I was not careful enough in articulating my worries, sorry—the comment was more general.
I agree that what you wrote is often not literally affected by my concerns. What I’m worried about is this: given the nebulousness of the domain and, often, lack of hard evidence, it seems inevitable people are affected by intuitions, informal models,etc. - at least in the “hypothesis generation phase” and “taste what to research”. I would expect these to be significantly guided by illustrative examples, seemingly irrelevant word choices, explicitly “toy” models or implicit clues about what is worth to emphasize.
So, for example, while I agree you did not commit to some suffering-focused theory, and neither do many others writing about the topic, I would be really surprised if the “gut feeling” prior of anyone actually working on wild animal suffering agenda was that animals on average experience more pleasure than pain, or, that wild nature is overall positive.
Similarly, while I’d assume nobody commits to the fallacy “if insects have moral weight, their overall weight will be huge” explicitly, I’m afraid something vaguely like that actually is guiding peoples intuitions.
Ah, I see the worry more clearly now. I agree that, as best we can, we ought to examine not only the strict implicatures of what people write but also the background assumptions that motivate their reasoning. And I agree that at this stage of research, people’s reasoning is going to be motivated less by hard evidence and more by pre-theoretic beliefs, although I don’t really see a way to avoid this stage and jump straight into a more mature field.
For what it’s worth, I personally think there’s a significant chance that wild nature is overall positive and that invertebrates have negligible moral standing. But I also think there are plausible arguments on the other side, and if those plausible arguments turn out to be sound arguments, then the issue of invertebrate suffering (or wild animal suffering more generally) could be huge. The only way to get a better handle on the issue is to do more careful research.
I was not careful enough in articulating my worries, sorry—the comment was more general.
I agree that what you wrote is often not literally affected by my concerns. What I’m worried about is this: given the nebulousness of the domain and, often, lack of hard evidence, it seems inevitable people are affected by intuitions, informal models,etc. - at least in the “hypothesis generation phase” and “taste what to research”. I would expect these to be significantly guided by illustrative examples, seemingly irrelevant word choices, explicitly “toy” models or implicit clues about what is worth to emphasize.
So, for example, while I agree you did not commit to some suffering-focused theory, and neither do many others writing about the topic, I would be really surprised if the “gut feeling” prior of anyone actually working on wild animal suffering agenda was that animals on average experience more pleasure than pain, or, that wild nature is overall positive.
Similarly, while I’d assume nobody commits to the fallacy “if insects have moral weight, their overall weight will be huge” explicitly, I’m afraid something vaguely like that actually is guiding peoples intuitions.
Ah, I see the worry more clearly now. I agree that, as best we can, we ought to examine not only the strict implicatures of what people write but also the background assumptions that motivate their reasoning. And I agree that at this stage of research, people’s reasoning is going to be motivated less by hard evidence and more by pre-theoretic beliefs, although I don’t really see a way to avoid this stage and jump straight into a more mature field.
For what it’s worth, I personally think there’s a significant chance that wild nature is overall positive and that invertebrates have negligible moral standing. But I also think there are plausible arguments on the other side, and if those plausible arguments turn out to be sound arguments, then the issue of invertebrate suffering (or wild animal suffering more generally) could be huge. The only way to get a better handle on the issue is to do more careful research.