Not caring for things that are not smart in a comparable way to us is an intuition I cannot even parse. Making 'intelligence' a qualifier for not being tortured, when capacity for pain isn't an equivalent property, is so arbitrary I don't even know how to rebut the idea. One might as well decide that surface skin area is the determining factor in deciding which suffering creatures count and which do not.
I'm still firmly in the "Not caring about animals because they’re not smart" camp.
Unlike Bentham, I actually do have an intuition that harming plants is wrong. I can't help feeling bad whenever I'm gardening and have to pinch off excess seedlings. I'm not sure how common such intuitions are, but I'm definitely not alone in this. By the same token I even feel bad about "harming" inanimate objects like stuffed animals. I'm pretty sure many children would agree with that particular intuition.
My point is that intuitions can be flawed. The above are not the only flawed moral intuitions I possess. My intuitions also tell me it is wrong to harm human fetuses, or to unplug Terri Schiavo, or to torture dogs or babies, or for there to be billionaires while I am not also a billionaire.
Some intuitions that are widely held are still flawed and I think Bentham is using such intuitions to try to show that factory farming is bad.
I maintain that we don't have to worry about the suffering of non-"smart" animals because it is not *like* anything to be a non-"smart" animal. As far as I know, drugs that can enfeeble the human mind lead to black out well before the mind is reduced to an animal level of function. To me that means there are no experiences to worry about beneath a certain level of cognition.
The view that unintelligent animals aren't conscious is pretty radical, and I don't know of anyone else that believes this. I don't think your credence in this belief should be so high that you choose to buy animal products
If you abstain from animal products, and you didn't need to, you've missed out on some food and convenience. If you don't abstain, and should've, you've tortured and killed thousands of sentient beings over your lifetime. Clearly the badness of the latter outweighs the perceived low chances that animals are conscious. It would be rational to give them the benefit of the doubt
I'm glad I can serve to expand the diversity of beliefs you have encountered. That said, it’s not that I think animals aren’t conscious. They are clearly awake and respond to stimuli. I just don’t think most animal suffering matters. It seems like your belief that it does is the radical one, or at least highly contested in our world.
As for why I place such high credence in the idea that animal suffering doesn’t matter, it’s because I have a very high level of certainty that my own suffering didn’t matter during certain periods of my life. Infancy was one of those periods. If we are going to compare torturing animals to torturing infants, which I think is a reasonable and correct comparison, then my very high credence that torturing me as an infant wouldn’t matter is going to extend to animals.
My moral intuitions say yes, but reasoning says no, the suffering of babies is no worse than the suffering of human fetuses. Neither is capable of having experiences we need to care about.
It's a combination of personal experience and accounts I've heard from others. I have no experiences from my time as a fetus/infant/toddler and have not heard differently from anyone else.
As I said above, "As far as I know, drugs that can enfeeble the human mind lead to black out well before the mind is reduced to an animal level of function. To me that means there are no experiences to worry about beneath a certain level of cognition."
I have memories from when I was 2, when I was probably about as dumb as most animals. This seems like a very radical, revisionary view that you shouldn't accept with high confidence, and so based on a high probability that animals feel pain, you shouldn't eat them.
First memories at two is impressively young, but it's well past infancy so I'm still comfortable biting the bullet regarding babies.
Do you have any particular reasons to believe you were as dumb as most animals at the time of your first memories? It seems intelligence is one of the factors determining when we emerge from childhood amnesia, so if you have true memories from the age of two, you may also have been impressively intelligent and not as dumb as most animals at all.
As I said, I'm in the "Not caring about animals because they’re not smart" camp. Your post makes the point that I "must say we can torture and kill mentally disabled people and babies" which I accept. Are you suggesting that actually I "must say that we can torture and kill mentally disabled people and babies AND TODDLERS"?
That is admittedly a much harder bullet for me to bite. If a moral realism oracle promised to reward me based on how close I get to guessing the correct age where we should condemn inflicting pain on humans, I'd go with 33 months from conception - just before toddlerhood.
If there are really animals that are as smart as toddlers who have emerged from childhood amnesia, I wouldn't want to eat them. It would have to be more comprehensive than "four neat tricks this animal can do better than a 3 year old, number three will blow your mind" though.
When are you going to lay out your thoughts on epiphenomenalism? I've read better than half of your articles and your outlook seems to depend entirely on epiphenomenalism being false (Intuitions, seemings, suffering won't cause much if epiphenomenalism is true). The alternative (in light of your dualism) is that most interesting human activity is the result of non physical causes by way of the supernatural. I guess you could give up the commitment to consciousness not being physical, but that's no fun. It's past time, please write the epiphenomenalism article we've been looking forward to!
Not caring for things that are not smart in a comparable way to us is an intuition I cannot even parse. Making 'intelligence' a qualifier for not being tortured, when capacity for pain isn't an equivalent property, is so arbitrary I don't even know how to rebut the idea. One might as well decide that surface skin area is the determining factor in deciding which suffering creatures count and which do not.
I'm still firmly in the "Not caring about animals because they’re not smart" camp.
Unlike Bentham, I actually do have an intuition that harming plants is wrong. I can't help feeling bad whenever I'm gardening and have to pinch off excess seedlings. I'm not sure how common such intuitions are, but I'm definitely not alone in this. By the same token I even feel bad about "harming" inanimate objects like stuffed animals. I'm pretty sure many children would agree with that particular intuition.
My point is that intuitions can be flawed. The above are not the only flawed moral intuitions I possess. My intuitions also tell me it is wrong to harm human fetuses, or to unplug Terri Schiavo, or to torture dogs or babies, or for there to be billionaires while I am not also a billionaire.
Some intuitions that are widely held are still flawed and I think Bentham is using such intuitions to try to show that factory farming is bad.
I maintain that we don't have to worry about the suffering of non-"smart" animals because it is not *like* anything to be a non-"smart" animal. As far as I know, drugs that can enfeeble the human mind lead to black out well before the mind is reduced to an animal level of function. To me that means there are no experiences to worry about beneath a certain level of cognition.
The view that unintelligent animals aren't conscious is pretty radical, and I don't know of anyone else that believes this. I don't think your credence in this belief should be so high that you choose to buy animal products
If you abstain from animal products, and you didn't need to, you've missed out on some food and convenience. If you don't abstain, and should've, you've tortured and killed thousands of sentient beings over your lifetime. Clearly the badness of the latter outweighs the perceived low chances that animals are conscious. It would be rational to give them the benefit of the doubt
I'm glad I can serve to expand the diversity of beliefs you have encountered. That said, it’s not that I think animals aren’t conscious. They are clearly awake and respond to stimuli. I just don’t think most animal suffering matters. It seems like your belief that it does is the radical one, or at least highly contested in our world.
As for why I place such high credence in the idea that animal suffering doesn’t matter, it’s because I have a very high level of certainty that my own suffering didn’t matter during certain periods of my life. Infancy was one of those periods. If we are going to compare torturing animals to torturing infants, which I think is a reasonable and correct comparison, then my very high credence that torturing me as an infant wouldn’t matter is going to extend to animals.
Do you think the suffering of babies is bad?
My moral intuitions say yes, but reasoning says no, the suffering of babies is no worse than the suffering of human fetuses. Neither is capable of having experiences we need to care about.
Why do you think that there's nothing it's like to be a non-smart being?
It's a combination of personal experience and accounts I've heard from others. I have no experiences from my time as a fetus/infant/toddler and have not heard differently from anyone else.
As I said above, "As far as I know, drugs that can enfeeble the human mind lead to black out well before the mind is reduced to an animal level of function. To me that means there are no experiences to worry about beneath a certain level of cognition."
I have memories from when I was 2, when I was probably about as dumb as most animals. This seems like a very radical, revisionary view that you shouldn't accept with high confidence, and so based on a high probability that animals feel pain, you shouldn't eat them.
First memories at two is impressively young, but it's well past infancy so I'm still comfortable biting the bullet regarding babies.
Do you have any particular reasons to believe you were as dumb as most animals at the time of your first memories? It seems intelligence is one of the factors determining when we emerge from childhood amnesia, so if you have true memories from the age of two, you may also have been impressively intelligent and not as dumb as most animals at all.
As I said, I'm in the "Not caring about animals because they’re not smart" camp. Your post makes the point that I "must say we can torture and kill mentally disabled people and babies" which I accept. Are you suggesting that actually I "must say that we can torture and kill mentally disabled people and babies AND TODDLERS"?
That is admittedly a much harder bullet for me to bite. If a moral realism oracle promised to reward me based on how close I get to guessing the correct age where we should condemn inflicting pain on humans, I'd go with 33 months from conception - just before toddlerhood.
If there are really animals that are as smart as toddlers who have emerged from childhood amnesia, I wouldn't want to eat them. It would have to be more comprehensive than "four neat tricks this animal can do better than a 3 year old, number three will blow your mind" though.
When are you going to lay out your thoughts on epiphenomenalism? I've read better than half of your articles and your outlook seems to depend entirely on epiphenomenalism being false (Intuitions, seemings, suffering won't cause much if epiphenomenalism is true). The alternative (in light of your dualism) is that most interesting human activity is the result of non physical causes by way of the supernatural. I guess you could give up the commitment to consciousness not being physical, but that's no fun. It's past time, please write the epiphenomenalism article we've been looking forward to!
I think epiphenomenalism is objectionable because it makes the pairing between the mental and the physical too coincidental.