Thank you so much for this, it is extremely useful and interesting. I find Levin’s work really thought-provoking and I am particularly interested in his emphasis on ethics, which is how I encountered some of his articles in the first place. I guess you may know or be interested in this recent article of his: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnsys.2022.768201/full
It’s weird and stimulating to read how in his view we’re gonna be surrounded by diverse “beings”—whichever definition we give to this—that may be beyond this cut-out definitions predominantly adopted up to today (even in philosophy). Still, developing new ethical framework may really prove essential (Levin is well aware of many topics discussed in this forum, it appears, so he’s really a good source).
PS. this is my first comment ever here on EA Forum, but I really find this stuff exciting (I am trying to work on ethics / expansion of the circle beyond the common categories, for reasons quite close to Levin’s ones). I would be very interested in anything and anyone with some perspective regarding not only animal ethics, but further and, potentially, with a keen eye on anthropocentrism (for / against / shades of), maybe one day I’ll write something here too—so thanks again!
Thank you! Glad I got someone else to crawl out of the woodwork, welcome to the EA forum :). (I’m also more of a lurker.)
The paper you linked is indeed fantastic, I think it might be my favourite piece of writing ever. I read it after I wrote this hence why I didn’t talk about it. There are two other things I would point towards w.r.t to the topic of panpsychism: - The Computational Boundary of the Self (another great one from Levin) - If Materialism is True, the United States is Probably Conscious (by a fella called Schwitzgebel)
And w.r.t what you are saying about being surrounded by diverse beings—I think thinking about cyborgs and engineered entities is a great way to prepare the ground for this kind of moral shake-up, but the more I look into this the more I think that we are already surrounded by weird and wonderful beings—distributed group entities at all levels, ecology, economy, politics, sociology.
I am still thinking and reading about these topics a lot, and in the next months I’ll have some free time to maybe do some more writing about it.
In a way I see why animal welfarists are avoiding panpsychism at the moment—the absolute hellscape of welfare that is the meat industry definitely feels more pressing than, like, figuring out how to measure the welfare of the USA or the brazilian rainforest or so. Though maybe in the long run, seeing these entities as agents with hedonic valency will be a good and useful way of talking about their health and the way they act in the world. What is the impact of tictok on the mental health of the entity that is the USA? Maybe this is actually a very good and important framing, and useful?
Thank you so much for this, it is extremely useful and interesting. I find Levin’s work really thought-provoking and I am particularly interested in his emphasis on ethics, which is how I encountered some of his articles in the first place. I guess you may know or be interested in this recent article of his: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnsys.2022.768201/full
It’s weird and stimulating to read how in his view we’re gonna be surrounded by diverse “beings”—whichever definition we give to this—that may be beyond this cut-out definitions predominantly adopted up to today (even in philosophy). Still, developing new ethical framework may really prove essential (Levin is well aware of many topics discussed in this forum, it appears, so he’s really a good source).
PS. this is my first comment ever here on EA Forum, but I really find this stuff exciting (I am trying to work on ethics / expansion of the circle beyond the common categories, for reasons quite close to Levin’s ones). I would be very interested in anything and anyone with some perspective regarding not only animal ethics, but further and, potentially, with a keen eye on anthropocentrism (for / against / shades of), maybe one day I’ll write something here too—so thanks again!
Thank you! Glad I got someone else to crawl out of the woodwork, welcome to the EA forum :). (I’m also more of a lurker.)
The paper you linked is indeed fantastic, I think it might be my favourite piece of writing ever. I read it after I wrote this hence why I didn’t talk about it. There are two other things I would point towards w.r.t to the topic of panpsychism:
- The Computational Boundary of the Self (another great one from Levin)
- If Materialism is True, the United States is Probably Conscious (by a fella called Schwitzgebel)
And w.r.t what you are saying about being surrounded by diverse beings—I think thinking about cyborgs and engineered entities is a great way to prepare the ground for this kind of moral shake-up, but the more I look into this the more I think that we are already surrounded by weird and wonderful beings—distributed group entities at all levels, ecology, economy, politics, sociology.
I am still thinking and reading about these topics a lot, and in the next months I’ll have some free time to maybe do some more writing about it.
In a way I see why animal welfarists are avoiding panpsychism at the moment—the absolute hellscape of welfare that is the meat industry definitely feels more pressing than, like, figuring out how to measure the welfare of the USA or the brazilian rainforest or so. Though maybe in the long run, seeing these entities as agents with hedonic valency will be a good and useful way of talking about their health and the way they act in the world. What is the impact of tictok on the mental health of the entity that is the USA? Maybe this is actually a very good and important framing, and useful?
Lets see!