"But Thucydides, how do you *know* the dog or cat can't contemplate its suffering? " See above post and every post I ever made about philosophical skepticism.

I don't see all animals as lower life forms, please read more carefully, I know your phone screen is small and all.

Emotions evolved, and have evolutionary purposes. Seeing an animal express emotion simply doesn't have bearing on its consciousness.

(Just so we're clear, I didn't read all of this... Just making something a touch clearer: there are conditions to think that something is a candidate for the status of sentient. Some important similarities (if merely functional) with our nervous system, for one. Some important similarities in behaviour as well.)

Thucydides, I want tobsee proof that you know any animal outside the hive/school intellect doesn't have consciousness. Until then you are making an assumption and a dangerous one to set any animal up for potential abuse because the abuser or the system doesn't see them as sentient. You are no different than the theoretical aliens who come to earth and experiment on humans.

"It matters because it means there really is no difference between dissolving a sugar cube and squashing a fly."

Yes, you keep repeating these silly analogies, but they still hinge on this unsubstantiated notion that somehow consciousness is the be-all end-all of life. That nothing without consciousness is actually living, so therefore dogs and pigs are all sugar cubes and automatons.

"If you're just supposed to stop recognizable suffering no matter what it is that is suffering, why is it okay to rip potatoes out of the ground, killing them, and eat that?"

Because potatoes are not likely sentient.

"Why is it okay to allow your body to destroy microorganisms by the million?"

Again the issue of sentience and the actions are involuntary and likely necessary to continue living. The problem is gratuitous suffering. Gratuitous suffering must be deliberate and also, unnecessary.

"Why is it okay to cut down trees and live in wooden structures? To wear cotton shirts? To wear insect repellent? To allow spiders to eat flies?"

It's ok to do what it takes to ensure your own survival. Shelter is necessary for survival, as is clothing. As is repelling insects which carry malaria and other diseases (and there are eco-friendly/natural insect repellents). Your analogies are fallacious.

I still don't think I read an answer to the question as to why life only matters if you have the ability to philosophize about pain.

@Thucy,

No, I get what you mean. I'm very interested in philosophy of mind, so I get the concepts. I just reject your definition of consciousness. I absolutely think I'm conscious during non-lucid dreaming, and I can't figure out how anybody could think otherwise, though admittedly, maybe we're only arguing about words.

In other words, I don't see self-aware and conscious as the same thing at all. Even when I'm awake and working on something, I'm not always self-aware. Sometimes I'm aware only of it (in just exactly the same way that I'm aware of things in my non-lucid dreaming). I would have to stop and think to refer it to myself. Now, sure, I can do that, but it seems silly to me to argue (though I know many do) that consciousness hinges on this sporadic thing I sometimes do. Am I only conscious when relating something to myself?

I say, clearly not. Consciousness should instead be just the experience of qualia.

As for arbitrariness... OK sure. I don't really accept the arbitrariness you suggest, but arguendo, I will. My point is, you decide what you want to believe, and don't believe one can do anything else, so I don't get why you're agonizing like this. Choose whichever one you want to be true and add it to your world of appearances or whatever. You don't even mind contradictions in there, so you should be fine.

(Another random pointer:
Generally, arguments that ground moral values on "life", do so because of the "sacred character of life", its *inherent value* if you will. It's often argued, however, that such an evaluation rests on the false premise that there is such a thing as "inherent value". Values are to be found, such a line of argument would go, embedded in narratives about the world. Expressing it as the "sacred character of life" is of course an allusion to religious narratives, where the value of life is indeed deemed sacred and absolute. Outside of such religious narratives, however, its hard to sustain the thought that life, or anything else for that matter, has inherent value. To sum up: life doesn't have any objective value. It receives it in virtue of becoming meaningful in the way WE appropriate the world.)

"it seems silly to me to argue ... that consciousness hinges on this sporadic thing I sometimes do. "

I'm not really arguing that. I argue that when you're awake even if you're not presently having the thought "I am conscious" you still are conscious because you are aware of what is happening to you, perceptions or whatever. We take it for granted, being conscious.

"My point is, you decide what you want to believe, and don't believe one can do anything else, so I don't get why you're agonizing like this" Because as I explained to you before I like to be consistent - that's my arbitrary choice.

"Because potatoes are not likely sentient."

Okay... what? This is what I am saying Putin. Potatoes aren't sentient, and no one is emotionally attached to them, so killing them is not morally significant.

The same goes for bacteria, for insects. I'm confused now on how exactly it is you are disagreeing with me. I thought sentience was a bad criterion for moral worth, isn't that what you said?

"I still don't think I read an answer to the question as to why life only matters if you have the ability to philosophize about pain." The same reason there's nothing wrong with cutting off a corpse's head - nothing bad is happening to anyone unless you are somehow negatively affected by your action.

Basically, without consciousness, I am saying, you are just matter, no different from a corpse or abiotic matter - morally speaking anyway. If you don't think that's legitimate that's fine but stop saying you don't understand it. Lol.

"It's ok to do what it takes to ensure your own survival. Shelter is necessary for survival, as is clothing. As is repelling insects which carry malaria and other diseases (and there are eco-friendly/natural insect repellents). Your analogies are fallacious. "

I am finding it hard to believe that you believe this, given what you have been saying.

Is it not speciesist to value your life over the lives of what you seem to believe are equally worthy lives of other species? Why are you better, again? Do they have less rights than you or not? If they have the same rights, then you should just go one for one. For you to live you have to kill millions of beings - better that you be killed to save their lives.

Either that or you need to admit that some certain other species do not get rights. Like (I think) most people do. Well, I take that back, you've already taken rights away from potatoes because they're not sentient. So now I'm really confused about your position.

Also, we don't NEED wood or cotton shirts, so you haven't really justified that in survival terms. You've only justified it for people who need it in the same way people justify subsistence hunters and fishers in survival terms.

Needless to say, once again, this seems to mark you as a speciesist valuing human life over animal but hey.

"Because as I explained to you before I like to be consistent - that's my arbitrary choice. "

Huh. I could swear that what you explained to me before was that you don't have any problem with believing contradictions. I can dig up the quote and PM it to you if you want.

In any case, I still don't understand your project. It seems based on the idea that there is some kind of objective moral truth, which you have unknowingly based your moral intuitions on so far, but that it is important that you figure out what the source of this moral truth is and use the same source to extend your moral intuitions to a new domain.

But you don't believe anything like that, so I don't get it. You more or less believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that your current moral intuitions (toward humans, in other words) are reflective ultimately of profound wishes in your own personality, what you want, and not of some objective external truth. Since you _don't know_ what to think about animals, it seems to me you _don't have_ any deep moral wishes with respect to them. So ... make a decision, right?

In other words: if I were to attempt a serious answer here, I would have to attempt to reason from something to my answer. But I truly just don't have any idea what kind of thing you would recognize as an axiom or a moral source of authority, so where would I start to reason? You certainly didn't reach your conclusions about humans because you started with, "Well, they are conscious, and I intuit that I should treat conscious things such and such." You started with "They are humans."

Well, use the same algorithm, right? If you have an intuition, use it, and if you don't, do whatever the heck you want to.

Or if you really want an argument, then at least tell me what rational basis I can use to argue from. Like I say -- I was never aware you had any for ethics.

"Okay... what? This is what I am saying Putin. Potatoes aren't sentient, and no one is emotionally attached to them, so killing them is not morally significant.

The same goes for bacteria, for insects. I'm confused now on how exactly it is you are disagreeing with me. I thought sentience was a bad criterion for moral worth, isn't that what you said?"

I'm confused as to why you're confused. Sentience = feeling pain. Your position is not that inflicting pain on animals is wrong but it's only wrong if they can "understand" the pain. How are those positions alike? My position is consistent. The inflicting of unnecessary pain is morally wrong. In order to inflict pain something has to feel pain. If pain is inflicted in order for you to survive it is not wrong. Self-defense is not immoral.

"I thought sentience was a bad criterion for moral worth, isn't that what you said?"

No, consciousness is a bad criteria. And this has nothing to do with "worth". I agree with Cachimbo, there is no such thing as inherent or objective worth. It has to do with the fact that inflicting unnecessary pain on others is wrong.

"Is it not speciesist to value your life over the lives of what you seem to believe are equally worthy lives of other species? Why are you better, again? Do they have less rights than you or not? If they have the same rights, then you should just go one for one. For you to live you have to kill millions of beings - better that you be killed to save their lives. "

How is it speciest? It has nothing to do with privileging humans as a species. It has everything to do with ensuring one's own survival. Every creature is acting morally when it engages in actions to ensure its own survival. If you have no ability to even ensure your survival that all talk of "rights" is rather meaningless since there is no basic 'right' to survival. The whole basis of my "morality" hinges on ensuring life's survival on this planet and minimizing harm, which is why I find your view to be repugnant.

they're all 'conscious' thucy. fuck, even trees talk to each other through chemical signals and mycellium etc

communication is not consciousness, and besides, if that's what you believe, sic, how can you justify the use of wood

" Every creature is acting morally when it engages in actions to ensure its own survival"

I..... don't know about all that. If you knew you could save 100 people if you went back into the burning building, but you yourself would probably die, isn't the right thing to do to go and die trying?

I am also down for minimizing harm, but for a different reason.

On the example of the deer being painfully killed by a croc - do you believe that this is a moral problem? If you do, do you advocate we intervene to prevent this harm/suffering? If not, why not?

"Sentience = feeling pain"

But feeling pain is not the same thing as suffering, it's not necessarily morally repugnant.

Think about the way you experience sensation. The sensation comes, and your brain registers it and acts on it. AND THEN, it comes to your consciousness and you realize it and feel it.

That last part is not shared by non-conscious animals. The sensations, yes, do HAPPEN to them, they are perceived by their sense organs. They do not however feel the sensations.

Your argument is making less and less sense. Non-"conscious" animals perceive pain but they don't feel it? What on earth are you talking about?

"On the example of the deer being painfully killed by a croc - do you believe that this is a moral problem? If you do, do you advocate we intervene to prevent this harm/suffering? If not, why not?"

Crocodiles need to eat to live, so no. I fail to see why you continually feel the need to come up with analogies like this.

"I..... don't know about all that. If you knew you could save 100 people if you went back into the burning building, but you yourself would probably die, isn't the right thing to do to go and die trying?"

That's an entirely different scenario. Your other "analogies" basically argued that humans shouldn't live at all and humans should just kill themselves in order to avoid killing microorganisms. In this scenario, you're risking your life to help others avoid death. There is no intrinsic conflict between your life and the life of these others.

" There is no intrinsic conflict between your life and the life of these others. "

Yes there is, you save their lives, and you die, or you save your life, and they die.

Perception is different from feeling and appreciating. Perception is the physical process of your eyes interpreting light chemically and giving the information to the brain which can use it to recognize things and direct actions based on instinct. In the same way, "perceiving" an emotion involves your body reacting to something, say finding a friend dead, and releasing chemicals that create the emotional response, which direct actions accordingly by instinct. None of this involves consciousness so far. It is the consciousness that gives these feelings meaning. Put another way - only conscious things can wonder about why they might exist and what the meaning of life is, how long they will live, if they will be happy tomorrow, only conscious things can think to themselves that they are grateful for something or whatever. Only conscious beings, in fact, can have a morality that is anything other than instinctual. This is why only conscious beings are inside of a moral framework in terms of intrinsic worth. A single conscious entity has intrinsic value morally, for all the reasons normally advanced, it can feel pain, it can experience emotions, it can be responsible for its actions because it can think about them. It knows it exists.

Another analogy. If I have a plane, and I am flying it, and a wing gets shot off, and the plane's systems are set up to perceive if that happens, and it starts beeping loudly at me because the wing was shot off, is the plane feeling pain? It perceived the pain, in it's own way, with it's limited nerves that it has. But, since there is no consciousness to the plane, no, it is not feeling pain in a conscious, morally meaningful sense. Only in a metaphorical sense does it feel pain. This exact rule applies to things like trees and snakes. It has these systems in place too, but there is nothing going on upstairs. Do not confuse the presence of a brain or emotional chemical reactions or communication with conscious.

And crucify me because I am using analogies to try to explain what would otherwise be so airy and abstract as to count for next to nothing.

You seem to be saying that animals can be forgiven for just following their instincts - crocs eat animals, so, there you go.

But we humans have been hunters for a very long time, and have also been molding and exploiting our environment for a very long time too, also in an attempt to survive.
So... where is the line getting drawn? Define "need"? Could we not nourish the croc with some kind of synthetic and save other animals from that suffering?

It may sound ridiculous, I find it to be, but I would think if you believe all animals have rights and should kept from suffering if at all possible without causing suffering to still others, then, that's the sort of thing you'd have to advance.

You really have a knack for making things pretty antagonistic lol Putin it's pretty impressive. It's your tone, I think.

1. Pigs and chickens and such things are domesticated.
2. Vegans don't want us to eat pigs and chickens.
3. If we didn't eat pigs and chickens, they would have to survive alone in the wild.
4. They would go extinct.
=> Vegans want to exterminate pigs and chickens from the earth.

Also, on a serious note, I think what Putin is saying that you seem to be missing, Thucy, is that humans, since we have the ability to save stuff and mitigate suffering without jeopardizing our survival, we ought to. (sorry for the lack of flowery language... Math major)

Also, never never never make a "where is the line getting drawn?" argument. It is the worst kind of logic there is. Literally the worst. Kinda my pet peeve.

on food production by the way - note that it is recommended we eat less meat.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Making-a-difference/Change-Agent/2011/1014/The-world-can-feed-itself-without-ruining-the-planet-study-says?cmpid=ema:nws:Weekend%20Newsletter%20%2810-15-11%29&cmpid=ema:nws:NzQ4MDUzNjYzMgS2

Can you clarify what you mean by food 'production' here, Thucy?

Lmao. Question me again and I ban you.

Ha. That wouldn't surprise me. That or depth-charging my insolence away.

hehe +1

"Also, never never never make a "where is the line getting drawn?" argument."

What are you talking about it's one of the most important concepts in philosophicalish topics - most things exist on spectra, to function we need categories, where do you place the lines between them? It's usually the source of all dicussion, difference in opinion on the location of the lines.

Yeah, but saying that their is confusion about where the line should be drawn is absolutely irrelevant as to whether there should be a line drawn somewhere.

*that there is confusion

for example, the fact that it is hard to say whether a day goes from being "nice" to "a little too hot" at 76 degrees or 77 degrees doesn't mean we should stop describing how temperate a day is.

OK, so this thread has seriously made me reconsider my meat eating... I like Putin's definition for sentience. If it can feel pain (or we can tell it does through it's actions) then it is sentient and should not be made to needlessly suffer. To that end, while I may not give up beef or chicken or pork (God knows everything is better with bacon) I will consider the source and research more how that source treats and dispatches its animals.

As far as one animal attacking another, that's nature. There is nothing moral or immoral in nature as nature is survival of the fittest. Only humans can act morally or immorally as that is a construct of society.

Do the chickens have large talons?

See Thucy, what seems totally illegitimate to me about your argument is your assumption that self-awareness and consciousness are completely correlated. That if you're not aware of _yourself_, _as an entity_, then you're no more aware of the external world, or your feelings, than an airplane is. That is totally unsupported, so far as I can see.
Whence this correlation? You don't say.
I think we should believe that dogs experience qualia (and that airplanes do not).

"Only humans can act morally or immorally as that is a construct of society."

Exactly. Human and other conscious animals that is. Hint hint.

"Whence this correlation? You don't say."

See my post about forming "theories"

"I think we should believe that dogs experience qualia (and that airplanes do not)."

I don't see why. Just because you find it easier to identify with a dog... also, I reject the idea that qualia alone gives you moral worth.

I think dogs have consciousness. They may not philosophize about their existence but they experience "being". They're definitely not mindless automatons. They don't have human thoughts, they have dog thoughts, which would be hard or even impossible for us to imagine. I think lots of animals have consciousness.