"This, I think, is pretty obvious. If I were to meet a chimpanzee that had the same conscious experience as a human, with all the same capacities (e.g reading, writing, and talking), I would think them worthy of all the same moral rights a human has. They should be able to vote, drive, and go to university. This might sound odd, but I think most people share this intuition, because that’s what we think when we see this scenario in science fiction. When we watch Star Trek, we see many different species, but I don’t think many of us think that Vulcans are less deserving of moral consideration simply because they aren’t human. We don’t look at them on the bridge and think “Who let that filthy Vulcan touch the controls. Someone grab the antibacterial spray!”."
Something I have often wondered about in relation to this- in regard to, for example- True Blood. What should we do if we discovered a species of, say, vampires who were just really nasty, but mentally just as competent as other people. Let us say not all vampires were nasty- but most were, and their cruelty arose from their intrinsic nature (suppose their morality is shifted one standard deviation downwards, but the variance also somewhat increased). Would it be immoral to deny them the right to vote? This isn't what Connor is talking about, since he explicitly rules out different treatment based on different attributes as speciesism, but it's an interesting case.
I'll bite the bullet. Eating an Alzheimer patient is disturbing for the same reasons eating a cat is (violating norms, indicating general callousness and low reaction to "cuteness", and so on), but not nearly as bad as eating a sapient human. (Infants are more difficult because of their potential to become human.)
I also think it's less bad, but would you think it's permissable to farm and eat them for the same reasons we do animals? I'm willing to accept it's less wrong than killing a psychologically healthy human, but it's still abhorrent and not justified in ordinary circumstances
There can be second-order consequences for treatment of actual sapients, but if we ignore those... kinda? To take a close example, I wouldn't really be disturbed if we used them for, say, cosmetics and drugs testing even if the drugs' effects are horrendous (including from the veil of ignorance: Alzheimered version of me is no longer me in any important sense). My intuition literally groups them somewhere along with cats (and I like cats): gratuitious violence is suspicious, but violence for efficiency is permissible.
Being an apex predator is good. But being THE apex predator with self-awareness is a whole other can of worms. Lots of philosophical arguments about the value of any sentient life to be free of undue suffering are complex to the point of no use. Evan a basal emotional response of simple empathy to another sentient organisms suffer demands more of us. It’s imperative we find more ethical and sustainable solutions for energy consumption and obligates us towards being better and limiting our gratuitous impacts on species and environmental sustainability.
Are arguments that other sentient beings should be free of undue suffering complex? I think they're pretty simple. The marginal case argument above is pretty simple
We can even just say this:
Suffering is bad.
If suffering is bad, it's wrong to make animals suffer without good reason
Therefore it's wrong to make animals suffer without good reason.
Wrong is not as clear or convincing an argument to justify upending the entire system. Especially given the moral relativism accompanying that statement. I agree there is broad consensus that allowing or facilitating undue suffering of any sentient organism is generally not a positive characteristic or action. Avoiding causing suffering is a noble cause. And most would agree anyone advocating for suffering or being apathetic to the idea is generally wrong or a malcontent.
That said, the justification for the widespread existence of routine suffering and lack of humane conditions in human’s priorities for the welfare of livestock, especially given the pervasive nature and immediate lack of enactable sustainable agriculture and animal husbandry practices that could maintain current and prospective production and consumption levels without the abject horror of industrial agriculture, seems entirely infeasible and unlikely to be a persuasive justification for the cessation of current practices and the associated disruption in market availability of livestock products.
So yes, suffering is wrong and should not be intentional or the primary reason for interspecies interactions, animal husbandry, and routine livestock production. But accepting that suffering occurs across the process of current standards of livestock production and is an unfortunate and unintended consequence of such practices, doesn’t make a strong argument to justify abandoning them altogether without a reasonable, accessible, and practical solution that can be adopted with minimal disruption to agricultural trade. I recognize that sounds very dismissive.
But without those conditions and without any alternatives we are at an impasse which human preservation and prioritization are almost impossible to argue against, which mandates a continuation of the status quo. While allowing for minimally impactful change from an atypical minority of consumers who are able to substitute those products with ideologically acceptable alternatives, despite the high opportunity costs associated with ethically sourced agricultural products currently. Hence my cynicism about the deeper philosophical and ethical concerns about this situation being relegated to thought exercises and moral arguments in the face of real alternatives.
None of this realism or rationalism or whatever you want to call my cavalier acceptance of an objectively horrible enterprise, is meant to devalue or diminish the fact of the matter and the existence of the animals enslaved in the industrial exploitation of various sentient species, with real emotional impulses, that can sense fear, and are designed to experience repetitive trauma and stressors during the animals lifetimes vis a vis a routine practice of exposure to horrific conditions and abysmal experience by its very nature of being. It’s truly one of the horrors of the modern condition.
And I respect and appreciate the people who dedicate their work and time to improving the existence of the most vulnerable species on earth.
Well I disagree because I'm not a moral relativist, and I don't think it's infeasible to abandon animal exploitation, but that's outside the scope of this post so let's end that there
It’s pretty hard to change the habits of an entire species immediately. Especially without a widely accepted positive alternative readily accessible. So we’ll agree to disagree on the immediate feasibility of such a venture. But I do wholeheartedly agree we should always strive to be better. I don’t feel good about animals getting tortured. But if you are gonna suggest some people are gonna starve as an acceptable alternative, you’re gonna have a bad time.
I don’t claim to understand your argument beyond agreeing that humans should move away from industrial agriculture to a more sustainable, more deliberately considerate livestock farming process, and emphatically greater consumption restraints paired with truly humane practices that will make the entire industry as close to ethically and morally considerate as possible. That said, you insisted that you’re not a moral relativist and dismissed my pretty reasonable assertions about systemic limitations out of hand.
But understanding the complexity of the situation, the necessity of the products, and the scale of the transitions you’re suggesting, it’s a long way away. So you accept the status quo for the duration, hopefully logarithmic change occurs simultaneously and we all feel better sooner.
But if by rejecting moral relativism, you’re suggesting to be unable or unwilling to accept the status quo for that interval, you are implicitly stating humans will not have the same abundance of animal protein, and again without your immediately available substitutional technology, people are going to starve.
Please don’t feel obliged to reply. You made it clear my stance wasn’t worth considering. But thanks for reading the response anyhow.
"This, I think, is pretty obvious. If I were to meet a chimpanzee that had the same conscious experience as a human, with all the same capacities (e.g reading, writing, and talking), I would think them worthy of all the same moral rights a human has. They should be able to vote, drive, and go to university. This might sound odd, but I think most people share this intuition, because that’s what we think when we see this scenario in science fiction. When we watch Star Trek, we see many different species, but I don’t think many of us think that Vulcans are less deserving of moral consideration simply because they aren’t human. We don’t look at them on the bridge and think “Who let that filthy Vulcan touch the controls. Someone grab the antibacterial spray!”."
Something I have often wondered about in relation to this- in regard to, for example- True Blood. What should we do if we discovered a species of, say, vampires who were just really nasty, but mentally just as competent as other people. Let us say not all vampires were nasty- but most were, and their cruelty arose from their intrinsic nature (suppose their morality is shifted one standard deviation downwards, but the variance also somewhat increased). Would it be immoral to deny them the right to vote? This isn't what Connor is talking about, since he explicitly rules out different treatment based on different attributes as speciesism, but it's an interesting case.
Interesting dilemma. I have no idea
I'll bite the bullet. Eating an Alzheimer patient is disturbing for the same reasons eating a cat is (violating norms, indicating general callousness and low reaction to "cuteness", and so on), but not nearly as bad as eating a sapient human. (Infants are more difficult because of their potential to become human.)
I also think it's less bad, but would you think it's permissable to farm and eat them for the same reasons we do animals? I'm willing to accept it's less wrong than killing a psychologically healthy human, but it's still abhorrent and not justified in ordinary circumstances
There can be second-order consequences for treatment of actual sapients, but if we ignore those... kinda? To take a close example, I wouldn't really be disturbed if we used them for, say, cosmetics and drugs testing even if the drugs' effects are horrendous (including from the veil of ignorance: Alzheimered version of me is no longer me in any important sense). My intuition literally groups them somewhere along with cats (and I like cats): gratuitious violence is suspicious, but violence for efficiency is permissible.
That's really quite an awful thing to believe
Being an apex predator is good. But being THE apex predator with self-awareness is a whole other can of worms. Lots of philosophical arguments about the value of any sentient life to be free of undue suffering are complex to the point of no use. Evan a basal emotional response of simple empathy to another sentient organisms suffer demands more of us. It’s imperative we find more ethical and sustainable solutions for energy consumption and obligates us towards being better and limiting our gratuitous impacts on species and environmental sustainability.
Are arguments that other sentient beings should be free of undue suffering complex? I think they're pretty simple. The marginal case argument above is pretty simple
We can even just say this:
Suffering is bad.
If suffering is bad, it's wrong to make animals suffer without good reason
Therefore it's wrong to make animals suffer without good reason.
Wrong is not as clear or convincing an argument to justify upending the entire system. Especially given the moral relativism accompanying that statement. I agree there is broad consensus that allowing or facilitating undue suffering of any sentient organism is generally not a positive characteristic or action. Avoiding causing suffering is a noble cause. And most would agree anyone advocating for suffering or being apathetic to the idea is generally wrong or a malcontent.
That said, the justification for the widespread existence of routine suffering and lack of humane conditions in human’s priorities for the welfare of livestock, especially given the pervasive nature and immediate lack of enactable sustainable agriculture and animal husbandry practices that could maintain current and prospective production and consumption levels without the abject horror of industrial agriculture, seems entirely infeasible and unlikely to be a persuasive justification for the cessation of current practices and the associated disruption in market availability of livestock products.
So yes, suffering is wrong and should not be intentional or the primary reason for interspecies interactions, animal husbandry, and routine livestock production. But accepting that suffering occurs across the process of current standards of livestock production and is an unfortunate and unintended consequence of such practices, doesn’t make a strong argument to justify abandoning them altogether without a reasonable, accessible, and practical solution that can be adopted with minimal disruption to agricultural trade. I recognize that sounds very dismissive.
But without those conditions and without any alternatives we are at an impasse which human preservation and prioritization are almost impossible to argue against, which mandates a continuation of the status quo. While allowing for minimally impactful change from an atypical minority of consumers who are able to substitute those products with ideologically acceptable alternatives, despite the high opportunity costs associated with ethically sourced agricultural products currently. Hence my cynicism about the deeper philosophical and ethical concerns about this situation being relegated to thought exercises and moral arguments in the face of real alternatives.
None of this realism or rationalism or whatever you want to call my cavalier acceptance of an objectively horrible enterprise, is meant to devalue or diminish the fact of the matter and the existence of the animals enslaved in the industrial exploitation of various sentient species, with real emotional impulses, that can sense fear, and are designed to experience repetitive trauma and stressors during the animals lifetimes vis a vis a routine practice of exposure to horrific conditions and abysmal experience by its very nature of being. It’s truly one of the horrors of the modern condition.
And I respect and appreciate the people who dedicate their work and time to improving the existence of the most vulnerable species on earth.
Well I disagree because I'm not a moral relativist, and I don't think it's infeasible to abandon animal exploitation, but that's outside the scope of this post so let's end that there
It’s pretty hard to change the habits of an entire species immediately. Especially without a widely accepted positive alternative readily accessible. So we’ll agree to disagree on the immediate feasibility of such a venture. But I do wholeheartedly agree we should always strive to be better. I don’t feel good about animals getting tortured. But if you are gonna suggest some people are gonna starve as an acceptable alternative, you’re gonna have a bad time.
I didn't say I expect the change to be immediate, nor did I say I expect the change to cause people to starve.
I don’t claim to understand your argument beyond agreeing that humans should move away from industrial agriculture to a more sustainable, more deliberately considerate livestock farming process, and emphatically greater consumption restraints paired with truly humane practices that will make the entire industry as close to ethically and morally considerate as possible. That said, you insisted that you’re not a moral relativist and dismissed my pretty reasonable assertions about systemic limitations out of hand.
But understanding the complexity of the situation, the necessity of the products, and the scale of the transitions you’re suggesting, it’s a long way away. So you accept the status quo for the duration, hopefully logarithmic change occurs simultaneously and we all feel better sooner.
But if by rejecting moral relativism, you’re suggesting to be unable or unwilling to accept the status quo for that interval, you are implicitly stating humans will not have the same abundance of animal protein, and again without your immediately available substitutional technology, people are going to starve.
Please don’t feel obliged to reply. You made it clear my stance wasn’t worth considering. But thanks for reading the response anyhow.
Also, there's the @DavidPinsof argument that suffering is good, akshually.
It's ok to eat humans too.
Do you mean it's okay to farm and kill humans before eating them, or just that cannibalism isn't intrinsically wrong?