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Emails - Personhood
Dramatis Personae K.C., Cerebro	2015-11-30 "Well, then." (Part of Flu Season TP.)
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from: K.C. Love <klove@xaviers.edu to: Sysadmin <cerebro@xaviers.edu> date: Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 05:05 subject: The Ethics of Undeath There are things that I know and things that I do not know. I don't know how to begin sorting through the world. I have some facts and some other things that may not be facts. Thoughts. Things. How to order them. I don't know that either. Here are some things I know: -Some zombies are starting to display behaviors indicating that they are able to learn. -The zombies that I have seen or heard of with more developed cognitive function are all zombies that received but did not respond to treatment while alive. -A boy here has (had?) psionic abilities enabling him to project his mind outside of his body during which time his body was inert but alive. -While in the med lab his inert body ceased biological functions and reanimated. Presumably he had received treatment, as the entirety of the infected school body had done so. Presumably it was unsuccessful (note the reanimation.) -His disconnected mind was still present in the med lab after body had reanimated. -His disconnected mind appeared displeased with the state of reanimated body. Suggested that body be terminated. Instructed me to tell others present that he was no longer in the room. Fled. Here are some things I do not know: -Learning behavior is a universal among zombies who had carried the drug-resistent strain of illness while alive. -Learning behavior is a sign of thinking behavior and a sign of developing minds that would indicate personhood in these new types of zombie. -Personhood is in any way quantifiable. -It is normal for this individual's mind to remain active and separate from body postmortem. (Likely not many test cases for him either.) -It is normal for this individual's mind to remain active and separate from body following postmortem reanimation. (Same as above.) -Minds in zombies with developed cognitive function analogous to minds of their pre-mortem identities (they are the 'same' person?) -Mind of zombie whose mind dissociated from body before death = ??? Here are some things. Here are some things. Some things are right and some things are wrong. Killing people is wrong. Killing OTHER people is wrong. Killing yourself is I Am Not Sure. That is yourself, right. I don't really know how to think about killing Yourself it might hurt other people that is not nice but maybe it is not wrong in the same way. If someone says kill ME though now they are telling you to kill another person, that's a different line. And if someone tells you to tell someone to kill them, that's a different different line. And if someone says kill ME and the ME might not be them anymore, that's a different different different line. But what if it was them? And he was eating his friends. Because I thought a wrong thing. But what if it was not him but a new person. Then it was not his choice to kill him. I don't know anymore. I do not know things. There was a very short time to explain all these things, and if I could have sent everyone in the room this email they would have understood better. I don't think they'd have read it. Also by then he'd probably have eaten a face. Also I still do not understand, so maybe they would not have understood better. I still do not understand. I do not think I made the right choice. He ran away from the school and I have not seen him since then. His body is still downstairs, and hungry. He is not -- I have not found him. I have read every color line in the school several times over. He is not anywhere. He is not anywhere. I should not have let this happen. I did not know how to explain. But here are some things. KCL ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- from: Sysadmin <cerebro@xaviers.edu> to: K.C. Love <klove@xaviers.edu date: Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 05:05 subject: Re: The Ethics of Undeath Well, then. If you have not blazed new trails in ethical philosophy, you have at least stumbled across some rarely-used ones. Even the relatively prosaic quandaries involved with this MedLab incident would incite significant disagreements among several major schools of ethics. Pursuant to the above, my predictive algorithms for human behavior suggest that the scenario would not have turned out very differently if you had withheld all information available to you or if you had communicated all information availble to you with perfect clarity and efficiency. There are also actions you might have taken which would have led to the destruction of Sergio's reanimated body. Applying my own ethical framework and heuristics to the situation, though, I would have provided selective information that in the end differs little from what you did. None of which is to say it was the /right/ decision. I do not think we have enough information at hand to determine that and I do not know if we ever will. But in essence, preserving the zombie against Sergio's wishes meant cruelty toward him in order to avert killing a potentially sentient entity. I do not know if the alternative would have been much less cruel to him, really. I know not how to define personhood save by asymptotic accumulation of symptoms. Fortunately, present circumstances do not necessarily require a definition, only determining whether the entity now inhabiting Sergio's body exhibits signs of a developed consciouness. I suspect that we will have more information to that end once Charles has had a chance to examine this zombie's mind in depth. He can also try to find Sergio's discorporate consciousness, but if he succeeds we might do well to have someone /else/ counsel the boy. Going forward, though? I think we will need to blaze some trails. Cere -----------------------------------------------------------------------------