Thank you for your comments on my specific queries concerning the would-be
abilities of human clones, if they are one day successfully created.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, May 03, 2004 11:22 PM
Subject: Re: One of the posts from the
Blog Experiment on Jack Park's site
Ayten, I join you in praising Judith's post -
however it was more than what I can easily read (and absorb?). I am
thrown off when RR draws examples (evidences?) from chapters of biology,
physics (and math, like 'Hamiltonian')
for statements about (wholistic)
complexity, which indeed are abstracted reductionist models of the latter.
Then I have to stop, re-read, and realize that RR addressed the reader, who
comes from reductionst scientific thinking. I am not.
I got 2 ideas:
1./ a clone is chimeric: the difference
between 'more or less' is quantitative, not reaching into the quale.
I could not decipher RR's opinion about the
psyche of a (successful?) clone, IMO the genetic stuff it continues is
pertnent only to body(function) building.
Your _expression_
>"...neurological (including all brain
functions), passional, >intuitional, spiritual;...<
gave me the idea #2:
( I don't recall a concerning thought
from RR - (Judith?) - )
namely that cloning may provide a "blank"
mindset.
Works on the body. Genetic
bio-stuff.
In my decade-long discussions about the memes (not in the original Dawkins
version and not as later opponents distorted it) - it is IMO a "routine" of one's thinking, style,
(dis)likes, beliefs, emotions, the mindset -
and it develops
on the gentically provided base during development - maybe starting in the womb, enriched
in early learning about the world (environment), both physical and social, as
pretty flexible at this age, although later on it can be altered by
learning-experience (whatever we mean by that).
My usual example (and this will be familiar to
you) are the
Yanitchars, the Janissaries, the Flowers of the Garden of Begtas, the
elite force of the Ottoman Sultans. They were collected from a wide series of
occupied countries as babies, from an even wider (genetic/worldview) sortiment
of descent, and brought up in collective
'vocational' muslim education into uniform,
reliable killing machines.
I called them secondary clones before cloning
became a realistc (household) concept.
As I wrote some time ago to another
list: we did not read the report of a sheep-psychologist who examined
Dolly in the "sheepish psych science" (in sheepese) whether she was
a psychologically 'normal'
sheep. I don't trust the human
examinations and conclusions in
sheepish matters.
Your idea about the successful
cloning which:
>"...could produce uniform individuals to
gradually replace >the diversity at large,..."<
postulates the discontinuation of the bisexual
process. It
may well be that the clones will be more
successful(?)
but this perspective looks to me as utterly
boring.
Not only do I find the conventional techniques
entertaining,
I also realize that Nature (the biosphere?)
goes for diversity.
We are very very far from "the age of the
clone", don't even know (our other ongoing thread) whether
besides unknown psych, which I mentioned, will a clone have an adequate
immune system? A repair mechanism? does it respond to
medication? Heal wounds?
I am not surprised that RR did not speak
much about cones (it would have
been premature before their emerging).
Cheers
John M
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, May 03, 2004 4:27
AM
Subject: Re: One of the posts from the
Blog Experiment on Jack Park's site
Judith,
It is an interesting and thought provoking post.
I am wondering, even it may not be directly related to
your post, what your father was thinking and you&others in the list
are thinking about the clonning, in terms of both bilogical and
cultural anthropology. On the ethical side, if successful, an authority with
all the means at hand, could produce uniform individuals to gradually
replace the diversity at large, as one point. The other is whether
physiologically cloned individual (i) will have the ability to cope with the
requirements of higher more and more complex realms such as biological,
neurological (including all brain functions), passional, intuitional,
spiritual; (ii) if so will they develop in line with the abilities of
the original from which they sprung out or split in the process ???
My best,
Ayten
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, May 02, 2004 5:06
PM
Subject: One of the posts from the
Blog Experiment on Jack Park's site
Hi Folks,
I thought the list would be interested in this excerpt of my father's
so I'm posting it here, as well. Wherever I have inserted comments or
changes, they are encased in brackets [ ]. They number
very few.
Cheers,
Judith
(Repeat-copy of excerpts
truncated)
Press in 1999.