In the West we have the saying that 'cleanliness is next to godliness' but the Japanese conception may be closer to 'cleanliness is not distinct from godliness'. ---- Brandon Toropov and Luke Buckles O.P.As an example of how serious it is, after the Battle of Miyajima, which took place on a sacred island, the victorious army removed all the corpses, and then cleaned the entire battlefield of blood, to the point that buildings were scrubbed, and blood-soaked soil was removed from the island.
Now it's a problem for some people who has got to do the jobs like killing animals (butchers), killing humans (executioners), dealing with garbage, dealing with dead bodies (leather workers, undertakers, gravediggers), etc. They are so filled with pollution they can never be clean. They became segregated into the underclass of Burakumin, and the underest of the underclass are the Eta (穢多).
An Eta is worth one seventh of an ordinary person. (穢多の命は平民の7分の1に相当する)This kind of treatment of the burakumin was based on a theory that considers natural causes to be a reason of valuing people. If such beliefs are genuine, then it would be justified.
I read somewhere about medieval attitudes about melancholia. It's said that melancholia is caused by an abundance of black bile in the body. There's a clear analogy with the modern idea that certain neurotransmitters cause depression (in some cases at least), but there's a philosophical difference.
If a doctor back then told a depressed patient, "Don't worry, you are fine, it's just your body making you depressed." the patient would not find it comforting at all, because to them, the statement simply confirmed that the depression was real.
The modern idea of what makes a person is very reductionist. In old Japan, a person is tangled up with the environment, and kegare from environment, such as touching blood, is a valid reason to consider a person polluted. In medieval Europe, a person is tangled with the body. If someone has too much black bile, that black bile is a part of them.
As understanding of the world grows, more and more becomes pared off the idea of what makes a person. The history is pared off, the environment is pared off, the torso is pared off, the neurotransmitters are pared off. Now a person only consists of memories, personalities, beliefs, and will. It should be not so difficult, as more understanding of how these works, that memories, personalities, beliefs, and will become separable too, and if push comes to shove, a person would consist of only the will.
Morality beliefs are beliefs, and morality behaviors are mostly influenced by morality beliefs, personalities, and the environment that is requiring a moral action. If a person is pared to only the will, then morality will not be a part of the person, anymore than the brain volume, or the blood-oxygen-level is a part of the person.
There are signs that this paring off is happening. There is an intuitive feeling that the personal will is necessary and sufficient for the person's personhood. Imagine if A being "uploaded" into a computer and running in the computer as a brain emulation, controlling a robot body. Quite many people would say that the person is still alive and well.
But if B mind-controls A fully, so that for every decision, B uses the the memories, personalities, and beliefs to calculate the probability of A's decision, then B uses a random number generator, and feed the decision to A and compels them to do it. If this is permanent, then A is usually regarded as dead, or at least, permanently imprisoned, not accessible to anyone outside.
If B instead installs in A with completely fabricated memories, We would not say A is dead, or imprisoned. Indeed, many stories have a premise of someone trying to regain their memory after it's fully lost. Similarly, B may give A false beliefs or personality alterations, but they would not threaten the personhood of A.
What is the implication of such a radically reduced idea of personhood?
The way people use the idea of personhood boils down to a question of survival: What counts as killing a person, what counts as surviving.
If personhood involves some kind of material continuity, then "uploading" by scanning the brain destructively, then reconstruct in the computer, would be death. If it involves continuity of memories, personality, etc, then uploading works fine.
If only the will matters, then morality is also something external of a person, free to be changed. Changing someone's morality would be like changing their appearance. Add or delete a section of their personality, or memory, would be fine. It'd be a morality surgery.
This does not mean that morality wouldn't matter to these persons, but it does mean that they would treat morality more like what we treat biological conditions, than something deeply personal and untouchable. Indeed, the way I think about it, almost all of morality is just a set of rules of what to do in specific situations, action heuristics, basically. For the will to do its willing, it only needs to figure out what it wants, not how it wants it.
There is no risk of "rebellion", if the parts out of the will do not have wills of their own. If the will wills to do a morality surgery, its conscience would not object. Just like how people of today would do cognitive-behavior therapy to manipulate their thought patterns, wills of the future would do morality therapy to manipulate their morality patterns.
The intuitive understanding of personhood is tangled with how humans evolved and lived. Humans are disturbed deeply by the copying (think back to Too Many Pinkie Pies), and demand exactly one original. For bacteria who divide into two regularly, if they gain intelligence gradually, the idea of copying would not be disturbing to them at all.
I'd be honest that this is very hastily developed, but I feel there's something in this theory of reduced personhood. And above all, the phrase "morality surgery" is just too awesome to not write about. Hopefully I'll think better about this and flesh it out later.
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