Kenneth Russell
Dr. Chris Boese
English H102
15 Sept 98

 

Humans Playing God

 
With the continual advancement of technology, human cloning and the ability to select traits in humans has recently become a heated issue. Along with this comes the humanization of robots, or cyborgs. The present vain, immoral attempts by humans to play God will eventually result in the creation of beings that look like humans and act like humans, but are not human because they do not possess a soul. This grim future, shown in Blade Runner, demonstrates the importance of sorting out these issues and their morality at this point in society, while changes can still be made.

Before genetic engineering, human modifications, and cyborgs can be discussed, it is necessary to define what exactly makes a sentient being. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines sentient as "(1) responsive to or conscious of sense impressions, (2) aware, having or showing realization, perception, or knowledge, (3) finely sensitive in perception or feeling." Using this definition, the replicants in Blade Runner would certainly be sentient beings and thus human, the opposition would say. They obviously are conscious and aware, as they are so close to humans it takes a rigorous test with special equipment and a trained administrator to know the difference between a replicant and a human. They can see, touch, feel, hear, etc. just as humans can. They can even feel pain, though they are able to deal with it with superhuman strength, such as when Roy puts the stake in his hand and screams out in pain. The only way that the replicants do not fit the description is the very last part – "finely sensitive in . . . feeling." The one way replicants are able to be detected in the Voigt-Kampff test is by their lack of empathy in certain situations, such as Leon’s response when he is told he flips a turtle on its back in the desert and now it is helpless. This is not to say that they have no feelings or attachments, because that is obviously not the case either. The replicants were very emotive, especially toward other replicants. After Deckard kills Pris, Roy is sorrowful and upset. He comes in and sees Pris with her wounds and goes over and lovingly checks to see if she is alive. He then kisses her dead body and goes after Deckard for revenge. Those are all very human emotions and qualify the replicants as sentient beings.

The opposition would say that the presence of these emotions and the fact that replicants are sentient makes them human. But, the fact is that these are programmed responses, a machine merely functioning as it was instructed to in its programming. Because of this, I do not believe they are human. Descartes once said, "I think, therefore I am." Pris echos this in her line in the movie when she says, "I think, Sebastian, therefore I am." But thinking does not make something human. It merely means that the thinking thing exists and has the ability to think, nothing more. The replicants are lacking in something else that makes them human – the soul. I do not believe that humans are the mere sum of their parts. Every piece that makes a human a human cannot be pinned down and replicated. I believe that each of us is imparted with something special, a soul, beyond what can be pinned down. It is this soul that makes humans unique and sets us apart from other living organisms. The soul is also what makes identical twins unique, though they have identical genetic code.

The difference with replicants is that they were created by other humans. They are the mere sum of their parts – each part created separately. Even though when the replicants were created they were made as human-like as possible, their creators were still not able to give them a soul. They programmed them to have feelings and memories, but all of those were artificially fabricated – merely programmed responses. I believe humans are created by God. Replicants are obviously not. It is because humans are created by God that they are special, having a soul which is not linked to mere genetic material.

One main question that is brought up when discussing genetic engineering such as the creation of replicants and cloning of humans is the morality of it. Is it wrong to create such engineered beings? I look at the issue as two distinct classes – robots made like humans, and humans made more desirable through genetic engineering. I think that both are wrong. It is one thing to identify human genes to help prevent horrible diseases such as cystic fibrosis but quite another to create the "perfect" human. Even when using genome mapping to help prevent such diseases, extreme care has to be exercised. Weinberg tells of a horror story in The Dark Side of the Genome that is a grim fate indeed if our future comes to this.

Two decades ago, genetic screening among the population in central Greece for the blood disease sickle-cell anemia revealed a number of normal individuals carrying genes that predispose their offspring to the disease. Because the test results were inappropriately disclosed, these individuals became publicly identified and stigmatized, and formed an unmarriageable genetic underclass. (Weinberg 310) Situations far worse than this could be our future if we do not set limits now. Imagine if everyone’s genetic makeup was known – your predisposition for intelligence, certain diseases, longevity, ingenuity, etc. If the information were public, a whole new type of racism and prejudice would result, based on genetics. Weinberg further warns "DNA profiles will never be clear, fully reliable predictors of all traits. For many complex traits . . . genetics will at best provide only a probability of development." With this many possibilities for catastrophe, just based on trying to help out people with diseases, imagine the issues that creating a perfect human would raise and how society could become. Perhaps only "perfect" people could be our leaders. What if laws were passed ordering that people were only able to reproduce with a "perfect" person? Look at Blade Runner – the Earth had become a place that only undesirable people (such as certain races, like Asians) or people with defects (like Sebastian, with his aging disease) lived. To be able to live in the Off-world colonies, you had to be able to pass various tests, one of which was a medical test that Sebastian failed. It is easy to see the pitfall that could become out society if it advanced in this way. Once the Pandora’s Box of genetic engineering is opened, even if to rid people of genetic diseases, this future will be a logical progression and difficult to regulate or prevent.

Those issues are problems in making humans more perfect. There is also the issue of making robots more human, such as the replicants in Blade Runner. This raises just as many moral questions. The replicants in Blade Runner were almost completely human. Deckard even fell in love with Rachel, a replicant. Also, Rachel was not even aware that she was a replicant until after Deckard tested her. Things like that blur the line between human and machine so much that people argue over whether it is right to kill or "retire" them, or enslave them. The opposition would argue that the fact that replicants look just like humans and are killed in the same way, bleeding, makes it wrong to do so. It is easy to see how it would make someone reluctant to retire a replicant as they look the same as you or me. It goes against our morals to kill something that looks human, whether is actually is or not. The only way that can be overcome is for people to convince themselves that the replicants are not human. Blade Runners serve that purpose and can make sure they are actually killing replicants, not humans. I believe that it is not wrong to retire replicants. They are only machines and computers, acting as they were programmed by humans to act. They were programmed to have pain, or respond externally as humans do when under pain, by their programmers. It is not as if they are real humans with souls. Killing a replicant is no worse than putting a bullet through your computer. The computers in this case are just so advanced that they respond as a human would to being shot, because that is how they were programmed. They could have just as easily been programmed to smile and give you a big hug when you shoot them. That still doesn’t overcome the problem that they are difficult to tell apart from humans, which would be a fatal mistake if a human was thought to be a replicant. That is why the simpler solution is to not make robots identical to humans, as it creates so many problems. That is something very hard to control, however, and bound to eventually happen. The other way is to only let them be retired by professionals, such as the Blade Runners.

Enslaving them is the same situation. It is no more wrong to have a replicant do work than it is to have a machine assemble cars on an assembly line as they do today. The problem comes because they have been programmed to emulate humans as closely as possible, even improving on humans in strength, intelligence, etc. They are even able to formulate resistance and revolt, as humans would in the same situation. This shows that people went too far in emulating humans. There is no point trying to make replicants human, because without the soul that they can never posses, then they are truly empty. Machines that do the job without having any emotion are a much better tool. It is just mere vanity that could cause humans to want to duplicate themselves. The complications that result from the replicants looking so much like humans make it something that should just be prohibited.

At a certain point, when robots are made almost completely organically, then they are almost just human clones. I do not think that human clones would have a soul either, as they were created by humans. In many regards they would be like replicants. Creating them in the first place is just as bad, if not worse, as it is humans trying to be God. Nature should be allowed to take its course with as little interference from humans as possible. The opposition would argue that by cloning humans, transplant organs could be made that would be an identical match. I don’t believe that because you would be helping a human that is makes it ok to make humans as spares. Certain things are limitations we have built in by God.

The issues of cloning and replicating humans are very debatable. I question the morality of such emulation of humans and the motivation in the first place, when other machines would serve as well as robots, but know that it will be something hard to regulate and enforce. That makes it all the more important that these issues be addressed before problems get to the point that they are demonstrated to be at in such movies as Blade Runner. It is through early debates and regulation that the horrible future shown as a possibility can be avoided.