Vegan for like 12 years now.

Excellent.

Speciesism cannot be held up without leading to a slippery slope. — darthbarracuda

But only humans have articulate speech and so a capacity to master the habits of thought that we would associate with being self-conscious. For instance, we can fear our death. We can even fear the death of those animals particularly dear to us. So in reality there is a discontinuity there that would make a difference.

And then there is also a proximity argument. You may not like it, but it seems quite rational to be most concerned with everything that is closest to us. If a plane crashes in a foreign land, it is natural to care most about any tourists from our home country. And this is because it is only sensible to care the most about what we most directly can affect (or be affected by). It is irrational to just have a free-floating abstract empathy, regardless of differences in proximity.

So your starting point is a presumption of a world without gradations. And yet gradations exist. Any rational ethics would take account of the fact we are actually people embedded in a complex world, not souls living in moral Platonia.

But only humans have articulate speech and so a capacity to master the habits of thought that we would associate with being self-conscious. For instance, we can fear our death. We can even fear the death of those animals particularly dear to us. So in reality there is a discontinuity there that would make a difference. — apokrisis

There is not. You are asserting that propositional mental content is required for self-consciousness, or any sort of experience at all for that matter, when this is quite a big issue and actually has a lot going against it. Furthermore, humans are not the only ones with language - look at birds, dolphins, whales, primates, etc. They may not be as refined or poetic (capable of metaphors) as ours, but they act as a complex signalling device that offers the hypothesis that they realize who they are and that others like them exist.

In any case, it is clear from the behavior of animals that many, if not most, fear death, which is why suicide is almost unheard of outside of human civilization. It is clear that animals react to painful stimuli in similar ways that we do. It is clear they nurture their young and care about the pack. And until we have good evidence that animals aren't conscious in some sense (evidence is leaning the other way), it would be wise to act as if they do have consciousness.

And then there is also a proximity argument. You may not like it, but it seems quite rational to be most concerned with everything that is closest to us. If a plane crashes in a foreign land, it is natural to care most about any tourists from our home country. And this is because it is only sensible to care the most about what we most directly can affect (or be affected by). It is irrational to just have a free-floating abstract empathy, regardless of differences in proximity. — apokrisis

I disagree. Hume pointed out how proximity matters in empathy, but he failed to recognize economic proximity. The super rich ignore the super poor right outside their doorstep. It's only natural to care for one's family - but tell that to Marx and see how he reacts.

Bottom line here is that appeals to proximity or emotional support groups (like nationalism) is tribalism, a worn-out doctrine that can and should be replaced by a cosmopolitanism.

So your starting point is a presumption of a world without gradations. And yet gradations exist. Any rational ethics would take account of the fact we are actually people embedded in a complex world, not souls living in moral Platonia. — apokrisis

I'm not really sure what you're saying here, but from what I can tell you are associating comfort with morality. So long as we follow the rules of the universe and obey our instinctual programming, we're being moral. Moral conventionalism, i.e. common-sense morality, rife with contradictions and arbitrary constraints on action.

So long as we follow the rules of the universe and obey our instinctual programming, we're being moral. — DarthBarracuda

What 'rules of the Universe' are you referring to? Scientific law? And 'being moral' requires deliberation, to the extent one 'obeys instinctual programming' then you're no different to animals, and there's no morality involved. Indeed the fact tha we can reflect on and amend our course of action, is one of the fundamental ways we differ from animals.

It makes no sense for a biologist to say that some particular animal should be more cooperative, much less to claim that an entire species ought to aim for some degree of altruism. If we decide that we should neither “dissolve society” through extreme selfishness, as Wilson puts it, nor become “angelic robots” like ants, we are making an ethical judgment, not a biological one. Likewise, from a biological perspective it has no significance to claim that I should be more generous than I usually am, or that a tyrant ought to be deposed and tried. In short, a purely evolutionary ethics makes ethical discourse meaningless.

Richard Polt, Anything but Human.

It's not as much reason as pride that makes me wish to not enslave, exploit, and harm things that these terms can be meaningfully applied to for my convenience or pleasure. I'm above that. I don't need to do that, I'll take the inconvenience, because I can.

You are asserting that propositional mental content is required for self-consciousness, or any sort of experience at all for that matter, — darthbarracuda

No. On the basis of the science, I say that animals of course have experiences and can suffer (or enjoy). But also that it is clear that self-consciousness is a socially-evolved linguistic habit. So only humans can worry about things in an abstract fashion, viewing their own existence through a culturally-constructed lens.

Furthermore, humans are not the only ones with language - look at birds, dolphins, whales, primates, etc. — darthbarracuda

Humans are the only ones with articulate language, as I say. The difference is in the capacity for grammatical structure and hence actually "rational" or abstracted trains of thought.

In any case, it is clear from the behavior of animals that many, if not most, fear death, which is why suicide is almost unheard of outside of human civilization. — darthbarracuda

Nonsense. Animals don't contemplate suicide because they are not equipped for that kind of (socially constructed) kind of thinking about the fact of their own existence.

They don't "fear death", even if of course they are biologically wired to act in ways that promote their own survival.

It is clear that animals react to painful stimuli in similar ways that we do. It is clear they nurture their young and care about the pack. And until we have good evidence that animals aren't conscious in some sense (evidence is leaning the other way), it would be wise to act as if they do have consciousness. — darthbarracuda

Again, I am the first to say animals are aware. But it is a plugged into the moment or extrospective awareness. Humans have grammatical speech and so a new level of abstract symbolic thought.

The super rich ignore the super poor right outside their doorstep. — darthbarracuda

That's not so hard if they live in a gated community with security and are tightly connected to a super rich view of life in which the poor only have themselves to blame for their poverty.

So I would hardly condone what you describe, but it is not a good example of why proximity is a relevant fact.

It's only natural to care for one's family — darthbarracuda

You got it. And from there, your extended family, your neighbours, your town, your nation. Or however else your social existence is in fact hierarchically organised in terms of co-dependent interactions.

It is not a bad thing. It would be irrational not to be most interested in those with whom there is the most common interests. Its normal social organisation.

Bottom line here is that appeals to proximity or emotional support groups (like nationalism) is tribalism, a worn-out doctrine that can and should be replaced by a cosmopolitanism. — darthbarracuda

That's my point. The loss of social cohesion is one of modern society's moral problems. Once people start caring more about highly abstracted wrongs than the wrongs they can see right under their nose, then things get out of kilter.

Cosmopolitanism presents no issue here as the proximity principle does not stop you have some generic views about humanity as a whole. Given that we are 7 billion people now crowded onto one small planet, cosmopolitanism is indeed a clear necessity.

Yet still, it matters that we live in structured fashion - that's what morality is all about. And it is the nature of that structure which I am addressing.

I'm not really sure what you're saying here, but from what I can tell you are associating comfort with morality. — darthbarracuda

No need to jump ahead to any goals. I'm just talking about the fact that there are discontinuities that mark the continuity of the moral landscape.

I take the naturalistic view and so "it is all one cosmos". But then there is also a clear structure - an emergent hierarchical organisation, a self-balancing complexity - that is also part of this naturalness. And it would thus be only natural for that ontology to inform any moral reasoning.

We know what is natural. The debate then is whether to remain consistent with that or to strike off in a different direction because it is "reasonable" ... then supplying a good reason for deviating from nature.

It's interesting how most of us, including the participants in this thread, drift from saying 'non-human animals' to mistakenly saying 'animals' - by which we mean all animal life but humans. We are like them; oh, but we aren't.

This drift suggests to me that we find it hard to focus our rationality on the issue in question. We eat, experiment on and use for work and pet-loving leisure non-human animals. How shall we speak with any clear-sightedness about our attitude to them? We find it hard to imagine a commonality between 'us' and 'them', even if we theorise since Darwin that we abstractly accept there is a continuity.

I don't subscribe to an -ism like the op's - I'm not even sure that 'species' is that well-defined - but I completely agree on the benefits of rethinking our role in the ecology of where we live, and what respect we give to other creatures and the wider world we're in. We find it hard to imagine a finitude to the resources we exploit (and this includes other animals), so the Economics we live by imagines ravenous appetites and endless alternative sources of supply. But there are limits to appetites and souorces of supply, our Economics is mistaken in the long run. A shift in mindset would enable us to live more harmoniously with the earth . Greater respect for fellow animals would be one part of such a shift.

What 'rules of the Universe' are you referring to? Scientific law? And 'being moral' requires deliberation, to the extent one 'obeys instinctual programming' then you're no different to animals, and there's no morality involved. Indeed the fact tha we can reflect on and amend our course of action, is one of the fundamental ways we differ from animals. — Wayfarer

Yes, I find it odd that even those who super-anthropomorphise animals to the extent that they regard them as a sort of nobler human (thinking of many pet owners here, and even some scientists) rarely, if ever, admonish them for immoral behaviour, or for eating meat.

In other words, speciesism, just like its relatives, is a form of oppression; it is the disregard and domination of the animal kingdom simply because we can, and because it benefits us. Man is the pinnacle of existence - endowed by God himself as the image of himself, or endowed by the universe as the perfect machine of efficiency. In any case, this makes God or the universe particularly sinister in nature.

No, I cannot see any justification for speciesism. The exploitation of animals for profit (slavery) or consumption (murder), under some of the most inhumane conditions (abuse), is disgusting. This is not only an emotional argument, but a rational one - it is, under our modern concepts of equality, disgusting that animals are treated this way. The unnecessary hunting of animals for entertainment (murder), the experimentation of animals for "scientific progress" (torture), the disregard of the plight of wild animals (neglect) from disease, predation, or natural disaster, the ownership of animals for entertainment (slavery), etc - all of these result from an inability to empathize with animals of different species. — darthbarracuda

I couldn't help but laugh when I read this. It's no surprise that the white privilege mentality drives ideas like this. What is labeled as a fight against racism becomes racist itself as it paints a certain majority group with a broad brush - labeling all whites as racist.

Now all humans are speciests. All humans are at fault for being speciests while not acknowledging that all other animals are also speciests. Those damn speciests lions are always hunting down and eating those poor antelopes and those speciests bees won't have anything to do with those spiders. And why won't that armadillo have sex with me - a human? - it only has sex with other armadillos. It must be a speciest.

The fact is that even if you eradicated speciesm from humans you have only made a small dent in specieism as a whole. How are you going to change the minds of all those other animals and if you don't think it is necessary to do so, then you really aren't against specieism - just as Black Lives Matter isn't about all black lives - only about black lives ended by cops.

This is not only an emotional argument, but a rational one - it is, under our modern concepts of equality, disgusting that animals are treated this way. The unnecessary hunting of animals for entertainment (murder), the experimentation of animals for "scientific progress" (torture), the disregard of the plight of wild animals (neglect) from disease, predation, or natural disaster, the ownership of animals for entertainment (slavery), etc - all of these result from an inability to empathize with animals of different species. — darthbarracuda

Disgust is an emotion, as is empathy. So how is it a rational argument?

Disgust is an emotion — Michael

There is very strong evidence to the effect that disgust is entirely a learned behaviour. We are disgusted by what we are taught to be disgusted by. Hence, the lack of disgust demonstrated by infants, and the huge differences in what is found disgusting across the world. So it is not unreasonable to see this as rational matter. That doesn't, of course, mean that the conclusions reached are right! Personally I find the argument to be a load of dingo's kidneys (mmmmm, kidneys - this calls for a fry-up tonight!)

Its merely a political argument, rather than a philosophical one. Sexism, racism, speciesism, etc. are all concepts that gained popular recognition with the invention of human rights which only emerged as a political movement due to modern technology turning the ancient practice of slavery into a nightmare on a grand scale. The average life expectancy of slaves working in the cane fields, for example, was five years, yet, they were so cheap it was still worth shipping them thousands of miles and losing up to half of them on the journey alone.

Notably, it was also money behind the adoption of human rights with the industrial north merely taking advantage of another opportunity to exploit the cotton farmers of the south. Something like 80% of Americans at the time were against freeing the slaves and when the constitution was changed to grant them equal rights as citizens the first thing those with money did was to insist it be interpreted as meaning corporations are people.

The idea that sexism, racism, etc. have been eliminated is laughable. In fact, there are an estimated 350 million slaves in the world today and even in the state of Louisiana women are still making 66c on the dollar for the same work as men. Nor has communism provided any sort of viable alternative to the problem of money and power doing all driving and, until it is resolved, progress will remain piecemeal at best.

Perhaps the best argument today against speciesism and allowing money to continue to do all the driving is the simple fact that within twenty years commercial fishing will become impossible due to their no longer being enough wild fish left in the oceans while, within fifty, every wild land animal larger than dog is projected to become either extinct or only exist in zoos. Humanity is killing itself and ranting and raving about morality or whatever has proven to be all but totally useless. What we require is something that can compete better against the mindless practice of merely following the money wherever it leads.

More and more empirical research, however, is supporting the theory that a vast amount of vertebrates, and even invertebrates, have a phenomenal consciousness and sentience. — darthbarracuda

I don't agree that empirical research can actually demonstrate this.

I don't have a problem assuming that some non-human animals have consciousness. I definitely assume that.

But I don't consider non-human animals persons on the same level as human animals. That's not a factual matter. It's an issue of how I think about non-human animals versus human animals and what I require to consider animals persons in the way that I consider humans persons.

Of course, I'm a subjectivist/an individual-oriented relativist on ethics anyway. I don't have any ethical problem with keeping animals as pets, keeping them in zoos, having them perform in circuses, using them for meat, etc.

rarely, if ever, admonish them for immoral behaviour, or for eating meat. — tom

One of the points of abolishing speciesism is becoming an active role in the ecosystem - i.e. intervening and eliminating predation, helping diseased animals, etc.

Again, I am the first to say animals are aware. But it is a plugged into the moment or extrospective awareness. Humans have grammatical speech and so a new level of abstract symbolic thought. — apokrisis

Non-human animals are not capable of higher level thought process at the tier of humans, so they cannot be seriously expected to be moral agents. They can't even vote.

Yet they can suffer, and that's what matters. Many non-human animals have intellectual abilities on par or superior to babies, toddlers, and the mentally infirm. Yet these animals are often not seen as morally important.

Nonsense. Animals don't contemplate suicide because they are not equipped for that kind of (socially constructed) kind of thinking about the fact of their own existence. — apokrisis

This is not correct. Many animals are capable of experiencing depression. Look at dogs who lose their owners, they mope about and are unable to be cheered up. Or a mother sheep who loses her offspring.

Penguins actually have been recorded to kill themselves. If they cannot find a mate, they walk into the ice desert of Antarctica and die.

So to mitigate the suffering of non-human animals because they lack socially constructed propositional language is, as I see it, dogmatic and narrow-minded.

You got it. And from there, your extended family, your neighbours, your town, your nation. Or however else your social existence is in fact hierarchically organised in terms of co-dependent interactions.

It is not a bad thing. It would be irrational not to be most interested in those with whom there is the most common interests. Its normal social organisation. — apokrisis

Right, but there's a difference between rational egoism and ethical altruism. Shelly spends an entire book debunking the notion that rational egoistic constraints can be rationally (in the non-egoistic way) applied to ethics. They're arbitrary.

Our abilities and our biases do not constrain morality. Morality need not be possible to attain for it to be so.

That's my point. The loss of social cohesion is one of modern society's moral problems. Once people start caring more about highly abstracted wrongs than the wrongs they can see right under their nose, then things get out of kilter. — apokrisis

How so? Singer actually argues that if we adopted vegetarianism or something like this, we could solve a lot of the world's hunger problems.

But in any case, how does extending one's care for another being outside of one's neighborhood make the whole thing topple? I mean, there's an entire movement, Effective Altruism, dedicated to figuring out how people can still enjoy their lives while doing the most they can.

I take the naturalistic view and so "it is all one cosmos". But then there is also a clear structure - an emergent hierarchical organisation, a self-balancing complexity - that is also part of this naturalness. And it would thus be only natural for that ontology to inform any moral reasoning.

We know what is natural. The debate then is whether to remain consistent with that or to strike off in a different direction because it is "reasonable" ... then supplying a good reason for deviating from nature. — apokrisis

Yes, and I am advocating a moral non-naturalism. Nature is not inherently good, in fact many times it comes across as entirely indifferent or perhaps even sinister.

So yes, it is all "one cosmos" - yet we are also part of the cosmos, and we can feel, we can suffer. So any emergent, local phenomenon like morality is still going to be under the "one cosmos", but in a specific location. Applying holistic habits of thermodynamics to acute problems in morality obscures the identity of morality.

What 'rules of the Universe' are you referring to? Scientific law? And 'being moral' requires deliberation, to the extent one 'obeys instinctual programming' then you're no different to animals, and there's no morality involved. Indeed the fact tha we can reflect on and amend our course of action, is one of the fundamental ways we differ from animals. — Wayfarer

For the record, I'm not advocating evolutionary ethics.

Disgust is an emotion, as is empathy. So how is it a rational argument? — Michael

We need certain basic intuitions to get discussion off the ground. In terms of ethics, one of these intuitions is empathy. From there we can create rough logical syllogisms. In fact we don't even have to call anything (im)moral to get a point across. We can show how inconsistent our behavior is: for example, we would help a child who is drowning in a lake, so why wouldn't we help the child in Africa who is dying from malaria? We would help our dog if it was injured, so why wouldn't we help the rodent in the Amazonian jungle who is injured? We wouldn't experiment on humans, so why should we be allowed to experiment on animals?

Common-sense morality is filled with contradictions and arbitrary constraints, like I said.

I don't agree that empirical research can actually demonstrate this.

I don't have a problem assuming that some non-human animals have consciousness. I definitely assume that. — Terrapin Station

Correct.

Of course, I'm a subjectivist/an individual-oriented relativist on ethics anyway. I don't have any ethical problem with keeping animals as pets, keeping them in zoos, having them perform in circuses, using them for meat, etc. — Terrapin Station

I wonder how you can be alright with this if you assume non-human animals have consciousness without lacking empathy or suffering cognitive dissonance.

The fact is that even if you eradicated speciesm from humans you have only made a small dent in specieism as a whole. How are you going to change the minds of all those other animals and if you don't think it is necessary to do so, then you really aren't against specieism - just as Black Lives Matter isn't about all black lives - only about black lives ended by cops. — Harry Hindu

This is a pragmatic argument that does not affect the legitimacy of the OP.

In any case, we would presumably change the minds of predators by eliminating them from the population and restructuring ecosystems so predators cannot exist en masse. A good way of doing this would be to limit the amount of foliage available for herbivores to eat. Thus the population of herbivores would decrease, and the population of carnivores would follow.

It's interesting how most of us, including the participants in this thread, drift from saying 'non-human animals' to mistakenly saying 'animals' - by which we mean all animal life but humans. We are like them; oh, but we aren't. — mcdoodle

Singer points this out in his book Animal Liberation and argues that the use of "animals" instead of "non-human animals" is merely for pragmatic efficiency, not to demean them in any way.

We can show how inconsistent our behavior is: for example, we would help a child who is drowning in a lake, so why wouldn't we help the child in Africa who is dying from malaria? We would help our dog if it was injured, so why wouldn't we help the rodent in the Amazonian jungle who is injured? — darthbarracuda

I don't see why it's inconsistent. Am I inconsistent if I eat a burger but not a hot dog? I don't think so. So why am I inconsistent if I help one person but not another?

We wouldn't experiment on humans, so why should we be allowed to experiment on animals?

Where has this "should" come from? You were just talking about what we actually do (and don't do).

In terms of ethics, one of these intuitions is empathy.

Sure. But as you've already said, some people don't have empathy for (certain) non-human animals. So where do you go from there? Argue that people ought to have empathy for non-human animals? On what grounds would you justify such a claim?

I don't see why it's inconsistent. Am I inconsistent if I eat a burger but not a hot dog? So why am I inconsistent if I help one person but not another? — Michael

In the case of burgers and hot dogs, no, you are not being consistent, but that's acceptable. You like burgers more than hot dogs.

But apply this reasoning to helping people. You would have to say that you like people of your own species more than people of different species, i.e. other people of different species don't matter.

This, I think, produces a feeling that adequately satisfies the open-ended question and shows how it is inconsistent to believe the latter but not the former, because the latter is a distinctively moral claim. I need not tell you that speciesism is immoral for you to come to your conclusion that speciesism is immoral.

Where has this "should" come from? You were just talking about what we actually do. — Michael

Switch "wouldn't" to "shouldn't". Or vice versa.

But apply this reasoning to helping people. You would have to say that you like people of your own species more than people of different species, i.e. other people of different species don't matter. — darthbarracuda

That doesn't follow. Rather you should say "i.e. other people (?) of different species don't matter as much to you". And that's true, they don't. Humans matter to me more than frogs.

This, I think, produces a feeling that adequately satisfies the open-ended question and shows how it is inconsistent to believe the latter but not the former, because the latter is a distinctively moral claim. I need not tell you that speciesism is immoral for you to come to your conclusion that speciesism is immoral.

Believe what? That humans matter to me more than frogs? I don't understand how that's an inconsistent belief. There's no contradiction that I can see. Furthermore, it's a true belief. Humans really do matter to me more than frogs.

Switch "wouldn't" to "shouldn't". Or vice versa.

Then one can argue that the things that make it the case that one shouldn't experiment on humans don't make it the case that one shouldn't experiment on non-human animals.

For example, if as you say empathy is the starting point, and if it's immoral to experiment on things with which you empathise, then if you empathise with humans but not with non-human animals then it's immoral to experiment on humans but not immoral to experiment on non-human animals.

Non-human animals are not capable of higher level thought process at the tier of humans, so they cannot be seriously expected to be moral agents. They can't even vote.

Yet they can suffer, and that's what matters. Many non-human animals have intellectual abilities on par or superior to babies, toddlers, and the mentally infirm. Yet these animals are often not seen as morally important. — darthbarracuda

In two short paragraphs you completely undermine your own case. You simply cannot have your cake and eat it. Either animals are different to humans in which case the application of human ethical systems is a category error or they are identical in which case the application of human ethical systems is justified but must include all the consequent responsibilities and potential for forfeiture it entails.

Moreover you imply that humans have a right to be spared suffering of which there appears to be no evidence at all. So you're actually arguing for animals not to be treated equally with humans at all but to be given privileges far in excess of them. It simply won't wash.

If your barn's on fire and trapped within it are your wife, a complete stranger who just happened to be visiting, and a pig and you can only save two of them before the roof collapses which are the lucky two?

And you say you're not a specieist? Yeah, right!

I wonder how you can be alright with this if you assume non-human animals have consciousness without lacking empathy or suffering cognitive dissonance. — darthbarracuda

I'm guessing that you're referring primarily to eating meat?

First, remember that I do not consider non-human animals persons anywhere near the level of humans. Some I don't consider persons at all. The animals where we have better reasons to guess that they'd have anything like human consciousness and so be closest to us in terms of personhood are apes. We don't eat apes for meat, though. Most of the animals we commonly eat for meat are much further down the personhood scale.

If you're also asking about zoos, circuses, pets, etc., my opinion of those is quite positive--if I were most non-human animals I'd much rather live in a place where I'm constantly fed and kept safe from predators, natural disasters, etc.

Also, re your other comments, I don't base any ethical views on the concept of suffering. I don't do that for humans, either. The reason for that is that I think that suffering tends to be incredibly vague, and I don't at all agree that it's necessarily negative. I think that a lot of things that commonly fall under (those vague definitions of) suffering are rather positive instead if not neutral, including positive upshots but not just limited to that.

One of the points of abolishing speciesism is becoming an active role in the ecosystem - i.e. intervening and eliminating predation, helping diseased animals, etc. — darthbarracuda

Eliminating predation? What by euthanasing all predators? Teaching spiders to be vegan? What are you even talking about?

Penguins actually have been recorded to kill themselves. If they cannot find a mate, they walk into the ice desert of Antarctica and die. — darthbarracuda

Occam's razor says it is rational to seek the least complicated explanation of natural phenomena. I happened to be in Antarctica with penguin researchers a few years ago. And in fact a little group of penguins waddled right past the base heading in the wrong direction. They didn't look unhappy, just determined. The researchers said they get lost like that all the time as they seek out new living space. We headed them off and pointed them back where they came. But the researchers said most likely they would resume their trek after we had gone.

It's nature at work. If penguins never wandered, they'd never find new places to live.

So to mitigate the suffering of non-human animals because they lack socially constructed propositional language is, as I see it, dogmatic and narrow-minded. — darthbarracuda

Or the rational answer.

The conflict here is between the Enlightenment and the Romantic point of view.

The Enlightenment was about recognising humans as natural creations with a natural logic. We could consider the basis of human flourishing and create the social, political and ethical institutions to foster that. And recognising the continuity between humans and other animals was a big part of the new thinking.

So it is Enlightenment values that have steadily changed our treatment of animals (and races, and sexes, and the infirm/mentally ill/infantile) to reflect what we actually know about their capacity to suffer. That is what rationality looks like - consistent decisions based on accurate information.

Unfortunately you appear to be backing Romanticism instead. Every individual is a special creation. Absolute rights apply because something "is a mind" or "has a soul" in black and white fashion. Romanticism rejects shades of grey. A papercut is as bad as the Holocaust. Any flicker of suffering at all becomes a reason to say life in any form simply should not exist.

Romanticism is the ontology of choice for facists for good reason. Absolutism justifies irrationality in absolute fashion. That is why politically correct thinking - enlightened attitudes born out of rational realism - becomes something far more dangerous and unreasoning in the hands of those with romantically absolute habits of thought.

Morality need not be possible to attain for it to be so. — darthbarracuda

Again this just betrays the monotonic absolutism which gives you the answers you want to hear.

Back in the real world, complexity is the result of complexly (hierarchically) organised states of constraint. So there is never a single target to be shot for. Instead, we seek to organise our world so that it is separated into its more general constraints and its more particular constraints. So generally we might not want to cause suffering. But then many particular circumstances can rationally justify that.

Rational morality is all about having this well-integrated variety in our behavioural responses. We act in a way that is a negotiated balance of all the circumstances, both general and particular. That is why it takes quite a lot of time, training and effort to produce morally mature humans. Functional humans have to find complex decision-making to be second nature.

This is the reason for being impatient with simplistic romantic thinking. It is patently unadapted to the real world where moral action actually matters.

How so? Singer actually argues that if we adopted vegetarianism or something like this, we could solve a lot of the world's hunger problems. — darthbarracuda

Sure, we could all eat powered seaweed and the planet might then support 20 billion people. But rather than one dimensional thinking like this, it would be more moral to recognise the huge complexity of the ecological disaster we are so busy manufacturing.

And that starts with understanding the fact that fossil fuels have been dictating human moral behaviour for the past 300 years in ways we only dimly perceive. There is a reason why climate deniers thrive.

So there is no point discussing morality in an abstracted absolutist fashion - especially in terms of what we would all hope for, but already believe could never be achieved.

We have real problems in the world which we need to solve. Your romanticism becomes Nero fiddling while Rome burns in that context. Veganism or anti-natalism is dangerously distracting - immoral behaviour - to the degree it degrades contemporary moral debate.

Applying holistic habits of thermodynamics to acute problems in morality obscures the identity of morality. — darthbarracuda

As I say, it is quite the opposite. Your promotion of fluffy irrealism is a dangerous distraction when there is a real debate that needs to be had.

In exaggerating the agency of the sentient individual, you are playing right into the hands of fossil fuel's desire for entropification. Removing social and cultural constraints on biologically-wired desires is exactly why rampant entropification is winning despite our own human long term interests.

Yes, and I am advocating a moral non-naturalism. Nature is not inherently good, in fact many times it comes across as entirely indifferent or perhaps even sinister. — darthbarracuda

Who was talking about "good" in some abstract absolutist sense?

Again you betray your Romantic ontology in worrying about what might "inhere" in material reality as if it might exist "elsewhere" in Platonically ideal fashion. If you understood Naturalism, you would see this couldn't even be the issue.

You point to the indifference of Nature - even its sinister character - as a way to sustain the standard mind/body dualism of Romanticism. You have to "other" the world in a way that justifies your absolute privileging of the self - the individual and his mind, his soul, his inalienable being.

But absolutism of this kinds works both ways - which is what historically makes it so philosophically dangerous.

In removing all moral determination from "the world" - and society and culture are the principle target there - the Romantic reserves all moral determination for "the self". So it suddenly becomes all right if you are a vegan or anti-natalist "like me". You don't actually need a reason. You get an automatic high five as a kindred spirit. Morality becomes reduced to a personal preference - the preferences the Romantic knows to be true because of the certitude of his feelings about these things.

Eliminating predation? What by euthanasing all predators? Teaching spiders to be vegan? What are you even talking about? — apokrisis

I'm talking about radical restructuring of the ecosystems of the world in the same way first world countries restructure the political and economic structures of developing nations.

As I've explained before, as has been affirmed elsewhere (see the Foundational Research Institute), constraining the amount of foliage results in less herbivores and even less predators. Decrease the amount of foliage so that the herbivore population is manageable and the carnivore population is eliminated.

But this is merely pragmatic issues, not on the level of theoretical normative ethics.

Occam's razor says it is rational to seek the least complicated explanation of natural phenomena. I happened to be in Antarctica with penguin researchers a few years ago. And in fact a little group of penguins waddled right past the base heading in the wrong direction. They didn't look unhappy, just determined. The researchers said they get lost like that all the time as they seek out new living space. We headed them off and pointed them back where they came. But the researchers said most likely they would resume their trek after we had gone. — apokrisis

No, it's recorded that penguins remove themselves from their society and die in the middle of nowhere. They are tracked and found to die miles away from the ocean. There is video evidence of penguins looking back at their clan as if they are looking back in forlorn. They know exactly what they're doing.

In the wake of uncertainty, we should opt for the most inclusive position - that of assuming animals can suffer, and not jumping to conclusions that inevitably marginalize potential sufferers.

Or the rational answer.

The conflict here is between the Enlightenment and the Romantic point of view. — apokrisis

Absolutely not. It was the Enlightenment after all that produced the Cartesian view of animals as simply "machines" that has persisted for centuries.

I'm not sure why you keep trying to reduce my arguments to the binary Enlightenment/Romantic view.

Sure, we could all eat powered seaweed and the planet might then support 20 billion people. But rather than one dimensional thinking like this, it would be more moral to recognise the huge complexity of the ecological disaster we are so busy manufacturing. — apokrisis

Straw man.

So there is no point discussing morality in an abstracted absolutist fashion - especially in terms of what we would all hope for, but already believe could never be achieved.

We have real problems in the world which we need to solve. Your romanticism becomes Nero fiddling while Rome burns in that context. Veganism or anti-natalism is dangerously distracting - immoral behaviour - to the degree it degrades contemporary moral debate. — apokrisis

No, it's not, because there's a difference between normative ethics and practical applied ethics. I am under no delusion that veganism will be adopted worldwide. This does not change the truth of my claims, though.

You're operating under the assumption that what we can fix is all we ought to fix. This limits the content of our theories.

In exaggerating the agency of the sentient individual, you are playing right into the hands of fossil fuel's desire for entropification. Removing social and cultural constraints on biologically-wired desires is exactly why rampant entropification is winning despite our own human long term interests. — apokrisis

Maybe it's time to realize that entropy will always dominate our future interests. Hence why I said that the universe can sometimes seem almost sinister.

Who was talking about "good" in some abstract absolutist sense?

Again you betray your Romantic ontology in worrying about what might "inhere" in material reality as if it might exist "elsewhere" in Platonically ideal fashion. If you understood Naturalism, you would see this couldn't even be the issue. — apokrisis

No, I really don't, stop telling me what my views are.

You point to the indifference of Nature - even its sinister character - as a way to sustain the standard mind/body dualism of Romanticism. You have to "other" the world in a way that justifies your absolute privileging of the self - the individual and his mind, his soul, his inalienable being. — apokrisis

And you seem content with diminishing this perceived rift between the self and the rest of the world as if it's not important at all, thus shifting the focus of ethics from people as they perceive themselves as people to some abstract universal concept of entropy. We are part of the world, yes, but we also seem apart of the world as well. There is a larger picture at play, thermodynamic entropification, that we don't easily identify with. This is the "other" in which I speak, not in an ontological manner but a phenomenological manner.

In removing all moral determination from "the world" - and society and culture are the principle target there - the Romantic reserves all moral determination for "the self". So it suddenly becomes all right if you are a vegan or anti-natalist "like me". You don't actually need a reason. You get an automatic high five as a kindred spirit. Morality becomes reduced to a personal preference - the preferences the Romantic knows to be true because of the certitude of his feelings about these things. — apokrisis

Well, I mean I am a consequentialist. I would prefer if you were vegetarian and antinatalist for good reasons, but what matters ultimately is how your actions are affected by your views regardless of their justification.

There is another angle from which to think of "speciesism" which is to say that thinking about an individual in terms of being a member of a species is a denial of personhood. So, whether in relation to humans or non-humans, to think of them in terms of 'species' is a rejection of the idea that they can be persons.

The question then becomes; Is it necessary for individuals to be capable of conceiving of themselves as 'person' for them to qualify as a person?

Species are made of individual organisms that have a family resemblance to each other. They are fluid and ever-changing, yes, but we can organize them so for pragmatic reasons.

The question then becomes; Is it necessary for individuals to be capable of conceiving of themselves as 'person' for them to qualify as a person? — John

Personhood brings so much to the table. To be a person would seem to mean you should have bodily autonomy, the ability to participate in politics, pursue your dreams, etc.

But personhood is not necessary for an organism to suffer. So the ability to conceive of oneself as a person is not identical to ethical importance.

I don't think you saw the direction or relevance of what I said judging from your first couple sentences.

It is only in the context of personhood that ethics becomes thinkable. Of course we, as ethically thinking persons can consider the ethics of our behavior towards non-persons, even towards the whole impersonal world.

Do we have good reasons to believe that animals practice ethics? Even highly intelligent ones? Chimpanzees band together to kill fellow chimpanzees.

See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPznMbNcfO8

Bottlenose dolphins slaughter porpoises and apparently even their own young.

See here: http://scribol.com/environment/animals-environment/bottlenose-dolphin-the-only-marine-animal-that-kills-for-fun/

For such behavior to be considered unethical the ability to think ethically must be imputed.

The species of speciesism that bothers me the most is that which reduces the person to being a mere member of a species, utterly determined by nature, genetics, culture and so on; because this is a denial of the real sense and possibility of ethics, and a denial of personality itself.

There is video evidence of penguins looking back at their clan as if they are looking back in forlorn. They know exactly what they're doing. — darthbarracuda

Anthropomorphic nonsense. And dangerous for the reasons I've outlined.

Absolutely not. It was the Enlightenment after all that produced the Cartesian view of animals as simply "machines" that has persisted for centuries. — darthbarracuda

I think Descartes produced that Cartesian view as part of sustaining the transcendental self of theism.

Science certainly promotes popular notions about reality being a mechanism. But scientists - especially if they biologists - know that the reality is in fact organic. So bodies are not simply machines, but complexly/semiotically machines, and thus not really machines at all.

You're operating under the assumption that what we can fix is all we ought to fix. This limits the content of our theories. — darthbarracuda

I'm seeking to limit theorising to what is rational. Your OP claimed to want rational thinking. I have shown how your views are actually informed by the irrationalism, the dualism, the transcendence, the absolutism, that are all the hallmarks of Romanticism.

We can't even talk about the fixing until we have a proper understanding of the thing we might claim to be broken in some fashion.

And you seem content with diminishing this perceived rift between the self and the rest of the world as if it's not important at all, thus shifting the focus of ethics from people as they perceive themselves as people to some abstract universal concept of entropy. — darthbarracuda

My point is that Romanticism gets in the very way of the problems that it might want to solve. If folk see themselves apart from the world, then they are not going to act in ways that could improve things.

If you spend all your time worrying about the pain lions inflict on zebra, you are never going to contribute in useful fashion to the real moral consequences of collective human behaviour for both lions and zebra.

Well, I mean I am a consequentialist. I would prefer if you were vegetarian and antinatalist for good reasons, but what matters ultimately is how your actions are affected by your views regardless of their justification. — darthbarracuda

You lost me there. How can the justification not be basic?

My point is that Romanticism gets in the very way of the problems that it might want to solve. If folk see themselves apart from the world, then they are not going to act in ways that could improve things. — apokrisis

The problem is that if people see themselves in terms of the world they will inevitably come to deny their own freedom and responsibility; their selfhood, This may already be seen in the way the scienitfc image of the human as being just another species leads to an inability to see humans as anything other than completely determined by nature, genetics and/or culture.

Anthropomorphic nonsense. And dangerous for the reasons I've outlined. — apokrisis

No, it's not anthropomorphic nonsense. These penguins are acting in what we perceive to be distinctly human. We should view them as capable of sentience (until proven wrong), just as we don't throw out SETI transmissions as just pulsating stars, despite the likelihood of them being just pulsating stars. In the case of animals, there is no defined and systematic definition of sentience, and the scale is tipped towards sentience anyway.

Furthermore I fail to see how this is dangerous. Identifying and empathizing with another animal? How horrible! I should obviously be focused on my species...cause my species is da best. :-}

Science certainly promotes popular notions about reality being a mechanism. But scientists - especially if they biologists - know that the reality is in fact organic. So bodies are not simply machines, but complexly/semiotically machines, and thus not really machines at all. — apokrisis

To quote Voltaire, then, if animals cannot feel or have no sentience - then why are their bodies structured and their behaviors so as if they do feel and have sentience?

I'm seeking to limit theorising to what is rational. Your OP claimed to want rational thinking. I have shown how your views are actually informed by the irrationalism, the dualism, the transcendence, the absolutism, that are all the hallmarks of Romanticism. — apokrisis

No, you claim that my views are irrational. They are not. They are informed by science, informed by ethical theory.

Put yourself in the shoes of a lab mouse. Do you really think it would be alright for the scientists to experiment on you just because they think you're not actually "there"?

What could possibly be so important as to warrant the ignoring of the suffering of other beings?

If you spend all your time worrying about the pain lions inflict on zebra, you are never going to contribute in useful fashion to the real moral consequences of collective human behaviour for both lions and zebra. — apokrisis

I'm not spending all my time worrying about it - I'm doing something about it by contributing to Effective Altruism programs (the most significant and effective means to help others currently under the Sun). What you see as complaining is me attempting to convince others.

Do you think there is a problem or not in regards to animal suffering? How am I wasting time by pointing out what I see to be problems? Essentially your position comes down to "I don't quite agree with what OP is saying, therefore he is wasting is time." Nonsense.

You lost me there. How can the justification not be basic? — apokrisis

Because I'm not a deontologist. Intentions don't matter to me. As long as the best possible state of affairs acquires, justification doesn't matter. The best possible state of affairs is going to be the best because of right reasons. though. It's the same reasoning behind a political party - lots of different viewpoints, but somehow they all come together to support a single candidate. Each person believes the candidate to be the best, despite having differing reasons, and these differing reasons don't concern them so long as the candidate is elected.

The problem is that if people see themselves in terms of the world they will inevitably come to deny their own freedom and responsibility; their selfhood, This may already be seen in the way the scienitfc image of the human as being just another species leads to an inability to see humans as anything other than completely determined by nature, genetics and/or culture. — John

I disagree. I know science gets the blame for Scientism, but science is perfectly capable of understanding organisms as organisms. And a capacity for creativity and autonomy fits quite happily into the organic perspective. This is why biologists think computer scientists are a little nuts when they talk about artificial this and that.

So yes, there is definitely the widespread notion that reality is a machine, deterministic in its detail and meaningless as a whole. But this is a caricature of the relevant science, not a view that the science supports.

My question then is to whose advantage is it that a mechanical disposition has become wired in to much of modern culture? And how does that wrong view coexist so happily with what should seem its exact opposite - the Romantic view of life?

My argument is that scientists (in the relevant fields) don't really believe that nature is "just a simple machine". The scientist would instead be the first to stress the intimate interconnectedness of individuals and their cultures, human social systems and planetary ecologies.

But a belief that the world is just a bunch of mindless material to be exploited, coupled to the belief that the individual mind has transcendent importance, goes together as the moral justification for the way our politics and economies have become structured.

Even though the two things seem to be speaking in opposite ways, in both privileging the most self-centred possible view of life, they both act to remove social and cultural constraints on individual action. And thus - even in their conflict - they co-exist and thrive.

So you can't oppose Scientism with Romanticism. They are both riding the same wave of entropification.

Only Naturalism can see this is the case and so perhaps do something about it. But what hope is there in a world where people can pass off forlorn suicidal penguins as empirical evidence of something? That romanticism is just the flipside of thinking of penguins as disposable flesh automata.

I'm watching Westworld. Consider the co-dependency of these memes there. The machine that comes alive - has a soul. Scientism and Romanticism need each other as thesis and antithesis. Meanwhile the extravagant desires of fossil fuel slip past unnoticed. Whichever way you think you go - mechanistic exploitation or maximal individual autonomy - you are endorsing the one grander entropic scheme as in practice they amount to the same thing.

Individualism wants to shed all constraints - social and ecological - and so finds itself plugged directly into fundamental thermodynamics, the most general and mindless constraint that can't be avoided.

No, it's not anthropomorphic nonsense. — darthbarracuda

You are welcome to present the scientific evidence then. As I say, I've seen what you are talking about first hand and talked to the researchers who live with the colonies.

To quote Voltaire, then, if animals cannot feel or have no sentience - then why are their bodies structured and their behaviors so as if they do feel and have sentience? — darthbarracuda

It is probably pointless repeating myself here but I am the last to claim animals lack experience or phenomenology. Jumping spiders are one of my favourite cases.

But my argument is that we then have to define sentience or consciousness in ways that aren't anthropomorphic. We have to talk about the neuroscientific reality rather than just projecting some image of consciousness we have developed onto animals universally.

Having studied the comparative neurology of critters like jumping spiders and avians, I think I am well placed to do just that.

Put yourself in the shoes of a lab mouse. Do you really think it would be alright for the scientists to experiment on you just because they think you're not actually "there"? — darthbarracuda

Well yeah. One of the reasons for not actually doing that kind of research myself was that in the end I could not stomach it. After cutting up bodies for biology, shocking rats and frogs for psychology, and then discovering what really goes on in neuroscience animal laboratories, it became too much to continue going down that line.

But that was the 70s. The ethics is not perfect these days, but they have been hugely cleaned up. In terms of these kinds of issues, I have seen immense and continuing change on all fronts.

However it has been achieved on a rational basis, one capable of understanding the notion of reasonable trade-offs.

You however argue in terms of absolutes. And when the evidence is not there, you invent it - like these forlorn suicidal penguins deciding to die by trekking inlands rather than just stepping off the beach into the waiting jaws of the local orca pack.

Do you think there is a problem or not in regards to animal suffering? How am I wasting time by pointing out what I see to be problems? Essentially your positions comes down to "I don't quite agree with what OP is saying, therefore he is wasting is time." — darthbarracuda

In fact I care a lot about animal suffering and ecology generally. The difference is that I don't have to invent the facts that would support a simple-minded absolutism. I've studied the science and that informs my ethical position.

Each person believes the candidate to be the best, despite having differing reasons, and these differing reasons don't concern them so long as the candidate is elected. — darthbarracuda

I still don't follow you. But doesn't simply mentioning Trump and Clinton create a problem here?