Glen -
Aha! Excellent point! That viruses are parasites might be a critical issue, though. What do viruses really do for us? It's less a matter of whether they feel pain and more about parasitism. I hesitate to google "ethics of parasitism".
.. and now we tangent to mutualistic, commensal, and parasitic
symbiosis. Viruses may or may not be strictly parasitic (if such
an absolute is even possible)... it doesn't seem to be a far
stretch to suggest that humans have adapted to hosting viruses in
many ways, some as beneficial as compensatory. Following the
other lines of thought here, it has been said that "pneumonia is
the old man's friend" (not a virus, but the same role). Is not
herd-culling of value to a species?
I nominally borrow my ethics in this context from Albert Schweitzer's "Reverence for Life" and his oft-quoted (by me mostly) line:
The most immediate fact of man’s consciousness is the assertion "I am life that wills to live in the midst of life that wills to live"
— Albert Schweitzer
This question took me nicely back to the Alife II conference in
SFe in 1990 when these kinds of questions were still fairly fresh
and young. I found a great "trip report" by another one of the
attendee which preserved a number of great anecdotes from some of
the familiar names.
http://shinyverse.org/larryy/ALife2.html
I think the most interesting to me (in that moment?) was a panel
on the Ontology of ALife... probably good preparation for FriAM
discussions...
Ontology of Artificial Life Panel with Peter Cariani, Steen Rasmussen, Norm Packard, Tom Toffoli, Robert Rosen and Elliot Sober
The trip-report didn't trigger my memories beyond remembering that the panel was a lot more lively and interesting than it's title would suggest.
Symbiotically yours,
- Steve
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