Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 11:30:24 -0400 (EDT)
From: Michael Straight 
Subject: Re: (urth) TBOTSS and colonialism

On Sat, 1 Jun 2002, Andy Robertson wrote:

> Their minds *right down to their deepest souls* are no more than a genetic
> ghost conjured up by their blood-drinking bodies as a chameleon-game to
> facilitate more blood-drinking - a fake so deep that the poor minds
> themselves believe it to be true, but a fake nontheless.
> 
> The only thing about them that is *not* borrowed is their genetics, their
> bodies, and it is the only thing that can be meaningfully judged.

I don't see how you can hold to that view of mind/body relationship and
still view chems as persons (which Wolfe obviously does).

If a soul is only 'real' if it is part of a human being, then chems and
inhumi and Babbie and digitized "gods" are all just "a fake so deep that
the poor minds themselves believe it to be true."

There are people who believe that to be the case, that an AI for instance,
would only be pretending to have consciousness, but I don't think that is
the stance Wolfe is taking in these books.

For further disproof, note that Fava's soul seems to survive her death in
some way, living on in Mora's dreams and enabling them both to posess
Vadsig.

-Rostrum


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