The Ethics of Star Trek: Autonomy and Society

Thanks, Faust! Per the revised structure, I will defend my case and summarize the debate thus far. Again, Iquotes from Pro may be italicized. CON's CASE"Ultimately, the 'Founding' line of genetic stock will fade into extinction, all that will be remaining is an entire colony of Rikers and Pulaskis, and we well know of their stance on the matter. If the purpose of government is to protect its citizens or continue its citizen’s will, thinking into the future should be practiced. The Riker and Pulaski clones will be subject to the same genetic fade, and the Mariposan Clone colony would presumably end the minute the last clone from the 'Founders' passed. Now the citizens of such a government in question will quite literally be comprised of nothing but clones that were adverse to cloning to begin with!"The clones are merely the bodies of Riker and Pulaski, they do not share the minds or memories of them. Cloning is the cloning of DNA--it does not replicate memories, feelings, or beliefs. So, just because the original donors objected to their forced donation, that does not mean that the clones will object to the process, or harbor any ill-will against the original line of colonists. In fact, there is every reason to believe that if the clones of the two grow up in the Mariposan culture, that they will readily consent to the process of further cloning. So, there is no reason to believe that the colony would end the minute the original line died off; in fact, logic suggests that the Rikers and Pulaskis would continue the society. Pro then agrees that the purpose of government is to protect its citizens and to "continue their will." In order to ensure the continued existence of Mariposan culture and society, the very essence of which is tied to cloning, the government must acquire new DNA to enable that culture to perpetuate. It does its citizen's will by preserving that culture; TURN Pro's argument against him, here.And sure, there may eventually be issues with replicative fading with the Rikers and Pulaskis, but it would have bought Mariposa many generations, possibly more than a hundred years, to either solve the fading problem or to find new (hopefully willing) donors. Recall, the original colonists and their line survived more than a century before the replicative fading issue became dire."Secondly, the current clones from the Mariposan adopted cloning and the subsequent moral complications from necessity, not as an adaptation of culture."Pro does not give any thought to how culture develops when he writes this. Consider, many cultural practices arose out of necessity, but then, those practices became traditions as they were repeated and passed down from generation to generation. One example of this would be the Jewish prohibition on eating pork. [1] Pork was historically a vary dangerous meat to consume due to its high microbial content. Eventually, it became a cultural practice to avoid eating pork, and this cultural practice was even incorporated into religion to reinforce its validity. It was adopted, at first, out of concerns over health, but later became a cultural or spiritual phenomenon. So, it is fundamentally incorrect for Pro to say that just because cloning was originally adopted out of necessity that it cannot be an element of culture. In fact, cloning is the main foundation on which their society evolved and is structured, so it is very clearly an important aspect of Mariposan culture."However there is something hiding in the phrase “choosing the lesser of two evils” when it comes to these clones. There are a lot more choices on the table than 2."Pro's whole argument against utilitarianism hinges on his claim that the Mariposans had options other than to forcibly clone Riker and Pulaski. If I show this to be untrue, then my original argument stands."The Mariposa clones were not sterile. They were opting to steal genes and clone them out of convenience, not necessity...With Starfleet now knowing of this colony’s existence, trade and settlers could be established, and new genetic stock, those in line with the original intent of a culture, that which the Founder’s had, could finally be fulfilled."There are three objections that we can raise to this line of argumentation. The first is one of genetic diversity, the second is one of culture, and the third is one of knowledge.The colonists could not reproduce among themselves due to issues with genetic diversity. Science tells us that for a population to be self-sustaining over time, it needs a certain amount of genetic variation in its members. [2] When members of a population are too genetically similar, genetic faults like hemophilia proliferate, the population isn't diverse enough to withstand disease, etc.. So, cloning was the only available means with which the colonists could sustain their population.Now, Pro suggests that once introduced to Starfleet, they could've accessed sources of genetic diversity (e.g. other people). But this is an incredibly ethnocentric view to take. Pro suggests that the colonists should revert to their colony's original intent, but its original intent is not reflective of its current culture. What Pro is basically saying is that its past culture is better than its future one, but preferencing one culture over another is inherently prejudiced. There current culture is valuable and worthy of preserving, just like any culture is. And, there is nothing inherently wrong in the Mariposan culture. Forced cloning is not something they want to do (in fact, they did ask permission), but they felt it was the only way of maintaining their current culture.We may even say that we are violating the clones rights by forcing them to reproduce in order to save their society when they don't wish to.Moreover, this appeal to origins is ridiculous. Why does something's original intent outweigh its current state? We wouldn't say to Jamaica that it should revert to a slave colony because that was its original intent, just as we wouldn't tell Australia it needs to return to being a penal colony or tell England it needs to become an absolute monarchy again. Cultures evolve, and that is a natural process--we shouldn't mandate regression just because there are things we dislike in a given society or things we think are impractical. That would unjustifiably impose our opinions on others. Pro talks a lot of bodily autonomy, but what of the autonomy of societies to have their own cultural views and function accordingly?Thirdly, Pro presupposes that the Mariposan colonist knew that there were refugees available to them. But that's false. They were not necessarily aware of the existence of the refugees abroad the Enterprise, nor were they necessarily aware that these refugees would be willing to help them populate Mariposa. Given their lack of information, and given the urgency of their need to find fresh DNA (with replicative fading they couldn't wait long to find suitable, human colonists capable and willing of reproducing with them), the Mariposan's choice were an understandable reaction to what seemed to them to be a situation with no desirable solutions, only DNA theft.REVIEWPro's arguments rely on four points: (1) the importance of bodily autonomy over other concerns, (2) that the clones Rikers and Pulaskis would not cooperate with the Mariposans, (3) that there were viable alternatives to the forced cloning that obviated the need for it, and (4) the historicity of conflict and genetics. Each one of these arguments falls.Pro fails to offer any framework or warrant to justify the importance of bodily autonomy in this debate. He just assumes that it matters, and appeals to our moral intuitions to verify this. Unfortunately, this is just one giant bare assertion/ipse dixit fallacy on Pro's part. We must therefore default to my framework options (e.g. government duty and utility), which I justified in R3.My argument about the duty of government shows that any government is tasked with preserving its society (which may include doing things not normally considered moral). To preserve a society founded on cloning, the government took actions to preserve its cloning heritage. I have shown that Pro's claim that clones from Riker and Pulaski would cooperate, and so Pro's one objection here fails. I can win on this framework option. I have also shown that there weren't really any good options, from the Mariposan point of view, for preserving their society accept to engage in the forced cloning. So, from a utilitarian stance, we can also vote Con. Finally, I illustrated that Pro's claims that cloning caused wars was false, because there are important distinctions between cloning and genetic engineering. So, Pro's assertions lack any historicity.With that, I negate. VOTE CON!SOURCES1 - http://en.wikipedia.org...2 - http://learn.genetics.utah.edu...