The distinction between natural and unnatural seems, on the face of it, simple enough. So, too, do we readily accept value judgments that hold the natural superior to the artificial. But the conditions for naturalness quickly become murky. When it comes to the ethical and ontological implications, this boundary is yet more uncertain, writes Alex McKeown.
At first sight it seems to be an obvious question with an obvious answer: What is natural? Well, it’s anything that occurs naturally. But this answer is question-begging, as it presupposes we know what it means to be ‘naturally’ occurring, as opposed to occurring through some other, non-natural means.
So perhaps we could say it means anything non-artificial. This answer, though, invites the further question of what it is for something to be ‘artificial’. A similarly straightforward answer to the question of what is artificial might be ‘something that we humans make, rather than something that could be found if we weren’t here’. But despite its apparent plausibility, this also fails to cast the distinction clearly. We’re going to think about the nature of the distinction in some detail here in relation to a hypothetical category of entities which straddle this ambiguous boundary – conscious Synthetic Biological Organisms (SBOs).
Whether conscious or not, SBOs challenge the nominal ontological distinction outlined.
We’ll see that the uncertainty of the boundary has ontological and ethical implications which it’s interesting to consider given the current trajectory of scientific research and development, albeit that conscious organisms of this kind are only a theoretical possibility.
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