This is nuts as there is hardly a crying need to protect the human population from the dangers of cultish antinatalists.

With 2.5 billion people in 1950, 6.5 billion in 2005, and 9 billion by 2050, there just ain't a problem in that regard.

Antinatalism is as meaningless as a possum throwing itself under a passing truck and trailer. — apokrisis

I think you misread what I was trying to say. I'm saying that you tend to use the appeal to majority as a way to substantiate your point- because it must be "true" in its historical development of the group to be considered appealing. However, even if this is the case, I doubt many want to hear that they are solely existing to keep institutions alive simply because that is what the institution wants. Whether its true or not, the lack of autonomy that implies is as unappealing to most individuals as the fact that by preventing the creation of another person, they are preventing the harm that would be experienced by that person. Both may be true (and so I am even granting you the point for argument's sake), but both are unpopular. Thus, as I said, your point could make sense but it does so in a way that does not pass your own test which again, is an appeal to the majority.

More crazy arithmetic.

The way societies actually think is that small global changes can improve the average lot of the many. You only have to focus on shifting the mean a small degree to make a large difference for the many. — apokrisis

First of all, societies do not think.. You mean the way social conventions have developed.. Whether that's true or not, it is not really refuting my claim. Actually, it strengthens it. So even if the family down the street has 20 kids, the fact that any number (at least 1) was prevented still made a difference.

Yeah. But you hardly invented this idea yourself, did you? You are simply repeating what you heard others say. So you speak for a familiar vein of thought - the romanticism that became existentialism that has become pessimism. And you are looking around on this forum for moral support for this stance, along with seeking to "other" me so as to confirm the social validity of that way of thinking.

You can't escape the very game you pretend to reject. If you could, you wouldn't even bother coming on a forum like this to argue with someone like me. — apokrisis

I never claimed that I am some lone figure that has come up with the most innovative new idea. In fact, I usually go out of my to reference past philosophers on the points I am making. That is not to say I think every thought they had was accurate though. You are aiming your attack at the wrong target. It's not that I think the pessimistic outlook is some transcendent notion that goes beyond the group (which by the way, you apparently at least admit can be a part of the group, even if it is a minority position), but rather it is a conclusion that only a self-reflecting species such as ours can have. You fail to understand that our species' ability to self-reflect means that we not only follow the group-individual dynamics that you describe, but we can make judgements, evaluations, and conclusions on our species' activity as we are participating in them. This self-reflecting ability to understand that we are simply keeping the group going to keep it going (what I call instrumentality) and to evaluate it as absurd, is an example of this. I believe that was part of the point Zapffe was making. We have this general-processor brain capable of not only solving immediate problems but understanding our very own human condition. The very process of individual-group dynamics which shaped our human brain, also created a situation where we can see our own situation.

However, rather than staying in this angsty place, we have mechanisms to ensure we don't dwell on it much. Now, here is where I can finally start finding common ground because those mechanisms are probably a part of the group dynamics as well. We cannot get beyond our own habits at all times. Even though this is the case, we can have sustained periods of reflection, and even just a background notion while we distract ourselves and find some sort of "flow" activities to involve ourselves in, that the situation of keeping things gong for the sake of it is absurd, exhausting, and neverending, and strains us. Sure it can be no other way, but we can still recognize this situation.

Also, you seem to be underplaying the role of the uniqueness of individual experiences. Though language and give us a common understanding and natural feedback loop to strengthen certain individual/group aims, the individual point of view is still unique to each individual. I can perhaps convey in an intersubjective way a sense of what I am experiencing, but it can never be completely replicated or understood. There is an interior world which others are not privy and can never fully be privy to. There is an aloneness to each individual's ego alongside the connectedness with the group and environment.

You also do not seem to take into account contingent circumstances. This group dynamic thing you promote has to work on statistics rather than necessities. What this means is that all the learned experiences that have been collected by the group can be taught and sometimes the application of this "wisdom" works out for people but other times it does not. Circumstances can be very different for very different people. On average it has to work well for most people, but it does not have to work for everyone.

I think you misread what I was trying to say. I'm saying that you tend to use the appeal to majority as a way to substantiate your point- because it must be "true" in its historical development of the group to be considered appealing. However, even if this is the case, I doubt many want to hear that they are solely existing to keep institutions alive simply because that is what the institution wants. Whether its true or not, the lack of autonomy that implies is as unappealing to most individuals as the fact that by preventing the creation of another person, they are preventing the harm that would be experienced by that person. Both may be true (and so I am even granting you the point for argument's sake), but both are unpopular. Thus, as I said, your point could make sense but it does so in a way that does not pass your own test which again, is an appeal to the majority. — schopenhauer1

In any case, apo's appeal to the majority doesn't even make sense because it fails to account for other majority views that contradict his own.

A cursory glance at culture reveals a deep sense of cynicism about life. You have Shakespeare alluding to this in many of his plays. You have Monty Python's Life of Brian mocking organized religion and pointing out the flaws of life while the actors are being crucified, as well as shows like Rick and Morty or True Detective that are heavily based off existentialist literature. You have everyday comedians making money off of social criticism. You have organized religion all over the place - various ways of venerating the "perfect hero". Everyone of us has gone through, or is currently going through, the developmental years between childhood and full-fledged adulthood - and everyone of us can attest to the teenage disillusionment with the world and the subsequent need to repress this and "move on" to "more important things", and the aforementioned cultural items are popular and memorable ways of releasing this tension. None of these things would have existed had they not acted as some kind of relatable catharsis for the audience. The reason they are popular is because they speak a bit of refreshing truth in a sea of madness.

Another cursory glance at history reveals a deep fear of death, from the massive Pyramids at Giza to the ancient Chinese Terracotta Army, to the rise of fascism in 20th century Europe and the decay of the western world into decadence and materialism. It also shows how many great civilizations rose and fell because of a single relationship or a megalomaniac leader. The historical artifacts can be beautiful - but the motivation behind these artifacts is usually anything but impressive.

So when we look at the Big Picture™, civilization looks almost like a 90s-00s strategy game - build your empire, gather resources, advance to the next age, build unique structures, harness the power of nature, and lead your little society to greatness! The civilization functions like a well-oiled machine. Everyone is doing their part, everyone follows "natural law", everyone gets married at age 25, has three children, a dog, and a white picket fence. The future is bright - soon we'll be level 50 platinum! - and nothing can stand in our way, and certainly not those pesky pessimists and antinatalists...

But this is just not reality, or at least not the Full Picture. Individual lives tend to look almost like an MMO - you start out interested with the surroundings, gameplay, and story. But pretty soon you start to get bored. It's just the same thing over and over again, grinding mobs, grinding crafting, grinding character traits...and you've devoted so much time to this character that you don't want to leave and lose it all. Sometimes there's updates that keep you entertained for a few hours; then it's back to the grind. The infinite grind, with no real end goal, just some arbitrary achievement and a stupid little costume or stronghold decoration. Wooooo! Sometimes you distinguish yourself from the rest of the grinding herd by owning a guild, or selling enhancements, or pwning everyone else in multiplayer. Yet this status is only a status when compared to other players. What use is a platinum membership if there's no-one there to worship you? Then there's server crashes and accidental character deletions - oops! All that work, down the drain...

At the metaphysical level, uniqueness is rare - thanks to universals, we have the same goddamn shit everywhere we go. There's only so much you can build with a limited set of LEGOs.

Civilization may prosper but only at the expense of those supporting it.

it's a bit unfair to paint me as an advocate of factory farming don't you think?

it's a bit unfair to paint me as an advocate of factory farming don't you think? — apokrisis

I'm afraid that crusaders in this field tend to have little time for fairness.

Thus, as I said, your point could make sense but it does so in a way that does not pass your own test which again, is an appeal to the majority. — schopenhauer1

So you agree I'm right but now make up this weird claim that I think most people would straightforwardly agree? And yet I've said the majority - in this romanticised, individualist, existentialist modern culture of ours - have been brought up to have a different set of beliefs. So to agree with my rational and empirically supported position would be to go against the general social brainwashing.

My point was that people like you and DC have swallowed the idea that personal autonomy is paramount - which is why the discovered lack of it becomes a bitter disappointment. Romanticism promised you something, then took it away. But you still fundamentally believe in it.

The Cosmos was meant to be enchanted. It is merely prosaic. So you wish it would all just fuck off and die.

You fail to understand that our species' ability to self-reflect means that we not only follow the group-individual dynamics that you describe, but we can make judgements, evaluations, and conclusions on our species' activity as we are participating in them. — schopenhauer1

You talk about rational self-reflection as some "big brained" biological capacity which we should take for granted. But it's a linguistic and cultural habit that has evolved socially and so is tightly wedded to a social level of action. Our societies shape the kind of "self" reflection (and regulation) which suits their purposes.

So again, you are just expressing the particular romantic individualism promoted as a social asset at a particular stage of human social evolution - a time when fossil fuel wants to be burnt as fast as possible. It really helps that unlimited growth agenda to produce generations of individuals who want to get off their arses and find ever more creative methods of increasing their ability to consume.

We have this general-processor brain capable of not only solving immediate problems but understanding our very own human condition. — schopenhauer1

If we must use computer analogies, then again look to the culture that writes the current generation of software and the story of the "human condition" it finds functional to tell.

And sure, it is a necessary part of the evolutionary process that there is dissent. You have to have failure to find the winners. You need variety to maintain adaptive capacity.

So there is absolutely nothing unnatural about anti-natalism being out there as a meme. But while we are on the sugar-rush of a fossil fuel bonanza, global population growth won't halt until it hits some harder limit than that.

the individual point of view is still unique to each individual. — schopenhauer1

Romanticism in a nutshell.

Of course I understand that I'm not you and you are not me. We are all separate lives in that sense. But humans are highly constrained by their shared biological, social and cultural histories. The actual individuality becomes fractional by comparison.

So I'm not about denying anything. I'm just about empirical accuracy. If you want to claim that everyone is an individual, let's quantify that. Society seems to need both poets and soldiers. It has cultural institutions to produce both. But what would you guess the ratio of professional poets to professional soldiers to be? And what would the answer tell you?

This group dynamic thing you promote has to work on statistics rather than necessities. — schopenhauer1

But that's just the definition of a natural system. Nature works by developing the constraints that shape its local degrees of freedom. Existence is probabilistic - or rather, a story about the rational development of propensities.

Tendencies can tolerate exceptions and still be tendencies. This is why the organic is so powerful and persistent, not brittle like the mechanical (where tendencies must be necessities for the machine to work more than once).

On average it has to work well for most people, but it does not have to work for everyone. — schopenhauer1

Yep. And natural selection needs its failures. That is how it can continue to track success.

A cursory glance at culture reveals a deep sense of cynicism about life. — darthbarracuda

Yep. Romanticism tells the story of what it is to be the heroic individual, the legend of your own lunchhour.

And in a fossil fuel age, where there is abundant resources to be wasted, it makes sense to construct a mentality that wants to rip up its own past so as to free itself to invent a new future.

All the traditional constraints on growth - the kind of conservative wisdom that traditional societies build in because they have been bumping into various growth constraints - can be trampled into the dust, leaving the individual unfettered to be part of the new fast changing lifestyle predicated on a new level of entropic possibility.

The reason they are popular is because they speak a bit of refreshing truth in a sea of madness. — darthbarracuda

Yep, rebel without a cause still sums it up. It's the hep cats against the squares. Anti-natalism is just the latest self-tragic pose - the floppy Emo fringe being drapped across the murder porn of shows like True Detective to give them a little counter-culture chic.

Individual lives tend to look almost like an MMO — darthbarracuda

Well that's been my point. Modern civilisation has developed in unreflective fashion, re-organising itself so as to dissipate fossil fuels in the most mechanical fashion. Thus if you want to focus on the actual issue, this is the issue.

But there is no point bleating about cosmic insignificance or the fact that the majority are going blindly with the entropic flow. This is simply given voice to the very Romanticism, the Individualism, that modern civilisation has used to rip up its past, free itself to consume its own future with unconstrained haste.

To talk about the virtues of veganism or antinatalism is just pointless displacement activity. It is to accept the disconnect between the social and individual sphere which modern civilisation is using to do its thing. It is to exist in a world that is actually eating ever greater quantities of meat and breeding with exponential zest, and simply want to do "the opposite" without actually dealing with the core mythology that makes that society what it is.

The fact is that entropification is natural. That's who we are. That's what life is. But also there is a choice. We can see that a sustainable lifestyle requires one mentality - a highly socially constrained one. While a fossil fuel lifestyle promotes another - one in which romantic individuality prevails, where the social past can freely be rewritten in whatever way "you" believe right.

You claim that pessimism is a reaction to modernism, yet pessimism was around long before modern society emerged. The Wisdom of Silenus would have been the True Detective of ancient Greece. Modern society is just the crumbling structure of civilization, foreseen by Nietzsche and co. Man's history is an ironic fight against nihilism.

That is what life produces in copious amounts: irony, the comedic aspect of tragedy. You can talk of entropy production but life adds such insignificant amount of entropy to the overall state of the universe that this makes it rather unimportant. Irony can only exist when there are conscious beings, and in fact it is produced quite liberally. Where there is sentient life, there is irony.

Life is an accident, it's a thing that just "happened". We shouldn't expect it to be purpose-filled and comfortable.

To talk about the virtues of veganism or antinatalism is just pointless displacement activity. It is to accept the disconnect between the social and individual sphere which modern civilisation is using to do its thing. It is to exist in a world that is actually eating ever greater quantities of meat and breeding with exponential zest, and simply want to do "the opposite" without actually dealing with the core mythology that makes that society what it is. — apokrisis

No. It is an understanding of what constitutes organic life, and a rejection of this as much as we can while continuing to live. It is the realization that life is a family of suffering, and the subsequent denial of cannibalism. Veganism was practiced thousands of years ago - every problem that modern society has in which pessimism and veganism responds to, was in existence millennia ago. Modern society just tends to have a way of amplifying them.

The fact is that entropification is natural. — apokrisis

But not moral.

That is what life produces in copious amounts: irony, the comedic aspect of tragedy. — darthbarracuda

What's ironic is that the Life of Brian was accurate as satire in being so squarely aimed at the narcissism of small differences. The laugh was at all the various beetle-browed self-rule factions that were utterly ineffectual.

Remember how the film ends. The crack suicide squad from the Judean People's Front charges to save Brian on the cross and then commits mass suicide in front of the Roman troops in a political protest.

The modern equivalent is proclaiming oneself to be a Vegan, or a Pessimist. Cue the furious social boundary marking discussions about whether you can be a "real vegan" living on chips and chocolate. Or a "true pessimist" if you don't follow through and top yourself, or if you keep a cat, dog or pet rat.

In terms of postmodernity, consumer culture has been seen as predicated on the narcissism of small differences to achieve a superficial sense of one's own uniqueness, an ersatz sense of otherness which is only a mask for an underlying uniformity and sameness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_differences

The Wisdom of Silenus would have been the True Detective of ancient Greece. — darthbarracuda

I enjoyed True Detective (the first one at least) at the level of well-acted murder porn. But let's not pretend it had any philosophical merit. Or even artistic merit. It was a soap with glossy pretensions.

You can talk of entropy production but life adds such insignificant amount of entropy to the overall state of the universe that this makes it rather unimportant.... Where there is sentient life, there is irony. — darthbarracuda

Humans are warming a whole planet. That's quite impressive historically speaking.

It takes a gallon of petrol to produce a modern cheeseburger. A gallon of petrol represents the geologically-reduced remnants of 98 tons of ancient planktonic biomass dug out of a deep hole.

I think you can only call the ecological footprint of the typical Westerner "insignificant" because you haven't really ever checked out the numbers involved.

And irony is not that prevalent in human culture. Sarcasm might seem universal these days due to the internet, but I remember when the Germans, French and Americans certainly did not get Monty Python.

And even then, the primary job of irony/sarcasm/mocking and "a sense of humour" generally is as a sophisticated tool of social constraint. Laughter is the group's way of bringing individuals into line with a collective point of view.

So to the degree that irony exists, it is evidence of the value we all place on a capacity to exert social control. Laughter is the clever way we now draw sharp boundaries so as to define a group identity - even when that laughter is aimed at the very fact that this is the kind of social trick we are always pulling, as in a very fine comedy like the Life of Brian.

Life is an accident, it's a thing that just "happened". We shouldn't expect it to be purpose-filled and comfortable. — darthbarracuda

For something so accidental, life managed to happen rather easily. It appeared pretty much immediately once the biophysics allowed the semiotic phase transition involved. So from a biological perspective, it is about as "accidental" as steam condensing to water once the temperature has sufficiently cooled.

If we are going to talk about purpose, then it doesn't seem a problem to me that that is only meaningful in an ultimately thermodynamic sense. I'm all about the naturalism.

As for comfort, who ordered that? Thermodynamics justifies talk about balance or equilibrium. And you need two to tango. So if there is satisfaction, there must be unease. If there is comfort, there must be striving. It's yin and yang. Your monotonic notions have no value in nature.

Veganism was practiced thousands of years ago — darthbarracuda

So should I be a vegan because I believe animals have souls and in the truth of reincarnation?

Cannibalism was practiced until a few hundred years ago. And with a similar theistic logic. You ate the dead so as to make something of them also something of yourself.

So let's stop pretending that there is a fixed morality at work here. Rationality is not enough as a guide to what is right. You also need an accurate empirical picture from which to draw those rational conclusions.

And this is what I've been saying you lack. You just make up the facts to fit the particular cultural prejudices which are symptomatic of your cultural miillieu. You have picked up various ideas that are fashionable for the moment and sticking to them like glue.

They may well be functional ideas. They may indeed be a better way to think. But you haven't yet managed to argue that case in terms of naturalism. You have just appealed to the kind of romantic and dualistic mysticism which deserves the kind of ridicule it gets.

I enjoyed True Detective (the first one at least) at the level of well-acted murder porn. But let's not pretend it had any philosophical merit. Or even artistic merit. It was a soap with glossy pretensions. — apokrisis

Oh sure, I agree, it was cliche. But it talked about relevant pessimistic themes that people ordinarily would not look into.

Humans are warming a whole planet. That's quite impressive historically speaking. — apokrisis

Ooooo, a whole planet.....in a universe of countless planets...such majesty...

Being proud of our entropic production is akin to a toddler being proud of a little LEGO tower he made in ten minutes.

It takes a gallon of petrol to produce a modern cheeseburger. A gallon of petrol represents the geologically-reduced remnants of 98 tons of ancient planktonic biomass dug out of a deep hole. — apokrisis

That is just an example of how utterly wasteful action tends to be. How the output never matches the input.

So to the degree that irony exists, it is evidence of the value we all place on a capacity to exert social control. Laughter is the clever way we now draw sharp boundaries so as to define a group identity - even when that laughter is aimed at the very fact that this is the kind of social trick we are always pulling, as in a very fine comedy like the Life of Brian. — apokrisis

It's also a way of relieving tension when things get a bit too difficult to handle. Just look at the Greek tragedies followed by comedies.

For something so accidental, life managed to happen rather easily. It appeared pretty much immediately once the biophysics allowed the semiotic phase transition involved. So from a biological perspective, it is about as "accidental" as steam condensing to water once the temperature has sufficiently cooled. — apokrisis

And from a metaphysical perspective, life and the universe in general is absurd and accidental. Given the timeline of the universe, life is but an irrelevant blip.

If we are going to talk about purpose, then it doesn't seem a problem to me that that is only meaningful in an ultimately thermodynamic sense. I'm all about the naturalism. — apokrisis

Unfortunately this equivocates natural telos with psychological affirmation of importance.

As for comfort, who ordered that? Thermodynamics justifies talk about balance or equilibrium. And you need two to tango. So if there is satisfaction, there must be unease. If there is comfort, there must be striving. It's yin and yang. Your monotonic notions have no value in nature. — apokrisis

Yup, basically scientific taoism. You would have liked Nietzsche, he put emphasis on the "healthy" life as a way of "calming us down" after the storm of disillusionment and nihilism. I don't think he succeeded but whatever.

So should I be a vegan because I believe animals have souls and in the truth of reincarnation? — apokrisis

Uhh, no.

Cannibalism was practiced until a few hundred years ago. And with a similar theistic logic. You ate the dead so as to make something of them also something of yourself. — apokrisis

Okay.

So let's stop pretending that there is a fixed morality at work here. Rationality is not enough as a guide to what is right. You also need an accurate empirical picture from which to draw those rational conclusions. — apokrisis

Right, but again I'm not a moral realist, so I'm not under any illusions that there is a "fixed" morality here. Only realizations about our state and the relations we have with others.

And this is what I've been saying you lack. You just make up the facts to fit the particular cultural prejudices which are symptomatic of your cultural miillieu. You have picked up various ideas that are fashionable for the moment and sticking to them like glue. — apokrisis

What facts do I make up? Animal suffering? That is fact!

You've avoided any real response so I'll only repeat that pessimism is a cliche - the latest reincarnation of romanticism - and not an interesting philosophical analysis. It finds only what it already presumes.

That is my position on this: speciesism is wrong and should be abolished in the same way racism, sexism, and homophobia have/should be. It is inconsistent to support the abolishment of the latter while ignoring the former. — darthbarracuda

Yes, of course.

Has anyone actually disagreed with this position in this thread? There's big piles of seemingly dissenting words but they all seem to be about metaethics.

Has anyone actually disagreed with this position in this thread? — zookeeper

Yes. Several times on the basis that the whole nonsense is a massive category error. I described it as a load of dingo's kidneys at one point. I understand that it might be difficult to spot in this exchange of largely meaningless verbiage which other posters are prone to but my colours are firmly nailed to the mast!

Except that it hasn't done any such thing. 99.9% of the species that have existed on Earth are now extinct and that ratio will at best remain constant although as nature has failed to find a predator to keep the human species which is doing a bang up job of exhausting its food sources that's pretty unlikely. — Barry Etheridge

The most important aspect of life is competition. Without it life would never evolve into the variety of forms and behaviors that we see today. — Harry Hindu — Harry Hindu

Somebody's been drinking a little too heavily at the Dawkins trough. Symbiotic and co-operative relationships between species are far more effective at preserving diversity than competition. Competition, by definition, results in a winner and a lot of losers. Co-operation results in a lot of winners. Evolutionary theory tends to fixate on higher order animals as single organisms when in fact they are a co-operative colonies of thousands of species constantly constantly interacting with thousands of other such colonies. — Barry Etheridge

Maybe you didn't know Dawkins wrote "The Selfish Gene" where he explains how cooperation can evolve as a means of social organisms achieving their own personal goals and where cheaters within a group of intelligent members with long memories won't do so well. Take a look at the part where he talks about the game theory and the Prisoner's Dilemma.

There are many reasons why 99.9% of the species that existed are extinct. When the environment changes those balances are disrupted, but once the environment settles down and becomes stable, those balances re-occur.

I won't disagree that humans have changed the environment, but then so do many other organisms and other processes, like the sun, and the internal forces of the Earth, which have a much larger impact on the environment than humans do presently. Change is the name of the game. Change occurs - sometimes slowly and sometimes rapidly - and when it does those balances and cooperative relationships are disrupted.

Competition is the process where an organism becomes acclimated to the new environment - competing for the resources with other species thereby creating an almost perfect balance between organism and environment. When the species becomes so perfectly tuned to it's environment it won't change, like how the shark hasn't changed for millions of years because it has evolved to the point of being an almost perfect killing machine in the water. The reason why it can never be the perfect killing machine is because it would end up killing all it's prey to the point where the species that is the prey will be eaten to extinction and then the shark starve and die. There will always be a competition between prey and predator. As the prey evolves new abilities to evade the predator, the predator will be forced to evolved a counter or die off.

'...it's a bit unfair to paint me as an advocate of factory farming don't you think? — apokrisis'


I'm afraid that crusaders in this field tend to have little time for fairness. — Barry Etheridge

Apo, I didn't mean to paint you as an advocate of factory farming, quite the contrary, I think of you as an eco-friendly poster, indeed I'm intrigued that, as I read you, you think something like factory farming is indeed a symptom of how we as human creatures are going wrong. I just can't get to that via naturalism; I have to approach it from a different angle.

Crusading, Barry: I'm an old git who stands for elections, knocks on doors, discusses ecology and the plight of fossil fuels with strangers on behalf of the Greens. I have a point of view, and I'm a fair man: these two things are possible in the same person. It seems an odd idea to me that to campaign is somehow to be unfair: how will the polis survive without a lot of pavement-pounders like me? Let's all be polite.

You've avoided any real response so I'll only repeat that pessimism is a cliche - the latest reincarnation of romanticism - and not an interesting philosophical analysis. It finds only what it already presumes. — apokrisis

:-}

In any rate, pessimism is an argument for pessimism, so it's not too surprising to myself that there exist people who are discontent with the system. The whole picture takes this phenomenon into account and doesn't pretend like it's some alien from a different universe.

Yes, of course.

Has anyone actually disagreed with this position in this thread? There's big piles of seemingly dissenting words but they all seem to be about metaethics. — zookeeper

For some reason these debates tend to devolve into metaethics. I'm still waiting for a decent argument against the OP that doesn't reek of subjugation and question-begging naturalistic fallacy bullshit.

I'm still waiting for a decent argument against the OP that doesn't reek of subjugation and question-begging naturalistic fallacy bullshit. — darthbarracuda

I gave one a few days ago that you haven't yet addressed:

"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."

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." — Michael

When I say empathy is a starting point, I mean that empathy gives us an initial motivation to help another person. We need no extra justification to help someone if we feel empathetic to them.

Yet this is surely not the only motivation for ethics. We can see how rights are applied to humans that are explicitly non-rational, like toddlers, or the mentally disabled. We can see how non-human animals are sentient. We can notice how our empathy is inherently tribe-like. And we can piece these together to come to the conclusion that our application of rights is completely arbitrary - thus motivating us to create a new schema, one that includes non-human animals in its domain.

So it would go like this:

1.) The ability to suffer is a prime candidate for ethical priority (plausible)
2.) Non-human animals can suffer (highly likely)
3.) Non-human animals therefore have ethical priority (from 1 and 2)

Like I said before, we need not care for non-human animals to realize that they deserve to be treated equally.

And I appealed to the other forms of -isms like sexism and racism to show how any arbitrary exclusion of non-human animals from the domain of ethics can equally be applied to the exclusion of females or blacks from the domain of politics or society in general. Thus this is an ad absurdum argument which is meant to show the inconsistency and arbitrary-ness of speciesism.

We can see how rights are applied to humans that are explicitly non-rational, like toddlers, or the mentally disabled. We can see how non-human animals are sentient. We can notice how our empathy is inherently tribe-like. And we can piece these together to come to the conclusion that our application of rights is completely arbitrary — darthbarracuda

It's only arbitrary if sentience is the only relevant factor. Given that we also give rights to the dead would suggest that this isn't the case. Rather it seems that humanity is a relevant factor. And given that non-human animals aren't human, it's not inconsistent to not give them the same rights as us.

1.) The ability to suffer is a prime candidate for ethical priority (plausible)
2.) Non-human animals can suffer (highly likely)
3.) Non-human animals therefore have ethical priority (from 1 and 2)

I don't quite understand the implication of this. What exact rights are you proposing we give to non-human animals? The right to marriage and to run for President? What does treating animals with equality actually entail?

It's only arbitrary if sentience is the only relevant factor. Given that we also give rights to the dead would suggest that this isn't the case. Rather it seems that humanity is a relevant factor. And given that non-human animals aren't human, it's not inconsistent to not give them the same rights as us. — Michael

In which case, I would urge us to reconsider our prior beliefs. Ancestor worship is irrational, the deceased are no more and cannot be harmed. Only the memory of them can be tarnished. So we aren't giving rights to the dead as much as we are preserving a legacy of this person.

I don't quite understand the implication of this. What exact rights are you proposing we give to non-human animals? The right to marriage and to run for President? What does treating animals with equality actually entail? — Michael

Right, so animals can't vote. They can't write dissertations defending their right to not be abused. They can't collectively come together and petition for change.

Equality in this sense does not register as equal "everything", just as equality between the sexes does not mean men can get abortions (it doesn't make sense). Rather, equality means equal treatment - if we treat humans with respect, then we ought to treat animals with respect. If we wouldn't murder a human, then we ought not murder an animal. If we wouldn't enslave a human (anymore at least...), then we ought not enslave an animal.

Administering rights to humans but not to non-human animals requires a justification, which will take the form of an ethical constraint. Yet, as I have argued, there are no constraints that aren't arbitrary, contradictory, or irrational.

Yet, as I have argued, there are no constraints that aren't arbitrary, contradictory, or irrational. — darthbarracuda

I think I see your problem....

Ancestor worship is irrational, the deceased are no more and cannot be harmed. — darthbarracuda

So? Clearly our moral considerations do not just take into account harm done, which is exactly why it is not sufficient to argue that animals ought be treated with equality simply because they can be harmed.

Administering rights to humans but not to non-human animals requires a justification, which will take the form of an ethical constraint. Yet, as I have argued, there are no constraints that aren't arbitrary, contradictory, or irrational.

Administering rights at all requires justification (if it requires justification at all). And it might be that part of the justification for administering rights to humans is that they are human – i.e. humans have rights not because they can suffer but because they are human – and given that non-human animals are not human it is not arbitrary, contradictory, or irrational to administer rights to humans but not to non-human animals.

Rather, equality means equal treatment - if we treat humans with respect, then we ought to treat animals with respect. If we wouldn't murder a human, then we ought not murder an animal. If we wouldn't enslave a human (anymore at least...), then we ought not enslave an animal.

I don't see how you get from "animals can suffer" to "we ought not kill animals". I'm guessing the implicit premise is "we ought not kill things which can suffer". Clearly this isn't a premise that many agree with. So if you want to argue that we ought not kill animals then the burden is on you to defend the premise "we ought not kill things which can suffer". Simply saying "we ought not kill humans" doesn't do this. The latter doesn't entail the former.

I think I see your problem.... — apokrisis

Or rather, you should see this as your problem and look into why the constraints of common sense morality are largely arbitrary and defenseless.

So? Clearly our moral considerations do not just take into account harm done, which is exactly why it is not sufficient to argue that animals ought be treated with equality simply because they can be harmed. — Michael

Yet we can refine our moral considerations and reject the notions of common sense morality that make no sense.

Administering rights at all requires justification (if it requires justification at all). And it might be that part of the justification for administering rights to humans is that they are human – i.e. humans have rights not because they can suffer but because they are human – and given that non-human animals are not human it is not arbitrary, contradictory, or irrational to administer rights to humans but not to non-human animals. — Michael

But why should we limit these rights to only humans? As I've shown there's really no justification to not give these rights to non-human animals.

I'm guessing the implicit premise is "we ought not kill things which can suffer". Clearly this isn't a premise that many agree with. — Michael

I disagree. A lot of people see animals as "lesser" creatures, of a "lesser" intellect and thus "logically" (?) "lesser" emotional capacity. They don't disagree with the notion that we ought not kill or harm things which can suffer. They just think that non-human animals are more akin to machines than feeling creatures.

It says something about the arbitrariness of common-sense morality when we look at how a hunter might own a pet dog to help sniff out the game, and has an emotional connection to this animal and cares about its welfare, while simultaneously failing to attribute these same rights to the elk it murders. It's cherry-picking bullshit, through and through.

Yet we can refine our moral considerations and reject the notions of common sense morality that make no sense. — darthbarracuda

What do you mean by it not making sense?

But why should we limit these rights to only humans? As I've shown there's really no justification to not give these rights to non-human animals. — darthbarracuda

Why limit rights to only those things which can suffer? And why do we need justification to not give them rights?

If you want to argue that things can deserve rights even if we don't give them rights, and if a thing deserving rights is independent of whatever rights we actually give (or not give), then if humans deserve rights but non-human animals don't then this is all the justification we need to give rights to humans but not to non-human animals.

It says something about the arbitrariness of common-sense morality when we look at how a hunter might own a pet dog to help sniff out the game, and has an emotional connection to this animal and cares about its welfare, while simultaneously failing to attribute these same rights to the elk it murders. It's cherry-picking bullshit, through and through.

Why must our application of moral rights not be arbitrary? If I choose to give some people cake but not others then I'm being arbitrary. Am I obligated to give everyone else cake? Of course not. So that we choose to give some things rights but not others is arbitrary. Are we obligated to give everything else rights? Prima facie, no. A case needs to be made for other things deserving rights. And maybe non-human animals don't deserve the same rights as us, either because they can't suffer or because a capacity to suffer is not sufficient.

What do you mean by it not making sense? — Michael

I mean that it is not consistent or rational.

Why limit rights to only those things which can suffer? And why do we need justification to not give them rights? — Michael

Well, because having a feeling mind carries with it certain liabilities, like the capacity to suffer. And I see no good reason to posit alternative capacities that makes something worthy of ethical consideration. They don't fulfill the open-ended question.

Why must our application of moral rights not be arbitrary? If I choose to give some people cake but not others then I'm being arbitrary. Am I obligated to give everyone else cake? Of course not. So that we choose to give some things rights but not others is arbitrary. Are we obligated to give everything else rights? Prima facie, no. A case needs to be made for other things deserving rights. And maybe non-human animals don't deserve the same rights as us, either because they can't suffer or because a capacity to suffer is not sufficient. — Michael

Again, if we apply the concept of equality universally, then we'll see how giving some people cake but not others is not advisable - is this not the basis of socialism?

I am coming from a perspective that affirms the concept of equality and the ethical importance of suffering. In order to argue against my claim, then, you will need to argue that equality shouldn't be applied universally (and thus not be equality in any meaningful sense), and that suffering is not the only ethically important notion - and from my view, the former would depend on arbitrary moral constraints, and the latter fails to fulfill the open-ended question.

In order to argue against my claim, then, you will need to argue that equality shouldn't be applied universally (and thus not be equality in any meaningful sense), and that suffering is not the only ethically important notion - and from my view, the former would depend on arbitrary moral constraints, and the latter fails to fulfill the open-ended question. — darthbarracuda

Or we could just ask you to support any claim you might wish to make, having explained why it is in fact arbitrary in mandating universality where even commonsense says differences exist.

If animals, for instance, can't imagine their own extinction by death and so experience existential dread, then do we get to take that distinction into account, or not?

You are taking an all or nothing approach to sentience. And where are the facts that would justify such an arbitrary stance on your part?

If animals, for instance, can't imagine their own extinction by death and so experience existential dread, then do we get to take that distinction into account, or not? — apokrisis

Well, sure, but we'll have to have solid evidence to show that they can't feel dread. In any case the murder of a non-human sentient would be similar to the murder of a human - you are taking away the chance to experience potential good in the future, or the freedom to do so. Ignoring this just makes them out to be machines with no purpose or goal, which just isn't true (or, at the least, should not be assumed)

You are taking an all or nothing approach to sentience. And where are the facts that would justify such an arbitrary stance on your part? — apokrisis

No, I am taking an all-or-nothing approach to ethics about sentience. I understand how minds exist in a gradience. This does little to the ethics of sentience, however.

I am coming from a perspective that affirms the concept of equality and the ethical importance of suffering. In order to argue against my claim, then, you will need to argue that equality shouldn't be applied universally (and thus not be equality in any meaningful sense), and that suffering is not the only ethically important notion - and from my view, the former would depend on arbitrary moral constraints, and the latter fails to fulfill the open-ended question. — darthbarracuda

This is high order sophistry! One is never required to prove a negative. It is the plaintiff that must prove his case, something which you have singularly failed to do in my opinion. The defendant is not required to prove anything.

In any case the murder of a non-human sentient would be similar to the murder of a human — darthbarracuda

Yes it would if the non-human sentient was human! You've continually failed to (or more likely refused to) address this simple fatal flaw in your argument long enough. It is an inescapable truth that human rights (if such a concept has any meaning anyway) are the distillation of ethical arguments by humans, about humans, and for humans. There is no rational or logical argument by which the qualifier 'human' may be erased. They do not, by definition, apply to any species other than humans. For any other species to have these rights they must not simply resemble humans they must be humans or identical to humans.

The whole basis of your argument is that every ethical principle which applies in defining human rights is transferable without modification to other animals and that is simply not the case for the simple reason that every ethical principle which applies in the definition of human rights is predicated on the uniquely human.

I mean that it is not consistent or rational. — darthbarracuda

If part of the reason that we treat people better than we treat animals is that people are human then it's not inconsistent or irrational to treat people better than we treat animals.

Just as if part of the reason that we treat things which can suffer better than we treat things which can't is that things which can suffer can feel pain then it's not inconsistent or irrational to treat things which can suffer better than we treat things which can't.

There's a reason behind our treatment (either "they're human" or "it can suffer") and we're applying that reason consistently.

Well, because having a feeling mind carries with it certain liabilities, like the capacity to suffer. And I see no good reason to posit alternative capacities that makes something worthy of ethical consideration.

Others disagree. Others say that being human makes something worthy of (special) ethical consideration. Others say that even things which can't suffer can be worthy of ethical consideration (e.g. the dead). What reasons do you have for believing that all things (and only those things?) which can suffer deserve equal ethical consideration? You keep asserting it and demanding that others prove you wrong, but that's shifting the burden of proof.

I am coming from a perspective that affirms the concept of equality and the ethical importance of suffering. In order to argue against my claim, then, you will need to argue that equality shouldn't be applied universally (and thus not be equality in any meaningful sense), and that suffering is not the only ethically important notion - and from my view, the former would depend on arbitrary moral constraints, and the latter fails to fulfill the open-ended question.

It's not my job to argue against your claim. It's your job to defend your claim.

Furthermore, you keep using this term "arbitrary" which doesn't actually apply here. A thing is arbitrary if it is done without a reason, but there is a reason why we treat people better than we treat non-human animals; that reason being that the former are human, and so deserving of special ethical treatment. It may also be the case that non-human animals deserve this same kind of special ethical treatment, but we can't simply assume that they do. You can't go from "humans deserve special ethical treatment" to "non-human animals deserve special ethical treatment".

Or to put it another way, you can't go from "all humans ought be treated equally" to "all things which can suffer ought be treated equally". And there's nothing arbitrary, irrational, or inconsistent about the former.