If you're interested in this topic, I heartily recommend Carl Safina's Beyond Words. It presents compelling evidence for the thesis that the default in the animal kingdom is conscious & feeling.
I can tell you with great certainty that the cat presently sitting in my lap has feelings. When she's angry, she turns into a total bitch and knows just how to press my wife's buttons :) Example - after getting upset about being put on a diet a while back, she relieved herself in my wife's shoes. My wife handles the feeding.
We have 4 cats, two horses, a goat, and a dog. All exhibit behavior that is inexplicable without emotion. I realize that all of these creatures are pretty close to one another in terms of classification, but it wouldn't surprise me a bit if these behaviors existed in creatures more distantly related to our cadre of quadrupeds.
It would surprise me to learn that animals don't have emotions and consciousness.
I read once that we are not our thoughts - we are the agent that experiences and hears our thoughts. I think that this meta-congition is uniquely human (and consequently, the ability to think about meta-congnition is uniquely human).
Just took a glance at this, and it doesn't seem the book suggests that the whole of the animal kingdom has consciousness, right? Could we attribute this to a spider or a scorpion? Of course this depends on the definition of C, but we can agree there's a "higher" form of consciousness, which the book is mostly exemplifying by using elephants and wolves. These larger creatures seem obvious, but serve no evidence to whether or not the simpler lifeforms like insects, and even small fish have anything more than basic instincts.
I have a betta. It's pretty easy to tell when he's feeling something; if you've ever had or seen one, you know they're pretty expressive little guys. Granted, he mostly seems to be anticipating being fed (or the possibility of lady bettas wandering by the nests of bubbles he builds), or getting pissed off (which he displays by war-dancing -- just youtube it) at the snail living in his tank, but he's fully capable of interacting with humans at the level of most other sorts of pets. I'm not anthropomorphizing. If he could breathe air, he'd be doing his very best macho impersonation of a tomcat (or small yippy dog that thinks it's approximately the size of a great dane).
If we go one step up and think about the average high schooler, I still am having trouble differentiating what (the high schooler) he or she might feel from what the betta might -- hunger, sexual frustration, happiness, annoyance, loneliness... the betta probably can't do trigonometry, doesn't have opposable thumbs, and has a different set of instincts tailored to his environment. We've simply evolved to do different things; that doesn't mean humans cannot observe emotions analogous to our own in other creatures.
Spider-wise, I've never observed one for periods of time long enough to do much more than remove it from my house, but who knows.
The book is architected around three exceptionally rich (and well-studied) examples: wolves, elephants, and dolphins (esp., killer whales). But he spends a great deal of time on other species (birds, fish, and yes, insects) and you would be missing the point of the book to think he's only talking about "higher" species.
There are animals that don't have a central nervous system and even some that don't even have a nervous system at all (sponges). How are they supposed to feel?
Not 'feelings' exactly, but, 1mm long nematode worms (with only 1000 cells) can show signs of depression and become addicted to nicotine amongst many other surprisingly 'human' behaviours.
You seem to be identifying consciousness with the physical structures that apparently support it. We read every day on this forum that correlation is not causation.
I'm currently reading it and I reiterate the suggestion. It is very compelling. Plus it is very well written, which makes reading it a very pleasant experience.
I would not be surprised if fish have feelings or even emotions.
The link is worth reading. Despite being short, it summarizes several reasons why non-humans are likely more similar than not to humans that have been developed in the past 2 decades, with no published counter-examples.
I almost felt guilty for taking fish oil and eating sushi, but then it's clear that a fever reflex doesn't equate to missing Jane the cute fish next door, writing Leaves of Kelp or being jealous of Henry's dorsal fins, although I must admit they are quite impressive. It might seem anthropocentric (it's definitely anthropomorphic), but Jane was really tasty with soy sauce and wasabi.
Non-human animal activities should not provide a logical or moral foundation for our behavior and it is illogical to claim that we should eat the same diet they do, especially as most of them are obligatory carnivores killing for survival, whereas humans physiologically resemble frugivores. Also your reasoning would justify killing companion animals and also humans - after all, "circle of life".
More importantly, we recognize that unlike animals, we cannot justify taking the life of a sentient being for no better reason than our personal dietary preferences. So it is probably not useful to consider the behavior of fish when making decisions about our own behavior.
People have been killing each other since the beginning of time.
Are we living on the same planet? Why do I have to give eating salmon any thought?
Here's a question to ponder: what are morals and these 'should's you describe meant for? For people to share common values so that we get along better, right?
That's created by humans, FOR humans, that we want to get along with!
For everything else, I don't really understand.
I am nice to squirrels, I just happen to like them. Rats, I don't like. Cockroaches I really don't like - when I see one in my house, I take a slipper and kill that sucka.
Am I supposed to justify stomping on a cockroach too? Where does this moralizing end?
>Here's a question to ponder: what are morals and these 'should's you describe meant for? For people to share common values so that we get along better, right?
Thats not really how morals are defined. That is just one oversimplified and fairly self serving definition of ethics.
But lets try this with your own view point: Try pondering the question you posed:
>what are morals and these 'should's you describe meant for?
Now since you believe common values help us get along, and you therefore believe that forms the basis of ethical decision, then your question needs to be:
"What common values do other people hold that may be different to mine?"
It may come as a shock to you, that there is whole world of people and even animals and insects, that don't share your views - that see the world through totally different eyes. If they don't contribute to your idea of a common value, does that make them worthless and irrelevant to the world, the world they live in.
By stomping on the cockroach (for no reason beyond what you like and don't like) - you are saying it has no value in your life, and therefore should not exist.
To be honest, this isn't about morality - its about having a basic respect for anything that lives. Why, given the chance, would you not have this respect?
Ok let's be very clear about this - I stomp on a cockroach because I feel like it. I don't think and ponder that it should not exist anymore than I wonder if tea in a cup should not exist in the cup as I drink it.
I happen to have what you call 'basic respect' for living things, I find a dude snapping the neck of a rabbit 'icky'.
I see that as me having grown up in a city and never having to snap necks to make a meal that evening. If I end up living on a farm, I'm sure I'll quickly get used to snapping necks of chickens and rabbits no problem.
See, your whole argument boils down to 'why aren't you more like me? Isn't being like me better than being like you?'
That's one point of view, I'd much prefer other people be more like me as well, so that I can get along with them better etc. I just recognize that that's simply a self-serving preference.
> See, your whole argument boils down to 'why aren't you more like me? Isn't being like me better than being like you?'
If you want to make that point, please support it with an explanation to why and how I have led you to believe that? because I genuinely don't follow your logic.
>Ok let's be very clear about this - I stomp on a cockroach because I feel like it.
And you call that respect?
That isn't what I call a basic respect for living things. Finding a rabbits neck breaking "icky", also isn't a basic respect. If you could provide a reason for killing, like a health one, I might start to understand.
Let me try another tack thats a bit more 'on topic'.
What behavior would a cockroach have to exhibit before you treat it like a human?
>What behavior would a cockroach have to exhibit before you treat it like a human?
Human behavior. Awareness of social context. Learning, speech, and advanced decision-making and planning skills. Is that just a poorly-thought-out question?
Humans who lack these skills tend to get boxed up, put in cells, and treated like cattle, too.
I'm trying to provoke some thought about how we ascribe value to living things (and trying to relate it to the views of the person I was responding to). I was also trying to keep the debate relevant to the original article. Does that make any more sense?
Its an interesting set of qualities you ascribe to being human. does lacking all these (or some) of these make you worth less as a human? does it make you a 'cockroach'?
Some cultures certainly treat people with learning difficulties worse than cattle. Others love, support and engage them - understanding the world through their eyes too.
> Why do I have to give eating salmon any thought?
The same reason you would give thought to killing a Golden Retriever for food. Due to indoctrinated beliefs, people think it's alright to kill certain animals for food, but not others, and when asked why, the logical inconsistencies become very apparent. See http://www.carnism.org/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es6U00LMmC4
> Am I supposed to justify stomping on a cockroach too? Where does this moralizing end?
Any killing is self-defense in always justified. However, if there's an opportunity to practice non-violence, why not take it?
My answer is because I don't feel like it on that day. Sometimes I feel like practicing non-violence, other days I feel like practicing it and letting off some steam.
There is no inherent moral virtue in not picking up a stick when walking through a forest and slashing tall grass as you walk around.
Now if tall grass can express discontent similar to human discontent and you happily ignore it, then the issue is that you're likely to inflict human violence with no second thought.
THAT societies don't like. But don't get it twisted with empty moralizing - we want people to feel bad about violence to prevent violence to other humans within our tribe, that's it.
You've explained the inherent problem I believe to be facing humanity today - apathy and lack of empathy. We can't accept violence if we want to live in a free and peaceful society. All oppression has to eventually fall by the wayside and taking the opportunity to not torture many sentient animals is a good way to help.
> you can recognize that fantasizing about a world that's impossible given human nature is simply a waste of time.
I'm a vegan - I'm not fantasizing, I'm actually living in accordance with my beliefs.
I see where you're coming from - it's an idealistic point of view.
We have violence, violence is bad, if we want peace, we need to get rid of it.
Makes sense.
Is that realistic on any level? No.
So either you can stick to idealistic notions and claim that the world is messed up because people are not like you, or you can recognize that fantasizing about a world that's impossible given human nature is simply a waste of time.
Fantasizing about a better world is a good coping strategy that I use myself. I just don't believe it to be anything but a coping strategy. At the end of the day, I need a strategy to change the real world I'm living in, to my liking.
Telling people 'why not be more like me?' is not a very good strategy :) I dare say you actually lack the nuanced understanding of the world to actually make it the way you want it.
Let's put 100 people of your choosing, the ones with least apathy and most empathy on the planet, on an island. How well are you going to do?
What if they're a bunch of non-apathetic, empathetic idiots? They light themselves on fire trying to make a campfire, they chop off their own fingers cutting up salad, but they are so empathetic towards each other.
A few days later, you're all dead.
The inherent problem is people are dumb - your current beliefs on what's wrong with people falls in the naive category. THAT is the problem - there's no lack of empathy, there's lack of intelligence. Lack of empathy is mostly short sightedness - most people don't think of anything but themselves and their immediate family because they're dumb, not because they are apathetic, they don't have the capacity for much is all.
I see from another comment that you are Vegan, so how did you make the distinction of what living things are acceptable to eat, and which are not? Plants are just as alive as mammals, fish or insects; so if it isn't 'life' that you are preserving, what exactly is it? some idea of consciousness? intelligence? How does something like Honey fit into your view of this issue?
Further, how do you justify your greater reliance than meat eaters on migrant underpaid labor? Is human suffering for your nutrition preferable to animal suffering?
Isnt this just a game of semantic false moral superiority until there is a nutrition source that is completely death and suffering free?
> Plants are just as alive as mammals, fish or insects
Two things: plants aren't sentient and animals also eat plants - many, many times more plants than vegans do. So if you truly regard plant and animal life to be the same, it would behoove you to immediately stop eating animals! It's very obvious how this argument falls flat on its face when brought to the light of critical thinking.
> how do you justify your greater reliance than meat eaters on migrant underpaid labor?
This is just conjecture, but I'll try and answer anyway. You can be vegan and care about how workers are treated. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive. Personally, I grow most of my food myself, but obviously this isn't practical for most people. Why not turn this question around and ask, how are slaughterhouse workers treated and what their experience must be like?
> Isnt this just a game of semantic false moral superiority until there is a nutrition source that is completely death and suffering free?
Pretty ironic to hear this from someone who beliefs him or herself to be superior to animals, and justifies their destruction. It's not a game of semantics - in fact, it's not a game at all. Animal agriculture is the leading cause of climate change. You can be coy all you want, but you are actively contributing to the problem by consuming animal products.
Is a venus fly trap sentient?
Is a cricket sentient?
Is a starfish sentient?
Is a worm sentient?
How about trees that communicate with other trees nearby?[1][2]
>and animals also eat plants
Plants also eat animals[3] animals also eat other animals, so i dont understand how this is an argument.
>This is just conjecture
61% of all farmworkers have incomes below pverty level, average life expectancy subtanstially lower than rest of population[4]
cites migrants earning 7500$ per year, 52% having no legal status in US[5]
>Why not turn this question around and ask, how are slaughterhouse workers treated and what their experience must be like?
you could certainly make that argument, but i dont think its likely to mirror agricultural migrant labor
>Pretty ironic to hear this from someone who beliefs him or herself to be superior to animals, and justifies their destruction.
Thats quite a label to apply to someone you've never met and whose never said anything like that.
You seem to believe you are superior to plants though...
You're making straw man arguments. Humans don't breed, enslave and kill billions of starfish, crickets and worms. Do you see what you're doing? Rather than acknowledge we're harming many animals which are no doubt sentient, you're appealing to fringes to bolster an illogical argument. I'm not surprised - many carnists take refuge in the plant-killing argument as a last resort. It's fascinating what lows the human mind will reach to justify cruelty. And so what if animals kill other animals? Do you really think that's a reason to act the same? Why pick this behavior, and not the one in which animals commit infanticide or sniff each other's rear ends?
> You seem to believe you are superior to plants though
The only one I'm superior to is myself when I still paid for the abuse of animals.
>Humans don't breed, enslave and kill billions of starfish, crickets and worms.
But we do breed, enslave and kill trillions of carrots, apples, potatoes, tomatoes, etc
But again, you have made it clear you feel that some life is not as valuable, namely plant life - so it is morally acceptable from your view to kill plants but not animals because of the difference in the value of life.
Thats good for you but i am interested in hearing arguments from someone who doesn't just ignore uncomfortable facts.
The plant-killing argument is extremely trite and appealing to it to justify the animal holocaust just shows you are desperate for any reason to keep engaging in animal abuse. Please - do have the humility to read again and see just how ridiculous your arguments have been. Claiming vegetables are enslaved and killed is just silly and you know it. What's more, I've repeatedly told you more plants are killed for livestock feed, but somehow you choose not to address this apparent contradiction.
you actually completely fabricated what you think my views are, i'm justifying nothing and my position is still unstated.
I'm simply exploring a philosophical question, while you are obviously defending your lifestyle choices.
That philosophical question being how can one type of life be valued more than another, or how do you justify a moral position of life is precious while simultaneously ending life daily for nourishment. this is a quandary literally every human on the planet faces, no one is attacking veganism, or you , or your choices.
How you are missing that this is my argument, and continually projecting me as some one dimensional 'vegans are even worse than meat eaters' is quite confounding to me.
There is a very clear and obvious distinction between the plant and animal kingdoms. Any attempts to qualify both as the same when it comes to their destruction is just a coy way to rationalize unethical behavior. Like I said, even if it were true that plants feel pain the same as animals, one would still be compelled to go vegan, since animals "kill" more plants than people do by eating them directly.
> There is a very clear and obvious distinction between the plant and animal kingdoms.
Sure, but whether the things which make up that distinction have particular ethical significance is a different question. And I have yet to see any definition of sentience for which both of the following are true:
(1) It does, in fact, apply to all animals and no plants, and
(2) Most people would agree that it has ethical significance.
In fact, I haven't seen any definition of sentience for which even (1) alone is true.
> Like I said, even if it were true that plants feel pain the same as animals, one would still be compelled to go vegan, since animals "kill" more plants than people do by eating them directly.
That seems to a apply a utilitarian standard of ethics, not the categorical one which is usually in arguing that veganism is an ethical compulsion (under the categorical ethics usually applied to argue for veganism, recognizing plants as sentient would make eating either inexcusable, even if it were a survival necessity.)
Once you accept that its a utilitarian matter, determining that something is ethically demanded requires agreeing to a particular ethical calculus -- a method of aggregating utilities and disutilities experienced by different participants. And there's an infinite number of possible functions that can be used, and they can support any possible conclusion.
> under the categorical ethics usually applied to argue for veganism, recognizing plants as sentient would make eating either inexcusable
Veganism is the ethical position that animals should not be exploited for food, clothing and other purposes. If you want to start a Compassion for Carrots organization, be my guest, but please don't form conjecture on others' behalf. You've also not yet provided evidence for plants' sentience, so you haven't actually given reason for considering the abuse of animals to be ethical or acceptable.
oh so you ignored my central point all along adn instead took my philosophical question of all life vs some life, and decided to defend veganism against a phantom attack.
Well you win, veganism is definitely the superior lifestyle choice, you are a better person than everyone on earth who isnt vegan. There are zero philosophical or moral quandries that exist within veganism, especially with respect to the value of life.
A cow grazing a pasture is not killing the mice in that pasture. Its true that winter fodder (hay) requires cutting the field (three times over the summer). But that isn't the same as plowing, planting, cultivating and for some crops, digging to harvest. So grass-fed beef is absolutely several orders of magnitude less devastating to animal life. One cow is killed to feed several people. Instead of millions of rodents killed to provide potatoes.
The worldwide premeditated killings of 60 billion land animals in slaughterhouses and 90 billion marine animals in the waterways are diametrically opposed to the accidental tractor-killings in a field. Slaughterhouses intentionally kill animals for meat, dairy and egg-eaters. How many farmers do you know intentionally crushing gophers, mice and snakes with their John Deeres?
Every single mouse, snake and gopher in the field is killed by plowing, spraying, cultivating and harvesting. By the millions per section. The ground under the shade of a field of corn is essentially sterile. Enough denial; its absolutely disastrous to animal life to farm vegetables and grains.
Okay, but it's even more disastrous to animal life to farm animals. Over 150 billion animals are bred and killed on purpose. A billion is a thousand times more than a million, by the way. Using the argument that some animals are inadvertently killed as a byproduct of crop production, especially when the overwhelming majority of those crops are grown for livestock, is just logically fallacious and dishonest.
Hey a section is one square mile. So Iowa has over 50,000 sections. 90% under cultivation. Most for grain, not for animals. So in Iowa alone, we've about met that number. Add in California, Illinois, Nebraska and so on and we zoom past that number.
Of course we do. There are thousands of rodents for every cow. This is a silly discussion. Its a pity it makes Vegans seem responsible for billions of deaths, but there it is.
And I seriously doubt that 15 farm animals are killed for every man, woman and child on the planet. That's gotta be fiction.
Both everything I and you have said can easily be verified with simple Google searches. You are being dishonest if you think more animals are killed by vegans than meat, dairy and egg eaters, or just trying to start a flame war. Either way, I think you've learned some interesting things through our discussion and I hope you'll consider it with less personal bias in the future.
I hope you've learned something too. That nothing comes free; that just because you don't see the killing doesn't mean you're innocent. That the entire subject has no easy answers.
or you still have the exact same singular problem:
You kill things in order to survive.
Full stop.
Meat eaters, vegans, pescatarians, vegetarians, whatever - they all survive by killing other living things and consuming them.
I was wondering the opinion of someone who was making good passionate arguments against the consumption of meat on the basis that it is immoral to kill and eat living things.
I guess wondering how that user feels about this philosophical quandary is downvote worthy though
The definition of veganism is, a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose.
It's not about pursuing some ideal in which no one gets hurt. It's also ludicrous to argue that "killing" plants is in any way comparable to killing actual animals. Check out this site, it very accurately and in a straightforward manner discredits all of the arguments you've made against veganism in this thread so far - http://adaptt.org/veganism.html#
I'm responding directly to an argument based on it being morally wrong to kill living things, specifically to kill some living things but not others (cows but not golden retrievers).
I am not making arguments against veganism, i am asking a philosophical question in response to a moral position. Please understand i am not attacking you or your lifestyle
My argument was, again, how do you use a moral justification of 'killing things is wrong' to change from one lifestyle of killing things, to another lifestyle of killing different things?
Why is cow vs golden retriever so important, but golden retriever vs potato completely laughable? You are still ending life to nourish your body no matter what. Both a cow and a potato cause and have external costs as well (i would say methane from cows is less or equally concerning as pesticides)
> Why is cow vs golden retriever so important, but golden retriever vs potato completely laughable? You are still ending life to nourish your body no matter what.
This is what Jainists believe and they actually avoid root vegetables for this reason. I'd like to see you make the same argument for fruit, for example. Do you think "killing" a fruit is the same as killing a cow? Do you really think a fruit's life is "ended" when I bite into it? If so, you're just appealing to ridicule and I'm not sure this conversation is worth having.
> i would say methane from cows is less or equally concerning as pesticides
The methane emitted from cattle farming is literally one of the largest contributors to climate change. To say it's less concerning than the use of pesticides shows a deep ignorance of the contradicting evidence, or confusion.
>I'd like to see you make the same argument for fruit, for example.
Why is cow vs golden retriever so important, but golden retriever vs apple completely laughable? You are still ending life to nourish your body no matter what.
Oh and i doubt you will have that opinion if bees are eradicated worldwide due to pesticides and we all die off
Unnecessary for your personal survival? That's true, but it's a very limited perspective to take. Cockroaches are known to affect our species' health adversely (e.g., http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11240940). If you wish to reduce their and other insects' unnecessary suffering without compromising the interests of humans, a better thing to advocate for is that we use more humane pesticides (http://effective-altruism.com/ea/nx/humane_pesticides_as_the...), not that we refrain from killing them.
You move in to a new apartment. Your first night, at 2 am, you hear a noise. You turn on the bedside lamp and see several cockroaches scurry under your bed. What do you do?
I used to live in India, that's the norm. We lived with them. The trick is that there's other things that eat cockroaches, that we also lived with, so it doesn't get too much of an issue. A house is part of an ecosystem, not a sterile environment.
For the record, it's almost guaranteed that any rice you eat in India has had cockroaches in the rice sack. Not a lot you can do about it. That's why we wash and cook things.
Now, admitting that I'm largely ignorant about conditions in India, and recognizing that it's a very large country with wide variations--is it not the case that public health in India is generally worse than in more developed nations where e.g. cockroaches would be considered a pest to be eliminated, partially for health reasons? If so, could that attitude toward them be part of the reason for the worse public health? I'm asking out of curiosity; this is not an assertion. :)
Quite possibly. On the other hand... we have immune systems for a reason - I see people in my developed country now who seem to become ill every month, and I do wonder whether our insistence on keeping a close-to-sterile environment has something to do with that. And in any case, there's more pressing issues like the general lack of clean water, even in many cities - all water should be boiled, but that doesn't always happen.
Why would you not seal the sack? Seriously. That is what I do with food if I know there are roaches in the neighborhood. Trust me, no roaches are getting in my food.
They're great huge sacks of rice - you can maybe fold over the top, but short of putting duct tape over it every time you need more rice, there's no sealing to do. I'm sure many people do that anyway, but I wouldn't trust many restaurants to, nor many shops.
> Non-human animal activities should not provide a logical or moral foundation for our behavior
Why not?
What should provide a moral foundation for our behavior?
That's a trick question. There is no objective basis for morality. We can make it whatever we like, preferably optimizing our value preferences. As for me, I like meat, so I will continue to enjoy eating animals. On the other hand, I personally dislike unnecessary cruelty, so I am not adverse to treating farm-raised animals better, up to some point where the tradeoff between lots of cheap meat and well-treated animals starts looking bad for me. There is, of course, no objectively "correct" value-preferences either, but since humans are social animals, you should probably abide by the norms of your social group if you want to fit in. Morality as herd instinct in the individual and all.
> More importantly, we recognize that unlike animals, we cannot justify taking the life of a sentient being for no better reason than our personal dietary preferences.
Sure we can. I want to, and that's all the justification I need. What is your basis for claiming that I need some special justification?
There are victims which suffer as a consequence of your actions. I think that makes it clear the behavior is unethical. If "I want to" were all the justification needed, the world would be an even more terrible place to live. We wouldn't accept that excuse if made by a person kicking a dog, for example, so why should we for abuse of other non-human animal species?
Edit (can't directly reply):
> There's nothing objectively wrong or evil about suffering
There is plenty wrong with causing suffering. I think in the case of eating animals, society is quite detached from the experience, though. That's why we shy away from watching slaughterhouse videos, why we put pictures of happy cows on cartons of milk - why such an unbelievably rosy picture must be painted to justify ruthless and horrific violence taking place all the time. Anyway, I would like to share with you that it has been my experience watching those videos and learning more about how animals are treated for food and other purposes changed my perspective, and it might interest you, too. Earthlings is a powerful documentary, is available free on YouTube, and I recommend it.
> The only reason you and I wouldn't accept that argument about kicking a dog is because that goes against strong social norms our culture has about abusing pets.
Exactly! To the same point, the reason it is acceptable to raise and kill billions of animals are also social norms and culture. Is the hypocrisy of it all not apparent?
> I find the presumption of moral superiority repugnant, especially in an age where we should all know better.
It's appalling you don't recognize that not abusing sentient creatures is morally superior. Personally, I see this as a strong denial mechanism which you may be yet unaware of. Do check out the Earthlings documentary, it will really open your eyes.
It doesn't make it clear at all. There's nothing objectively wrong or evil about suffering, however most of us personally don't like it or however much some of us might empathize with the victims. You're simply restating your position based on your personal value preferences (such as 'suffering is evil') which are by no means universal and certainly not binding moral edicts.
The only reason you and I wouldn't accept that argument about kicking a dog is because that goes against strong social norms our culture has about abusing pets. That doesn't make our beliefs moral truths, or our arguments sound.
What you're advocating is that we change those norms to proscribe the eating of animals based on your value-preferences - you're advocating a change of our tastes, in both senses of the word. And you are not going to sway many people to make a fundamentally emotional decision with 'logical' or 'moral' reasoning, particularly when for many people the eating of meat (or even the killing of animals) is not only something they like but part of their cultural identity. Even so, people like me are still going to be steadfast in their opposition to your attempted revolution of social norms based simply on their value-preferences and because, frankly, I find the presumption of moral superiority repugnant, especially in an age where we should all know better.
There's nothing objectively wrong or evil about suffering
Nothing wrong or evil about human-inflicted suffering? So, what is objectively wrong or evil in this world? Give me some examples.
The only reason you and I wouldn't accept that argument about kicking a dog is because that goes against strong social norms our culture has about abusing pets.
That's really the only reason you see for this? So, anything that doesn't go against social norms is ethically acceptable? Are there no historical incidents where horrible things were done within the bounds of "social norms" that maybe make you question that belief? Is it always right, if popular opinion says it is?
> Nothing wrong or evil about human-inflicted suffering? So, what is objectively wrong or evil in this world? Give me some examples.
Nothing. That's my whole point. Can you tell me where we can see what is objective evil? Or is it all just ultimately based on our contemporary feelings that "oh, that's awful"?
> So, anything that doesn't go against social norms is ethically acceptable?
Correct, ethically acceptable is defined by your culture. If you're an ancient Aztec, human sacrifice is ethical. If you're a 21st century American, human sacrifice is not ethical.
> Are there no historical incidents where horrible things were done within the bounds of "social norms" that maybe make you question that belief?
No, because I'm not arrogant enough to declare myself somehow wiser and more able to see The Truth than the billions of humans who have lived on this earth over the past two million years who were also convinced they alone knew the truth of right and wrong while all holding very different moral beliefs from one another. Why do you think you're different? If there is a "true" morality, it is clearly not accessible to mere mortals by reason.
"Can you tell me where we can see what is objective evil? Or is it all just ultimately based on our contemporary feelings that "oh, that's awful"?"
My particular ethics are (mostly) utilitarian in nature. Maximizing happiness and minimizing suffering, with a recognition that we live in a world of limited resources and limited understanding of both happiness and suffering. But, it's relatively easy to recognize suffering, so I try to shape my life in such a way that the amount of suffering I cause is minimized. I would argue that suffering is a more objective measure than popular opinion, though neither is perfect, and both rely on my ability to understand what other people or sentient beings are experiencing and thinking.
"No, because I'm not arrogant enough to declare myself somehow wiser and more able to see The Truth than the billions of humans who have lived on this earth over the past two million years"
But, arrogant enough to dismiss thousands of years of philosophers on the topic of ethics. Got it.
Frankly, I find your belief on this repugnant, and disturbing. I'm not sure how to even have a conversation about ethics with someone who denies the very existence of ethical behavior, instead replacing it with adherence to popular opinion (and demanding objectivity while relying on something as shifting and difficult to observe as the beliefs of large groups of people).
Why? Utilitarianism is fine, but the variable you choose to optimize and why is precisely what is subjective. Why optimize for happiness and not order? Or security? Or liberty? Or really, anything else? Simply because you prefer it.
> But, arrogant enough to dismiss thousands of years of philosophers on the topic of ethics. Got it.
Are you sure you're not picking and choosing your philosophers, and picking and choosing what they had to say on the subject? While there has been an abundance of philosophers writing reams and reams on the subject, I think you might find the majority of them simply wrote to extol a particular brand of norms (usually the imagined ones of their past) without justifying them on any solid rational basis. A careful examination of these 'ethics' generally finds they're quite distinct from what a 21st century westerner actually regards as ethical. There have also been plenty of philosophers saying exactly what I am saying.
> I'm not sure how to even have a conversation about ethics with someone who denies the very existence of ethical behavior, instead replacing it with adherence to popular opinion (and demanding objectivity while relying on something as shifting and difficult to observe as the beliefs of large groups of people).
The fortunate thing is that the product of normal socialization is a human being who has already been instilled with the norms that society wants it to hold and therefore most people are in agreement about the broad strokes of what is right and wrong. And if they haven't been convinced, then ideally the law keeps them in check. Naturally, because our society is so large and there are so many influences on people from different perspectives, and because societal norms are fundamentally fuzzy, people can argue for days about whether particular things are right or wrong.
And yes, cataloging the changing norms of societies is an incredible and fascinating enterprise that, even more than a hundred years from its real beginning, still has a very long way to go.
In general, you should interpret what I'm writing as descriptive, not prescriptive.
Unfortunately I waited too long to edit a response to your edit, so I have to engage in the discourtesy of double posting. :)
> There is plenty wrong with causing suffering.
What, specifically? What makes it wrong?
> I think in the case of eating animals, society is quite detached from the experience, though. That's why we shy away from watching slaughterhouse videos, why we put pictures of happy cows on cartons of milk - why such an unbelievably rosy picture must be painted to justify ruthless and horrific violence taking place all the time.
For millions of years, most people hunted down and slaughtered their own food. In many cases the animals suffered horribly, even as badly or worse than they do in our industrial farming environments.
I agree that most people are far removed from the experience of the suffering and killing of farm animals. I think that's exactly why people like you exist. Most people are raised up surrounded by puppies and kittens, not food animals, and grow up watching Disney movies full of friendly, talking animals. The majority of modern western society is far removed from the reality of life. No surprise that when confronted with excerpts from it, they respond with horror, it being utterly at odds with their prior experience.
> To the same point, the reason it is acceptable to raise and kill billions of animals are also social norms and culture. Is the hypocrisy of it all not apparent?
No. There is no larger moral framework. Morality is a social phenomena that manifests in arbitrary ways, though with humans (as with other social animals) it will always tend to some degree of in-group altrusim. There is no hypocrisy to be had because it is fundamentally arbitrary.
> It's appalling you don't recognize that not abusing sentient creatures is morally superior
This is my point. Our culturally contextual blinders generally prevent us from coming to objective conclusions about right and wrong. There is no objective right and wrong. There is no telescope science can use to inform us about moral reality. There are no sacred laws inscribed on our souls by God. Innumerable philosophers have tried to ground morality in something objective and all of them failed. This is why you keep repeating that the suffering and killing of animals is wrong, but cannot explain to me why this is so, except that is appalling that I need an explanation. It is a reality for you, insofar as it is a reflection of your feelings and tastes, but your feelings and tastes are not my feelings and tastes nor at they anyone else's; they are yours alone. History is the single best teacher of the subjectivity of morality.
There's nothing wrong (in my opinion) with having the feelings and tastes you do (and therefore the moral-philosphical positions), but you cannot convince me, or people like me, of your position by stamping your feet and asserting a moral superiority that not only does not exist but cannot exist.
> Personally, I see this as a strong denial mechanism which you may be yet unaware of.
My moral nihilism, or whatever you might choose to label it, came to fruition long before I had the vaguest idea of defending the eating of animals. Nor do I feel particularly strongly on the subject; if a law was passed tomorrow I would chiefly be annoyed at the difficulty of getting the protein/calorie ratio demanded by my workout and diet regimen.
I am not interested in the documentary, having seen plenty of examples of gratuitous animal cruelty myself, and having killed animals (legally) myself. There is no amount of suffering that a video could show me that would change my mind because I deny that the suffering is inherently wrong. I merely prefer that the suffering of animals be minimized to the extent that it can be done without raising the cost of meat significantly.
It seems to me, you deny objective ethics when it conveniently justifies your behavior. Only a very sad and miserable person must beg for an explanation as to why inflicting suffering is wrong. Perhaps you are yourself trapped in a cycle of fear, apathy and pain, so you don't recognize it in others? I'm not really sure what to make of it. It's quite bizarre when someone outright denies others' will not to be abused. To paraphrase another reply, the arrogance is stinky and quite palpable. I hope you will have the humility to watch the documentary I suggested after all, and perhaps even feel a little ashamed of some of the things you've said in your post.
> It seems to me, you deny objective ethics when it conveniently justifies your behavior.
I deny objective ethics always, regardless of whether it justifies my behavior.
> Only a very sad and miserable person must beg for an explanation as to why inflicting suffering is wrong.
This is what I mean. There is no real explanation as to why inflicting suffering is inherently wrong, so the natural resort (probably the evolved retort) is to assume I'm evil/wicked/sad/miserable. That's the natural response to anyone who doesn't fit in the prescribed norms, but that of course does not make it objective.
> Perhaps you are yourself trapped in a cycle of fear, apathy and pain, so you don't recognize it in others?
Well, I feel happy. :)
There is no connection between virtuosity and happiness, though many ancient writers dearly wished there was, unless society consistently punishes people who violate norms. That's been known at least since Ecclesiastes.
> I hope you will have the humility to watch the documentary I suggested after all,
Even disregarding what I said, I don't watch documentaries. Any documentary. It takes too much time for too little content that is too easily edited into propaganda, and though I don't think it is the case here, they are too often the sources touted by conspiracy theorists.
I recommend reading something more outside of your stream, perhaps Zhuangzhi or Nietzsche.
The assumption in every culture I've lived in has been that eating animals and their byproducts is not only acceptable, but the right thing to do. That is the default; the "presupposed" belief. But, it is a belief that requires no evidence to be accepted by the majority of people.
When shown evidence that animals experience suffering because of this behavior, and when shown evidence that animal agriculture is disastrous for the environment, you have evidence on which to make decisions from an ethical perspective, and not merely a cultural history perspective. What you do with that evidence is up to you, of course; the law will likely never, in our lifetimes, be strict enough to prevent animal suffering or environmental catastrophe. So, it's your decision to participate in it, or not, and to what degree.
First, condescending backslapping is rude and rationalization of ignorance is dumb.
The sheer volume of methane from animal production is raising the temperature of the planet dangerously.
Next, the Petri dish that is playing Russian Roulette by exhausing antibiotics and incubating the next pandemic are the two final nails in the coffin of meat.
Good luck with that belief that energy-intensive lifestyle should or can scale to 10 billion people.
We should be setting a better example for developing nations and choosing wiser diet and lifestyle behaviors which won't doom us to move entire cities inland.
Exactly. I think authors understand this too. The problem is that they want to make their article popular and get more citations, that is why they add this BS about consciousness to their article.
What is sad is that most comments on HN are about "feelings" that their pet fish has and how fscking happy they are when fed.
I think it does. The study authors present evidence that fish, as measured by a stress hyperthermia response, respond in a manner consistent with an emotional response.
As a recanted neurobiologist, I find that surprising and I'm willing to go along with the headline. It would be even more surprising (to me, at least) to find that something as fundamental as emotional response were not to be found in more primitive branches of the phylogenetic tree.
I don't buy it. If I attach a switch to an incandescent light bulb, then the bulb will get hot if I press the switch. If I press the switch enough, the light bulb will burn out. But it would not be accurate to say that the light bulb "died of stress" or that this was evidence that the light bulb could "feel" anything. It certainly doesn't prove the light bulb is conscious.
Humans try so hard to believe consciousnesse is boolean, like "humans have it" and "every other living thing does not" is almost funny. I have news for nerds,, conciseness is a float, imprecition and all.
So cannibalism and eating dolphins is way more closer than the average human is comfortable with, so people like to err on the lest uncomfortable side.
While true that doesn't progress the discussion. The question is whether this evidence suggests the floating point number assigned to fish should be higher. That a lightbulb at ~0.0 consciousness could perform similarly is a good reason to give little weight to this study. What's the counterargument?
Is there no C line in the animal kingdom? If so we're saying spiders and cockroaches are conscious? Surely there's a distinction, and nobody really doubts elephants, dolphins and great apes, but we can clearly see the difference in quality of C. So if there is some kind of line or distinction within the animal kingdom, where would it be? Are insects the end of mechanical behavior? Or could that line extend to small fish and crustaceans? I think the article is using the word "feeling" a little too freely here. By the same measure, There could be an experiment suggesting cockroaches get stressed, and if so, would we be so quick to say they have feelings?
The problem is that consciousness is such a loaded concept. It can mean higher-order thought, self-awareness, ability to feel emotions, the phenomenon of subjective experience itself, and more. I find that most conversations about it involve lots of talking past each other.
But according to the article stress hyperthemia is one trait used to identify consciousness. Is consciousness the same as "having feelings"?
>One particular trait used to identify consciousness, which was previously thought to be absent in fish, is the capacity for stress-induced hyperthermia or “emotional fever”. This is a physical reaction similar to a fever caused by infection, but in this case the trigger is a stressful situation. Basically, the body gets warmer in response to stress.
I googled stress-induced hyperthermia and got very little.
That would imply that if it's a marker for consciousness it's not a well accepted one. Maybe it's one marker among many, but certainly not enough to support the HN title "Fish have feeling".
And simply on a logical level I'm not seeing the connection between stress causing heat, and consciousness.
Animals obviously can get stressed, and animals obviously can have a fever. I'm not seeing why consciousness is necessary to link the two.
Which is, in the literature about animals and feelings, considered evidence that an animal may have feelings. Did we read the same article? It says quite plainly that this response is considered evidence of feelings in animals, and the supposed lack of this response in fish was evidence that fish did not have feelings.
So, if the lack of response (in previous measurements) was considered evidence against fish having feelings, why would this better experiment, which did observe the response in fish, not be considered evidence of fish having feelings?
Because "feelings" is undefined. If the only evidence of having/not having "feelings" in fish is the increase of temperature, why not simply talk about the increase of temperature, without inventing "feelings"? Not inventing non-material objects unless something is impossible to explain without them is the basis of science, it is called Occam's razor.
My server also increases temperature under high load. Should I conjecture that it has feelings?
It is one of many aspects of the fish mind mentioned in the article; things like developing memories, comparing oneself to other fish, exhibiting preferences, etc. Each of them alone may not be enough to argue "fish have feelings" or "fish can think" or "fish are sentient beings", but they are evidence of those things. They don't make it so, but they hint at something that it is hard to figure out without a number of data points.
Occam's razor can just as easily be applied here to come to a conclusion that is opposite your conclusion.
Fish do things that mammals (humans) do. We know that mammals do those things (stress fever) because they are experiencing things in a way at least somewhat comparable to the way we experience them (they are experiencing discomfort and fear and their body is responding to it, just as ours do). What is the simpler explanation here?
1. Your conjecture that fish are utterly and completely different from other living things that exhibit this response and that they are exhibiting this response for reasons unlike our reasons (i.e. they aren't experiencing discomfort and fear, but are still heating up like we do).
2. They're more like other sentient beings than we'd previously assumed, and are experiencing things in some ways similarly.
In short: If you're coming at this with the strongly held belief that fish are impossibly different from humans and can't possibly have feelings, you would interpret your way. But, if you're coming at it with no strongly held beliefs on the subject, and you see a fish behave in ways that indicate they are sentient and experience suffering like other animals...well, you assume the responses and behaviors are because they are kinda like those other animals.
Your assumption (that this response has no relation to the similar response in mammals) requires a new explanation for why the response happens. Thus, it seems to not be the simplest explanation (to me).
> Occam's razor can just as easily be applied here to come to a conclusion that is opposite your conclusion.
I don't conclude that fish don't have feelings and human have. What I say is that "feelings" and "experiencing" are undefined terms. So, both statements "fish have feelings" and "fish don't have feelings" are meaningless.
> Your assumption (that this response has no relation to the similar response in mammals)requires a new explanation for why the response happens.
I didn't assume that.
"Experiencing fear" is not an explanation for heating. The real explanation requires less abstraction, modelling organism as close to physics as possible, explaining biological processes that happen inside, not just comparing fish to mammals in a way that is more abstract than biology itself.
> Thus, it seems to not be the simplest explanation (to me).
Occam's razor is not about the simplest explanation. The simplest explanation for everything is "god will". Just as inventing "god" is simpler, inventing "fear", "feelings", "mind" and other non-material things is simpler, but unnecessary and does not explain anything really.
See, I never said that fish does not have feelings or that fish have feelings. I think it is meaningless.
"Feelings" is an abstraction that makes it easier to explain human behaviour. With fish, asking questions like "does it have feelings", "does it have free will", "is it conscious" etc. is just the same as asking the same questions about machines: it does not help you to make any decisions about how to interact with it, so it does not matter.
So, to extend the question I asked before: Does that mean because we cannot ever really know what goes on in another human's mind, does that mean human "feelings", "free will", or "consciousness", are meaningless and does not help us make decisions about how to interact with other human beings?
The HN title is the one the BBC had used in linking to the article from their homepage; it made sense to me and so I went with it for the HN post (I didn't actually notice until afterwards that the title in the article itself was different). Hope that helps clear up the reasoning behind it.
Speaking as one, I don't avoid meat because I oppose in all cases the killing of animals for human consumption. I'm a pescetarian because I think the environmental impact of industrial agriculture, both in emissions and in land and water use, is unnecessarily large. Similarly, I try to mostly avoid milk for the most part, which a lot of vegetarians who wouldn't touch fish don't seem to have any objection to...
The whole article is about undefined "consciousness". As the article itself says, it is "loosely defined as an ability to experience thoughts and emotions".
I wonder why HN would discuss "mind", "consciousness", "being an observer", etc. All these terms are no different from religious "soul", philosophical "qualia", they are equally undefined.
At this point of progress in AI and computing I would expect hackers to study how intelligence invents these terms [2], not falling for this mistake themselves. It was suggested that AI would become "confused and as stubborn as are men in their convictions about mind-matter, consciousness, free will, and the like" at the beginning of AI development [3]. I would be more interested in study of how AI or more intelligent animals, such as monkeys, develop religion and "mind"-like terms.
The article itself [4] is about stress-induced hyperthermia (SIH). It proves that fish increases temperature and moves to more warm water in response to stress. It is not too interesting for HN. Instead, synonym "emotional fever" is used for SIH and the conclusion is made that fish is capable of emotion and everyone happily discusses meaningless "emotions", "consciousness" and the like.
Of course they do,
our Betta gets as excited as a puppy every morning when we show up to feed him.
Each one we have had over the years has had a distinct personality.
> our Betta gets as excited as a puppy every morning when we show up to feed him
I don't think that really supports the theory of fish having feelings. I'm not sure it requires feelings to respond to repeated stimuli in a way to generates a more advantageous outcome. That's not to say fish don't have feelings, just that I'm not sure this is necessarily good evidence.
> Each one we have had over the years has had a distinct personality
That seems more likely to be indicative of feelings/consciousness in my eyes. Personality, specifically different personalities in the same type of organism, would indicate to me complex learned behavior (what else is personality but that?).
How can one support the theory of people having feelings, except for assuming that people feel more or less what you feel yourself? Unless you can experience others' feelings yourself somehow, you can always call everyone else's behavior "responses to repeated stimuli in a way that generates a more advantageous outcome." Personality is no different (so different fish, or people, have a different strategy of generating advantageous outcomes - learned or innate, it indicates some degree of complexity, but not "feelings.")
The whole subject of "feelings" is kinda thorny as long as you either subscribe to a worldview where there's no real difference between inanimate and living objects (it's all just a bunch of atoms, it just so happens that some bunches move and some are stationary), or, alternatively, if you do believe in such a difference but have nothing but a gut feeling to rely on when defining the limit between "machines" and "feeling beings." Which means it's a thorny issue for, well, most of us.
At one end of the spectrum we have single celled organisms that respond to stimuli in specific, preprogrammed ways. At the other end of the spectrum (as far as we know), we have humans, with conscious thought, memory and feelings that guide us to our responses. I think of feelings as just another, albeit more advanced and nuanced, feedback system in the larger system that guides us. I think certain actions are easier to achieve with more complex systems (such as those that include rational thought and or emotions). For example, self sacrifice, working for a group goal, or prioritizing your offspring over yourself. It's possible instinct might work in some of these cases, but I'm also not sure how instinct differs from emotion in some cases.
So, what I meant was that I'm not sure response to feeding, or imminent feeding necessarily shows of any of the mechanisms I would associate emotions, in my naive understanding of the subject, purely on the basis that I think a similar response could be achieved without emotions. I thin human behavior is complex enough that emotions are evident in most cases, even on short observation. For example, viewing feeding in humans with more than a few individuals would probably show common groupings between the humans after just a short while. While it's possible that this could be the result of extremely complex or finely tuned automata, it's more likely in my eyes that there are more complex feedback mechanisms in place (which to be fair, could easily be classified under "extremely complex automata").
In short, I don't place a huge importance on emotions, as I think they are just an extra mechanism that develops in complex feedback systems for a more advantageous set of responses to stimuli. That said, I think we can look at how organisms respond to stimuli and make educated guesses as to whether emotions are in play or not, and to what degree. I also don't believe there's any real distinction between a machine and a human being. We've just developed feedback mechanisms so complex that they've generated new emergent behavior.
It's not without its merits, but the question then remains whether emacs suffers when closed if it accumulated enough state for Steve Yegge to consider it "conscious" the way humans are.
Just read the abstract of the article [1]: "It has been suggested that the capacity for emotional fever evolved only in amniotes (mammals, birds and reptiles), in association with the evolution of consciousness in these groups. According to this view, lack of emotional fever in fishes reflects a lack of consciousness."
The article is about "emotional fever", defined as "a transient rise in body temperature shown in response to a variety of stressors". Article shows that fish can show this behaviour. On the other hand, the "lack of consciousness" or its existence, is not proven. It is just a hypothesis, based on some "view", expressed in [2].
I make it an effort to respect all living things -- I'm adverse to killing anything that doesn't pose a threat to me or my family. I catch lizards and bugs and mice in my house -- I take them outside and let them go. Most spiders are welcome, but the venomous ones do get the boot. I sometimes will try to capture even the dangerous ones and take them far enough away that they are no longer a threat.
I don't take it to an extreme -- I regularly splatter bugs on the windshield of my car. Though, it's fun to view it from the prospective of a potentially conscious bug, fighting the invasion of the scourge of the giant genocidal automobiles, bugs suicidally hurtling themselves at the attackers in a futile attempt to defeat them. I also don't extend the courtesy to plants.
Why? Life is precious and rare, regardless of what form it's in. Just the fact that we don't know if these creatures have a consciousness is enough for me. Someone with an IQ of 1 deserves to live as much as anyone else.
If you look at both quadrupeds and bipeds, you'll see around the time they evolved an interrim period in which creatures existed that were not really quadrupeds or bipeds.
Evolutionary success creates only the illusion of lines, none really exist.
You take the word 'line' too literally here, it just means a boundary.
Reality has very few lines.
Using an unnecessarily strict definition for line, you'll find there is almost nothing in the universe that is perfectly distinct:
There are no species, no genders, no living things, dead things, no discrete individuals, not even any discrete objects, no colors. Nothing is high, nothing is low, nothing is dark, nothing is bright; nothing is anything.
We can obviously draw a boundary between quadrupeds and bipeds -- we're doing it the second we use the words. Whether that boundary is absolute is not valuable.
The interesting question isn't "Can we argue for a continuum of awareness between insects and humans?" That part is easy.
The interesting part is, "Do we know enough about consciousness to describe a meaningful boundary between them?"
