On 26/07/2006, at 1:07 PM, jdiebremse wrote:
--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], Charlie Bell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
After all, how can you
propose a new species name for humanity?
Very easily. _Homo technologia_ could be the next step, if they
form
a separate breeding group from baseline humans.
Or Homo symbioticus (or whatever the name proposed at the end of
_Heart of the Comet_)....
My point, though, was simply that at that point they would clearly no
longer be human.... they would be something else, by definition.
This is why we'll never agree. Being human is about expressing
humanity, not about chromosome number, or genetic engineering, or
symbiosis, or phenotypic modification. It's about language, society,
culture, art, curiosity, expression, experience, learning. We could
modify our bodies beyond all recognition and become a thousand new
species, and as long as we retain all the aspects of mind that make
us human, we'll be human.
Likewise, if we're not capable of those things, we're not fully
human, or not human at all. Not in any sense that means anything.
Charlie
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