Author. Software engineer. I study the mind and build tools for thinkers. Ex Apple. Translator of The Beginning of Infinity.
I write at https://blog.dennishackethal.com
I work on https://veritula.com
Dennis Hackethal
Karma: 6
I’m actually surprised by how relaxed the official definition is.
It’s strange for someone to implicitly allow “practical” exceptions to their moral code.
‘It’s not practical’ usually means ‘I didn’t feel like being consistent’.
If animals are sentient, then it’s immoral to harm them. Full stop.
There are many problems with Pascal’s Wager. The problem I was thinking of is that, by imagining the punishment for not believing in god to be arbitrarily severe, one can offset even the smallest ‘chance’ of his existence.
We could arbitrarily apply that ‘logic’ to anything. For example, I don’t think rocks can suffer. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there’s a ‘small chance’ they do suffer anytime I step on them. And I step on many rocks every day – so many that even the smallest chance would warrant more care.
Maybe video-game characters can suffer. I’m pretty sure they can’t, but I can’t be 100% sure. Many people play GTA every day. So much potential suffering! Maybe we should all stop playing GTA. Maybe the government should outlaw any game that has any amount of violence…
And so on.
Yes to both questions (ignoring footnotes such as whether it’s one’s responsibility to improve anyone’s ‘welfare’ or what that even means, and whether epistemology is about beliefs or “representing” them and whatever that might mean – your questions are based on a rather math-y way of looking at things that I disagree with but am entertaining just to play devil’s advocate against my own views).
There’s also Pascal’s Wager.
[T]hat’s an awfully big bet. [Y]our credence in this view would need to be extremely high to justify it.
We have different epistemologies. I don’t use credences or justifications for ideas. I hold my views about animals because I’m not aware of any criticisms I haven’t addressed. In other words, there are no rational reasons to drop those views. Until there are, I tentatively hold them to be true.
Hi Bob,
To me, the outcome of the experiment wouldn’t matter either way. I wouldn’t suddenly accept it if it corroborated my view. (At least I like to think I’d be too rational to do that.) The methodological issues of using science to sidestep a philosophical problem, and of assuming the conclusion, remain.
When it comes to Neanderthals, I’m no expert. But when it comes to present-day animals, I haven’t found many behavioral similarities between them and humans. On the contrary, having studied animals a bit, I repeatedly find them to behave utterly differently from humans. And on the rare occasions they do behave similarly, it’s whenever humans are not being critical but enacting automated routines, like when sleepwalking. That’s when humans are pretty comparable to animals.
I’ve documented extensive evidence of animals behaving as though they are not sentient but robotic. I also address the arguments from phylogenetic proximity and neurophysiological similarities here and here, respectively – along with all the other commonly raised objections and questions.
My current view is that animals lack a critical ability and that sentience stems from this ability alone. Following Deutsch, I believe this critical ability is a binary matter, not a matter of degrees. So an organism either has it or it doesn’t – a stag wouldn’t have more of it than a stag beetle. I don’t think either one has any of it. That said, with the right programming, both could be made sentient (though that would presumably be highly immoral).
The good news here is that, if I am right, maybe animal suffering is a non issue after all, which means a whole host of ethical problems just kinda… resolve on their own.
I’m always skeptical of scientific studies weighing in on the question of animal sentience because it just isn’t a scientific question. It’s a philosophical one. You may find this passage from David Deutsch’s book The Beginning of Infinity illuminating (chapter 12):
[T]he controversy about animal minds – such as whether the hunting or farming of animals should be legal – … stems from philosophical disputes about whether animals experience qualia analogous to those of humans when in fear and pain, and, if so, which animals do. Now, science has little to say on this matter at present, because there is as yet no explanatory theory of qualia, and hence no way of detecting them experimentally. But this does not stop governments from trying to pass the political hot potato to the supposedly objective jurisdiction of experimental science. So, for instance, in 1997 the zoologists Patrick Bateson and Elizabeth Bradshaw were commissioned by the National Trust to determine whether stags suffer when hunted. They reported that they do, because the hunt is ‘grossly stressful…exhausting and agonizing’. However, that assumes that the measurable quantities denoted there by the words ‘stress’ and ‘agony’ (such as enzyme levels in the bloodstream) signify the presence of qualia of the same names – which is precisely what the press and public assumed that the study was supposed to discover. The following year, the Countryside Alliance commissioned a study of the same issue, led by the veterinary physiologist Roger Harris, who concluded that the levels of those quantities are similar to those of a human who is not suffering but enjoying a sport such as football. Bateson responded – accurately – that nothing in Harris’s report contradicted his own. But that is because neither study had any bearing on the issue in question.
This form of explanationless science is just bad philosophy disguised as science. Its effect is to suppress the philosophical debate about how animals should be treated, by pretending that the issue has been settled scientifically. In reality, science has, and will have, no access to this issue until explanatory knowledge about qualia has been discovered.I would echo Deutsch’s points re the “anxiety-like states that were moderated by anti-anxiety medications” and other examples you mention.
I think animals matter morally, but their moral worth is derived from the value they offer to humans (eg as pets or food). I wouldn’t particularly care about birds crashing into windows unless the owners of the windows care, in which case they will voluntarily invest in measures to prevent such crashes and no regulation is necessary. Or maybe if birds crash into windows so much that it has a negative effect on the ecosystem, with knock-on effects in turn hurting people.
I always get a bit queasy when somebody tries to present some moral calculus and then wants it turned into legislation. It’s just a way of saying the government should force others, on your behalf, to do what you think is right. That’s not the government’s job.
I did get the word wrong, thanks for pointing that out. I just double checked the definitions of both ‘practical’ and ‘practicable’.
Imagine you cannot afford the vegan burger. Then I think you should skip a meal and wait for the next meal with vegan options. It’s practicable (ie doable) to go hungry for a couple hours in exchange for saving an innocent soul.
If the official definition is compatible with that, then I’m on board.