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If a non-human animal is unhappy, you would prefer it to be painlessly killed. If a human is unhappy, you would prefer it not to be painlessly killed.
Am I mis-stating something here? If not, could you please explain the difference?
As I understand the concept, it involves connecting a wire to the animal's brain in such a way that it always experiences euphoric pleasure (and presumably disconnecting the parts of the brain that experience suffering).
Humans (and potentially some nonhumans like dolphins and apes) are special in that they have forward-looking desires, including an enduring desire to not die. I don't want to trample on these desires, so I'd only want the human killed with their consent (though some exceptions might apply).
Nonhuman animals without these forward-looking desires aren't harmed by death, and thus I'm fine with them being killed, provided it realizes a net benefit. (And making a meal more delicious is not a net benefit.)
why not? (blah,blah, googolplex of spectacular meals vs death of tb bacillus, blah)
This is interesting. Even though I usually love life minute to minute, and think I am one of the happiest people I know, I don't have a strong desire to be alive in a year's time, or even tomorrow morning. And yet I constantly act to prevent my death and I fully intend to be frozen, 'just in case'. This seems completely incoherent to me, and I notice that I am confused.
Wild animals go to some lengths to prolong their lives. Whether they are mistaken about the value of their lives or not, what is the difference between them and me?
P.S. I'm not winding you up here. In the context of a discussion about cryonics, ciphergoth found the above literally unbelievable and recommend I seek medical help! After that I introspected a lot. After a year or so of reflection, I'm as sure as I can be that it's true.
If you did have such a desire, how do you suppose it might manifest?
Very similarly to my actual behaviour of course. As I say, I notice that I am confused.
But if you're saying that my behaviour implies that I feel the desire that I don't perceive feeling, then surely we can apply the same reasoning to animals. They clearly want to continue their own lives.
Okay, well, what would such a strong desire feel like, do you think? I take it you say you have an absence of such a desire because something is lacking where you expect it should be if you had the desire. What is that?
Yes, I feel I know what it is to want something. I'm very good at wanting e.g. alcohol, cigarettes, food, intellectual satisfaction, and glory on the cricket field. And I don't feel that sort of desire towards 'future existence'.
I mean, I think that if I was told that I had a terminal cancer tomorrow, that I'd just calmly start making preparations for a cryonics-friendly suicide, and not worry about it too much. Even though I think that the chances of cryonics actually working are minute.
Whereas I'm pretty sure that if I get out for a duck in tomorrow's cricket match, that I'll feel utterly wretched for at least half an hour, even though it won't matter in the slightest in the grander scheme of things.
And yet, were someone to offer me the choice of 'duck or death', of course I'd take the duck.
It's really weird. I feel like I somehow fail to identify with my possible future selves over more than about a week or so. I've tried most vices and not worried about the consequences much. And yet I never did do myself serious harm, and a few years ago I stopped riding motorcycles because I got scared.
It's as though someone who is not me is taking a lot of my decisions for me, and he's more cautious and more long-termist than me.
It sounds as if you use the words "desire" in two different senses - concrete, gut-level craving on the one hand, vs abstract, making-plans recognition of long-term value on the other hand.
That doesn't sound so unusual - I don't, for instance, feel a burning desire to be alive tomorrow - most of the time. I'm pretty sure that if someone had a gun on me and demanded I hand over my last jar of fig jam, that desire would suddenly develop. But in general, I'm confident anyway that I'll still be here tomorrow.
Hypothesis: desire is usually abstract, in particular when the object of desire is a given, but becomes a feeling when that object is denied or about to be denied.
(I'm rather doubtful that most animals experience "desires" that conform to this dynamic.)
Well, it makes sense to me that future time can't really be an object of desire all on its lonesome. People have spent time trying to work out what is being feared when we fear death, or what is being desired when we desire to live longer. A very common strategy is to say that what we fear is the loss of future goods, or the cancelation of present projects, and what we desire are future goods or the completion of present projects.
So in a sense, I think I'm right there with you in wanting (in some kind of preference ordering way) to live longer, but without having any real phenomenal desire to live longer.
Ah, thank you. That explains it quite neatly.
I imagine that, ideally, there would be some sort of behavioural test for such forward-looking desires that could be administered; otherwise, I'm not sure that they could be reasonably claimed to be absent.