For a long time, I wanted to ask something. I was just thinking about it again when I saw that Alicorn has a post on a similar topic. So I decided to go ahead.
The question is: what is the difference between morally neutral stimulus responces and agony? What features must an animal, machine, program, alien, human fetus, molecule, or anime character have before you will say that if their utility meter is low, it needs to be raised. For example, if you wanted to know if lobsters suffer when they're cooked alive, what exactly are you asking?
On reflection, I'm actually asking two questions: what is a morally significant agent (MSA; is there an established term for this?) whose goals you would want to further; and having determined that, under what conditions would you consider it to be suffering, so that you would?
I think that an MSA would not be defined by one feature. So try to list several features, possibly assigning relative weights to each.
IIRC, I read a study that tried to determine if fish suffer by injecting them with toxins and observing whether their reactions are planned or entirely instinctive. (They found that there's a bit of planning among bony fish, but none among the cartilaginous.) I don't know why they had to actually hurt the fish, especially in a way that didn't leave much room for planning, if all they wanted to know was if the fish can plan. But that was their definition. You might also name introspection, remembering the pain after it's over...
This is the ultimate subjective question, so the only wrong answer is one that is never given. Speak, or be wrong. I will downvote any post you don't make.
BTW, I think the most important defining feature of an MSA is ability to kick people's asses. Very humanizing.
I don't doubt you're a nonviolent and non-aggressive guy in every day life, nor that in its proper historical context the history of colonists and Indians in the New World was really complicated. I wasn't asking you the question because of an interest in 18th century history, I was asking it as a simplified way to see how far you were taking this "Anyone who can't kick ass isn't a morally significant agent" thing.
Your willingness to take it as far as you do is...well, I'll be honest. To me it's weird, especially since you describe yourself as an emotivist and therefore willing to link morality to feeling. I can think of two interpretations. One, you literally wouldn't feel bad about killing people, as long as they're defenseless. This would make you a psychopath by the technical definition, the one where you simply lack the moral feelings the rest of us take for granted. Two, you have the same tendency to feel bad about actually killing an Indian or any other defenseless person as the rest of us, but you want to uncouple your feelings from "rationality" and make a theory of morality that ignores them (but then how are you an emotivist?!). I know you read all of the morality stuff on Overcoming Bias and that that stuff gave what I thought was a pretty good argument for not doing that. Do you have a counterargument?
(Or I could be completely misunderstanding what you're saying and taking your statement much further than you meant for it to go.)
By the way, I didn't downvote your response; you deserve points for consistency.
Do I deserve points for consistency? I personally tend to respect bullet-biters more, but I am one. I'm not sure I have a very good reason for that. When I say that I think bullet-dodgers tend to be less sensible I could just be affirming something about myself. I don't know your (or other non-biters) reasons for giving points, other than over-confidence being more respected than hedged mealy-mouth wishy-washing. One might say that by following ideas to their logical conclusion we are more likely to determine which ideas are false (perhaps making bullet-bi... (read more)