In his doctoral thesis Greg describes the human ‘spirit’ as essentially a dispositional center of rationality. Human agency, then, amounts to rational-sentient dispositional subjectivity. “A” human agent, “an” individual person, then, is a one such dispositional center of responsibly disposing volition.

…or something like that.

Of course, this is all embodied. And as far as we know, the center of this embodied personal agency is the human brain. Why the brain? Well, I’m hypothesizing I suppose. Get a kidney transplant and you’re the same person. Donate blood and it’s just the ‘material’ you donate. Somebody who gets your blood or kidney or lung doesn’t stop being the ‘person’ they were before the transplant. And you remain continuous with the same person too. We can safely say this about pretty much any body part—blood, kidneys, hearts, lungs, etc.—save the brain. We’ve never actually transplanted brains successfully (Dr. Frankenstein excepting), so we’re hypothesizing. But my argument would be, transplant the brain, and you transplant the person. Or do you?

D and I got onto this by discussing cloning. I argued that if you were to clone me, the clone would constitute a human person NOT numerically identical to me. That is, it would not be my ‘spirit’ (as defined above) in another body. You’d have two separate ‘spirits’ or ‘souls’ (or ‘embodied agents’) whose destinies would be determined by the exercise of their respective minds and wills. Given our scientific abilities today, cloning involves gestation and maturation, like any birthing process. So the ‘person’ would emerge (assuming an emergence view of personhood). Or the ‘person’ would be—poof—created by God anew at whatever stage the cloned element achieved the requisite status in gestation.

But consider a related but separate interesting question. What if we were able to clone somebody ‘as is’. That is, what if we were not limited to placing the genetic code from a slice of some ‘body’ into gestation to produce a new born, but were capable of actually reproducing the total neural state of an adult brain and placing that into a separate human body? All the established neural networks would be exactly reproduced as is, and placed into another body. Same memories, same established likes and dislikes (so far as those reside in established neural states), same ingrained habituation, etc. You get the picture.

What then? Same ‘person’? You have the same subjective identification going on. The reproduced-cloned copy would awaken from the table believing himself to ‘be’ Tom. The clone would totally believe he’s married to Anita, father of four, ordained minister, etc. Well, would he BE those things? Would he BE that person? Certainly the original would be those things. But why would the original be those things? Because the original neural networking was that location in physical creation with the ‘person’ (‘spirit’, ‘disposition’) of “Tom” was for 47 years located. That’s where I did my disposition and self-determining work. Well, what’s the ‘personal’ status and identify of the cloned, reproduced ‘Tom’ with respect to the original?

What if the two of us met up? Well, there’s no doubt that each is, in terms of Greg’s definition of a human ‘spirit’, a different spirit/soul. The fact that each is a different ‘agent’, perceiving and disposing in responsible ways that aren’t identical to the other proves this. The original would not be responsible for the choices of the copy, nor could either determine the other by virtue of personal choice. Clearly each is his own ‘individual’, a distinct, rational, disposing center of experience.. No doubt about that.

D and I started to freak out when I asked him about applying this to Jesus. Two scenarios:

1) Cloning the living Jesus. Take a piece of Jesus’ liver, clone it with the requisite science, gestate it, and—kaboom!—you have a newborn! But a newborn what? Would the clone be God incarnate? I’m pretty certain the clone would NOT be God incarnate. What would emerge would be a merely human being. But I’m open to changing my mind.

2) The more difficult scenario would be the cloned-reproduced Jesus. Take the adult Christ and copy (by whatever Sci-fi means you want to image; I think we CAN imagine such a thing occurring; it’s not logically contradictory), reconstruct, or reproduce the exact same neural networking of Jesus.

What would happen with the copy in case (2)? The clone would certainly identify himself as the Son. He'd go around calling God his “Father,” and talk of having been uniquely “sent” to do such and such a mission.

Planis

Post Edited (PLANIS) : 7/20/2007 10:02:46 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (PLANIS) : 7/21/2007 1:28:32 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Theoria) : 7/21/2007 6:22:39 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Theoria) : 7/21/2007 7:30:18 AM (GMT-5)

In Buddhist philosophy, anatta (Pāli) or anātman (Sanskrit) refers to "non-self" or "absence of separate self". One scholar describes it as "...meaning non-selfhood, the absence of limiting self-identity in people and things...". What is normally thought of as the "self" is in fact an agglomeration of constantly changing physical and mental constituents ("skandhas" ).

...

Another understanding of anatta (as enunciated by the Buddha in the Mahayana "Tathagatagarbha" scriptures) insists that the five "skandhas" (impermanent constituent elements of the mundane body and mind of each being) are indeed "not the Self", since they are doomed to mutation and dissolution, but that, in contrast, the eternal buddha nature deep within each being is the supramundane True Self—although this realisation is only fully gained on reaching awakening ("bodhi".

Post Edited (Theoria) : 7/21/2007 7:45:09 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (jefscott) : 7/21/2007 7:49:28 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (jefscott) : 7/21/2007 7:52:23 AM (GMT-5)

Personally, I think BOTH of these scenarios are interesting. But I at least would like a response for the "body" part. If we were to have cloned the body of Jesus, wouldn't we have a copy of the body of GOD HIMSELF or not?

But let's go on to say that, by some means, it WAS actually possible to have cloning and "personality transfer" by some means...such that what Tom was describing obtains. You'd have two "Jesuses" having every reason to think that each individually WERE the Son of God. Neither being would have any reason to think otherwise, especially if they interacted with their environment before they had a chance to "meet" and understand what was going on. The self-understanding of BOTH humans would be the pretty much the same. Both would say their name was Jesus. Both would say their mother and father where Mary and Joseph. Both would pray to the Father in the same way...believing themselves to be the Messiah in the same way. So besides being in two distinct bodies...(which I guess would lead to two different spirits)...what would happen? Would we say that only ONE of these beings had the Son as the subject of it's being? If so, how?

Well, the real issue is whether the Son took both as his flesh, and with that whether the passion was ongoing in both. So, primarily that is an issue which does not at all have anything to do with cloning. Secondly, as above, personhood has more to do with each individual imaging the personhood of God than it does physiology. I know Tom framed this as a current-science scenerio, but we know more than merely through neuroscience. Humans are unique. The author N. pointed that out, and developed it quite well, in a short space.

For me, the part I like the most is how this question makes us return to the basics, like "Though the temple of Thy body was destroyed in the hour of the passion, yet even then one was the hypostasis of Thy Divinity and Thy flesh." and then tests our grasp of such essentials of the faith! Both for the untility of what we can say, and for the discernment of what we cannot--and why.

Thanks.

.

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 7/21/2007 9:20:43 AM (GMT-5)