But let’s stretch ourselves a bit further! What about non-living things? Why not give a bit more respect to objects, as a start by reducing waste? If we take a longtermist view, there will absolutely not be enough raw materials for people for even 100-200 more years – let alone a 800,000 – with our current (and increasing) global rates of resource extraction.
I’m not saying these should be immediate priorities over human beings, but I really miss these considerations from the article.
I feel the same way and want to point out a less utilitarian and more selfish effect. I think it’s not hard for people to envision a world where people truly cherish. Cherish themselves, each other, possessions and everything around them. I’m assuming all of us (except maybe some neurodivergent beings) have had moments where we can see the beauty of everything. Walks in nature can easily trigger this effect.
This sort of appreciation for everything seems to be the basis for almost every religion and can now still easily be found in stoicism and Buddhism for instance. The teachings there suggest that one meditates for those around them and in return gains clarity and love. We gain something by giving.
I think it’s powerful to point towards those selfish effects if we want to redirect people’s beliefs and intuitions to include everything as objects to cherish. Grappling with the unwholesome reasons of doing something wholesome is just another part of that practice.
At the basis of giving and helping is both the rational ethical choice and also the “warm fuzzies”. These warm fuzzies can be there whenever you’re ready and they’re completely free.
It’s not clear to me what it would mean to “treasure a non-living thing” in the same way that we should “treasure a living [I’d add ‘sentient’] being”. When I treasure a sentient being, what I mean by this is that:
(1) I recognize that sentient being’s capacity to feel positive and negative states of mind;
(2) I recognize that that sentient being has interests of their own; and
(3) I take the previous two facts into consideration in my decision-making so that I don’t, unnecessarily, make that sentient being feel negative states of mind, or deprive them of their interests.
However, in the case of non-living things, such as rocks, knives, toys, etc, facts (1) and (2) are absent, and therefore I cannot treasure them in the same way I treasure sentient beings.
I can, of course, decide that some non-living thing has value (such as a potato), in so far as it can, for instance, satisfy the interest of a sentient being not to be hungry, and make that sentient being not experience the negative state of mind associated with hunger, but rather experience the positive state of mind associated with satiation, and the ripple effects of nutrition that flow from this.
In your example of reducing waste, who (or what), exactly, is being treasured? The waste, or the future sentient beings who, because of an environmentally friendly disposal of the waste, will have their interests satisfied by not living in a depleted Earth?
The difficulty I have with this argument is where do you draw the line with sentience? And if there’s a living thing just below the line, without “real feelings” or interests, but still able to experience pain or other feelings would you not treasure it?
One issue with my post I realise is that maybe by definition you need a sentient being to feel real empathy with, but what I had in mind wasn’t strictly just empathy, but caring for or treasuring things.
In a sense it’s more of an invitation for a thought experiment to extend our circle of concern regardless of utility. So to answer your question, it’s treasuring / appreciating / valuing / finding delight in anything really, just for the mere fact that it came together from cosmic dust. So even if something doesn’t have utility for a sentient being, favouring not destroying or harming them.
That being said, of course I’m not saying we should care more about a tuft of grass over a goat for example (and prevent the goat from eating the grass out of concern for the grass’s wellbeing) or to put more effort into preserving minerals than farm animal welfare, etc. Instead, as a concrete example, to consider the effects of our (over)consumption in increasing entropy and decreasing natural beauty, even if mining a bare hill without vegetation doesn’t impact anything living.
Why not start from the other end and work backwards? Why wouldn’t we treasure every living being and non-living thing?
Aren’t insects (just to react to the article) worthy of protecting as an important part of the food chain (from a utilitarian standpoint), for biodiversity (resilience of the biosphere) or even just simply being? After all, there are numerous articles and studies about their numbers and species declining precipitously, see for example: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeting-insect-numbers-threaten-collapse-of-nature
But let’s stretch ourselves a bit further! What about non-living things? Why not give a bit more respect to objects, as a start by reducing waste? If we take a longtermist view, there will absolutely not be enough raw materials for people for even 100-200 more years – let alone a 800,000 – with our current (and increasing) global rates of resource extraction.
I’m not saying these should be immediate priorities over human beings, but I really miss these considerations from the article.
I feel the same way and want to point out a less utilitarian and more selfish effect. I think it’s not hard for people to envision a world where people truly cherish. Cherish themselves, each other, possessions and everything around them. I’m assuming all of us (except maybe some neurodivergent beings) have had moments where we can see the beauty of everything. Walks in nature can easily trigger this effect. This sort of appreciation for everything seems to be the basis for almost every religion and can now still easily be found in stoicism and Buddhism for instance. The teachings there suggest that one meditates for those around them and in return gains clarity and love. We gain something by giving.
I think it’s powerful to point towards those selfish effects if we want to redirect people’s beliefs and intuitions to include everything as objects to cherish. Grappling with the unwholesome reasons of doing something wholesome is just another part of that practice.
At the basis of giving and helping is both the rational ethical choice and also the “warm fuzzies”. These warm fuzzies can be there whenever you’re ready and they’re completely free.
It’s not clear to me what it would mean to “treasure a non-living thing” in the same way that we should “treasure a living [I’d add ‘sentient’] being”. When I treasure a sentient being, what I mean by this is that:
(1) I recognize that sentient being’s capacity to feel positive and negative states of mind;
(2) I recognize that that sentient being has interests of their own; and
(3) I take the previous two facts into consideration in my decision-making so that I don’t, unnecessarily, make that sentient being feel negative states of mind, or deprive them of their interests.
However, in the case of non-living things, such as rocks, knives, toys, etc, facts (1) and (2) are absent, and therefore I cannot treasure them in the same way I treasure sentient beings.
I can, of course, decide that some non-living thing has value (such as a potato), in so far as it can, for instance, satisfy the interest of a sentient being not to be hungry, and make that sentient being not experience the negative state of mind associated with hunger, but rather experience the positive state of mind associated with satiation, and the ripple effects of nutrition that flow from this.
In your example of reducing waste, who (or what), exactly, is being treasured? The waste, or the future sentient beings who, because of an environmentally friendly disposal of the waste, will have their interests satisfied by not living in a depleted Earth?
The difficulty I have with this argument is where do you draw the line with sentience? And if there’s a living thing just below the line, without “real feelings” or interests, but still able to experience pain or other feelings would you not treasure it?
One issue with my post I realise is that maybe by definition you need a sentient being to feel real empathy with, but what I had in mind wasn’t strictly just empathy, but caring for or treasuring things.
In a sense it’s more of an invitation for a thought experiment to extend our circle of concern regardless of utility. So to answer your question, it’s treasuring / appreciating / valuing / finding delight in anything really, just for the mere fact that it came together from cosmic dust. So even if something doesn’t have utility for a sentient being, favouring not destroying or harming them.
That being said, of course I’m not saying we should care more about a tuft of grass over a goat for example (and prevent the goat from eating the grass out of concern for the grass’s wellbeing) or to put more effort into preserving minerals than farm animal welfare, etc. Instead, as a concrete example, to consider the effects of our (over)consumption in increasing entropy and decreasing natural beauty, even if mining a bare hill without vegetation doesn’t impact anything living.