You could imbue an item with intelligence and the desire to die gloriously in battle.
In response, DanielLC seems to take it for granted that the rule of morality is “Do to others what you would have them do to you.”, which is not bad as a rule of thumb, but leads to irreconcilable conflict when applied by people with different preferences (such as intelligence, even for a brief period, vs continuing to survive, once intelligence exists). The real rule should be “Do to others what they would have you do to them.”.
Since your clothing has no preferences before imbuing it with intelligence, anything that you do to it is (directly) morally neutral. As for the indirect effect that it’s liable to be horribly killed, the morality of that depends entirely on what its preferences are after it is imbued with intelligence.
All that said, I didn’t read the statues in OotP as having intelligence at all.
Edit: I forgot to state the correction to the Golden Rule above! Fixed. (Also minor grammar fix and removing the false reference to Dreaded Anomaly.)
It would be immoral to genetically engineer suicidal depression, and it would be immoral to engineer the desire to die in this society, where it cannot easily be fulfilled.
But imagine that puberty, instead of leading people to want to have sex, led us (or some of us) to want to die. While this might be as bad as puberty currently is, with new hormones and great confusion, hopefully a competent genetic engineer would actually make it better. No depression here, but looking forward to becoming an adult, with all that this entails. Presumably the engineer even has some purpose in mind, but even if not, I’m sure that society is more than capable of making one up.
There must already be a science fiction story out there with this premise, but I don’t know one.
It would be immoral to genetically engineer suicidal depression, and it would be immoral to engineer the desire to die in this society, where it cannot easily be fulfilled.
It would be immoral to engineer the desire to die in this society, where it is considered immoral to make people want to kill themselves.
You could imbue an item with intelligence and the desire to die gloriously in battle.
In response, DanielLC seems to take it for granted that the rule of morality is “Do to others what you would have them do to you.”, which is not bad as a rule of thumb, but leads to irreconcilable conflict when applied by people with different preferences (such as intelligence, even for a brief period, vs continuing to survive, once intelligence exists). The real rule should be “Do to others what they would have you do to them.”.
Since your clothing has no preferences before imbuing it with intelligence, anything that you do to it is (directly) morally neutral. As for the indirect effect that it’s liable to be horribly killed, the morality of that depends entirely on what its preferences are after it is imbued with intelligence.
All that said, I didn’t read the statues in OotP as having intelligence at all.
Edit: I forgot to state the correction to the Golden Rule above! Fixed. (Also minor grammar fix and removing the false reference to Dreaded Anomaly.)
And noting, of course, that this precise issue comes up when Harry has accidentally made the Sorting Hat sentient.
Would it also be moral to genetically engineer a human so that it becomes suicidal as a teenager?
It would be immoral to genetically engineer suicidal depression, and it would be immoral to engineer the desire to die in this society, where it cannot easily be fulfilled.
But imagine that puberty, instead of leading people to want to have sex, led us (or some of us) to want to die. While this might be as bad as puberty currently is, with new hormones and great confusion, hopefully a competent genetic engineer would actually make it better. No depression here, but looking forward to becoming an adult, with all that this entails. Presumably the engineer even has some purpose in mind, but even if not, I’m sure that society is more than capable of making one up.
There must already be a science fiction story out there with this premise, but I don’t know one.
It would be immoral to engineer the desire to die in this society, where it is considered immoral to make people want to kill themselves.
I haven’t commented on the morality of the issue at all, just the comparison of death to sleep.
Sorry, the opposing moral viewpoint against which Daniel argues is actually Daniel’s interpretation of Harry, not you. I’ve edited my comment.