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Lumifer comments on Why Eat Less Meat? - LessWrong
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No, I don't think so.
That's not a statement of fact. That's just their preferred definition for the expression "approximately as conscious as humans". I can define slugs to be "approximately as conscious as humans" and point out that compared with rocks, they are.
I have no way to respond to this.
That interpretation of the quoted expression strikes me as implausible, especially in the context of the other statements made in the declaration; for example: "Mammalian and avian emotional networks and cognitive microcircuitries appear to be far more homologous than previously thought." This indicates that humans' and birds' consciousnesses are more similar than most people intuitively believe.
Again, I ask: What form of evidence would you find more convincing than the Cambridge Declaration of Consciousness?
Evidence of what?
It seems that you want to ask a question "Are human and non-human minds similar?" That question is essentially about the meaning of the word "similar" in this context -- a definition of "similar" would be the answer.
There are no facts involved, it's all a question of terminology, of what "approximately as conscious as humans" means.
Sure, you plausibly define some metric (or several of them) of similarity-to-human-mind and arrange various living creatures on the that scale. But that scale is continuous and unless you have a specific purpose in mind, thresholds are arbitrary. I don't know why defining only a few mammals and birds as having a mind similar-to-human is more valid than defining everything up to a slug as having a mind similar-to-human.
I originally posted the Cambridge Declaration of Consciousness because Peter asked you, "What do you think of the body of evidence provided in this post [that nonhuman animals suffer]?" You said he hadn't provided any, and I offered the Cambridge Declaration as evidence. The question is, in response to your original reply to Peter, what would you consider to be meaningful evidence that non-human animals suffer in a morally relevant way?
I freely admit that animals can and do feel pain. "Suffer" is a complicated word and it's possible to debate whether it can properly be applied only to humans or not only. However for simplicity's sake I'll stipulate that animals can suffer.
Now, a "morally relevant way" is a much more iffy proposition. It depends on your morality which is not a matter of facts or evidence. In some moral systems animal suffering would be "morally relevant", in others it would not be. No evidence would be capable of changing that.