[brulpcoersero]

If humans are at the brahmin in the animal castes, shouldn't it be logical to classify each and every (genetically different) human from the most to the least developped, intelligent, capable, strong, beautiful, etc. ? The difficulty is choosing the criteria... Not everyone can be beautiful, intelligent and physically resistant at the same time. Yes, unfortunately, it is logical, and rather offends one's sense of fairness. When I think of humanity as a unit among other different units in the context of The Animal Kindom (echoechoechoecho), our clearest differentiating point is the conscious intelligence that is the jewel of our animal setting. Yet it is that very gem that makes it possible to consider humanity as its own kingdom with its own set of rules and criterion.

The point I was making was not that intelligence must be the criterion for making value decisions; my point was that even if you decide on a criterion for judgement, how do you judge? Using my example of intelligence as a criterion, which I favor, there is no clear point at which one goes from being non-intelligent to being intelligent. If you assume that there is this theoretical breaking point, you can follow the instinctive animal kingdom logic to its conclusion. A caste system somehow always shows up in this kind of logic. The most prevalent criterion-based caste system that figures in the cloning debate (actually, in most ethical debates) is Christian.
But I don't like to talk about religion.