Cloning will raise serious questions about personal identity and it is quite likely that our twentieth century view of personal identity will prove not only inadequate but also quite shortsighted. This crisis of personal identity is likely to affect art and literature and ultimate create some sort of an existential aberration in 21st century philosophy. Cloning may also affect social dynamics and ultimately politics in ways that we cannot conceive of with today's set of issues. We will probably have to face the spare parts issues and come to grips with what it really means to human.
It is also quite possible that we may make some breakthroughs in restoring extinct species, which will force us to confront and evaluate the forces of nature. So far we have managed to restrict our control of nature to damming rivers and irrigating desserts. But we have left the evolution of species to the design of nature. We may have to revisit that problem, and the larger problem of controlling nature versus living within nature. And we may, ultimately, have to determine if the artificial worlds that we create are inside or outside of nature.
This conflict between the natural and artificial worlds will become one of the dominant themes of 21st century philosophy and we will see our focus shift from epistemology to moral philosophy as we try to address the possibilities within our reach. However, unlike the endgame conflict with nature that dominated the 20th century, the tension between the natural and the artificial in the 21st century will all be in the gray area. People will have to decide what should be done when the goals are all within the reach of science and technology. This will place an enormous burden on intellectuals and moral leaders because these decisions will be pragmatic decisions with likely implementations. Answering the questions of how things should be will become the dominant discussion of philosophers and intellectuals.
With the death of rationalism we will look to new ways of knowing. We will not be able to reason our way through these problems. Mr. Spock from Star Trek may become a symbol of the bankruptcy of 20th century rationalism. Because of its richness in dealing with ambiguity and possible worlds, speculative fiction will become a more important component in the search for moral truth. Further, stories provide an effective means for integrating reason with emotion as we explore possibilities. The role of writers, historically, has been to allow us to hold a mirror up to ourselves to learn more about who we are. Writers in the 21st century will take on a much more important role, as they become our guides to explore possible worlds.
In the twentieth century, speculative fiction such as 1984 and Brave New World introduced possible worlds that nobody would want to inhabit and led to some public debate of these issues. In the twenty first century, this kind of speculative fiction will dominate the literary landscape exploring a wide variety of moral issues that arise from the advances in life sciences. We will look back at Jurassic Park as an early example of this genre in the same way that we look back at Jules Verne and H.G. Wells as forerunners of modern science fiction. The difference will be that this speculative fiction will be the source of mainstream public debate rather than the focus of fringe paranoids.
So, to sum it all up, the 21st century will see the impact of advances in life and biological sciences. The philosophical focus will shift from epistemology to moral philosophy. And the search for truth will create a new vehicle employing speculative fiction to explore possible worlds.
