Xodarap comments on Arguments Against Speciesism - Less Wrong

28 Post author: Lukas_Gloor 28 July 2013 06:24PM

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Comment author: jkaufman 28 July 2013 08:30:16PM *  19 points [-]

Some might be willing to bite the bullet at this point, trusting some strongly held ethical principle of theirs (e.g. A, B, C, D, or E above), to the conclusion of excluding humans who lack certain cognitive capacities from moral concern. One could point out that people's empathy and indirect considerations about human rights, societal stability and so on, will ensure that this "loophole" in such an ethical view almost certainly remains without consequences for beings with human DNA. It is a convenient Schelling point after all to care about all humans (or at least all humans outside their mother's womb).

This is pretty much my view. You dismiss it as unacceptable and absurd, but I would be interested in more detail on why you think that.

a society in which some babies were (factory-)farmed would be totally fine as long as the people are okay with it

This definitely hits the absurdity heuristic, but I think it is fine. The problem with the Babyeaters in Three Worlds Collide is not that they eat their young but that "the alien children, though their bodies were tiny, had full-sized brains. They could talk. They protested as they were eaten, in the flickering internal lights that the aliens used to communicate."

If I was told that some evil scientist would first operate on my brain to (temporarily) lower my IQ and cognitive abilities, and then torture me afterwards, it is not like I will be less afraid of the torture or care less about averting it!

I would. Similarly if I were going to undergo torture I would be very glad if my capacity to form long term memories would be temporarily disabled.

(Speciesism has always seemed like a straw-man to me. How could someone with a reductionist worldview think that species classification matters morally? The "why species membership really is an absurd criterion" section is completely reasonable, reasonable enough that I have trouble seeing non-religious arguments against.)

Comment author: Xodarap 28 July 2013 08:48:03PM *  5 points [-]

I wasn't able to glean this from your other article either, so I apologize if you've said it before: do you think non-human animals suffer? Or do you believe they suffer, but you just don't care about their suffering?

(And in either case, why?)

Comment author: jkaufman 28 July 2013 08:52:51PM *  3 points [-]

I think suffering is qualitatively different when it's accompanied by some combination I don't fully understand of intelligence, self awareness, preferences, etc. So yes, humans are not the only animals that can suffer, but they're the only animals whose suffering is morally relevant.

Comment author: davidpearce 28 July 2013 11:15:59PM *  17 points [-]

jkaufman, the dimmer-switch metaphor of consciousness is intuitively appealing. But consider some of the most intense experiences that humans can undergo, e.g. orgasm, raw agony, or blind panic. Such intense experiences are characterised by a breakdown of any capacity for abstract rational thought or reflective self-awareness. Neuroscanning evidence, too, suggests that much of our higher brain function effectively shuts down during the experience of panic or orgasm. Contrast this intensity of feeling with the subtle and rarefied phenomenology involved in e.g. language production, solving mathematical equations, introspecting one's thoughts-episodes, etc - all those cognitive capacities that make mature members of our species distinctively human. For sure, this evidence is suggestive, not conclusive. But the supportive evidence converges with e.g. microelectrode studies using awake human subjects. Such studies suggest the limbic brain structures that generate our most intense experiences are evolutionarily very ancient. Also, the same genes, same neurotransmitter pathways and same responses to noxious stimuli are found in our fellow vertebrates. In view of how humans treat nonhumans, I think we ought to be worried that humans could be catastrophically mistaken about nonhuman animal sentience.

Comment author: Kawoomba 28 July 2013 11:21:01PM 0 points [-]

"Accompanied" can also mean "reflected upon after the fact".

I agree with your last sentence though.

Comment author: Lukas_Gloor 28 July 2013 09:12:15PM 14 points [-]

How certain are you that there is such a qualitative difference, and that you want to care about it? If there is some empirical (or perhaps also normative) uncertainty, shouldn't you at least attribute some amount of concern for sentient beings that lack self-awareness?

Comment author: thebestwecan 11 June 2014 12:54:38AM 0 points [-]

I second this. Really not sure what justifies such confidence.

Comment author: Xodarap 28 July 2013 09:36:36PM 1 point [-]

It strikes me that the only "disagreement" you have with the OP is that your reasoning isn't completely spelled out.

If you said, for example, "I don't believe pigs' suffering matters as much because they don't show long-term behavior modifications as a result of painful stimuli" that wouldn't be a speciesist remark. (It might be factually wrong, though.)

Comment author: Emile 30 July 2013 09:10:22PM 0 points [-]

So yes, humans are not the only animals that can suffer, but they're the only animals whose suffering.

There's missing something at the end, like "... is morally relevant", right?

Comment author: jkaufman 31 July 2013 02:14:51AM 0 points [-]

Fixed; thanks!

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