It's time to stop killing meat and start growing it

[ecoli]

I keep checking the Jewish newspapers for information about this, because I wonder how 'grown' meat will be accepted in terms of following the laws of kashrut. I wonder if grown beef will be considered kosher, because the animals are supposed to be slaughtered in a certain way. But, if they were never really alive, do they have to be killed?

 

It's interesting stuff that's bound to cause debate in the religious sector.

[In My Memory]

Severian,

Why does a morally relevant characteristic refer to a being's mental and feeling capacities? Why is this worth more to you than its ability to photosynthesise for example? It seems to me that you are anthropomorphising.

 

IMM' date=' please provide a definition of a 'moral characteristic' and then present a proof of what constitutes a moral characteristic. Why should we accept your definition?[/quote']

Short explanation: moral characteristics are attributes about a being that constrain some permissible actions. Moral characteristics are almost always direct statements about a beings mental and feeling capacities, and a plant doesnt have those, so a plant has no morally relevant characteristics at all.

 

Long explanation: "Moral characteristic" is a pretty common phrase in philosophy, and to my knowledge most philosophers use it pretty much in this way: generally speaking, there are moral constraints on what we can do in our daily lives. For instance, suffering has moral disvalue as indicated lots of times in my previous posts, so suffering constrains some of our actions. If a being has the capacity to suffer, then it follows that there are some moral constraints on what we may do to the being, for example we have a coherent way of saying its wrong to torture a being. If a being's capacities or characteristics lead to constraints on what we may do to the being, we call those capacities and characteristics "morally relevant characteristics" (i.e. its reasonable to call the capacity to suffer a morally relevant characteristic). Theres your definition of a moral characteristic.

 

Now, I think you'll agree with me on the following: almost always, moral actions refer to the way we directly or indirectly affect beings, with respect to the affected beings moral characteristics. Keeping in mind that intrinsic values are goods worth pursuing without reference to other entities, and experiences like happiness and suffering are pursuable or avoidable for those experiences in themselves (among other traits), and keeping in mind that moral goods always reduce down to 1 or more intrinsic goods (i.e. charity is a moral good because it helps promote happiness and minimize suffering), its evident that intrinsic goods like happiness, suffering, preference satisfaction, and so on refer to mental experiences, so that other goods like rationality, capacity to reason abstractly, capacity for moral reciprocity, capacity to set long term goals, and so on reduce down through a set of intrinsic goods that are indelibly connected to a beings mental and feeling capacities.

 

So then, some mental and feeling capacity is a prequisite to obtain any intrinsically valuably qualities at all, as well as any other morally relevant characteristics that follow from those intrinsicly valuable qualities. Plants have mental or feeling capacities whatsoever, so the necessarily lack intrinsically valuable characteristics like a capacity to feel satisfaction or suffering (therefore they also lack characteristics like capacity to set goals, rationality, and so one). They lack all morally relevant characteristics, so they dont have any value in themselves. Notice that none of this reasoning is anthropocentric in the least, because the principles doesnt even depend on the logical existence of humans in the first place (it would be true even if humans didnt exist).

 

Plants only have extrinsic value, or value with reference to other entities, because they are food for others. In a roundabout way, you might say photosynthesis is a morally relevant characteristic because of my morally relevant characteristics, because if plants didnt grow then I'd starve to death and die (same for everyone else); so in this way, we have an argument against destroying the plant, but not because destroying the plant does any moral wrong to the plant, but because destroying the plant does moral wrong to everyone else. Unless of course, the plant is a weed, or inedible, then there'd be almost no reason at all to protect the plant (unless it was pretty ).

[Norman Albers]

Plants are sensitive to many things. The only question should be the level of suffering and pain inflicted. You seem to judge that since they don't have a nervous system like us they are on a level of no pain. What are we saying here? I certainly do credit animals with more similarities to us than do many people, and to me they have feelings. Plants respond to chemical signals, etc., but this is a good place of discussion.

[bascule]

Why does a morally relevant characteristic refer to a being's mental and feeling capacities?

 

Because feeling beings suffer

 

It seems to me that you are anthropomorphising.

 

I think the word you're looking for is "empathizing"

[Severian]

Short explanation: moral characteristics are attributes about a being that constrain some permissible actions. Moral characteristics are almost always direct statements about a beings mental and feeling capacities' date=' and a plant doesnt have those, so a plant has no morally relevant characteristics at all.

[/quote']

 

You see, you did it again. You made a totally unjustified statement pretending it to be fact. Why do moral characteristics have anything to do with a beings mental and feeling capacities? That is your assertion, and that is all it is.

 

Long explanation: "Moral characteristic" is a pretty common phrase in philosophy, and to my knowledge most philosophers use it pretty much in this way: generally speaking, there are moral constraints on what we can do in our daily lives.

 

I have no objection to that, but it is a pretty empty statement - just a matter of defiition

 

For instance, suffering has moral disvalue

 

Prove it. Why does suffering have moral disvalue. Can you even define what 'suffering' means? Am I suffering by having to read this drivel?

 

If a being has the capacity to suffer, then it follows that there are some moral constraints on what we may do to the being

 

No it doesn't because you have not made any link between suffering and morality. You have not even defined your terms.

 

If a being's capacities or characteristics lead to constraints on what we may do to the being, we call those capacities and characteristics "morally relevant characteristics" (i.e. its reasonable to call the capacity to suffer a morally relevant characteristic). Theres your definition of a moral characteristic.

 

I would accept that as a true statement, except for the parenthesis. That is a pretty big 'If' though.

 

Now, I think you'll agree with me on the following: almost always, moral actions refer to the way we directly or indirectly affect beings, with respect to the affected beings moral characteristics.

 

No - there are plenty of (im-)moral acts which affect no-one.

 

Keeping in mind that intrinsic values are goods worth pursuing without reference to other entities

 

There is no such thing. Everything has reference to 'other entities'.

 

charity is a moral good because it helps promote happiness and minimize suffering

 

Are you suggesting that charity has no "reference to other entities"? And there you go with that 'suffering' word again.....

 

its evident that intrinsic goods like happiness, suffering, preference satisfaction, and so on refer to mental experiences, so that other goods like rationality, capacity to reason abstractly, capacity for moral reciprocity, capacity to set long term goals, and so on reduce down through a set of intrinsic goods that are indelibly connected to a beings mental and feeling capacities.

 

Even if you were somehow proving that suffering or happiness were moral characteristics (and you have not, other than by choosing a definition) this would still only be a proof that these are members of the set. It does not prove that the set is complete.

 

So then, some mental and feeling capacity is a prequisite to obtain any intrinsically valuably qualities at all

 

Absolutely not. That is downright faulty logic.

 

Plants have mental or feeling capacities whatsoever, so the necessarily lack intrinsically valuable characteristics like a capacity to feel satisfaction or suffering (therefore they also lack characteristics like capacity to set goals, rationality, and so one). They lack all morally relevant characteristics, so they dont have any value in themselves.

 

And you use that faulty logic to exclude characteristics that you do not deem worthy. In other words, you assume at the start the very thing you now claim to deduce.

 

Notice that none of this reasoning is anthropocentric in the least, because the principles doesnt even depend on the logical existence of humans in the first place (it would be true even if humans didnt exist).

 

It is anthropocentric because the only reason you have accepted some characteristics and not others is because you have these characteristics.

 

if plants didnt grow then I'd starve to death and die

 

Why would this be a bad thing?

[Severian]

Because feeling beings suffer

 

Only because you define 'suffering' as what 'feeling beings' feel.

 

I think the word you're looking for is "empathizing"

 

No. Empathizing would be understanding what something else experiences. This is a transferance of what you feel onto another creature when you have no idea how it feels.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Why would this be a bad thing?

That's quite enough. Let's not let this thread degenerate into insults.

[ecoli]

No. Empathizing would be understanding what something else experiences. This is a transferance of what you feel onto another creature when you have no idea how it feels.

 

are you trying to claim that animals can't suffer or don't feel pain the way humans can? Becuase I'm sure there are studies that say otherwise.

[Severian]

That's quite enough. Let's not let this thread degenerate into insults.

 

That was meant seriously. What is the intrinsic worth of a life, without external validation of that life? For eample, one could take the view that once a mother has a grown child, she should 'make way' for her offspring.

[Severian]

are you trying to claim that animals can't suffer or don't feel pain the way humans can? Becuase I'm sure there are studies that say otherwise.

 

Not at all. But why is it morally relevant?

[Jim]

There seem to be two questions:

 

1. Is there a basis for drawing moral distinctions in the absence of a belief in God?

 

2. If we accept as a given that moral choices must be made, what is the basis for treating humans differently than animals?

 

#1 I accept on faith. #2 requires more thought on my part. I agree that a distinction based solely on membership in a species is not valid although the term "speciesm" seems like a cheesy appeal to the baggage of racism.

 

Although I couldn't find this full article, I tend to agree with the point made in this abstract:

 

I maintain that giving more value to human lives over animal lives achieves reflective balance with the commonsense notions that most of us have developed. Because utilitarianism, contractualism, and the classical philosophical methods of Kant and Aristotle all may allow favoring human interests over animal interests, it seems reasonable to suspect that animal rights activists embrace narrow, extremist views. There are many uniquely human experiences to which we ascribe high value-deep interpersonal relationships, achieving a life's goal, enjoying a complex cultural event such as a play or an opera, or authoring a manuscript. Therefore, it would seem improper that social and ethical considerations regarding animals be centered entirely on the notion of a biological continuum, because there are many kinds of human experience-moral, religious, aesthetic, and otherwise-that appear to be outside the realm of biology.

[padren]

Severian, I think the general philosophy being discussed is for the most part, the "golden rule" of "do unto others as you would have done to you."

 

The idea is, if you can suffer and you don't want to suffer, and you see another creature capable of equivelent suffering that you could make suffer for your gain, is it fair to make them suffer?

 

If you see a plant, sure, you know if you existed as that plant, you prefer to just grow and not be picked. But if you had a choice to take 15 minute detour into the shoes of a plant, with no nervous system or apparent means of consciousness and be suddenly picked, vs 15 minutes in the shoes of a cow nerviously and anxiously smelling the blood on the conveyer in the slaughterhouse before having a bolt slammed through the skull....chances are the plant-thing would be less tramatic.

 

Since we need to eat to live, and very few people just want to die, you do have to choose what you are going to eat.

 

If you do follow the golden rule, do you cause great suffering that you yourself would find horrible to experience, or pick a few plants?

While it may not be perfect (who wouldn't want parkland and wildlife reserves in place of all those wheat fields?) is the understandably better choice until we can invent synthisizers of some sort.

 

 

For the record, while I was a vegitarian for about 7 years, I do eat meat. I find it morally reprehensible and it is sickening to think of the manner it is produced in, but I enjoy the end result.

[Severian]

Severian' date=' I think the general philosophy being discussed is for the most part, the "golden rule" of "do unto others as you would have done to you."

[/quote']

 

So what constitutes an 'other'? Why are some organisms included and others excluded. I suspect that the criterion people like IMM want to use is how 'human-like' they are.

 

chances are the plant-thing would be less tramatic.

 

The problem with this is that you have made that statement from the point of view of a human. You have decided what you find traumatic and asked if the plant experienced that.

 

Let me give you another analogy. Imagine you had a robort of the form of Data in the Star Trek series. I am sure you would agree that it is not morally justifiable to torture him to death. But would it be morally justifiable to switch him off? Just flick a switch in a painless way? Probably also not - after all, he can presumably control his feedback circuits so could switch off his pain sensors anyway, so there is really no difference to the first scenario. (And what is pain to a robot anyway - a useful feedback mechanism?)

 

Now imagine less and less sophistocated versions of Data, until they are really nothing more than the computer you have on your desk. I presume you don't think it is immoral to switch off your computer. So somewhere in between it became OK to switch 'Data' off. But what is the difference? They both have circuits, they both can recieve and process data (no pun intended). Why is the complexity of the processing sometimes refered to as pleasure or suffering?

 

I think the real point were people change their minds about it being moral to switch him off is when they can no longer justify their anthropomorphism of the machine.

[bascule]

Only because you define 'suffering' as what 'feeling beings' feel.

 

Yeah, here's where IMM doesn't want to get into how the philosophy of mind comes into moral philosophy.

 

Personally I consider a neocortex (found in all mammals) to be what distinguishes suffering from mere fixed action patterns that respond to innate releasing mechanisms. I'd extend this to species with structures similar to the neocortex, such as what is found in birds.

 

This is because I think the neocortical column represents the fundamental unit of consciousness.

 

Empathizing would be understanding what something else experiences. This is a transferance of what you feel onto another creature when you have no idea how it feels.

 

Well, do you admit that chimpanzees/bonobos at least possess a human-like capacity for suffering?

[padren]

So what constitutes an 'other'? Why are some organisms included and others excluded. I suspect that the criterion people like IMM want to use is how 'human-like' they are.

In fact that is the whole point - the whole point of being able to relate at all to "doing unto others as you would have done unto you" requires an ability to identify commonality. There is so little "human-like" in a rock' date=' that it would be very hard for a human to make any moral decisions effecting rocks.

 

Thus, the whole point of the inclusion/exclusion is based on our ability to relate. We can make more and more vague guesses the more and more different something is, but it is harder to know. This is probably why there is such a debate over moral decisions affecting fetuses - no one is sure what they feel exactly that is in common with grown humans and exactly when...so it makes the process of transference much harder.

 

With other situations, such as any young to adult mammal, you can be very sure it can feel pain, therefore the it is much easier to make moral judgements about exposing mammals to pain or not - simply because it is so much easier to relate.

 

 

The problem with this is that you have made that statement from the point of view of a human. You have decided what you find traumatic and asked if the plant experienced that.

Its not the problem, its the point. What should we, as humans, base our morality on? Things we can't relate to?

 

 

Let me give you another analogy. Imagine you had a robort of the form of Data in the Star Trek series. I am sure you would agree that it is not morally justifiable to torture him to death. But would it be morally justifiable to switch him off? Just flick a switch in a painless way? Probably also not - after all' date=' he can presumably control his feedback circuits so could switch off his pain sensors anyway, so there is really no difference to the first scenario. (And what is pain to a robot anyway - a useful feedback mechanism?)

 

Now imagine less and less sophistocated versions of Data, until they are really nothing more than the computer you have on your desk. I presume you don't think it is immoral to switch off your computer. So somewhere in between it became OK to switch 'Data' off. But what is the difference? They both have circuits, they both can recieve and process data (no pun intended). Why is the complexity of the processing sometimes refered to as pleasure or suffering?

 

I think the real point were people change their minds about it being moral to switch him off is when they can no longer justify their anthropomorphism of the machine.[/quote']

 

If I put myself in a computer's shoes, I would not even be aware of being turned on and off. Therefore, I would not care. Therefore, it would not bother me to do that to a computer.

 

If I was an advanced Data-like android, and had the human-like characteristic of consciousness, I would mind being turned off. Therefore, I would find it morally wrong to turn him off.

 

 

Lets be clear about "anthropomorphism" in this case: That term is way to broad. It applies to an "angry storm" and all manner of simple attribution of human characteristics to everything from rocks to weather.

 

We are not looking at human traits - we are looking at shared traits. We do have traits in common with other species and even inanimate objects, and it is because of those shared traits that we can try to understand some limited degree of what other species or futuresque robots may experience, and therefore how we should treat them.

In the end though, it is all about the Golden Rule. The difference between the computer and the android is not the appearance, or the ability to tell jokes or make human facial expressions, but whether it shares any traits with us that would affect how we would want done to us in its shoes. When it comes to a computer, it lacks consciousness, but the android may very well have it. We know what it is like to be conscious and would not like it snuffed out in us, therefore if we were the android and conscious we would not want to be turned off.

 

It seems really simple to me and the factors you seem to feel are its flaws seem to me to be the strengths. I can't think of any other way to devise a moral standard that would live up to my requirements, what would you propose?

[In My Memory]

Severian,

Short explanation: moral characteristics are attributes about a being that constrain some permissible actions. Moral characteristics are almost always direct statements about a beings mental and feeling capacities' date=' and a plant doesnt have those, so a plant has no morally relevant characteristics at all.[/quote']

You see, you did it again. You made a totally unjustified statement pretending it to be fact. Why do moral characteristics have anything to do with a beings mental and feeling capacities? That is your assertion, and that is all it is.

Now you're just being silly, I explained both of those claims in a lot of detail immediately below the portion you quoted, but your comment about those claims being unjustified implied you didnt even read it... even though you responded directly to those justifications immediately afterward. How could the labels "short explanation" and "long explanation" be so unclear?

 

No it doesn't because you have not made any link between suffering and morality. You have not even defined your terms.

I would think the meaning of the word suffering is so obvious that it doesnt even need defining, especially since you've probably experienced suffering, but just for fun, lets say suffering is any aversive experience that usually corresponds with pain or negative emotions like sorrow or unhappiness.

 

Now, lets connect suffering to morality using a little metaethics: when we talk about intrinsic values and disvalues, we are talking about things worth pursuing or avoiding for the sake of those things without reference to other entities. Pain experiences are worth avoiding for the sake of avoiding the pain experiences themselves, so pain is intrinsically disvalueable. Nothing could be simpler

 

Even if you were somehow proving that suffering or happiness were moral characteristics (and you have not, other than by choosing a definition) this would still only be a proof that these are members of the set. It does not prove that the set is complete.

True enough, but I dont think its relevant. Why is it necessary to produce a complete set of intrinsic values when we only want to talk about happiness and suffering?

 

It is anthropocentric because the only reason you have accepted some characteristics and not others is because you have these characteristics.

Or maybe my ethic is cat-centric, and I value the characteristics only because cats have them... *sigh*

 

if plants didnt grow then I'd starve to death and die

Why would this be a bad thing?

Because starvation is torture' date=' and my life has value as an experiencing subject of a life with goals to pursue and I desires my own continued existence.

 

 

 

 

[b']Jim[/b],

Although I couldn't find this full article' date=' I tend to agree with the point made in this abstract:

I maintain that giving more value to human lives over animal lives achieves reflective balance with the commonsense notions that most of us have developed. Because utilitarianism, contractualism, and the classical philosophical methods of Kant and Aristotle all may allow favoring human interests over animal interests, it seems reasonable to suspect that animal rights activists embrace narrow, extremist views. There are many uniquely human experiences to which we ascribe high value-deep interpersonal relationships, achieving a life's goal, enjoying a complex cultural event such as a play or an opera, or authoring a manuscript. Therefore, it would seem improper that social and ethical considerations regarding animals be centered entirely on the notion of a biological continuum, because there are many kinds of human experience-moral, religious, aesthetic, and otherwise-that appear to be outside the realm of biology.

I've never seen anything so silly in my life I think its really evident that the author of that article isnt familiar at all with animal rights philosophies for a few reasons:

 

First, take utilitarianism: its a principle that values minimizing the harm that we cause and maximizing the pleasure, the philosophy was fathered by Jeremy Bentham. Here's what Bentham has to say about favoring human interests above animal interests:

Other animals, which, on account of their interests having been neglected by the insensibility of the ancient jurists, stand degraded into the class of things. ... The day has been, I grieve it to say in many places it is not yet past, in which the greater part of the species, under the denomination of slaves, have been treated ... upon the same footing as ... animals are still. The day may come, when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may come one day to be recognized, that the number of legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps, the faculty for discourse?...the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being?... The time will come when humanity will extend its mantle over everything which breathes...

Jeremy Bentham supported animal rights, and he opposed favoring human suffering over animal suffering. That excerpt appears in almost every book on animal rights I've ever read, and theres no way the author of the abstrat could have missed it if he was the least bit familiar with animal rights literature or utilitarian philosophy. Even still, modern utiliarians like Henry Salt, R M Hare, and most notably Peter Singer all argue for animal rights based on utilitarian principles. The minimization of suffering is a key objective in the animal rights movement, and its also a very basic principle of utlitarianism.

 

Second, take Contractarian positions: one of the interesting things about social contracts is that they necessarily exclude animals from being members of the contract, because animals arent rational beings and they cant consent to contractarian rules... but infants arent rational beings either, they cant consent to contracts either, so they are afforded no more moral protection than any animal by contractarian tradition. That reason, among others, is why social contract philosophies died at the turn of the 19th century. Contract philosophy was revived in 1970 by John Rawls, who articulates a position roughly like this:

 

- Imagine what kind of society a group of self-interested beings would create if they were hidden behind a veil of ignorance. If we imagine the beings dont know their future sex, race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, etc., and we ask those beings to select and agree on forms of social institutions, we would imagine that group would choose institutions most fair to everyone; therefore, we have a basis for appreciating social institutions on purely rational grounds. Of course, Rawls isnt an animal rights activist, because he allows for his group of rational beings to know their future species which undermines his whole veil of ignorance idea in the first place; if we take Rawls idea to its logical ends, so that the rational beings dont know their future species either, then we have a rational basis for appreciating animal rights, and more importantly it would be evident that animals rights and human rights are fundamentally drawn out of the same principles.

 

Third, take Kantian tradition. Currently, a philosopher Tom Regan has ressurrected Kantian tradition, where he extends Kantian philosophy that states we only have direct duties to moral agents (rational beings who can make moral decisions) to include direct duties to moral patients (non-rational beings like infants and animals). Regan's philosophy is very complicated to explain, but a good summary of it is available here (I recommend reading his book to get a better picture).

 

 

Finally, their are just too many non-sequitor leaps between saying "animals cant appreciate opera" and "its ok to kill animals to serve human interests". Aside from the fact that animals lack no more "uniquely human experiences" as their mentally similar human counterparts, animals and humans share many important interests that have almost nothing to do with uniquely human experiences at all. Animals and humans have an interest in being free from torture, having something to eat rather than starving, having freedom of movement, having shelter, and so on; wheres the argument that says causing two being identical amounts of profound suffering for identical durations of time have drastically different moral consequences because one being enjoys opera and another being doesnt? I dont think its justified to weight moral characteristics that arent even affected in a moral equation at all.

 

The author, I suspect, is using linguistic sleight of hand, and he probably argues that humans having some experiences makes them entitled to better treatment in all respects. However, thats an inferior ethic with respect to the following: we treat creatures similarly in so far as they have similar capacities, and we can entitle some creatrues to particular rights if they have capacities which other creatures lack. Simple demonstration: men and women are moral equals with respect to the capacity to suffer, be rational, and practice moral reciprocity, but only women are entitled a right to an abortion. With respect to uniquely human experiences, we can take animal suffering just as seriously as human suffering, but we can also say humans are entitled a right to vote and listen to opera because they have the requisite capacities that animals lack. In this way, we can rationally afford animals and humans equal moral status with respect to their similar capacities, and they have unequal moral status with respect to their differing capacities. What could be simpler

[Severian]

Now you're just being silly

Oh well then. Case closed. Sorry to have been a nuisance. The simplicity of your stunning argument just blows me out of the water.

 

I would think the meaning of the word is so obvious that it doesnt even need defining' date=' especially since you've probably experienced suffering, but just for fun, lets say suffering is any aversive experience that usually corresponds with pain or negative emotions like sorrow or unhappiness.

[/quote']

How do you define 'pain' or 'negative emotions'? Does a plant's chemical reaction to a lack of sunlight constitute suffering? If not, why not? What is the difference?

 

I put it to you that pain is only a word that represents a feedback mechanism in our bodies. This has evolved to help us avoid any injury which reduces our chance of having successful offspring. That is all it is, and since you have pointed out at great length elsewhere why evolution is not a valid basis for morality, surely pain is not a valid basis for morality either? (In fact, from an evolutionary point of view pain is a good thing, since it helps with survivability.)

 

Now, lets connect suffering to morality using a little metaethics: when we talk about intrinsic values and disvalues, we are talking about things worth pursuing or avoiding for the sake of those things without reference to other entities. Pain experiences are worth avoiding for the sake of avoiding the pain experiences themselves, so pain is intrinsically disvalueable. Nothing could be simpler

For something which could not be simpler you have than amazingly ass-backwards. Pain is not 'worth avoiding for the sake of avoiding the pain experiences themselves' - it is (arguably) worth avoiding for the individaul because it is a signal of a debilitating experience. If you were given the choice of switching off all the pain receptors in your body, would you do it? Of course not, because pain is actually a useful mechanism.

 

So you should not and cannot argue that feedback mechanisms themselves are immoral - you must argue about whether the things that the feedback mechanisms are trying to warn about are immoral.

 

True enough, but I dont think its relevant. Why is it necessary to produce a complete set of intrinsic values when we only want happiness and suffering?

You have argued (wrongly) why happiness and suffering are things that one should consider when deciding if an action is immoral or not. You now admit (above) that they may not be the only things which are relevant to a decision on morality. But now you are saying that it does not matter about the other factors? How can you possibily justify this? If one of the other factors is more important than pain and suffering then you will make completely the wrong decision.

 

Or maybe my ethic is cat-centric, and I value the characteristics because cats have them... *sigh*

Now who is being silly?

[In My Memory]

Severian,

How do you define 'pain' or 'negative emotions'? Does a plant's chemical reaction to a lack of sunlight constitute suffering? If not, why not? What is the difference?

Plants dont feel anything, thats the difference, they dont have mental experiences. Why is this even an issue? Please dont even try to argue that plants feel pain, because theres no earthly way you believe that in the first place -- you know for a fact that we are in agreement that plants lack of sunlight is not significantly comparable to anything felt be animal creatures. We agree with each other with respect to plant pain, so nothing can possibly be said to bridge a gap between our moral systems to make them agree even more.

 

This has evolved to help us avoid any injury which reduces our chance of having successful offspring. That is all it is, and since you have pointed out at great length elsewhere why evolution is not a valid basis for morality, surely pain is not a valid basis for morality either? (In fact, from an evolutionary point of view pain is a good thing, since it helps with survivability.)

You're going to have to reason better than that. Whats the argument that says evolved things can only be evolved things period and never correspond to moral characteristic?

 

For something which could not be simpler you have than amazingly ass-backwards. Pain is not 'worth avoiding for the sake of avoiding the pain experiences themselves' - it is (arguably) worth avoiding for the individaul because it is a signal of a debilitating experience. If you were given the choice of switching off all the pain receptors in your body' date=' would you do it? Of course not, because pain is actually a useful mechanism.

 

So you should not and cannot argue that feedback mechanisms themselves are immoral - you must argue about whether the things that the feedback mechanisms are trying to warn about are immoral.[/quote']

Come on, get serious, if any doctor tried to perform experiments on humans without anasthetic no one would believe that he was justified because "their pain is a very useful feedback mechanism!".

 

Minimizing the harm you cause to beings is exactly that: minimizing the harm you cause to them, and in most cases you have to analyze your moral behaviors on a case by case basis. Its evident that switching off pain receptors in a way that harms survival doesnt minimize the harm you cause to beings at all, and its evident that surgery without anesthetic doesnt minimize harms either. Does this imply theres some kind of inadequacy with the neat little "minimize suffering" scheme? No, not at all, because you're convoluting the means and ends of moral decision making, let me draw it out:

 

Moral imperative = minimize the harm we cause to feeling beings

   Situation = Surgery
            |
            |
           \|/
     Means = Anastetic
            |
            |
           \|/
    Ends = Minimal harm, patient doesnt suffer




   Situation = Baking cookies
            |
            |
           \|/
     Means = dont tamper with someones capacity to detect injury
            |
            |
           \|/
    Ends = Minimal harm, chef knows when he has a hand on a hot stove

Theres no reason to presume that the methods for one moral action are appropriate in another moral action. Notice we have a very consequentialist ethic, one that doesnt produce correct results when you mix up means and ends which is evident by example:

Moral imperative = minimize the harm we cause to feeling beings

   Situation = Surgery
            |
            |
           \|/
    Means = dont tamper with someones capacity to detect injury
            |
            ~
           \|/
    Ends = Minimal harm, patient doesnt suffer




   Situation = Baking cookies
            |
            |
           \|/
     Means = Anastetic
            |
            ~
           \|/
    Ends = Minimal harm, chef knows when he has a hand on a hot stove

The statements above dont follow logically from one to the other.

 

You have argued (wrongly) why happiness and suffering are things that one should consider when deciding if an action is immoral or not.

This is the most bizarre thing I've ever seen in my entire life, do you mean to tell me you dont make moral decisions without taking happiness and suffering in consideration? I'd really have a hard time believing that, because I'm pretty sure if someone tied you to a chair and started torturing you for hours on end, you wouldnt think to yourself "what moral objection can I possibly have? is it the fact I'm being tortured, or is it because I'm not going to make it to work on time today?".

 

More importantly, you havent even attempted to show that I've wrongly argued anything, you havent even attempted to provide a superior ethic, you havent provided anything except to quibble about things which we are already in agreement or to call me an athropocentric despite the fact that I support efforts to fight anthropocentricism.

 

Seriously, if you have a superior ethic, I'd LOVE to hear it more than anything. You wouldnt believe the sacrifices I make everyday to adhere to my moral principles (not just being a vegan, but also the huge amounts I give to charity, letting anyone stay in my house for the night, and supporting environmental causes whenever I can, etc) even when theres no legal consequence for not being a vegan, even when I miss out on a lot of things like spending holidays with my family because they murder animals everyday of their lives --- seriously, if everything I do is actually morally wrong, I'd really like to be corrected, and I'd be very interested to hear your superior ethic if you really have one.

 

You now admit (above) that they may not be the only things which are relevant to a decision on morality. But now you are saying that it does not matter about the other factors? How can you possibily justify this? If one of the other factors is more important than pain and suffering then you will make completely the wrong decision.

I thought I held pretty consistently that its only relevant to talk about moral characteristics in so far as they're affected, and that theres no point in talking about other characteristics that dont affect the outcome of a moral equation.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Severian' date='

 

Plants dont feel anything, thats the difference, they dont have mental experiences. Why is this even an issue? Please dont even try to argue that plants feel pain, because theres no earthly way you believe that in the first place -- you know for a fact that we are in agreement that plants lack of sunlight is not significantly comparable to anything felt be animal creatures. We agree with each other with respect to plant pain, so nothing can possibly be said to bridge a gap between our moral systems to make them agree even more.[/quote']

Ahem. See my post below

 

You're going to have to reason better than that[/url']. Whats the argument that says evolved things can only be evolved things period and never correspond to moral characteristic?

You can do better than that:

It should be noted that there are some cases in which the origin of a claim is relevant to the truth or falsity of the claim. For example, a claim that comes from a reliable expert is likely to be true (provided it is in her area of expertise).

 

Come on, get serious, if any doctor tried to perform experiments on humans without anasthetic no one would believe that he was justified because "their pain is a very useful feedback mechanism!".

Sorry, but doctors already do that. Some tests on the placebo effect and such give some patients painkillers and other saline, knowingly, and use pain as a "very useful feedback mechanism" to learn more about physiology.

[AL]

Ahem.

Those studies seem very iffy to me. Particularly when it began making comparisons to human telepathy and citing studies that plants respond to music and anger and sweet-talk. The latter was tested on Mythbusters and produced no effect.

 

I will say that it's probably true that plants do not feel pain as we know it. Those last four words, however, are key. Plants don't have a nervous system releasing neurotransmitters in response to stress like we have, but they do have a hormone system, releasing hormones in response to stress. Who knows if their hormone system doesn't allow them to "feel" pain in an alien fashion?

[ecoli]

Not at all. But why is it morally relevant?

 

why wouldn't it be morally relevant? Why should we seek the destruction of living things when it can be avoided? Even if we are not in the species group?

[Jim]

 

Here's the quote from the abstract.

 

I maintain that giving more value to human lives over animal lives achieves reflective balance with the commonsense notions that most of us have developed. Because utilitarianism, contractualism, and the classical philosophical methods of Kant and Aristotle all may allow favoring human interests over animal interests, it seems reasonable to suspect that animal rights activists embrace narrow, extremist views. There are many uniquely human experiences to which we ascribe high value-deep interpersonal relationships, achieving a life's goal, enjoying a complex cultural event such as a play or an opera, or authoring a manuscript. Therefore, it would seem improper that social and ethical considerations regarding animals be centered entirely on the notion of a biological continuum, because there are many kinds of human experience-moral, religious, aesthetic, and otherwise-that appear to be outside the realm of biology.

 

I've never seen anything so silly in my life

 

Well, I've no doubt lived longer than you.

 

I've italicized the part I don't really care about defending and bolded the part I have no hope of defending. I'm more interested in the substantive points made rather than going toe-to-toe with you in assessing the author's relative familiarity with Kant, Aristotle and the rest. I've learned to pick my battles more carefully.

 

I've underlined the part that caused me to post the link. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you respond to this point as follows:

 

Finally' date=' their are just too many non-sequitor leaps between saying "animals cant appreciate opera" and "its ok to kill animals to serve human interests". Aside from the fact that animals lack no more "uniquely human experiences" as their mentally similar human counterparts, animals and humans share many important interests that have almost nothing to do with uniquely human experiences at all. Animals and humans have an interest in being free from torture, having something to eat rather than starving, having freedom of movement, having shelter, and so on; wheres the argument that says causing two being identical amounts of profound suffering for identical durations of time have drastically different moral consequences because one being enjoys opera and another being doesnt? I dont think its justified to weight moral characteristics that arent even affected in a moral equation at all.

 

The author, I suspect, is using linguistic sleight of hand, and he probably argues that humans having some experiences makes them entitled to better treatment in [i']all[/i] respects. However, thats an inferior ethic with respect to the following: we treat creatures similarly in so far as they have similar capacities, and we can entitle some creatrues to particular rights if they have capacities which other creatures lack. Simple demonstration: men and women are moral equals with respect to the capacity to suffer, be rational, and practice moral reciprocity, but only women are entitled a right to an abortion. With respect to uniquely human experiences, we can take animal suffering just as seriously as human suffering, but we can also say humans are entitled a right to vote and listen to opera because they have the requisite capacities that animals lack. In this way, we can rationally afford animals and humans equal moral status with respect to their similar capacities, and they have unequal moral status with respect to their differing capacities. What could be simpler

 

I'm taking my kiddos to the movie this afternoon so I don't have time to respond right now in any kind of detail. Also, I'm having to think about your points. Beyond my obvious problem with the conclusions of your argument (e.g. sacrifice a child for a chimp), I have concerns about the practicality and desirability of judging the "morally relevant characteristics" on an individual by individual basis. I'm not sure this can be done or even if it should be attempted. Sometimes, you need bright lines, e.g. killing human beings (except for very narrow recognized exceptions such as war and self-defense) is murder. I wouldn't want to place this kind of principle on a sliding scale where the wrongness of the thing depends on particular "morally relevant" characteristics of the individual victim.

 

I'll give this some more thought while I'm watching Superman and hope for an epiphany.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Those studies seem very iffy to me. Particularly when it began making comparisons to human telepathy and citing studies that plants respond to music and anger and sweet-talk. The latter was tested on Mythbusters and produced no effect.

 

I will say that it's probably true that plants do not feel pain as we know it. Those last four words' date=' however, are key. Plants don't have a nervous system releasing neurotransmitters in response to stress like we have, but they do have a hormone system, releasing hormones in response to stress. Who knows if their hormone system doesn't allow them to "feel" pain in an alien fashion?[/quote']

Whoops, that was a bad link (I knew the article existed, and I just picked the first on Google). Here's a better one, available from New Scientist (paid subscription only):

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15921534.900.html

 

Key quotes:

Some plants seem to be able to tell which caterpillars are feeding on them by tasting the insects' saliva—and they respond accordingly.

Pickett and his colleagues at Rothamsted have discovered an associated "wound signal" compound that neighbouring plants can smell. [. . .] Working with teams in Italy and Sweden, Pickett and his colleagues showed that when broad beans (Vicia faba) were exposed to the compound, they began making and releasing volatile compounds that attract insect predators of aphids. The investigators showed that three times as many predators were attracted to the plants treated with the newly discovered compound as to untreated plants.

Ordinary plants need a sense of touch to respond to the buffeting of the wind, which can cause considerable damage to foliage. "Plants don't like wind sway and try to resist it by strengthening tissues that are being swayed," says Trewavas.

Two years ago at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, Mordecai Jaffe used an instrument that made a "warble" sound 5 per cent either way of the chosen frequency. "We found that at about 2 kilohertz, which is about the same as a normal human voice, and at 70 to 80 decibels, which is a bit louder than speaking, we got a doubling in the growth of the dwarf pea plants," says Jaffe, who is now at Cornell University.

[bascule]

Whoops' date=' that was a bad link (I knew the article existed, and I just picked the first on Google). Here's a better one, available from New Scientist (paid subscription only):

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15921534.900.html[/quote']

 

So what suffers more, a plant, or my car when its On-Board Diagnostics register a component failure?

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

So what suffers more, a plant, or my car when its On-Board Diagnostics register a component failure?

You'd have to justify that analogy first.