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Xodarap comments on Arguments Against Speciesism - LessWrong
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You evade the issue, I think. It is sexist (or _ist) if you say "I consider X to be less worthy because they aren't in my race/class/sex/species, and I do have evidence to support my view."?
Sure, saying women are more likely to get breast cancer isn't sexist; but this is a safe example. What if we had hard evidence that women are less intelligent? Would it be sexist to say that, then? (Any objection that contains the words "on average" must contend with the fact that any particular women may have a breast cancer risk that falls anywhere on the distribution, which may well be below the male average.)
No one is saying "I think pigs are less worthy than humans, and this view is based on no empirical data whatever; heck, I've never even seen a pig. Is that something you eat?"
We have tons of empirical data about differences between the species. The argument is about exactly which of the differences matter, and that is unlikely to be settled by passing the buck to empiricism.
No. Because your statement "X is less worthy because they aren't of my gender" in that case is synonymous with "X is less worthy because they lack attribute Y", and so gender has left the picture. Hence it can't be sexist.
Ok, but if you construe it that way, then "X is less worthy just because of their gender" is a complete strawman. No one says that. What people instead say is "people of type T are inferior in way W, and since X is a T, s/he is inferior in way W".
Examples: "women are less rational than men, which is why they are inferior, not 'just' because they're women"; "black people are less intelligent than white people, which is why they are inferior, not 'just' ..."; etc.
By your construal, are these things not sexist/racist? But then neither is this speciesist: "nonhumans are not self-aware, unlike humans, which is why they are inferior, not 'just' because they're nonhumans".
I think we are getting into a discussion about definitions, which I'm sure you would agree is not very productive.
But I would absolutely agree that your statement "nonhumans are not self-aware, unlike humans, which is why they are inferior, not 'just' because they're nonhumans" is not speciesist. (It is empirically unlikely though.)
Agreed entirely, let's not argue about definitions.
Do we disagree on questions of fact? On rereading this thread, I suspect not. Your thoughts?
I think so? You seem to have indicated in a few comments that you don't believe nonhuman animals are "self-aware" or "conscious" which strikes me as an empirical statement?
If this is true (and I give at least 30% credence that I've just been misunderstanding you), I'd be interested to hear why you think this. We may not end up drawing the moral line at the same place, but I think consciousness is a slippery enough subject that I at least would learn something from the conversation.
Ok. Yes, I think that nonhuman animals are not self-aware. (Dolphins might be an exception. This is a particularly interesting recent study.)
Dolphins aside, we have no reason to believe that animals are capable of thinking about themselves; of considering their own conscious awareness; of having any self-concept, much less any concept of themselves as persistent conscious entities with a past and a future; of consciously reasoning about other minds, or having any concept thereof; or of engaging in abstract reasoning or thought of any kind.
I've commented before that one critical difference between "speciesism" and racism or sexism or other such prejudices is that a cow can never argue for its own equal treatment; this, I have said, is not a trivial or irrelevant fact. And it's not just a matter of not having the vocal cords to speak, or of not knowing the language, or any other such trivial obstacles to communication; a cow can't even come close to having the concepts required to understand human behavior, human concepts, and human language.
Now, you might not think any of this is morally relevant. Fine. But I would meet with great skepticism — and, sans compelling evidence, probable outright dismissal — any claim that a cow, or a pig, or, even more laughably, a chicken, is self-aware in anything like the sense I outlined above.
(By the way, I am reluctant to commit to any position on "consciousness", merely because the word is used in such a diverse range of ways.)
Birds lack a neocortex. But members of at least one species, the European magpie, have convincingly passed the "mirror test" [cf. "Mirror-Induced Behavior in the Magpie (Pica pica): Evidence of Self-Recognition" http://www.plosbiology.org/article/fetchObject.action?representation=PDF&uri=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.0060202] Most ethologists recognise passing the mirror test as evidence of a self-concept. As well as higher primates (chimpanzees, orang utans, bonobos, gorillas) members of other species who have passed the mirror test include elephants, orcas and bottlenose dolphins. Humans generally fail the mirror test below the age of eighteen months.
You are right, the mirror test is evidence of self-concept. I do not take it to be nearly sufficient evidence, but it is evidence.
This supports my view that very young humans are not self-aware (and therefore not morally important) either.
Could you possibly say a bit more about why the mirror test is inadequate as a test of possession of a self-concept? Either way, making self-awareness a precondition of moral status has troubling implications. For example, consider what happens to verbally competent adults when feelings intense fear turn into uncontrollable panic. In states of "blind" panic, reflective self-awareness and the capacity for any kind of meta-cognition is lost. Panic disorder is extraordinarily unpleasant. Are we to make the claim that such panic-ridden states aren't themselves important - only the memories of such states that a traumatised subject reports when s/he regains a measure of composure and some semblance of reflective self-awareness is restored? A pig, for example, or a prelinguistic human toddler, doesn't have the meta-cognitive capacity to self-reflect on such states. But I don't think we are ethically entitled to induce them - any more than we are ethically entitled to waterboard a normal adult human. I would hope posthuman superintelligence can engineer such states out of existence - in human and nonhuman animals alike.
Try telling a mother that her baby is not morally important.
(I would recommend some training in running and ducking before doing that...)
Well, do you disagree WRT conclusions? Are you, in fact, a vegetarian?
Nope, definitely not a vegetarian. I think that's a broader topic though.
To be absolutely clear: you agree that nonhumans are probably self-aware, feel pain, and so on and so forth, and are indeed worthy of moral consideration ... but for reasons not under discussion here, you are not a vegetarian? Fair enough, I guess.
EDIT: Apparently not.
Huh? What? Have you been reading my posts?? Are you perhaps confusing me with someone else...? (Though I haven't seen anyone else here take the position you describe either...)
Yes, I think nonhumans almost certainly feel pain; no, I don't think they're self-aware; no, I don't think they're worthy of moral consideration.
Edit: I don't mean to be harsh on you. Illusion of transparency, I suppose?
No, not really. I just read the post where you said you two agreed on facts and was confused - this is why.