Now, I’m not a big fan of objective or absolute morality, so we’re going to have to deal with a fairly general definition for the time being, lest we find ourselves dragging out the entire history of ethics.

If you’re uncomfortable with that, I suppose I could ask what logically makes human cloning seem like something that ought to be allowed or banned, and whether, in your opinion, by whatever ethical system you favour, the practice ought to be allowed or banned.

You could clone unethically, sure. But that’s true of any action.

For example, there is nothing unethical about making a salad with sesame seed dressing. That’s not an unethical practice. There is potential for harm to come from it, in the case that someone consuming the salad is allergic to sesame seeds. And if you’re making the salad specifically for someone with the knowledge that they are allergic to sesame seeds, then you are doing something unethical, and probably guilty of (attempted) murder.

But that’s an unethical action. The salad, the dressing, and the technologies that produce them are not unethical.

So, yes, cloning for the wrong reasons can certainly be unethical, but in general I don’t think that banning it because it could be used unethically is enough. To be consistent with our laws we’d also have to ban all guns, lawnmowers, baseball bats, pillows and sesame seeds.

If someone’s going to clone themselves and kill off the offspring to harvest their organs and prolong their own life, they’re already doing something illegal. Murder is already illegal. There’s no need for us to ban the cloning process because that’s not the process that caused the harm.

Another question I must ask, which you hinted at — if two people do the exact same thing, one because they wanted to save the world, and one because they wanted to progress their own career — is there an ethical difference? It would seem that your answer would be “yes”, but I’m not sure that it’s enough to worry about in all situations.

What if both of them clone a baby human? Both babies are given to adoptive parents. Both babies grow up to be happy children and happy adults. Both of them go to university and become brilliant philosophers. Is there really an ethical difference between both of their conceptions?

Is there an ethical difference between the conception of a baby as a result of planned parenthood, versus one who was conceived accidentally by parents equally capable of caring for their child, but who had not intended to have a child at that time?

I believe that good objectives must become the personal motivations for each individual contemplating cloning (or any other decision/action for that matter) as well as the other people involved in its execution, failing which, the same decision/action may be made for reasons that could be considered ‘unethical’.

So if those are the motivations, which are all generally altruistic in nature, what’s wrong with it, then?

Yes, we tend to push the boundaries of science. Those who have done so have brought us pretty far. We should always be mindful of the consequences, or potential consequences, of our actions. That’s what this post is about — considering the options. I would never suggest that we run into this kind of thing without that important process.

However, I don’t see a good enough reason why cloning ought to be deemed unethical.

There is a part of me that loves and celebrates creative pursuit, which I believe can become egoic pursuit if we are not mindful. The difference, as I see it, is that while the former is driven by love (the all-pervading, unified force of life), the latter is driven by the sense of a separate self that places it’s personal interests above the interests of others.

In the end, it is not so much the action i.e. cloning that matters, it is the motivation behind it that does.

On the other hand, I wonder from the scientific point of view about how a clonned person might live?