X-Envelope-to: ETHICS-L@UGA.BITNET
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ethics-l
Date:         Wed, 8 Apr 1992 17:18:49 -0400
From:         "Valdemar W. Setzer" <vwsetzer@MAFALDA.IME.USP.BR>
Subject: Re: Nanotechnology & Immortality

Well, I think I have a stack of msgs to answer! After getting a print-out
of Jim Dowey's mail of Sat, 4 Apr and also that of Ed Nilges dated Fri,  3 Apr,
I prepared some answers to them, but today there were a number of others
addressing my questions.
I will write some comments about the simplest ones.
1) Tim Weaver writes:

>Hardly commandments if stated properly
>You need not suffer
>You need not be born
>You need not die

Exactly, that's why I am against commandments: they don't invite you to
take a conscious action, but to obey. This was absolutely valid and
necessary at the original 10 commandments time, but would be improper
to man's present constitution. Nowadays we should act as self-conscious as
possible. I think everyone should establish his own inner "commandments",
which should be dynamic, and not follow external ones. If someone does
not do harm to another person because he is affraid of being prosecuted,
he is not acting as a free human being; according to my views, he is being
less human. If he does not do it because he respects other humans, and
has thought about that (which excludes such an  action due to pure feelings).
he is being more human. This is "inner ethics" and not "external ethics".
Now, I used "you shall" because people are being forced to act without
freedom, and this is part of "the horible world".

>Actually, you need not be born, should be you need not give birth,
>since the choice is not the child's, but the mother's.

The mother is "telling" the "unborn": "you shall not be born". I refuse
to admit (but, if good evidence is given, I will admit) that conception,
the most important happening in an individual's life, is a matter of
chance. As a matter of fact, I try to have no beliefs; to begin with,
I don't believe that something happens "by chance". My working hypothesis,
that there is a cause for everything, opens an enormous research
field, contrary to "chance", which closes it.


Fred Nixon writes:

>Perhaps you could elaborate on your basis for thinking materialism has
>created a horrible world, since you reject "commandments" (which I take
>to be "rules for ethical conduct"). How do you know it is a horrible world,
>and is it so just in your opinion, or is there some deeper level at which
>you think the world is broken?

I think I have answered  why I reject "commandments". Yes, I think our world
"is broken". Schumacher, author of "Small is Beautiful",
in his posthumous (I don't know how to write that)
book, "Good Work", mentioned that we have now more scientists than in the
whole history of mankind, and asked "what do all these scientists do?
They solve problems. Are we running out of problems? No! It seems like a
bottomless pit: for each problem those scientists solve,10 more are created."
or something very close. I see some problems solved, but I see **everywhere**
more problems being created. He also said that "we only hear about questions
of survival". Fred,  you certainly have AIDS problems in your country;
if you don't have cholera problems yet, as we do in my country, just you
wait. But physical sicknesses are just the external symptom; I am much
more worried about the human problems that do not show up in the surface and
which lead, for instance, to infant criminality (a big problem in my
country) or infant suicide (in Japan).
Let me throw some more wood in this fire: we have never had in our hystory
such a strong metaphor as the computer to convince layman that the
human being is a machine, and that the machine may have human characteristics
(the **horrible** name Artificial Intelligence definitely helps in producing
this misunderstanding). I am sure that this has a tremendous impact on
ethics. Can you imagine Hitler counting on a population of people
that would regard human beings not as animals, as he did, but as machines?
EVERITHING would be permitted, because machines have no ethics (until
some materialits start a new field of "Artificial Ethics"...). Unfortunately,
Fred, the future is not rosy: I think it is necessary, for the development
of mankind, that things get worse and worse, otherwise we could just
sit, cross our arms and wait until it gets better. Please, don't
misundestand me: I am not saying that we have to create miseries; I
think they exist and have to be fought against. For this, we need
consciousness and therefore knowledge - but not of the usual current type.
One of my working hypothesis is that man is not a pure physical being,
as well as animals and plants are not. Materialistic science will never be
able to help us solve our deep, non-physical problems. Again, don't
misunderstand me: I am not saying that we should give up scientific
thinking. On the contrary. But we have to renovate it, change some (or most) of
its premises and some of its methodology, otherwise we will never leave
Schumacher's "bottomless pit". Please notice that I am not a mystic (someone
based fundamentally upon his feelings). I don't want to through science into
the garbage, I would like to see it get out of the Newtonian-Cartesian
pit. As I would like to see machines put in their proper place.
Sorry everybody, this got too long.

Valdemar W. Setzer
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Sao Paulo
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