Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 15:38:24 -0400 (EDT)
From: Michael Straight 
Subject: Re: (urth) TBOTSS and colonialism

On Tue, 28 May 2002, Andy Robertson wrote:

> Our own minds *right down to our deepest souls* are no more than a genetic
> ghost conjured up by our bodies, to serve evolutionary drives.

OK.  I thought you were saying that inhumi souls were fake and human souls
were real.

> The chameleon/parasite aspect extends even to the nature of their *minds* -
> which faithfully hold to the MetaLie, the belief that they are human,   even
> while serving the cruel behest of evolution and nothing else.

OK, I agree that they want to be human and never can be.  But I think in
the course of trying to be human, they become *persons*.  I think that is
the key distinction.

Only humans are human, but chems, inhumi, digitized gods, Babbie are all
people.  I can't exhaustively define personhood, but I think it includes
moral action, the ability to love and be loved, and, for Wolfe, the
possibility of surviving death.

Inhumi personhood is derived from human beings (as are all the other
examples above), and they can never be human, but I think they can be
persons, capable of and accountable for moral actions.

> The initial point of this thread was that some of us deny the concept of an
> "inbuilt nature" in intelligent species.

Yes, but I'm not sure the inhumi nature is necessarily more of an obstacle
to becoming virtuous persons than human nature.  Neither group comes off
very well in the SS books.

-Rostrum


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