But nowhere have I said 'there is no world', only that we can't see it as if we were not a part of it, that the objective stance is treated as if it were an absolute, which it isn't. — Wayfarer

So you acknowledge that unperceived things exist, and you are only denying that we can see things as they are when unperceived? In that case there would seem to be no argument since our being unable to see things as they are unseen would seem to be a mere tautology.

Right, and this is just what I've been saying except I don't think the fact that we must acknowledge that there is a reality beyond our perceptual and conceptual capacities is without significance, since it is a fact about the human condition.
— Janus

Better yet, we can subtract the human from the epistemic equation as best we can. That is, apply the scientific method, or Peirce's logical arc of abduction, deduction and inductive confirmation. Arrive at the view that represents the limits of inquiry for a community of rational thought. Act as if it were the Comos that is contemplating its own Being. — apokrisis

I agree with what you say, and I think it follows on from what I said. It's the best we can do.

This is an ontological commitment we might make as part of an evolutionary metaphysics. Such as Big Bang cosmology. — apokrisis

I believe the Universe evolved, and I think this belief entails that there were an untold number of events and processes that occurred before there were any perceivers..

One can’t believe in physics without going along with its least action principle. Optimisation of dialectical balances just is the reality physics describes. — apokrisis

I don't have the background to understand what you are saying or hinting at here.

The "thing in itself" (which I'm saying is 'the Universe with no observers) represents the reality that lies beyond our perceptual and cognitive reach. This underscores the limits of human knowledge and reinforces the idea that our understanding is always shaped by the conditions of our cognition, making any direct knowledge of the "thing in itself" both impossible and meaningless within our conceptual framework. — Wayfarer

Right, and this is just what I've been saying except I don't think the fact that we must acknowledge that there is a reality beyond our perceptual and conceptual capacities is without significance, since it is a fact about the human condition. What I don't agree with Kant about is that we are (by dint of practical reason) warranted in populating that "realm" with the artifices of our own imagination and faith in the context of intersubjective argument. What we choose to believe in our own hearts is another matter; the point is that something seeming right to me cannot constitute an argument for why anyone else should believe as I do.

There was a mention earlier in this thread about Kastrup's 'mind-at-large', and my questioning of that in a Medium essay. On further reflection, I am beginning to see that this could be conceptualised as 'the subject' or 'an observer' in a general sense. It doesn't refer to a particular individual, nor to some ethereal disembodied intelligence that haunts the Universe. But I wonder if it might also be plausibly understood as represented by the 'transcendental ego' in Kant and Husserl. Also, quite plausibly, the role of 'observer' in physics, which is never something included in the mathematical descriptions. — Wayfarer

I cannot make sense of the idea of an "observer" apart from individual observers. We are finite temporal observers. Is there an infinite atemporal observer? Do we even know what that could mean? So, for me the "transcendental ego" is just an idea, I can't imagine how it could be a reality. I don't deny that it might be a reality, but I don't see how we could understand what such a reality could be, any more than we could understand what the reality of the in itself could be.

When it comes to imaginable possible more or less coherent explanations for how it is we all perceive the same things I can only think of 'actual mind independent' existence in the form of actual mind independent existents or ideas in a collective or universal mind, which is Kastrup's solution. I personally find the actual mind independent existents more plausible, but I can't mount an argument for that because there is no objective measure of plausibility. What is one person's plausibility is another's incredulity.

What is clear from ten years of interactions, is that you don't understand what I write despite repeated efforts on my part to lay it out as clearly as I can. I'm about at the end of my tether as far as you're concerned. — Wayfarer

I understand what you write, but I don't see just what is your reasoning for thinking what you think, and also it is not precisely clear to me just what it is that you do think. Your reference to a "transcendental ego" above is an example; I think that is a much less clear idea than the idea of a collective mind, or the idea of mind-independent existents.

So there are the known unknowns and then the unknown unknowns which we can believe surely also must exist? That kind of thing? — apokrisis

Sure, why not?

For me, it would is a matter for empirical inquiry. As in how far does one really get by employing tunnel vision?

The dog that didn't bark could be the clue. The world as it "is" might exist as an optimisation algorithm such as we find at the base of all physics – the least action principle. The "ought" that eliminated all the other worlds that felt they too might have been possible if we hadn't outcompeted them in the race to be the case. — apokrisis

I'm not sure what you are getting at with your first sentence. "The world as it is" is for us just an idea, but it doesn't seem to follow that the world as it is is just an idea. Do you think anything would exist if humans, or if you like, any other perceivers didn't exist? I'm not interested in the question as to what its mind-independent existence would be like, because I don't think we can answer that; it's kind of a meaningless question. "Optimization algorithm" is still an anthropomorphic notion, so perhaps we could rule that out?

But does he clearly believe either side of the proposition at any time? There are those who assert and won't explain. There are those who don't understand. Then there is this other thing of seeming to agree and then slipping back across the boundary towards the other side. A foot in both camps.

There are many ways that arguments are never won on PF. :wink: — apokrisis

Of course, I agree that these kinds of arguments can never be settled, and that people believe whatever they do for not purely rational reasons. So, we are all here telling others what seems most plausible, most salient, most important to us individually. We are all just one small voice in the greater cacophony that is human thought and belief.

But if we are here to argue sensibly it seems at least reasonable to be called upon to state a clear position. My complaint about @Wayfarer is that he cannot or will not do that. We don't all have to agree with one another, but it would help to at least know what the others' coherent and consistent standpoints are (if they have such). If the standpoints presented are not lucidly articulated and internally consistent then why should they be taken seriously?

A constant reminder that incomprehension of an argument doesn't constitute a rebuttal.

So though we know that prior to the evolution of life there must have been a Universe with no intelligent beings in it, or that there are empty rooms with no inhabitants, or objects unseen by any eye — the existence of all such supposedly unseen realities still relies on an implicit perspective. What their existence might be outside of any perspective is meaningless and unintelligible, as a matter of both fact and principle.

Hence there is no need for me to deny that the Universe is real independently of your mind or mine, or of any specific, individual mind. Put another way, it is empirically true that the Universe exists independently of any particular mind. — Wayfarer

It's not that I don't understand what you are saying, it's that I don't agree with it, but you don't seem to be able to fathom that. You say "the existence of all such supposedly unseen realities still relies on an implicit perspective", but from my perspective your mistake is that it is not that the existence of such realities "relies" on an implicit perspective, but that the judgement that there are (or are not) such realities is an expression of a perspective.

If you believe that there is a reality as to what is the case regarding whether such unseen realities rely for their existence on some perspective, then you are claiming that there is something mind-independently the case; that is that there are or are not such realities.

I don't see how you can escape from that. If you claim that sages can directly know what is going on you are claiming that something is the case regardless of any perspective, that is that sages either can or cannot know directly what is going on, or else your claim becomes meaningless.

You say it is empirically true that the Universe exists independently of any mind, which seems to imply that it is true only from that perspective. From what perspective do you imagine it to be untrue?

What are these and how would we know? — apokrisis

Well, in line with what I said, we don't know what they are. Do you really think the whole story consists in what we can be consciously aware of? I get it that if we can't know about something it, as Banno puts it, "drops out of the conversation", but I also think that it is a significant fact about the human condition that there is much that determines what and who we are, what we experience and how we interpret it, that is precognitive. Whether or not you acknowledge that determines your basic orientation towards life.

The irony is that someone like @Wayfarer who doesn't want to acknowledge that many things have happened, are happening and will happen that we can never know about, nonetheless believes that sages can "directly" know "what is really going on".

I think you are saying that we perceive the differences that have meaning for us, differences that make a difference for us, and that that meaning is the global background or context against which particulars can stand out. I agree with that, but I also think there are many differences we just don't perceive at all but that nonetheless make a difference to how and what we perceive.

The world is what is the case.
— Banno

For whom? And what was their purpose?

Always just half the story. — apokrisis

It seems plausible to think that there is much that is the case despite there being no one around to notice it, care about it, or comment on it, or even able to be consciously aware of it. I don't see that equating with "lumpen realism" if by that term you mean 'naive realism'. I think what we consciously experience always is "just half the story".

The world just is as it is, regardless of what you think of it
— Banno

It's a given, right? — Wayfarer

What is the alternative? That the world just is what it isn't? I have to say, Wayfarer, that I am yet, after all the exchanges we have had over the last twelve or however many years, to gain any clear idea of what it is you are actually arguing for.

(1) reality has an ineluctably subjective pole — Wayfarer

Reality as experienced and interpreted by us has a subjective pole, so no disagreement there.

(2) that no world can be imagined in which this is not the case — Wayfarer

We can imagine that the world without us has no subjective pole, in fact it seems to be the most plausible conclusion. We cannot imagine "what the world is like" without perceivers, because the idea of 'what it is like' is meaningless outside the context of perception and judgement. On the other hand, we can imagine that it is differentiated, that is that it is not amorphous, and the idea that it is differentiated has more explanatory power than the idea that it is amorphous, because if it were amorphous there would be no explanation for how we come to perceive difference.

(3) that this subjective pole or ground is never itself amongst the objects considered by naturalism — Wayfarer

Yes. obviously not because it is a concept not a concrete thing.

that the emphasis on objectivity as the sole criteria for what is real is deeply mistaken on those grounds. — Wayfarer

Objectivity is not a criterion, but a mode, of existence.

Please excuse my butting in. — Banno

Cheers but there is nothing to excuse, it's an open forum.

It's the same objection you're offering here, that our beliefs can be different to what we discover about the world. But notice that Philoonous qua idealist does have an answer to that, along the lines of coherentism. — Wayfarer

It has nothing to do with coherentism. The reality that we can be mistaken about. according to Berkeley, is the human mind-independent reality of what Goid has in mind, as opposed to the materialist reality of mind-independent existents.

You have been challenged to explain how it is that we all perceive the same things, if you reject both the idea of mind-independent existents and Berkeley's human mind-independent ideas in the mind of God. It seems you just don't want to admit you can find no alternative.

You always take one step further than your argument allows. — Banno

:up: That's an apt and succinct way of putting it.

A brick wall's response depends on what you throw at it.

Just to be clear: are you claiming that the world absent any perceivers could not possibly possess any differentiation whatsoever? If that were so, then how to explain the advent of perceivers in a world of difference and diversity?

How did the Great Amorphous Nothing give rise to the Immensely Complex Something?

I am anticipating a verrry long wait...

Edit: Some rhetoric appeared above as I wrote...still waiting for the reasoning.

There are no features without minds. In the absence of minds the universe, such as it is, is featureless, formless, and lacking in any perspective. — Wayfarer

I was just about to write "How could you know that" when I looked directly above and saw that Banno beat me to it.

Inferentially. — Wayfarer

Lay out the reasoning.

the mind creates gestalts, meaningful wholes, by which recognise not only letters, but also the basic features of the world. — Wayfarer

Right. the basic features of the world are not mind-created, but mind-recognized.

Schrödinger proposed this thought-experiment only to show that the 'Copenhagen interpretation' of quantum mechanics is, at best, paradoxical (i.e. does not make sense). — 180 Proof

:100: How easily and how often that is forgotten!

The very idea of a single way to live that would constrain us all as if we lived under actual environmental and thermodynamic constraints! — apokrisis

Yes, there would seem to be little hope for us as a species if we don't find such a way.

What does the job of organising our behaviour in some useful and self-sustaining way? — apokrisis

:up: I think that is what it all comes down to. Philosophy should be about how best to live. Whatever does not inform that, however interesting and creative it might be, is just a diversion in the form of speculation.

Where Kastrup aspires to prove logically that a Cosmic Mind must exist in some meaningful sense, Way says "there is no need to introduce a literal ‘mind-at-large’ to maintain a coherent idealism" {my emphasis}. What he does posit, in the article, is that a philosophical "paradigm shift from scientific materialism to scientifically-informed idealism" is currently underway"*2. And that new paradigm would not say "Abstract generalities can be said to only exist in their material instantiations" {my emphasis}. Which only makes sense from a Materialist perspective.

So, Way presents an alternative form of Idealism, which doesn't require an actual sensable God-in-the-quad to maintain the physical world in the absence of a human observer. — Gnomon

You haven't and Wayfarer hasn't, said what that alternative form of idealism consists in. If it is only that the brain models a world, well I think that is uncontroversial. But to think that what is being modeled exists in its own right seems most plausible to me given all the evidence from our experience as it is given by everday life and by science.

If there are no mind-independent existents and if there is no collective mind to which we are all connected, then how would you explain the fact that we all perceive the same things, including at least some animals? I am yet to see even the beginnings of any such explanation coming from you or Wayfarer.

I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you. Over and out. — Wayfarer

See above. You have not explained it. If you had I would have no trouble understanding it, although of course I imagine I probably would not agree with it and would thus critique it. But you have not given me anything at all to work with, just hand-waving. If you don't agree, then respond to this and lay it our as clearly as you can, and then we might get somewhere.

Again, 'I don't see how'. The fact you don't understand it is not a criterion. It's insight into a general process, one in which we're all involved. It's basic to the human condition, in fact it's basic to any form of organic life. — Wayfarer

There is no point saying that I don't understand some idea if you cannot explain it yourself. I can simply retort that you don't understand it either and that it is just something you vaguely gesture at.

It seems obvious to me that the mind interprets the world, it does not create it. The mind (brain) as well as the language and culture also generate an idea of a self, but the idea is still vague if you want to say that the self is anything more than the body, including its ideas, emotions and its history. But even then, there always seems to be something left out.

The only reality is mind and observations, but observations are not of things. To see the Universe as it really is, we must abandon our tendency to conceptualize observations as things. — Wayfarer

What, I should believe that just because it is said by

a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University, author of many publications on the topics of astrophysics and various forms of astronomy including optical, radio, ultraviolet, and X-ray. — Wayfarer

I understand what is being said, and I think it is an unwarranted conclusion that is incorrect and not in accordance with human experience—observations obviously are of things. I do agree with the last part that says that observations are not themselves things, if we define 'things' as 'what is observable or encounterable in some sense', because observations are not observable.

Who is this "we" to which you just referred? — apokrisis

I would have been better to say 'a world or a self is never encountered'.

Perhaps

"I see this or that makes sense or nonsense within this or that world model or ontic framework." — apokrisis

That seems right, but no framework is THE framework. I think we agree that the nature of things is best given to us by science, which is, when it comes down to it, an extensive elaboration of everyday experience and observation.

Self and world never seem to be found apart, and yet never together either. Curious. It is almost as if each is the other's reflection somehow. An Umwelt almost. — apokrisis

Right, the ideas of self and world are conceptually inseparable. I like the idea of an "Umwelt" or as Jaspers would put it "an Encompassing".

It ican be said of mindfulness meditation that its aim is to gain insight into the mind's 'I-making and mine-making' proclivities, which are going on ceaselessly due to ingrained habits of thought. — Wayfarer

I don't see how you could transcend the "I-making and mine-making proclivities" as long as you cling to the idea that the mind (that is the self) creates the world. Insofar as this places the self at the centre of the world it is not a "Copernican Revolution" at all.

(Which do you prefer, "The conscious self is a construction that arises in the dialectical process that is a world-making" or "Here is a hand"? — Banno

We don't encounter a world or a self, but we encounter many hands. And many hands make light work—but only if they work together.

"The conscious self is a construction that arises in the dialectical process that is a world-making" could be a quote from Edward Caird or T.H. Green. — Banno

I had to look up those two names—I don't know much about the British Idealists other than that they were followers of Hegel. Apparently, the early Bertrand Russell was of that ilk.

That said, I think there is a way of parsing the quoted statement that makes sense: 'The idea of a self co-arises with the idea of a world'. Both ideas are inherently vague—we never actually encounter a whole self, or a whole world.

My criticism of the view that everything is mind is that we really have no idea what that could mean. On the other hand, we know very well what it means to say that everything is material or physical, since we find ourselves in a material world, where everything, except abstract generalities, does seem to be physical. Abstract generalities can be said to only exist in their material instantiations, and we have no way of clearly conceiving and saying how they could exist in any other sense.

The progress hasn’t quite been zero. Nobels have been handed out… — apokrisis

Sure, however I'm not talking about the science, but the various metaphysical interpretations of the implications of QM made by probably mostly non-scientists.

At least science acknowledges that it is all only pragmatic modelling and not a pretence at knowing the ultimate truths. But science can afford to humble brag having achieved so much in telling the structural story of Nature. — apokrisis

I agree with this. though I think the general existential problem is, as Margaret Wertheim puts it in Pythagoras' Trousers, that the scientific world picture is only really accessible to a tiny minority, whereas the older, much simpler religious and mythological models of the Cosmos and Humanity's place in it were much more readily comprehensible, despite that fact that, under critical examination, they prove to be incoherent and rife with inconsistencies. Shared worldviews allow a more closely bonded society, so the challenge for science is to make itself more accessible to the average person.

I suggest that contemporary physicists' obsession with a theory of everything is socially irresponsible. In expecting society to provide billions of dollars to support this quest, TOE physicists have become like a decadent priesthood, demanding that the populace build them ever more elaborate cathedrals, with spires reaching ever higher into their idea of heaven, Since a theory of everything would be not only utterly irrelevant to daily human life and concerns, but also incomprehensible to the vast majority of people, TOE physicists can be likened to the late medieval Scholastics. This is the twentieth-century equivalent of asking how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.
From Pythagoras' Trousers

If you don't take a metaphysical position then you haven't put your faith in anything. I also try to avoid taking any metaphysical position.

When it comes to the simple question about whether the world existed before humans, I think all the evidence suggests it did and acknowledging that does not involve metaphysics.

I don't beleive that Quantum physics

has called the 'mind-independence' of what were thought to be the fundamental constituents of existence into question. — Wayfarer

although of course some want to interpret the results that way.

The metaphysical speculations about the results of quantum physics are of course untestable as I already implicitly acknowledged, as is the idea that reality is mind independent. That's way I say that for me, and I think taking parsimony and accordance with experience, and the incoherence of idealist speculations into account, the mind independence of reality is simply the most plausible assumption; but of course, it remains a question of faith and individual assessments of plausibility.

The only "philosophical significance" I can see in these metaphysical interrogations and in metaphysical speculations in general is that it is a fact of the human condition that people cannot help but fall into continuing to speculate in those ways. And as I've said many times, I see no problem with that except where people begin to imagine that they could ever come to know the answer to such questions. Apart from that error, they may be creative exercises of the imagination (although it doesn't seem as though anyone has come up with much new material in the last couple millennia, except for semiotic, enactive and information theory and related ideas, which at least have some connections with science.

That’s only a problem for solipsism - that only MY mind is real I didn’t explain it, because feel no need to. — Wayfarer

No, it's a problem that goes way beyond solipsism. If there are mind independent existents that would explain how it is that we see and hear the same things. The only other way to explain it is to posit some kind of universal connection or collective of minds, and hence we have Berkeley's "mind of God", Jung's "collective unconscious" and Kastrup's "mind at large".

I'd rather say that reason points to something beyond itself. But you will often say that anything that can't be understood in terms of maths or science is to be categorised as 'faith'. — Wayfarer

I missed this earlier. How you have characterized what I often say is not quite right. I think the only things we can know are those things which are tautologous, or which we directly observe, and with the latter we know only how things appear to be. Scientific theories are never proven, only may be disproven or surpassed, so faith operates there as well when we place our provisional confidence in them. Of course, the fact that some scientific theories have been observed to yield accurate predictions countless times is a point in their favour. The same cannot be said for metaphysical speculations, because they make no predictions that can be rigorously tested.

Yes, I think consistency with our experience is important. I'm not a fan of religious faith at all, at least insofar as it makes ontological or metaphysical claims. When I said philosophy is a matter of faith I meant that each of us, in taking some position or other, necessarily is placing their faith in what seems most plausible and consistent with our experience. It's difficult or impossible to determine truth in that context though, unless it is a simple matter of logic or empirical observation, and hence the role faith must play for each of in deciding what to think philosophically speaking.

And re-visiting it, I think perhaps rather than invoking the spooky 'mind at large', I would just use the term 'some mind' or 'any mind' or 'the observer'.) — Wayfarer

The problem I see is that without positing either some mind-independent reality or collective or universal mind it is impossible to explain how it is that we all see and hear the same things in the environment. Even animals see and hear the same things we do, albeit maybe not in just the same ways. That is what
needs to be explained, and reading your essay, I found nothing there that could explain it.

Noumena or the raw 'stuff' that somehow gives rise to our empirical relationship with the world does not require a god or some variation of cosmic consciousness to exist. I guess it is in this knowledge gap that we can insert any number of notions relating to higher consciousness - reincarnation, karma, spirits, clairvoyance, etc. — Tom Storm

I agree that we cannot know with certainty what lies beyond human experience. But it seems most plausible that whatever it is, it must give rise to the commonality of experience I mentioned in my reply to Wayfarer above. To my mind positing a universal or collective mind, or a karmic storehouse consciousness, or whatever to explain that commonality is way less parsimonious and way less in accordance with our everyday experience than positing a much less problematic mind-independent reality. All the evidence, all our knowledge and all our scientific theory indicates that the Universe existed for an almost unimaginable period prior to the existence of any humans.

I'm entangled in the hindrancesand have attained nothing by way of higher states. But that's the philosophy or 'way' that I am attempting to understand in some degree. At least it provides, as it were, a vantage point, and also, however remote, a sense of there being a destination. — Wayfarer

Without actual renunciation such social entanglements are inevitable. And even with renunciation, complete disentanglement is not possible, because complete renunciation is impossible. If you attempt to understand Buddhism or any mystical way analytically you will fail they cannot be rendered as coherent and consistent philosophy, they can only be "lived' via faith. Philosophy itself ultimately consists in faith, not in knowledge or understanding in a scientific, mathematical or logical kind of sense.

But does he do so coherently? Not that I have seen.

Ok, whereas I - and perhaps apokrisis - take mind to arise within the world. — Banno

Yes, there is no coherent way to render mind ontologically fundamental, since the notion has its roots only in our naively intuitive apprehension of our own experience. @Wayfarer claims he doesn't agree with Kastrup's "mind at large", which I would say is itself an incoherent idea, but he apparently cannot offer any coherent alternative. So, all he can do is vaguely gesture towards something he doesn't seem to want to give up, rather than being able to state a cogent position constituting an ontology.

I really can't blame him for this because I don't think a cogent (consistent and compete) ontologically is possible.

I read the idea of the impossibility of a private language as being based on the fact that if you tried to create a private language of your own from scratch, you would have to relate all your new words to, that is translate them into, the language you were already familiar with in order to establish their meaning.

Since you would be relying on the public language you are already familiar with, your new language would not really be a private language except in the sense that only you might know about it. Languages evolve naturally, we must think, over many generations, so to create one from scratch that relied on no existing language would be an insurmountable, and completely pointless even if it were possible, task.

The other salient question, it seems to me, is whether there could be any novel "private language" that could not be taught, even in principle, to others. If not, that might disqualify it as being a "private language". So again, this is because it seems that if you were to be able to teach it, it would need to be related to a public language the student was already familiar with.

The interpretation I dislike is the one that says that to ask "why are their clouds and why do they produce rain?" is to have become bewitched or fallen into incoherence. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Would that question not be simply what produces clouds and how do they in turn produce rain— a scientific question? I can't think of any other way to coherently frame the question. I mean you could feel a sense of great wonder that there are clouds and rain, and indeed a world at all, but I don't see any coherent question that sense of wonder could be transformed into other than the scientific ones.

Are you asking if they have the intelligence at par with human beings? Sure. Equal or more. — Bob Ross

torture, abuse, mass genocide — Bob Ross

OK, humans torture, abuse, commit genocide, but it is arguably on account of aberrant social conditioning. Other social animals don't have symbolic language, and thus being free of the potential for ideology based aberrant social conditioning, they are generally good to their own species.

So, what is it that causes this "devil species" to torture, abuse and commit genocide? Do they do these things to their own species, or only to other species? If they do it to other species, what is the explanation for why they do it?

The reason I say it is incoherent is because I can't imagine such a species, more intelligent than we are and in possession of symbolic language, not being bedeviled by ideologies, just as we are, which would mean such aberrant behavior would not be universal among them, just as it is not universal with us.

Is it a human-level intelligent species?

The notion of a "devil species" seems entirely incoherent to me, so I'm not seeing that there is a point to be missed.

" ...it is empirically true that the Universe exists independently of any particular mind."
yet
"...its existence is inextricably bound by and to the mind we have" — Banno

Right, so just what claim is being made? We know, because it is obvious that experienced reality is transjective, but it doesn't follow that the real as such has any subjective element.

I would also ask as to why it matters to those it seems to matter to. Could it be because they cannot bear the idea that this life is all we get?

I think he also wants to make a claim without making a claim.

Generally, yes. But would it be morally intuitive to say that a social species that maintains their society by torturing another social species as doing something 'good'? That's what is implied by Aristotelian ethics if the social species requires it to fulfill their nature. — Bob Ross

How could you maintain your society by torturing others? Unless you are talking about something like torturing slaves to keep them in line? If so, you are again talking about humanity, not other animals.

Social animals care about their own; otherwise, their societies could not last.