Ethical Dilemmas: The Artificial Reproduction Of My Brain

Imagine if you lived in a world where everyone was the same and had no physical differences. Everyone would have the exact same DNA. There would be no diversity within the population. If we continue to clone then this may be a possibility for the future. As of now there have been no cloned humans, but we are not too far away from being able to do so. Scientists have been cloning since as early as 1886, and have been cloning animals since 1996 with the birth of Dolly the sheep. Dolly the sheep was created by using reproductive cloning which is used to produce copies of whole animals (Cloning Fact Sheet NHGRI). Furthermore, there are two other types of cloning; therapeutic cloning and gene cloning. Therapeutic cloning is used to produce embryonic stem cells for medical research (Cloning Fact Sheet NHGRI). Gene cloning is used to produce copies of genes or segments of DNA (Cloning Fact Sheet NHGRI). Cloning should not be allowed because it is inhumane and unethical, results in more failure than it does results, and is unfeasible.

The current paradigm states “consciousness is organically based and cannot be emulated by A.I.” (Boss). Indeed, Descartes believed that the conscious mind and body are two separate things and, to be human, you need both ( (Matravers). Robot Ash certainly has a body that is separate from the A.I software, but that software is still not a conscious mind, rather it’s, albeit an

Without the quantifiable entity that is the brain, the mind would have no medium for which to exist.

A neurosurgeon asks you to agree with getting an Artificial Intelligence(A.I.) procedure, to increase your I.Q. by three times. Would you do it? Charlie Gordon, a thirty seven year old man with a mental disability, faces this exact question in the science fiction story “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes. He goes through with it, but afterwards, he discovers good and not-so-good things about life ,that he never knew. Carlie was better off before he had the A.I. surgery, because he lost friends, he regressed lower than before the surgery,and he developed new emotions, negatively affecting himself and the people around him.

4. True or false? Neuroethics is a subset of ethics that focuses on the interface between the human brain and machines.

According to many different philosophers such as Descartes and Locke there has to be more to the mind than just the materialistic view. There are many different parts to the brain which make it a whole according to science, so thinking about the brain from a philosophical standpoint, there must be different parts to make up the minds identity. According to John Perry, the memories and personality traits as well as beliefs and intellectual skills make up a personal identity and the body is just a vessel that holds this identity (TP, 197). Certain people might believe that if one were to get a brain transplant they would wake up the same person they were before they went in for the surgery. I, on the other hand concur with Perry and the idea

Similar to Susan Blackmore’s essay “Strange Creatures” Lauren Slater’s essay “Who Holds the Clicker?” questions the idea of who really has control of our minds. In Blackmore's essay, the thesis was very clear stating: “ what makes us different is our ability to imitate” ( Blackmore, 33). In Slater’s essay, the thesis wasn't very clearly stated. In my opinion, I feel that the thesis statement of this essay was that sometimes tampering with a patient's mind might have a positive effect. Sticking to my thesis in the previous paper I still feel that we as humans have control of our minds. But the mind and the brain are two different things. Although we might have control of our minds I don't think we have control of our brain.

The act of cloning a human being comes dangerously close to human beings acting as God. Do human beings have the right to tamper with nature in this way? This essay explores the various ethical issues related to the cloning debate, and seeks answers to this deep philosophical question at the heart of bioethics. As a student of genetic biology and future biologist, this question also has personal relevance. Our science is evolving at a rapid pace. As human cloning becomes increasingly possible, it is important that we analyze the ethics of cloning so that judicious public policy can be created. It is therefore my position that research into cloning should continue to fulfill the fundamental goals of scientific exploration and to explore the possibilities that cloning might have in terms of benefitting human society; on the other hand, there are certainly ethical limits to the practice of cloning. It is important to define those ethical limits, so that scientists understand the best ways to proceed.

Yes, it could make a paralyzed man walk and give the blind back one of their senses, but the surgery needed to put the BCI under the skull and onto the brain is highly, HIGHLY invasive (James,). If one single incision is out of place less than one centimeter out from where it was supposed to go, the brain could become permanently damaged (James,). Another ethical issue of this is that it has the ability to read the most inner and deepest thoughts that one has ever conceived and alter them in unimaginable ways (Regalado).

Issac Asimov’s theory of self-reflective awareness is that we are able to reverse engineer ourselves. Issac compares consciousness to a sandcastle. With the grains of sand we are able to build sandcastles, alter it again and you can reconstruct a tower. Similarly, the brain is bits of matter, just how a sandcastle is bits of sand. “If consciousness like its sand counterpart is substrate neutral then one could reverse engineer its coordinates and complex intersections and reconstruct it anew in an entirely different medium” (Is the Universe an App 130).

Science today is developing at warp speed. We have the capability to do many things, which include the cloning of actual humans! First you may ask what a clone is? A clone is a group of cells or organisms, which are genetically identical, and have all been produced from the same original cell. There are three main types of cloning, two of which aim to produce live cloned offspring and one, which simply aims to produce stem cells and then human organs. These three are: reproductive cloning, embryo cloning and therapeutic cloning. The goal of therapeutic cloning is to produce a healthy copy of a sick person's tissue or organ for transplant, and the goal of both reproductive cloning and embryo cloning is to

Relating to Daniel Dennett’s essay “Where am I” if Yorrick (Dennett’s brain) were to die would Dennett continue to exist through Hubert (the computer program that functionally mirrors his brain)? Dennett would not be able to survive because even though Hubert functions like Yorrick, Hubert isn’t able to recall memories and thoughts that make up a large part of Dennett. An example of this would be if you were to put your brain in a famous singer’s body and take their brain, would you be where they were or would you be in school right now? If they were to get interviewed about their past, what would they say. Memories and our feelings are vital to who we are. The celebrity might claim to be you and be able to tell personal stories about you. So Even though Dennett continues to have basic function such as breathing and a heart beat, his trust testament to himself, which included his personality, intelligence, and desires are not shown through Hubert.

The main brain areas that have been associated with morality at both structural and functional levels ( in text) . Moral traits are considered the most essential part of identity, the self, and the soul. A useful thought experiment concerning personal identity and brain transplantation was offered by that great physician-philosopher John Locke. He believed that with transportation soul also transfer to the receipt body. Author gave a great example of He imagined that transpiring prince brain into the cobbler's body along with transportation not only prince brain along with brain, soul would be transferred into the cobblers body transposition not of the brain, but of the soul of a prince into a cobbler's body and cobbler should have to abandon

It’s very obvious that Nancy Gibbs see’s the pros and cons of human engineering. There are so many negatives surrounding the positive thoughts coming from recreating the human mind that it makes it very difficult to say “let’s do it”. Although the thought to create a more advanced human mind in efforts to enhance intelligence may sound like the perfect idea, there are what if’s that stands in questioning. Gibbs gives the opinions of some doctors who specialize in different areas pertaining to the human mind as well as her own in terms the stance she takes on the idea. Gibbs talks about how neurobiologist Alcino Silva believes and questions the thought, that there’s a possibility that by enhancing intellectual ability, some other personality

Essay Question (2): Explain in full the ‘life in the shadow’ argument against human reproductive cloning. How might the argument be objected to? Do you regard the argument to be morally decisive, in the sense that it establishes that human cloning for purely reproductive purposes must never be permitted? Explain and defend your answer.