The Decommisioning of Androids In this essay I plan to prove, using three main concepts from John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding that replicates are not persons and can be retired without violating and moral, ethical, or legal laws. Replicates are merely man made intelligence and became a threat to real humans. Since the beginning of time man has killed animals and other humans that were a threat to others well-being. Why should these manufactured replicates be any exception? Problem: The problem proposed in the paper is weather or not it is ethical to retire replicates from the movie Blade Runner. In order to answer this question I must answer a couple of other questions. The hardest question will be, Are replicates people or are they just created machines by man. If they do qualify as living beings do we have the right to kill them based on our principles? One can look at these questions from many points of view. I chose to look at these questions from John Locke's perspective. I will use his philosophy to justify my answers to this question. Background: The movie Blade Runner takes place in the 21st Century. In this time period humans have the technological knowledge to genetically produce human like androids that have the capacity to think, feel, learn, and move about freely. They are in no way controlled by an outside party. However some of these replicates have learned too much and discovered that they are indeed man-made and can only live for four years. In an effort to find a way to extend their lives they rebel and kill several people in a "off world" and hijack a ship and return to earth. These replicates have been made illegal on earth and a special police unit called Blade Runners has been given the authority to kill any replicate on earth upon detection. This is where the moral and ethical dilemma comes in. Do these Blade Runners have the right to kill all replicates in punishment for the actions of a few? I say yes. The Blade Runners have every right to retire these replicates for several reasons. In the movie these replicates are a danger to society. When Tyrell told the replicate that he could not extend its life span he killed him. One cannot ask for the impossible and then punish he who cannot produce the impossible. I can understand why the replicates are upset.
Postrel, Virginia. “Should Human Cloning Be Allowed? Yes, Don’t Impede Medical Progress.” In Dynamic Argument. Ed. Robert Lamm and Justin Everett. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2007. 420-23.
Despite the changes in time and therefore, societal values, both Frankenstein and Blade Runner suggests that humanity’s pursuit for power and progress results in moral and ethical trepidations. Consequently, the comparison of these two texts expose the imperfections of human nature that will always remain perpetual regardless of context.
Silver’s argument illustrates to his audience that reproductive cloning deems permissible, but most people of today’s society frown upon reproductive cloning and don’t accept it. He believes that each individual has the right to whether or not they would want to participate in reproductive cloning because it is their reproductive right. However, those who participate in cloning run the risk of other’s imposing on their reproductive rights, but the risk would be worth it to have their own child.
Kass, Leon, and James Q. Wilson, eds. The ethics of human cloning. American Enterprise Institute, 1998.
McGee, Glenn, (2001). Primer on Ethics and Human Cloning. ActionBioscience.org. Retrieved October 3, 2004, from: http://www.actionbioscience.org/biotech/mcgee.html
The first time I watched Blade Runner (1982) I only viewed it as a poorly filmed, weird 80’s movie. However, with my new understanding of postmodernity I’ve come to view Ridley Scott’s movie, along with its sequel Blade Runner 2049, as some of the most fascinating movies I have ever seen. Upon watching both I have been captivated with thoughts on how to fix the problem that both movies show. The problem being that the internet has altered the nature of information and how it is processed by society. Elton Tyrell in Blade Runner touches on this by saying the Nexus-6 replicants are “more human than human.” Tyrell is conveying that these human-like robots has been able to overcome revolutionary change of information in society. This quotation
Although Locke’s description of the state of nature won’t turn out to be as dire as Hobbes’, it rests on the same notion that humans are born equal in the state of nature. Where their views diverge is what this total equality entails. Whereas for Hobbes, the depravity
Long after Shelley wrote her classic masterpiece Frankenstein and Huxley wrote Brave New World, the ethical controversy of cloning conflicts with modern artificial intelligence research. The question that challenges the idea of negative or positive behavior in a replicated machine relies on its similarity to the source of the clone, whether it emulates human behavior or acts as a “superintelligence” with supernatural characteristics void of human error. Humanity will not know the absolute answers concerning behavioral outcome without creating a physical being, an idea portrayed in Shelley’s Frankenstein in which the creation of a monster emulates from his creator’s attempts to generate life. At the time of the novel’s publication, the idea of replicating a soul portrayed a nightmarish theme with little consideration for the potential scientific advancements to facilitate in reality. It lead the genetic idea of manmade intelligence and its ethics emerging from the relativity of space, time, and original life on the planet. The debate of the existing possibility of sentient machines continues to progress, but the consideration of ethical questions such as “Should we create these artificial people?” and “How does this enactment define the soul and mind?” warranted from primitive questions about machine learning within the last century. After the initial proof of possibility for sentient machines, the perfection of cloning will generate “good” behavior at its perfect state several generations from now. The perfect machine portrays the potential for sensible human behaviors including compassion, mentality, empathy, alertness, and love. Humanity of the twenty-first century possesses the knowledge to fantasize the idea of artificial ...
Reflected in Scott 's Blade Runner, Tyrell has turned into the "God of biomechanics" and Roy his "prodigal son". These biblical suggestions are apparent of the consumerist drive for development of global organizations in the 1980 's and further uncovered how science effectively assume control; take control. The replicants are given embedded recollections and in that capacity are compelled to act a specific way.
8. Pellegrino, Edmund D., “Human Cloning and Human Dignity.” The President’s Council on Bioethics. 22 July 2007
Millar P. H. “On the point of the Imitation Game.” Mind, New Series, Vol. 82,
Philosophy has offered many works and debates on morality and ethics. One of these works is the concept of utilitarianism. One of the most prominent writers on the theory of utilitarianism is John Stuart Mill. He suggests that utilitarianism may be the guide for morality. His writing on utilitarianism transcends through the present in relation to the famous movie The Matrix. In the movie, people live in a virtual reality where they are relatively happy and content and the real world is filled with a constant struggle to survive. The movie revolves around Neo, who tries to free people from the virtual world in which they live. In light of utilitarianism, freeing these people would be morally wrong. In this essay, I will first explain John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism and some objections it faces. I will then talk about utilitarianism’s relation to The Matrix and why it would be morally wrong to free the people and subject them to the real world.
...be, as the Tyrell Corporation advertises, “more human than human.” Ridley Scott uses eye imagery to juxtapose the tremendous emotion of the replicants with the soullessness of the future’s humans. By doing so, Scott demonstrates that our emotions and yearning for life are the characteristics that fundamentally make us human, and that in his vision of our dystopian future, we will lose these distinctly human characteristics. We are ultimately losing the emotion and will to live that makes us human, consequently making us the mechanistic, soulless creatures of Scott’s dystopia. Blade Runner’s eye motif helps us understand the loss of humanness that our society is heading towards. In addition, the motif represents Ridley Scott’s call to action for us to hold onto our fundamental human characteristics in order to prevent the emergence of the film’s dystopian future.
I will argue that Locke believed that if you remain the same person, there are various entities contained in my body and soul composite that do not remain the same over time, or that we can conceive them changing. These entities are matter, organism (human), person (rational consciousness and memory), and the soul (immaterial thinking substance). This is a intuitive interpretation that creates many questions and problems. I will evaluate Locke's view by explaining what is and what forms personal identity, and then explaining how these changes do conceivably occur while a human remains the same person.
In the article that I chose there are two opposing viewpoints on the issue of “Should Human Cloning Ever Be Permitted?” John A. Robertson is an attorney who argues that there are many potential benefits of cloning and that a ban on privately funded cloning research is unjustified and that this type of research should only be regulated. On the flip side of this issue Attorney and medical ethicist George J. Annas argues that cloning devalues people by depriving them of their uniqueness and that a ban should be implemented upon it. Both express valid points and I will critique the articles to better understand their points.