rights that we call human rights are not exclusively humans, but rather apply to all persons.  Assumedly if Spock from Star Trek were to beam down on earth right now, we would not deny him rights and protections that we grant to other human beings.

Thats simple enough.  But what makes something a human being?  Genome?  As we tinker and through natural evolution, our genome changes.  And if we change it enough, would we lose our rights?  Again, probably not.

But I want to put forth a bolder claim.  I want to say that either "human" is so hopelessly vague as to be a meaningless term, or that it applies to the things that we may create through genetic engineering, including a cloned neanderthal.  So I'm going against science here.  Neanderthals are human, in the same way that I'm Hawaiian (I'm not Hawaiian in the usual sense).  Being Chinese, my ancestors helped colonize polynesia, and eventually Hawaii.  Hawaii thus, are really just asians with some modifications. (This goes back to the race debate we were having with the census).

Now whereas race is almost a meaningless set of vague descriptions of a category, species identification is a little more exact.   It usually involves inter-breeding possibilities and such.  But presumedly we could interbreed with a very different species, so long as we modified the genetic recombination in a way to produce fertile offspring (this is what they supposedly do in Star Trek for interspecies children unless they were by sheer coincidence genetically compatible).

*edit*  Hmmm... apparently its not terribly controversial that neanderthals are human....  I take it all back.

More identity puzzles

I don't know why I've been thinking about identity a lot lately....  But here's another puzzle:

I think what makes a person a mother at the very least is making a long-term commitment to caring for a child.  This allows us to cover all kinds of motherhood that doesn't involve biological reproduction.  Some people want to call pregnant women mothers, others, mothers to be.  Depending upon the commitment level, my definition would classify the ones who want to deliver mothers, and those that don't not mothers. 

It would also classify certain people as non-mothers that many would want to call mothers, like people who give up their babies for adoption.  I'm willing to live with this.

So whats the point of defining motherhood?  It strikes me as a puzzling kind of social identity.  E.g. I think my mom is still a mother, even though she doesn't directly care for me still (in the child rearing sense).  But what if I and my brother were to die today?  Would she still be a mother?  I'd like to say yes, since I would have called her a mother even though she's not directly caring for me still.

But the harder problems are cases where the mother has a stillborn baby.  Is she a mother?  Under my definition yes.  I suppose, others might want to take issue with that. 

Motherhood doesn't seem to go away easily once it is assigned.  Contrast that with other social identities like being a student, or an adolescent.  Even fatherhood I think is significantly different from motherhood (although I haven't quite formulated a definition for that yet). 

I'm not sure if my concept of motherhood is really robust enough either....  ambivolent mothers still seem like mothers to me, and I could imagine a mother who never makes long term commitments and simply reaffirms a short-term commitment over and over until her child turns 18, then kicks them out, deciding not to renew the commitment.

Ultimately, I find this case intresting because its another one of those cases in which we utilize a label or word without really understanding what it means in the fullest sense.  I think Socrates would be proud of my questioning.

Mereological Identity

I love XKCD!  And today's comic strikes that perfect balance between sentimentality and philosophy.

Clearly father is a spatio-temporal continuity theorist of identity.  If the aggregate breaks up, then its GONE.  But daughter is something like a mereological theorist of identity, if you're made up of the same parts, you're the same, or in this case.

I have to give it to father here, since daughter's notion is almost incoherent.  If she is an organ donor, and she continues to exist after her death, then she could exist in multiple places after she is dead, since she has multiple organs that could be donated.  Even worse, her organs are made up of things like tofu chicken nuggets and vegetarian tikka masala (I imagine she's a vegetarian).  So SHE really is just donating some soy protein to others.

If she would exist after death, then the same can be applied to what makes up her organs.  She could continue to exist just as easily as checking the cannibalize box on her driver's license.

What your state doesn't have a cannibalize box?