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Melody asked:
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What would Immanuel Kant's views be on cloning? I would also like to know what John Stuart Mill's
thoughts on cloning would be as well.
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============
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What these questions are asking you to do is to think of the general principle that Kant or Mill
advocates for making moral decisions, and apply it to the issue of cloning. This should give you a
determinate answer: this is what Kant (or Mill) thinks of cloning.
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But there is a problem. Let's consider Kant. Is the act of cloning universalizable? Can I consistently
will that everyone should make clones? It doesn't seem to me that there is any contradiction in
accepting universal cloning, like there is in universal lying, for example, which would undermine all
communication. But wait: maybe universalizing cloning would contradict respect for other humans
(the alternative formulation of the Categorical Imperative). Doesn't this depend on what we are
cloning for? And what respect means? And so on... This points to a problem with Kant's account — in
order to apply the Categorical Imperative, we need to take into account the context, the particularities
of the situation. So it is no easy matter to use Kant's views to come up with the morally right thing to
do.
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So, turn to Mill. Cloning would be right if it leads to the greatest happiness of the greatest number. So
how do we calculate the amount of happiness that would flow from cloning? And are we talking about
the general case of cloning (rule utilitarianism), or the specific case of creating just this particular
clone (act utilitarianism)? In either case, the arithmetic looks hard.
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In other words, I don't think that we can decide the answer to your questions, short of resurrecting
them and asking them. This points to the weakness of both of their moral theories: they do not issue
in straightforward answers to moral questions.
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Tim Sprod
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