At 325 degrees below zero, the essence of Tito sleeps.
I got a call today from Genetic Savings & Clone, the company that stores tissue samples of pets, and they told me the culturing of the samples I'd sent them was successful. I now have about 10 million cells waiting for the future moment — if ever — when the technology and the money coincide to allow me to clone him.
'The essence of Tito sleeps'? I don't think a living thing has an essence separate from its existence.
PZ Myers says:
Cloning would produce an animal that looks like Tito, and would be good and worthy as an individual in its own right, but it wouldn't be Tito.
One hears the claim that 'clones have no souls'. It's one of the reasons I think talk of souls is very dangerous. You can't detect the presence of a 'soul'. Some nutcase religion might decide that a particular group of people don't 'have souls'. And we know just which groups of humans they'd be lining up for the 'no souls' category.
Would you clone a pet or a person?
