In this blog post, we will consider the standards of “real” and the nature of identity through the fountain pen dilemma and the issue of genetic selection.
There is an old fountain pen in the presidential office of the Blue House. This fountain pen was used by former presidents of South Korea for generations, and was mainly used by the president to take notes during meetings or to approve certain matters. As time passed and several presidents changed, this fountain pen alone was passed on to the next president under the administration of the Blue House and was used at every meeting dealing with important national issues. However, this fountain pen, which has been with Korea throughout its history, broke down due to long-term use and was recently sent for repair. It was more defective than expected, and it was only after replacing almost all of the parts with new ones that the fountain pen could be repaired.
But imagine that the repairman, who felt sorry for the parts of this fountain pen with its historically significant meaning, made another fountain pen with those old parts. This newly made fountain pen uses most of the parts of the broken fountain pen and looks exactly the same. In this case, which of the two fountain pens is the meaningful fountain pen that has accompanied the history of the Republic of Korea? Which fountain pen should be considered the “real” fountain pen?
The movie “Gattaca” asks the question, “If given the choice, would you choose a natural human or a genetically engineered, customized human?” It assumes that the genes and traits of the two humans are identical, and can only be distinguished by whether or not their genes have been engineered. In other words, the argument against the introduction of technology on the grounds that it could lead to a society in which people are judged by their genes is not a personal choice but a social issue, so it does not fit the criteria for criticism. There are many ways to answer this question from a personal choice perspective, but I have interpreted this issue as “Can we distinguish between the real and the unreal?”
The position that favors natural humans is that customized humans are nothing more than fake humans derived from natural humans. They argue that natural humans are real humans, and customized humans are fake humans. They also argue that the real always takes precedence over the fake, and that the value of the real is higher because of its probabilistic rarity, which occurs “naturally.” According to this logic, a fountain pen that has been replaced with new parts is superior to a fountain pen that has been newly made with old parts, and the fact that it was accidentally used in the Blue House can be seen as having greater value due to its probabilistic rarity. Therefore, the aforementioned “fountain pen dilemma” leads to the conclusion that a fountain pen that has been replaced with new parts is the “real” fountain pen.
The position of choosing natural humans is convincing based on many examples from everyday life. For example, replicas cannot always be prioritized over the original, and expensive precious metals are valued because of their rarity. It is not easy to deny their logic, both ontologically and probabilistically.
However, no one would argue that it is genetic manipulation if all the genes of a fertilized egg with natural genes are transferred to another empty fertilized egg. This is because no manipulation is done to all the genetic components, and only the house containing the genes is replaced. Even if the house containing the genes is the same shape, it can be seen as the transfer of the original value. This is similar to making another fountain pen by simply transferring the parts of a broken fountain pen, isn’t it? This is because the original parts are put into a new, identical-looking shell.
In other words, just as the value of the original gene is the same as that of a pen made by putting all the genes into a different shell, the value of a pen made by transferring the parts of a broken fountain pen into a shell of the same shape is the same. This is the conclusion that negates the proposition “a fountain pen with new parts is more valuable than a fountain pen made with new parts and the original parts.” Because if you combine the two propositions, you get the proposition that a fountain pen that has been replaced with a new part is worth more than an original broken fountain pen that has had only the part replaced, which leads to the logical fallacy that the more you replace it with a new one, the more its value increases.
Ultimately, the fountain pen dilemma comes down to the inability to distinguish between the so-called “real” fountain pens, which are more valuable. Even if we put aside the issue of the superiority of real and fake, it is a problem that cannot distinguish between real and non-real. If it cannot be distinguished, the answer is “it doesn’t matter which one you choose.” If the same logic is applied to the issue of genes, it is impossible to say which is the “real” gene, the natural or the engineered one. Since it is impossible to distinguish between the real and the fake no matter which gene is chosen, it is impossible to think about the difference in value.
The ‘fountain pen dilemma’ was a hypothetical thought experiment. It is not known whether such a fountain pen actually exists in the Blue House. However, after examining the logic by taking a similar case as an example, it was found that there is no reason to choose between natural and customized humans. Therefore, if you can choose between a natural human and a customized human, it does not matter which one you choose because there is no difference in value between the two.
