Hi all. I've postponed several responses for too long now, so here's an all-at-once response.
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@Neil, it's you to whom my first response is due, and out of concern for space it will unfortunately be somewhat brief and perhaps a little unsatisfying. Re your
post #98, I think you've hit on a very important point re the moral relevance of the capacity of beings to suffer, and I appreciate you acknowledging that after all, yes, animals are aware of death and that some even mourn. I think you're missing something though, probably simply because it didn't occur to you rather than out of deliberate exclusion: the capacity of sentient beings for positive experiences and for well-being is equally relevant morally.
In terms of the supposedly lesser consciousness of certain forms of animal life - such as mealworms - I'm less inclined to side with the implications you wish to draw from IIT and more with those from the research of both Cleve Backster, who demonstrated - and which demonstration the popular television show
Mythbusters successfully replicated (a link which I've already posted) - that a plant will register emotions via a lie-detector test at the mere
thought of a nearby human of harming it, and of Jagdish Chandra Bose, whose
Boseian Thesis, based on careful experimentation and study, states that "there is no discontinuity between the living and the nonliving". In other words, I think we ought to be expanding our circle of ethically relevant beings rather than restricting it. For now I think that - for reasons given elsewhere - fruit by the botanical definition is the most sensible exclusion ethically from that circle of concern for the purpose of human diet: at least for those of us who still need to eat, and, unfortunately, I find myself amongst those.
Thank you very much for the video link. I am surprised that I had not seen that before. I personally think that it is likely that IIT could be correct, but what may be found is that the extent to information integration goes down below nervous systems to the level of the cell itself. If single cells themselves are conscious, then an even more complex organism like a plant may be able to respond in a measurable way to psychic intent like in the Mythbusters video.
However, I think there is a distinction that needs to be made. I think that in the example of the plant, showing that a plant responds to a physical insult is quite different from saying that it
suffers. I am unsure that we have any grasp on what it really means to suffer and where to draw the line, but I think in the case of the plant, we do not think that it suffers, which can drive moral judgment or lack of any moral judgment when it comes to harming a plant. I go into a bit more detail below about this, but my point is that I think there is a distinction to be made.
Laird said:
"Empirical uncertainty is one major reason why despite that morality is objective, our moral choices sometimes anyway require the exercise of judgement". In other words, re your example of animal sacrifice being ethical in certain cultures, this, I would expect, is because the animal is seen, in the long run, not to be harmed, because it enters the afterlife with merit for its sacrifice - or there would be a belief in some other counterveiling benefit to the harm of the sacrifice. It is not that it is a valid "culturally relative" ethic to arbitrarily harm other beings; no, the objective moral principle that avoidable harm is wrong applies always, else the culture is not truly an ethical one: all that changes is the empirical beliefs with respect to the nature and implications of the harm in question.
I know this wasn't addressed to me, but I wanted to comment since I mentioned that the moral questions have been of interest to me recently.
From what I have been reading, I cannot support the notion of an absolute moral objectivity. Absolute moral objectivity would mean that moral standards would be the same for any species, so if we were to communicate with extraterrestrials, they are guaranteed to share the same moral judgements. Moral objectivity seems to rely on rational judgement, where any rational species would be able to use moral reasoning to arrive at the same objective moral judgements.
There are several issues with this position. I will attempt to address each issue as I see it:
Moral reasoning as a basis of moral judgement - I suggest that evidence from several fields contradicts this idea:
1. Developmental psychology - children can recognize the difference between core moral rules and conventional rules by at least the age of 2, and by the age of 3.5 moral judgement seems to be in full swing even though their reasoning abilities just aren't there yet. These children can recognize that harm-based moral rules are not dependent of authority, are generalizable to other countries, and are considered "wrong." Essentially, very young children can recognize that it is wrong to pull someone's hair whether there is a rule for it or not, or regardless of where it occurs. Autistic and mentally retarded children are also capable of core moral judgement and certainly lack decent mind-reading and reasoning abilities.
2. Psychopathology - psychopaths have deficient ability for moral behavior, yet they are usually entirely capable of rational thought and reason. Unlike what I mentioned about how young children view core harm-based moral judgements, psychopaths do not make this distinction between moral rules and conventional rules (like you are required to wear your seatbelt in a car).
3. Some areas of social psychology and experimental philosophy indicate that moral judgements are made automatically and subconsciously, and that moral reasoning is an ad hoc response in most cases, and is often unable to explain the moral judgements in question.
These areas of evidence converge to support the idea that moral judgements are automatic and subconscious, and involving affective systems in the brain. Essentially, core harm-based moral judgements are automatic judgements that do result from a very limited mind-reading capability, along with some social learning, and this interacts with the emotional systems in the brain to make automatic moral judgements.
While moral reasoning can play a role in moral judgements, it does not seem to be the way moral judgements are made. Reasoning about moral judgement, if successful, seems to be able to shift a perspective to create a new automatic affective response to the situation in question.
So would an extraterrestrial species that visited us have the same moral judgements if they developed with no affective system? It seems doubtful, as psychopaths are perfectly rational yet have defective affective systems.
However, I do think that moral relativism also has problems. While certain moral judgements may seem extremely relative, such as taking the Lord's name in vain, there are certain judgements that seem essentially universal to humans, like it is morally wrong to torture and kill a child for fun. This seems strongly linked to our affective systems and aversion to seeing another person suffering. To me, it does seem that there may be a certain core of harm-based moral judgements that is fairly universal to a particular
species, or homosapians in this case. This grants a relative objectivity to certain harm-based moral judgements, but does not claim absolute objectivity in that
all intelligent beings would share those same moral judgements.
So where does this leave us with moral judgements with respect to harming animals? This, to me, is a rather fascinating question. While it seems that, unfortunately, harming animals as morally wrong is not yet a universal core moral judgement in humans, it does seem that this is improving. What I mean is that abusing a chicken, for example, while morally wrong to probably most people, is certainly not regarded as universally wrong as abusing a child. This seems to be of the same affective system, but simply extended to other species. And not all species share the same status, since burning ants with a magnifying glass certainly does not share the same morally wrong status as burning a dog alive for probably the vast majority of people. Perhaps this is related to some limited mind reading capability in the sense that we feel a dog suffers more than an ant, which makes harming one more affect-backed than the other.
Perhaps through science and education we may improve this situation as we start to realize the extent to which many species do indeed suffer. This information could help to then activate the affective system needed to make moral judgements about the situation. If you don't think a chicken actually suffers, and it is just a "bird brain," then you are unlikely to have your emotional system activated when you see a chicken harmed, and because of this, unlikely to judge it as morally wrong. This does seem very important, because the activation of the affective system is what makes moral judgements more salient. If one wishes to improve animal rights, it is important to educate about the richness of the lives of animals in order for people to realize how they may suffer, which activates the affective system, which then motivates people to actually wish to stop such behavior. Without this activation, it may range from apathy to intellectually acknowledging the wrongness of the abusive behavior, yet with little motivation to actually take any action. Without this motivation, who will change their diet? Or even make an effort to find humanely-raised animal products? Simply saying it is morally wrong will not accomplish this, since moral judgements are not made in that way.
But, while this is related, I think the even more interesting question relates to moral judgement regarding the killing of animals for
food. Earlier we had a pretty irreconcilable difference on the moral status of killing an animal for food. I was of the opinion that morality applied to how the animals were raised and treated, and also the method of killing, but that the killing itself was not morally wrong if it was done properly. You, of course, agreed on everything leading up to the killing part (at least insofar as agreeing that mistreating animals is morally wrong), but certainly disagreed by seeing the killing for food aspect as morally wrong.
I am unsure as to the reason for this difference, so I would love to hear your thoughts on this. As I mentioned, moral reasoning can be productive if you are able to get the other person to see a different perspective that then activat so the systems needed to make a different moral judgement. I am not attempting to change your mind here, but rather interested in recognizing this difference and attempting to discuss it to hopefully gain understanding of this question.
So for sake of conversation on this question, let me pose an "ideal" situation to discuss. I understand that this is not how animal products are consumed at any significant level, and even this ideal scenario has a low probability of occurring even in such a relatively rare scenario. So please suspend disbelief in order to isolate this single issue of killing for food.
I also understand your position is that you should avoid avoidable harm, in which case you could say that my situation is wrong simply because they could eat something else, such as fruit. Because of this, I will be interested to hear your response.
Let us imagine a family that lives in a rural area, but does have access to typical grocery stores where they can find the normal variety of foods found in modern supermarkets. Both of the adults are diabetics, and as such, based on their research, they feel that a low carbohydrate diet is good treatment and that eating meat will fill them up and help to keep their blood sugar levels stable. They are, however, concerned about the meat from the grocery store and how the animals were treated. So in order to not support such practices, the father chooses to hunt for his food since he has hunted in the past. When he goes out for a hunt, he tracks down a deer and he shoots a buck squarely in the head, and it dies instantly. He then takes this deer back, has it cleaned and butchered, and the uses this for food for the next two months.
So in this scenario, was it morally wrong to kill the deer? If so, why? If the hunter essentially snuck up on the deer and shot it from a distance, and it died instantly, what suffering could be involved? We are assuming this is a lone buck. Is killing for food itself morally wrong? And if wrong, is it because you still felt that they could have chosen to avoid animal products?