1
The Moral Status of Artificial Life
Bernard Baertschi, Institute for Biomedical Ethics, University of Geneva
Abstract
Recently at the J. Craig Venter Institute, a microorganism has been created through
synthetic biology. In the future, more complex living beings will very probably be produced.
In our natural environment, we live amongst a whole variety of beings. Some of them have
moral status – they have a moral importance and we cannot treat them in just any way we
please –; some do not. When it becomes possible to create artificially living beings who
naturally possess moral status, will this artificiality modify their status? Many people contend
that it will, but I am not of the same mind and will develop three arguments against it.
Key words: moral status, intrinsic value, artificial life, moral responsibility
Introduction
Since the beginning of the 21st century, ethical reflection on synthetic biology has been
growing, due to the advances in this field. This reflection targets mainly three aspects:
potential dangers for human beings (biosafety and biosecurity) versus potential benefits,
justice and fairness, and the moral stance adopted by human beings concerning life (playing
God and hubris) (Presidential Commission, 2010; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, 2009).
It is easy to understand the reasons for these concerns. Firstly, beings created by synthetic
biology are microorganisms, and some microorganisms are very dangerous for our health.
2
They may be dangerous for our environment, too. Secondly, present day biotechnologies are
expensive and their fruits will probably be more accessible to affluent citizens in affluent
countries. Thirdly, creation of life has been the prerogative of divine entities in our tradition,
therefore there is some worry that human beings could try to adopt a demiurgic stance.
Contrasting two ways of producing artificial living beings, one consisting in modifying
existing beings, and another consisting in building them from inanimate molecules, Joachim
Boldt and Oliver Müller speak in a theological manner of ‘creation ex existendo’ and ‘creation
ex nihilo’ (2008: 388).
These moral concerns are aimed at human beings and their environment, but they
overlook another one, pertaining to the attitude we ought to adopt towards created artificial
beings themselves. This attitude relies on several factors, a prominent one of which is moral
status. In this paper, I will examine this topic and try to answer the question of the moral
status of artificial life, that is, the moral status of individual living beings, since in our
tradition, only individual entities are generally deemed to possess moral status. It is
nevertheless a debated topic, if collective entities like ecosystems can possess moral status,
but this question must not hold us back, because artificial life is not a collective, it is an
abstract entity. The question of artificial living beings’ moral status has not been much
debated yet, and it is easy to understand why: the only beings artificially produced till now
have been microorganisms, and the moral status of microorganisms is not a very pressing
topic – perhaps it is even a spurious one. Nevertheless, it seems to me that there exist two
good reasons to examine this question. The first is that some philosophers and ethicists adopt
a biocentrist position, that is, a position that grants moral value to every living being. The
second is that it will perhaps be possible in some future to create living beings that are much
more complex; certain authors even hope to re-create members of some extinct species (ETC
Group 2007: 38). In a sense, such artificial complex beings already exist: think of animal
3
clones or of babies born after IVF. Of course, it depends on how you understand ‘artificial’.
After the J. Craig Venter Institute successfully transplanted the Mycoplasma micoides
genome in Mycoplama capricolum in March 2010, Roberta Kwok said that ‘the team has
fielded criticism for calling the resulting cell “synthetic” when the genome was essentially a
replica of a natural genome and required an existing recipient cell. Hutchison argues that
‘synthetic simply means “chemically synthesized”, not newly designed.’ (2010: 25). Like
‘artificial’, ‘synthetic’ has several meanings, even if we restrict its scope to the domain of
synthetic biology. Dieter Birnbacher has distinguished two important meanings of ‘artificial’
(1006: 8). It can be used in a genetic sense and in a qualitative sense. In the first sense,
‘artificial’ means ‘produced by human beings’. As we can see, it is an historical sense: we are
describing the history of a being’s production; if a human being is the main contributor to it,
the being is artificial, otherwise, it is natural. As human beings have hugely impacted nature,
there are some problems of scope with this definition; for this reason I will add: ‘produced by
human beings and by contemporary technological means’. In the second sense, ‘artificial’
means ‘similar to what is natural’. This sense is not historical, but phenomenological: if an
artificial being has properties similar to a natural one, then it is natural in the qualitative sense.
It follows that a being can be artificial in the genetic sense and natural in the qualitative one.
This is for a large part the case with Mycoplama micoides/capricolum created at the J. Craig
Venter Institute. In this paper, I will focus on the genetic sense, but not exclusively, and will
proceed in the following manner.
Firstly, I will clarify the meaning of ‘moral status’ with reference to natural beings, i.e.,
beings we find in our environment like adult human beings and animals. Of course, many of
those beings have been transformed and manipulated in our hands, but largely with the use of
non-technological methods (natural breeding, cross-fertilisation, education …). Secondly, I
will collect some claims saying that the difference between being a product of nature (i.e.
4
being natural) and being a product of human technology (i.e. being artificial) has, directly or
indirectly, moral relevance for moral status. Thirdly, I will develop three arguments, one
conceptual, one ontological, and one based on analogy to show that this belief is a mistake. I
will conclude with a proposal, inspired by Dworkin, to consider the moral impact of the
distinction natural/artificial in another light.
The Concept of ‘Moral Status’
Mary Anne Warren states: ‘To have moral status is to be morally considerable, or to
have moral standing. It is to be an entity towards which moral agents have, or can have, moral
obligations. If an entity has moral status, then we may not treat it in just any way we please’
(1997: 3). Beings that possess moral status have moral relevance or importance; some of them
possess rights. But who has moral importance? There is much disagreement on this point. For
some, called anthropocentrists, only human beings possess moral status; for others, called
pathocentrists, every being able to feel pleasure and pain has moral importance; for others,
called biocentrists, every living being is morally considerable (ECNH, 2010: 15-17). An old
kind of biocentrism attributes such a status to all living beings, but in an ordered way: there
exists a hierarchy or a scale of beings, with plants at the bottom and human beings (or God) at
the top. This seems to be old-fashioned, but it is still widely held, for instance in animal
experimentation, when it is claimed that it is less objectionable to sacrifice a mouse than a
chimpanzee, an assertion made, for instance, by the Nuffield Council (1996: 51).
To date, we have created only microorganisms. Therefore, if you are not a biocentrist or
someone who confers some moral value on such low creatures, the question that I have asked
will receive a very quick answer: artificial living beings have no moral status, they are beings
we can treat any way we please. But, as I have said, this quick answer is not satisfying,
because synthetic biology will progress. It is not satisfying for another reason too: if you are
5
not a biocentrist, artificial microorganisms do not possess any moral status, but natural ones
are on the same footing. Therefore the quick answer prevents every attempt to evaluate the
impact of artificiality on moral status. And it is exactly this question that is of interest.
In order to be able to determine if artificiality has an impact on moral status, I must
analyse more deeply what moral status consists of, independently of the question concerning
the kind of beings that possess or do not possess it. To illustrate my analysis, I will use
examples of beings that possess or could reasonably be said to possess such a status, but it
will only be for the purpose of being clearer.
Anthropocentrists, pathocentrists and biocentrists diverge, but what reason do they have
in favour of their positions? When we ask them: ‘Why do you grant moral status to X’, they
point to some property of X. For example: ‘Human beings have moral status because they are
rational beings’, or ‘Animals are morally considerable because they are sentient (i.e. they can
feel pleasure and suffer)’. ‘To be rational’ or ‘to be sentient’ are properties conferring moral
status. But how and why? What is the nature of these properties and why are they capable of
conferring moral status?
What is the nature of these properties? They are intrinsic properties. An intrinsic
property, says Warren, is a property a being possesses independently of its environment: ‘A
thing’s intrinsic properties are those which it is logically possible for it to have had were it the
only thing in existence’ (1997: 21). Intrinsic properties are contrasted with extrinsic
properties, that is, with properties a being possesses because of its environment. The two main
kinds of extrinsic properties are relational ones and instrumental ones. A human being
possesses intrinsic properties (e.g., reason), relational ones (e.g., he is loved), and
instrumental ones (e.g., he is a waiter). If we have some hesitation about categorising a
property (think of ‘to be blue’: is it intrinsic or relational?), a syntactic test will give the right
answer: intrinsic properties are monadic, i.e. they have only one place free, whereas extrinsic
6
ones are polyadic, i.e. they have more than one place free: F(x) is intrinsic, F(x,y) is extrinsic
(Bochenski, 1959: 43 and 51). Therefore ‘to be blue’ is intrinsic and ‘to be bluer than’ is
extrinsic (relational). But I will not dwell on this logical point, even if it has some importance,
as we will see. For now, let us admit that moral status is conferred by intrinsic properties and
not by extrinsic onesi.
How do such properties confer moral status? Not all intrinsic properties confer moral
status; they must also be valuable. Some properties ground values; intrinsic properties ground
intrinsic value, and external properties external values. Following G. E. Moore, we can say
that a being’s intrinsic value is the value he possesses by virtue of his intrinsic (or internal)
properties (Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen, 2000: 33; Baertschi, 2009, chap. 2.1).
Technically, we say that values supervene on properties. Stripped of modern jargon, this
thesis is very old. Take ‘dignity’, a concept long used to characterise the intrinsic value of
entities like human beings. We read in Aquinas’ Commentary on the Sentences this passage:
‘Dignity means the goodness something possesses because of itself, utility its goodness
because of another’ [dignitas significat bonitatem alicujus propter seipsum, utilitas vero
propter aliud] (lib. 3, d. 35, q. 1, a. 4, q. 1, c). In contemporary words: dignity means the
intrinsic value something possesses by virtue of some intrinsic or internal properties, utility its
instrumental value by virtue of some extrinsic or external properties. Kant agrees on this
point: ‘In the realm of ends everything has either a price or an intrinsic value [Würde].
Anything with a price can be replaced by something else as its equivalent, whereas anything
that is above all price and therefore admits of no equivalent has intrinsic value’ (2008: 33).
Bennett translates ‘dignity’ by ‘intrinsic value’, because, as he says in a footnote: ‘At the end
of the next paragraph Kant explicitly equates those two meanings, when he speaks of
‘intrinsic value’ (i.e dignity) [einen innern Wert, d.i. Würde]’.
To summarise: a being possesses moral status if he has a peculiar value grounded in
7
some of his intrinsic properties. Extrinsic properties can also ground value, but they are not
constitutive of moral status. Why? Tristram Engelhardt says: ‘The fetus of a woman who
wants a child takes on considerable significance. It gains value from her interests and love,
and that of others around her. The would-be mother, father, grandmothers, grandfathers,
uncles, and aunts can vest a wanted embryo or fetus with great value. The opposite can obtain
as well. Because of the circumstances of the conception, the probable circumstances of the
birth, or because the fetus is defective or deformed, a negative worth may be given. The fetus
may be seen as something that is threatening, harmful, disvalued, or even hated’ (1986: 218).
The value a foetus possesses is twofold: on the one hand, he has relational value or disvalue,
because of the attitude of his parents and family; on the other hand, he has intrinsic value
because he is a human being. The last point is contested, but let us admit that a foetus has
intrinsic value like any other human being. In this case, the foetus’ moral status depends
entirely on what he is, i.e., on his intrinsic properties. If this were not the case, if his status
were dependent on his relationships or on his utility, his status would vary accordingly. This
may not be shocking when you think of a foetus, but think of an adult: his moral status must
be independent of his personal, social and political relations. Take human rights: they are
based on the possession of humanity only.
It is interesting to note that some authors object to the exclusion of extrinsic values from
consideration of moral status when the moral status of ‘low’ entities is in question. Warren
claims that, for beings like embryos and foetuses: ‘The criteria of moral status must include
both certain intrinsic properties, including life, sentience, and personhood; and certain
relational properties, which sometimes include being part of a particular social […]
community’ (1997: 21). Baertschi and Mauron maintain the same position for embryos,
because they are essentially entities in becoming, that is, entities whose development
demands a heavy contribution from their environment, natural and social (2010: 102).
8
Moreover, if moral status encompasses all reasons to value an entity, as Warren’s definition
could suggest, relational values would find an important place within it. Or course, embryos
and foetuses are rather peculiar entities, but artificial living beings like microorganisms are
‘low’ entities too, and even very low ones; therefore extrinsic value could perhaps be relevant
in their cases. This consideration has some importance for me, because, if accepted, the
inclusion of extrinsic value in moral status would partly undermine the conceptual argument I
will propose.
However, for the moment, I will put this last point aside, and will apply the moral status
scheme developed so far to artificial living beings. I will say that when an artificial being has
a moral status, it is a function of its intrinsic value, grounded in some of its intrinsic
propertiesii. Accordingly, the question to be asked is the following: if a being is created by
human modern technology rather than by nature, does it change its moral status, that is, its
intrinsic value, or not?
The Demeaning Effect of Human Hands
Many people think that it does, and for the worse. Frequently, we hear claims about the
goodness of what is natural and the badness of what is synthetic, chemical or artificial. Such
claims are in general not voiced in relation to status, but with agency. Nature does good, but
human beings do not. Since ‘artificial’ denotes a mode of production and its product, the
negative evaluation associated with the first contaminates the second. The debates concerning
medicine (classical versus natural), GMO versus “naturally” grown plants iii , and more
generally biotechnologies are full of such claims. In a study concerning genetic engineering,
Rob De Vries states that, in the Netherlands, 57% of the respondents think that this
biotechnology is non-natural, and consider that it constitutes a problem; and these respondents
were not lay people, but people involved in biomedical science (2006: 218-220). More
9
generally, Henry Miller says that ‘in the case of the new biotechnology in the United States
today, the myth is of a childlike, “natural” world of purity and innocence that is corrupted by
scientific advances, especially those that “tamper with Nature”’ (1996: 98). In this context, it
is not surprising that many scientists fear that the use of the word ‘synthetic’ in synthetic
biology will be associated by the public with ‘negative images of monstrous life forms let
loose by maniacal scientists’ (Balmer and Martin, 2008: 6).
It is a job for sociologists and historians to investigate the roots and motives for such
beliefs – I will nevertheless come back to this subject in my conclusion –, but they are widely
spread in our society, and can be put under the banner of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, asserting in
Émile, in a style reminiscent of original sin: ‘God makes all things good; man meddles with
them and they become evil. He forces one soil to yield the products of another, one tree to
bear another’s fruit. He confuses and confounds time, place, and natural conditions. He
mutilates his dog, his horse, and his slave. He destroys and defaces all things; he loves all that
is deformed and monstrous; he will have nothing as nature made it, not even man himself,
who must learn his paces like a saddle-horde, and be shaped to his master’s taste like the trees
in his garden.’ (2007: 6)
For people who entertain ideas like these, there is a short way to consider that what
human beings create is not on the same footing as what nature creates. Some of them will
claim that the products of human hands and their natural counterparts are dissimilar, that there
exists an ontological difference between them, i.e., that their intrinsic properties are not
identical, even if they seem to be. For instance, synthetic vitamin C and natural vitamin C are
chemically different for them and have different effects on our body (synthetic vitamin C is
seemingly qualitatively natural, but it is a sham). Others will not be so precise and will only
contend that synthetic vitamin C is changed in some way, probably harmful to us. Think also
of the GMO debate, where a process of production is deemed to be in itself damaging and
10
denaturing. As we can see, the link with moral status could easily be drawn from such
considerations, even if it is very seldom articulated. In the case where X has a moral status, it
implies that its moral status is different, due to the fact that it is naturally or artificially
created. According to the demeaning effect of human hands, it would even be possible that an
artificial X loses its moral status as an X.
It is important to distinguish the above considerations from the reflections of Jürgen
Habermas when he says: ‘My particular concern is with the question of how the
biotechnological dedifferentiation of the habitual distinction between the “grown” and the
“made”, the subjective and the objective, may change our ethical self-understanding as
members of the species’ (2003: 23). Biotechnologies move the line separating the natural
(what is grown) and the artificial (what is made), and this has an impact on the way we
perceive ourselves. Like Rousseau, Habermas is not very optimistic on this point – he is not
very far from the American conservatives Kass and Sandel –, but his argument has nothing to
do with ontology (intrinsic properties) and moral status, it has nothing to do with what is and
could be created by us: it pertains to the question of the image human beings create of
themselves and the role they ought to play in nature and in society. I will return to this point
in my conclusion.
Three Arguments
Is this belief – i.e. the belief that an X has a different moral status, depending on whether
it is naturally or artificially created – correct? I think it is not, and I will give three arguments,
one conceptual, one ontological, and one based on analogy to show that it is a mistake. The
third argument, based on analogy, is perhaps conceptually less cogent, but psychologically
much more striking.
The conceptual argument relies on the concept of moral status as a function of intrinsic
11
properties. It is very simple:
1. The moral status of a being depends on what it is, i.e., on its intrinsic properties.
2. ‘To be created’ is not an intrinsic property, but an extrinsic one. More precisely, it is a
relational one, since ‘to be created’ is a dyadic property (a two places property) stating a
relation: ‘—is created by—‘
3. Therefore ‘to be created’ has nothing to do with moral status.
The simplicity of an argument is a strength, but sometimes it produces some uneasiness,
especially when it is abstract, as is the case with this conceptual argument. For this reason, I
will make some comments on it.
The crucial premise is the first. As we have seen, to link moral status with intrinsic
properties is the traditional conception. It has been challenged especially for some entities like
embryos, and maybe some theologically inspired authors would still deny it on the basis of
the consideration that the status of human beings consists in that they have been created by
God and in God’s image. But here, we must be wary: what gives a high moral status (a
dignity) to men is not the act of creation itself, but an effect of it: human beings are God’s
image, and ‘to be God’s image’ is an intrinsic property. Creation and production cause the
existence of some intrinsic properties in the being created or produced, but what counts for
moral status is not the way these properties have been created or produced, but the fact that
the being possesses them. Analogously, natural vitamin C and artificial vitamin C are
differently produced, but they will be different (i.e. they will have different properties,
causing different effects in our bodies) only if the way they have been produced gives them
different intrinsic properties. Otherwise, they will be the same vitamin C. In short, the way a
being is produced has, of itself, no impact on what it is.
The case is more complicated with embryos and with low entities like microorganisms,
as we have seen. If we include extrinsic properties and values in the basis of their moral
12
status, the conceptual argument would fall down for such entities, because the first premise
would be rejected. The two other arguments will nevertheless show that we have no good
reason to change our mind in the case of artificial life in general, and, more importantly, that
this peculiar relational property ‘to be artificially produced’ does not modify moral status.
Therefore, even if the first premise may not be true in some rather special cases, it has no
consequence on the thesis that artificiality has no impact on moral status.
The second argument is ontological and comes from the history of modern science
(Baertschi, 2009, chap. 5). As is well-known, modern physics was born in the 17th century or
a little earlier. It was born from the demise of scholastics (Aristotelian science), and some
authors, particularly René Descartes in France and Robert Boyle in England, were eager to
stress the novelty of their conceptions. These conceptions are expressed in several theses; two
of them are important for my argument:
1. There exists an ontological identity between what is natural and what is artificial.
2. There exists only one kind of change in nature.
Boyle is particularly clear on these points. In favour of the first thesis, he mentions the
discovery that glass produced in a volcano’s chimney and in a glassmaker’s furnace is exactly
the same glass, and he comments: ‘I know not why all the productions of the fire made by
chymists should be looked upon as not natural, but artificial bodies; since the fire, which is
the grand agent in these changes, doth not, by being employed by the chymist, cease to be and
to work as a natural agent: and since nature herself doth, by the help of the fire, sometimes
afford us the like productions that the alchymist’s art presents us’ (1666: 51). The two types
of glass are the same glass, because their stuff and the fire that produces them are the same.
The fact that nature (volcanos) or human beings are at the origin of the process is physically
irrelevant in itself; it has no impact on the intrinsic properties of the product.
The second thesis is also defended by Boyle. For him and physicists contemporaneous
13
with him, physical reality consists exclusively in moving corpuscles. Nature and human
beings have consequently only one way at their disposal to change reality: to act on the local
motion of corpuscles. Local motion is accordingly the only kind of change in nature, the old
other kinds (generation, growth and qualitative change) being reducible to it. Following this
conception, transmutation from lead to gold becomes possible and is hoped for by Boyle: ‘l
could not see any impossibility in the nature of the thing, that one kind of metal should be
transmuted into another (that being in effect no more than that one parcel of the universal
matter, wherein all bodies agree, may have a texture produced in it like the texture of some
other parcel of the matter common to them both)’ (1666: 94).
The conception of the material world that is beneath these theses is still with us today.
Contemporary science is modern science; there exists no theoretical gap between them
comparable to the gap between them and Aristotelian science. In particular, for Aristotelian
science, there was an ontological difference between natural and artificial beings, because
only natural beings possess a nature, that is, an internal principle of change (Gilson, 1984:
155). Conversely, artificial bodies can only be acted on from outside, they have no
‘spontaneity’. For Boyle, this Aristotelian thesis is profoundly mistaken and, as we have seen,
he wrote many pages to denounce it. Moreover, this new conception shows that the intrinsic
properties of a being are independent of the way this being is created or produced, by human
beings or by nature. In the case of glass – the example put forth by Boyle –, its intrinsic
properties are the same, be it natural or artificial; therefore its ontological status remains the
same. But glass has no moral status. Would it change anything if it were not glass but a living
being that were produced? Could we afford a good reason to deny that they would have the
same status, ontological and moral? I don’t see anyiv. I conclude therefore that even if
somebody sticks firmly to the denial of the first premise of the conceptual argument, that is,
even if he denies that the moral status of a being depends exclusively (and always) on what it
14
is, i.e., on its intrinsic properties or ontological status, he is not warranted to claim, in virtue
of the ontological argument, that ‘to be produced by’ is a relevant extrinsic property for moral
status.
The third argument will definitely settle the matter.
In the debate about cloning, it has been proclaimed that cloning is against human
dignity, and international legal texts have endorsed this view (Council of Europe, 1998). But
how should we understand that claim? If cloning is against human dignity, does it mean that a
cloned child would be deprived of human dignity? Some persons were – and still are – afraid
of that (Pinker, 2008). But it is sheer nonsense: human dignity is not something that can be
lost because of a human intervention; human dignity is an intrinsic value grounded on
intrinsic properties, and the properties relevant to the moral status of a child remain the same,
be it procreated by cloning or by sexual intercourse (or by IVF)v.
The argument by analogy is then straightforward:
1. A human being procreated artificially (by cloning or IVF) or naturally has the same
moral status.
2. Therefore the moral status of a human being depends on what it is, i.e., on its intrinsic
properties, and not on the way he has been procreated.
3. By substitution: a living being created artificially or naturally has the same moral
status.
4. Therefore the moral status of a being depends on what it is, i.e., on its intrinsic
properties, and not on the way he has been created.
Consequently, there is no good reason to reject the first premise of the conceptual
argument (identical with conclusion 4 of the argument by analogy). If not for all living
beings, it is valid for most living beings, that is, in general.
Conclusion
15
To believe that the properties ‘to be created or produced naturally’ and ‘to be created or
produced artificially’ – in short ‘to be natural’ and ‘to be artificial’ in the genetic sense – have
an impact on moral status is a mistake. If two living beings are similar but have been
produced differently, and if they have a moral status, then their status is identical, except if
the way they have been produced changes their intrinsic properties. To think otherwise is a
mistake, as I have said. Nevertheless, this mistake is widespread. Why? There probably exist
several reasons, some of them linked with a lasting and unconscious influence of the
Aristotelian view. Another reason comes from a confusion of category. We tend to interpret
the distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ as an ontological distinction (with moral
consequences), whereas it would be more appropriate to understand it as a moral distinction
(with no ontological consequences). I will conclude with some reflections on this point,
inspired by Ronald Dworkin.
Habermas has already given us a clue when he spoke of a change in ‘our ethical
self-understanding’. He is wary about this change in so far as it pertains to a modification of
our nature through genetic engineering. Our topic does not concern a re-creation of man, but
the artificial creation of organisms in general. Therefore we do not have to bother about
eugenics, as there is no attempt to modify the human germ. What remains is the move of the
frontier between what is given to us (the natural) and what we do (the artificial). And since
the domain of morality concerns what we do, this move has a moral impact. What impact? An
impact on our responsibility. The structure of our moral experience, says Dworkin, ‘depends,
crucially, on a fundamental distinction between what we are responsible for doing or
deciding, individually or collectively, and what is given to us, as a background against which
we act or decide, but which we are powerless to change’ (2000: 443). When our power
increases, our responsibility extends accordingly. With contemporary biotechnologies, our
power increases dramatically, then our responsibility too. It is or can be unsettling, but it is
16
not a radically new situation: for a long time, technosciences have made their moral demands
on us. As Theo van Willigenburg says: ‘Again and again, we need to reconstruct the border
between actions and happenings’ (2008: 154).
Therefore, we can approve this statement made by Holmes Rolston III: ‘It might seem
that ending the history of a species now and again is not far out of line with the routines of the
universe. But artificial extinction, caused by human encroachments, is radically different from
natural extinction. Relevant differences make the two as morally distinct as death by natural
causes is from murder’ (1985: 72). It is radically different, but not because human action
would have a different ontological effect from natural ‘action’, but because human beings are
responsible for their acts, whereas nature is not (it even does not act; natural events only
happen).
We can now see clearly that the mistake of believing that the artificiality of artificial life
and the synthetic procedures of synthetic biology have an impact on moral status is profound.
If they actually have an impact on our responsibility towards ourselves, towards nature and
towards the beings we create and will continue to produce, the moral status of these beings
has nothing to do with the fact that we and not nature are their creators.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the two referees for their helpful observations. In particular, all the endnotes
have been prompted by their remarks.
References
Aquinas. Scriptum super Sententiis, liber 3, d. 35, q. 1, a. 4, q. 1, c.,
www.corpusthomisticum.org/iopera.html (accessed 8 March 2011).
Baertschi B. 2009. La vie artificielle. Le statut moral des êtres vivants artificiels. Berne:
CENH.
17
Baertschi B. and Mauron A. 2010. ‘Moral Status Revisited: The Challenge of Reversed
Potency’. Bioethics 24(2): 96-103.
Balmer A. and Martin P. 2008. Synthetic Biology. Social and Ethical Challenges,
Nottingham,
BBSRC,
http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk/organisation/policies/reviews/scientific_areas/0806_synthetic_biolog
y.pdf (accessed 8 March 2011).
Birnbacher D. 2006. Natürlichkeit. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Bochenski J. 1959. A Precis of Mathematical Logic. Dordrecht: Reidel.
Boldt J. and Müller O. 2008. ‘Newtons of the Leaves of Grass’. Nature Biotechnology
26(4): 387-389.
Boyle R. (1666). The Origin of Form and Qualities, in The Works of the Honourable
Robert Boyle. London. t. 3.
Council of Europe. 1998. Additional Protocol to the Convention for the Protection of
Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Being with regard to the Application of Biology and
Medicine,
on
the
Prohibition
of
Cloning
Human
Beings,
http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/EN/Treaties/Html/168.htm (accessed 8 March 2011).
De Vries R. 2006. ‘Ethical Concepts Regarding the Genetic Engineering of Laboratory
Animals’. Medical, Health Care and Philosophy 9: 211-225.
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. 2009. Synthetische Biologie. Stellungnahme,
http://www.dfg.de/download/pdf/dfg_im_profil/reden_stellungnahmen/2009/stellungnahme_s
ynthetische_biologie.pdf (accessed 8 March 2011).
Dworkin R. 2000. Sovereign Virtue. London: Harvard University Press.
ECNH (Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology). 2010.
Synthetic
Biology.
Ethical
Considerations.
Bern,
http://www.ekah.admin.ch/fileadmin/ekah-dateien/dokumentation/publikationen/e-Synthetisc
18
he_Bio_Broschuere.pdf (accessed 8 March 2011).
Engelhardt H.T. 1986. The Foundations of Bioethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
ETC
Group.
2007.
Extreme
Genetic
Engineering,
http://www.etcgroup.org/upload/publication/602/01/synbioreportweb.pdf (accessed 8 March
2011).
Gilson É. 1984. Études sur le rôle de la pensée médiévale dans la formation du système
cartésien. Paris: Vrin.
Habermas J. 2003. The Future of Human Nature. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Kant I. 2008. Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, transl. J. Bennett,
http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/pdf/kantgw.pdf (accessed 8 March 2011).
Kwok R. 2010. ‘DNA’s Master Craftsmen’. Nature 468: 22-25.
Miller H. 1996. ‘When Politics drives science: Lysenko, Gore, and U.S. biotechnology
policy’, Social Philosophy and Policy 13(2): 96-112.
Nuffield Council on Bioethics. 1996. Animal-to-Human Transplants, the Ethics or
Xenotransplantation. London.
Pinker S.
2008. The Stupidity of Dignity. The New Republic, 28 May.
Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. 2010. New Directions. The
Ethics
of
Synthetic
Biology
and
Emerging
Technologies.
Washington
D.
C.,
www.bioethics.gov (accessed 8 March 2011).
Rabinowicz W. and Rønnow-Rasmussen T. 2000. ‘A Distinction in Value: Intrinsic and
For Its Own Sake’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 100: 33-51.
Rolston III H. 1985. ‘Duties to Endangered Species’, in R. Elliott (ed), Environmental
Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 60-75.
Rousseau J.-J. 2007. Emile. Teddington: The Echo Library.
Warren M.A. 1997. Moral Status. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
19
Van Willigenburg T. 2008. ‘Philosophical Reflection on Bioethics and Limits’, in M.
Düwell, C. Rehmann-Sutter, Christoph and D. Mieth (eds), The Contingent Nature of Life
(Berlin: Springer), pp. 147-156.
i
This thesis must be restricted to beings. It would not be valid for states of affairs, actions
and events, because some of them are relational in character. For example, the moral
significance of a death will be different depending on the manner it takes place, whether it is
brought about by nature or by a murderer.
ii
A meta-ethical observation is still in order. This thesis does not have any privileged
relationship with moral realism. It states that intrinsic value supervenes on intrinsic
properties, but remains silent on the nature of this relationship. It can be read in a realist spirit,
but in an antirealist spirit as well. if, for instance, we understand it in the following manner:
the intrinsic value of X is projected on X on the basis of its intrinsic properties. Therefore it is
inaccurate in my opinion to assert that, for an anti-realist, every value is relational.
iii
I put “naturally” between quotes, because naturally means here conventionally, that is a
kind of artificiality (in the genetic sense of the term).
iv
Of course, one could reject these tenets of modern science and stick to the Aristotelian
position; but it is in my mind a rather desesperate move.
v
This argument says nothing in favour or against cloning and remains compatible with
considering cloning as an infringement on human dignity. Analoguously, the three arguments
I have offered do not vindicate the morality of creating artificial life, because it could be an
infringement on the intrinsic value of living beings.