You raise some good points. (The following reply doesn’t necessarily reflect Jacy’s views.)
I think the answers to a lot of these issues are somewhat arbitrary matters of moral intuition. (As you said, “Big part of it seems arbitrary.”) However, in a sense, this makes MCE more important rather than less, because it means expanded moral circles are not an inevitable result of better understanding consciousness/etc. For example, Yudkowsky’s stance on consciousness is a reasonable one that is not based on a mistaken understanding of present-day neuroscience (as far as I know), yet some feel that Yudkowsky’s view about moral patienthood isn’t wide enough for their moral tastes.
Another possible reply (that would sound better in a political speech than the previous reply) could be that MCE aims to spark discussion about these hard questions of what kinds of minds matter, without claiming to have all the answers. I personally maintain significant moral uncertainty regarding how much I care about what kinds of minds, and I’m happy to learn about other people’s moral intuitions on these things because my own intuitions aren’t settled.
E.g. we can think about the DNA based evolution as about large computational/optimization process—suddenly “wild animal suffering” has a purpose and traditional environmnet and biodiversity protection efforts make sense.
Or if we take a suffering-focused approach to these large systems, then this could provide a further argument against environmentalism. :)
If the human cognitive processes are in the priviledged position of creating meaning in this universe … well, then they are in the priviledged postion, and there is a categorical difference between humans and other minds.
I selfishly consider my moral viewpoint to be “privileged” (in the sense that I prefer it to other people’s moral viewpoints), but this viewpoint can have in its content the desire to give substantial moral weight to non-human (and human-but-not-me) minds.
You raise some good points. (The following reply doesn’t necessarily reflect Jacy’s views.)
I think the answers to a lot of these issues are somewhat arbitrary matters of moral intuition. (As you said, “Big part of it seems arbitrary.”) However, in a sense, this makes MCE more important rather than less, because it means expanded moral circles are not an inevitable result of better understanding consciousness/etc. For example, Yudkowsky’s stance on consciousness is a reasonable one that is not based on a mistaken understanding of present-day neuroscience (as far as I know), yet some feel that Yudkowsky’s view about moral patienthood isn’t wide enough for their moral tastes.
Another possible reply (that would sound better in a political speech than the previous reply) could be that MCE aims to spark discussion about these hard questions of what kinds of minds matter, without claiming to have all the answers. I personally maintain significant moral uncertainty regarding how much I care about what kinds of minds, and I’m happy to learn about other people’s moral intuitions on these things because my own intuitions aren’t settled.
Or if we take a suffering-focused approach to these large systems, then this could provide a further argument against environmentalism. :)
I selfishly consider my moral viewpoint to be “privileged” (in the sense that I prefer it to other people’s moral viewpoints), but this viewpoint can have in its content the desire to give substantial moral weight to non-human (and human-but-not-me) minds.