The only feelings we can feel are our own. When it comes to the feelings of others, we can only infer them, based on their behavior — unless they tell us. This is the “other-minds problem.” Within our own species, thanks to language, this problem arises only for states in which people cannot speak (infancy, aphasia, sleep, anaesthesia, coma). Our species also has a uniquely powerful empathic or “mind-reading” capacity: We can (sometimes) perceive from the behavior of others when they are in states like our own. Our inferences have also been systematized and operationalized in biobehavioral science and supplemented by cognitive neuroimagery. Together, these make the other-minds problem within our own species a relatively minor one. But we cohabit the planet with other species, most of them very different from our own, and none of them able to talk. Inferring whether and what they feel is important not only for scientific but also for ethical reasons, because where feelings are felt, they can also be hurt. As animals are at long last beginning to be accorded legal status and protection as sentient beings, our new journal Animal Sentience, will be devoted to exploring in depth what, how and why organisms feel. Individual “target articles” (and sometimes précis of books) addressing different species’ sentient and cognitive capacities will each be accorded “open peer commentary,” consisting of multiple shorter articles, both invited and freely submitted ones, by specialists from many disciplines, each elaborating, applying, supplementing or criticizing the content of the target article, along with responses from the target author(s). The members of the nonhuman species under discussion will not be able to join in the conversation, but their spokesmen and advocates, the specialists who know them best, will. The inaugural issue launches with the all-important question (for fish) of whether fish can feel pain.
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Harnad, S. (2003) The Symbol Grounding Problem . Encylopedia of Cognitive Science. Nature Publishing Group. Macmillan. or: Harnad, S...
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Bekoff, M., & Harnad, S. (2015). Doing the Right Thing: An Interview With Stevan Harnad . Psychology Today . Twelve years after steppi...
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Extra optional readings: Harnad, S. (2011) Minds, Brains and Turing . Consciousness Online 3. Harnad, S. (2014) Animal pain and hu...
I have no doubt that animals feel and feel pain. I think most people would not eat a burger if they had to personally kill a cow themselves. As stated in the article, our similarities to mammals make it that much more difficult to hear and see their pain and suffering. And I agree, our dissimilarity to organisms like fish makes it easier to convince ourselves that they do not feel. Or even that their "feeling" is somehow less than ours and other mammals. Generally, those who fish receive less backlash than those who hunt for sport. However, even if fish started having the ability to whine or whimper, I still don’t think fish consumption would go down (as it makes little difference in the harm we as a species inflict on cows and pigs). Our many degrees of separation from the animal products we consume allows disconnect between the animal suffering and the animal products in front of us, and therefore a general de-sensitivity.
ReplyDeleteI know the article doesn’t get into the nitty gritty of animals as food and is more aimed at just recognizing sentience to generate empathy, but I do have some questions regarding the ethics of non-human animal consumption (as it seems to be pointed at in between the lines). Many animals eat other animals for survival. Is it the fact that we don’t need to consume animals to survive because we have many food alternatives to maintain a healthy diet that makes it unethical? Therefore, would understanding be granted to humans who have little choice in what food is accessible to them (as that goes back to survival)?
Morality is entirely about feeling, because only feelings can be hurt. "Bodies" -- like mountains or rivers -- can be "altered" but not hurt.
DeleteIn a zombie universe in which oganisms were just feelingless Darwinian survival/reproduction machines, there would be no right or wrong; nothing would "matter." (Matter to whom? how? why?)
In our universe of feeling beings, no one could ever say that it was morally wrong for obligate carnivores like lions to hunt, kill and eat their prey, otherwise they (and their young) die; nor that it was morally wrong for herbivore like water-buffaloes to fight for their lives against lions and even injure and kill them. These are cases of conflicts of vital (life or death) interest.
For the few remaining human subsistence cultures, for whom it is still a life-or-death necessity to hunt or fish, hurting other these feeling beings is not a matter of choice, and hence it is no more wrong than it is for the lion or the water-buffalo.
But most of us are no longer living in subsistence cultures, and we have a choice. We are causing pain, suffering and death in our victims not out of vital necessity, but just out of habit, for the taste. This does not cause us (much) harm -- not even as much as still indulging our taste for sugar, left over from the Pleistocene era (which just puts us at risk for cavities, obesity and diabetes). It only hurts our victims.
One of the effects of the other-minds problem is that we do not feel others' pain.
The only hope for our victims is that humans are an altricial species, as are all mammals and birds -- those whose young cannot survive without being nurtured by their parents. This has led to the evolution of "mind-reading" capacities, especially empathy. We cannot literally feel another's pain -- but it feels as if we can.
And that is the basis of morality, and mercy.
I want to start out by saying that I had the same assumption as you that if people had to kill the cow themselves that they would not eat it, but there are a ton of people all around the world that do this quite often, and this is how people used to get their food as well. I saw in a video that was asking people if they would still eat this package of meat if there's a picture and name of the cow that they're eating, and a lot of people laughed and said they really don't care. This brings me to your next point that "as stated in the article, our similarities to mammals make it that much more difficult to hear and see their pain and suffering." I think that speaking for a certain chunk of the population this is true, but there is a lot of people that this is not true for. Many people don't want to see the similarity between us and other animals because it denotes us as humans to merely being another animal. The word animal comes with its own negative descriptions for these individuals, also contributing to the distinction they make between human and animal. I think this extends to the OMP. For individuals that don't share the perspective of animal lovers or vegans, the OMP is possibly quite easy to understand and answer. I think that in Key's paper, his perspective seems obvious to him because he goes about this kind of thinking where the OMP is easy to answer. I am not a vegan (I'm trying to be), but it is personally difficult for me to not attribute feelings to animals and assume that they feel as I do in terms of pain. I think this personal feeling about animals feeling pain distinguishes between the two teams of thinking defined in Dennett's paper.
DeleteLike Naz said, other than the OMP, many people simply don't care and don't want to be put at the same level as animals. We perceive ourselves as superior than animals, and think that this is how the food chain works. This way of thinking lead to other serious implications like with racism and the fact that white people perceived themselves as superior than black people just because of their skin color.. If certain humans can make these kind of inferences, no wonder we live in a society that kills, hurts other beings and our planet for private gains...
DeleteMost people can tell when mammals or birds are in pain; for other vertebrates and invertebrates it is less obvious, but once you get to know them you can tell almost down to oysters.
DeleteI think (or at least I hope) that the people who really don't care, no matter what, are in the minority. But just as we can learn to care (thanks to lazy evolution), we can also learn not to care. That's why slavery and the subjugation of women lasted so long. I hope we will learn to stop inflicting the agony on animals that we are still inflicting, even now that it is no longer necessary for our survival and health.
“There is incomparably more at stake for others if we assume
ReplyDeletethat they don’t feel, yet they do, than if we assume that they do feel, yet they don’t.”
I think that there is an interesting tension within the idea of the “benefit of the doubt”. I’m in line with the general idea that attributing non-sentience to sentient beings have worse consequences on them than the other way around.
But, it is still important to have a more precise account on other species sentience. Indeed, one could argue with this line of reasoning that we don’t know if plants have sentience or not, and that, just in case, we should treat them as sentient. But if plants are presumed as sentient as humans or non-human animals, then why eat them rather than other species? If we presume that human beings deserve to eat to subsist, it would be arbitrary to eat animals rather than plants, or plants rather than animal and vice-versa.
To counter this sort of argument, one would have to provide an account on why it is more probable for animals to be sentient than for plants. Using our very acute mind-reading abilities could be a good way to do so (whereas we would be pretty confident about the other species feeling). Non-human animals appear to be way more similar to us than plants: they can move, eat, make sounds, etc. Plant can’t do any of that. So it is way more probable for non-human animals to be sentient than plants.
But at the same time, and as pointed out by Prof. Harnad, our mind-reading abilities can trick into misinterpreting feelings of non-humans because they have coincidental similarities with behaviours in humans (ex. The smile for human vs showing teeth for chimpanzees). This means that mind-reading cannot be the sole criteria for determining whether the others feel, and what the others feel. That is why it is absolutely necessary to develop a strong science of sentience.
Despite the Hard Problem of explaining how or why, it is virtually certain that feeling is caused by the nervous system.
DeletePlants (and microbes) do not have a nervous system. So it is virtually certain that plants (and microbes) do not feel -- and very likely that even the simplest invertebrates do.
It is is only at the frontier between the simplest nervous system and no nervous system at all that there is a real Other-Minds Problem: see the other-minds problem in other species. (There is also a real Other-Minds Problem in other states of sentient species, such as mammals under general anesthesia and early in embryogenesis; and of course in any state of a robot.)
There is a vital (life-or-death) conflict of interest between obligate carnivorous species (predator species who can only survive if they eat meat) and their prey species. The lion hunts and kills for its life (and the life of its young) and the water-buffalo fights back for its life and the life of its young.
But as to the "benefit of the doubt," it is also virtually certain now that the human species is not an obligate carnivore but a facultative omnivore: we can survive in full health as either a meat-eating carnivore or a plant-eating herbivore.
But we cannot survive eating neither. (Only plants can survive eating neither.)
So even if we decide (as every decent person should) that -- because they feel (i.e., they are sentient) and because it is not necessary for our health and survival -- we will not hurt or kill animals, we have no choice but to eat plants (whether or not they are sentient).
“There is incomparably more at stake for others if we assume that they don’t feel, yet they do, than if we assume that they do feel, yet they don’t.”
DeleteWhile there is very much still an impossibility in solving the hard problem of cognitive science, I believe this statement by Harnad really gets to the core of the issue. The moral issue surrounding whether or not animals feel is much more consequential negatively if we continue to harm them and then find out they do feel than if we do not harm them and then find out they do not feel. The one question I have however is in regard to evolution. I understand that humans are facultative omnivores, but why did evolution lead to humans having teeth such as canines for eating meat when we could very well do without?. And why would prehistoric individuals go out and hunt, which was much more dangerous than just picking berries, for example, if they did not need to? Is this an aspect of lazy evolution: to let us choose whether to eat plants or meat and just have the greatest amount of “bodily tools” to survive eating both?
It was ordinary evolution that led to our hunting and its evolutionary benefits for our species in our ancestral environments. That is not to be denied, just as our ancestral sweet-tooth is not to be denied. It is their necessity today that is at issue.
Delete(Our ancestral hunting success was not a result of our bodily might but our cognitive might, especially tools and weapons. And as for our teeth: have a look at the canines of our cousins the gorillas who, unlike us, are herbivores!
Even further, to solidify this division between animals in plants in respect to sentience you could take a more biological approach. It is generally agreed upon that our brain/nervous system is integral in feeling (what we associate with sentience). As plants do not have a nervous systems and all multicellular organism we would consider animals do, maybe we can use this as added evidence to our conclusions based off mind-reading?
DeleteEmily, please read the replies above.
DeleteRegarding the argument about whether or not plants feel:
DeleteDoes their lack of nervous system really make it certain that they don’t feel? That it doesn’t feel like anything to be a plant, and when we rip off leaves, it doesn’t feel bad? I’m not sure I’m convinced.
I don’t remember where I read or heard this, but I remember an account that trees sent out complex distress signals when they’re “being attacked” – and warn other trees (something to do with releasing chemicals into a root system) that other trees pick up and then can use a defense mechanism before they’re threatened.
So even though they don’t have a nervous system, they react negatively to certain physical stimuli – they behave in distress when their physical bodies are threatened. Of course, this could be totally zombic – but reacting to pain with distress I think is one of our primary pieces of evidence for sentience usually – so why deny that to plants? And if plants are capable of detecting physical threats or changes without a nervous system – why assume that a nervous system is required to feel? What about a possibility of underdetermination? This calls back Key’s article – I don’t think that the fact that fish brains lack the specific neural structure we have is evidence enough that they don’t feel pain as we do – in much the same way that I’m unconvinced that a plant’s lack of nervous system necessarily means that it doesn’t feel like anything to be a plant.
(I don’t want to comment on the ethics of eating plants – and I’m definitely not advocating for the nihilist idea that it’s just as problematic to eat plants as it is animals, but humouring that plants are sentient – at least I comfort myself by deeming it ‘okay’ to have a hierarchy – for example, I’m way more okay with the idea of eating bugs for protein than cows, and more okay with eating mussels than fish.)
Erin, no, it is not certain that plants don't feel. Just very probable.
DeleteThere is a branch of botany called "plant neuroscience" that is arguing for interpreting the signalling systems of plants as nervous activity, and for interpreting the roots as the brain. See this talk and this panel from the 2018 Summer School here on the other-minds problem in other species:
-- Frantisek Baluska: What a Plant Knows and Perceives
-- Arthur Reber, Frantisek Baluska, Lars Chittka, Michael Hendricks, Gregory Dudek PANEL 7: Microbes, Molds and Plants
But there is even more powerful signalling in human organs and tissues in vitro (e.g., a kidney being kept alive for transplant), yet we do not conclude that the kidney or tissue culture is sentient. (Plants also react to anesthesia, and when damaged, secrete substances that in animals are analgesic.)
But needlessly hurting or killing living beings, even insentient ones, still feels wrong, and wanton, whether or not it is just an overflow from our mammalian nurturance of our altricial young. (And to the (enormous) extent that sentient species, ecology and their air, water, soil and climate depend on plants, harming them not only seems wrong but is wrong.)
And there's no need to eat mussels or insects; plants provide all we need.
“There is incomparably more at stake for others if we assume that they don’t feel, yet they do, than if we assume that they do feel, yet they don’t. For feelings, if they are indeed being felt, can be hurt. Yet we cannot feel another organism’s hurt: Only the other organism — the one we are wrongly assuming to be mindless — can feel the hurt” (Harnad 2016).
ReplyDeleteWhile the hard problem is unsolvable, we do have a responsibility to consider our assumptions that result from its unsolvability: in other words, not knowing how or whether another being feels requires careful examination of our own actions towards these beings. Assuming another being does not feel when, in fact, it does, results in the incredible violence present in today’s world. We discussed in last week’s class about why we bother contemplating the hard problem if we may never come to a distinct conclusion. Harnard makes very clear that we must consider this problem not as a means to find a solution, but rather as guidance for how we decide to tread in this world. In the time in which we argue whether or not a fish can feel, billions of fish are being killed every year. So perhaps they cannot feel. But what if they could?
Possible consequences of scientific conclusions are too often ignored. But even further ignored are the possible consequences of controversies which cannot be properly examined through science. As we very well know, just because it cannot be empirically explained, does not mean it does not exist. And I believe that that which cannot be explained by science is what makes us alive, what distinguishes a being from a zombie.
Our inability to explain whether or not a being feels is a game of probability (as Antoine explained above, what prevents us from attributing sentience to plants?). We are forced to ask ourselves what is most probable, and often we are wrong. But just because we can be wrong, does not mean that the unnecessary killing of animals and other humans is ever justified. And the consequences of our assumptions are catching up to us too -- as we hurt one another, we hurt our planet, and we subsequently hurt ourselves. I agree that we need to develop a strong science of sentience, but the lack of this science in the current state does not absolve harming animals. Just because we do not know much about the consciousness of other animals, does not mean we are justified to act as we want. Ignorance warrants nothing.
I do want to bring the question to plants as well. Why do we not assume that they also feel pain but that they feel "plant pain" rather than other types?
DeleteGili, the problem here is not the HP but the OMP.
DeleteMarine, see the reply above about plants and nervous systems.
If plants did feel and what they felt was pain, then, by definition, it would hurt, whatever adjective we add to it. A "pain" that doesn't hurt is not a pain.
There does exist evidence that when plants are damaged they secrete analgesics, but it is not known what else anaesthetics do other than suppressing pain. They may have tissue-repair properties, such as preventing inflamation.
But the bottom line is that it is very likely that animals with nervous systems do feel and that plants without nervous systems do not. For most humans today, eating animals is no longer necessary for survival and health. But eating plants is necessary, whether or not they feel.
I agree that it is very likely that animals with nervous system do feel, and they do in fact feel pain. And it looks like the plants without the nervous system do not. The argument about eating plants, but not animals (the argument is clearly about doing the right thing with right kind of thing) goes like this: sentience seems to emerge from the nervous system (we are not certain), thus animals feel, so killing animals do hurt them.
DeleteI am still not convinced about the argument about eating plants over animals for the reason that plants are unlikely to feel since they don’t have a nervous system. Our primary definition of sentience was the existence of nervous system. However, I think there is more to the fact that we seem to attribute feelings more to animals than we do to plants: we can infer about animals’ states then we do plants’ states (even though neither is at human to human level, because clearly slow-loris doesn’t enjoy being tickled).
So, where is the boundary for feeling, because I don’t think neural system gives a clear cut. Yes, neurons look like they can be the answer for feelings, but whatever neurons are doing seems to be just a part of the cognition, and more specifically neurons seem to do computation part of cognition, (rather than emerging meanings).
And, we also talked about implementation-independence of computation. So clearly, plants might be doing some sort of computation. And if we follow with out argument, since they have some sort of thing that does computation (which is also done by neurons in animals), plants have feelings too.
BUT, I think that this conclusion seems to be wrong, Either this conclusion is wrong, or the premise about neurons and feelings is wrong. As I said in the very beginning, I agree that it is very likely that animals do feel. However, I am uncertain about plants.
To say the least, I would say that eating plants over animals is the right thing to do however, I am scared that I have a bias to say this because I can infer about animals better than I can infer about plants.
Worrying about whether plants feel doesn’t seem to be worth it for me (not that you’re truly advocating for that). Even forgetting how unlikely it is that they feel, there wouldn’t be any recourse if we determined -- to the extent or past what we have for the animals we eat -- that it feels like something to be a plant. In that scenario, we would be in the same moral position as many predators/early humans/etc who have no choice but to kill feeling beings.
DeleteThis isn't to say that there isn’t a moral issue in how humans account for our forests/ecosystems. Feeling animals --including humans-- depend on them, and suffer when they are destroyed (and long after).
Kevin, good reply.
DeleteOnur, I don't know what you mean by "Our primary definition of sentience was the existence of nervous system." The only way to understand what it means to feel is to feel. But that doesn't help with the OMP.
Yes animals are more like us, and easier to mind-read the more they are like us.
On the OMP boundary between sentient and nonsentient species, see other replies to 11b and 11c.
Cognition is not just computation, but no one said anything about what feeling was (other than that, like doing, feeling is produced by the brain), just that computation alone does not produce feeling.
Don't forget the brain has anatomy, physiology and chemistry too, to produce feeling.
"And, we also talked about implementation-independence of computation. So clearly, plants might be doing some sort of computation."
DeleteHere is what Harnad says about implementation-independence: “A computational theory is a theory at the software level; it is essentially a computer program. And software is "implementation- independent." That means that whatever it is that a program is doing, it will do the same thing no matter what hardware it is executed on. The physical details of the implementation are irrelevant to the computation; any hardware that can run the computation will do.”
Yes, computation is implementation-independent, but the hardware’s ability to run the computation is vital. In the case of nociception, the hardware is the nervous system. If plants, (like rocks, socks, and apples) do not have the hardware (nervous system) to run the software, then it cannot be said to be able to carry out computation. Therefore, it is safe to assume that plants cannot feel.
Emmanuelle, all true, but you seem to be missing the point that although almost everything (including the nervous system) is simulable by computation that does not imply that everything is just hardware running some computation or other. Think of the vacuum cleaner or the computational waterfall! And remember that they are just squiggles and squoggles!
DeleteOur temptation to interpret computation as if it actually were feeling, rather than just a computational simulation of feeling, is possible purely because we cannot see feeling the way we can see vacuuming or water.
Besides, Searle's simulation (and Periscope) shows that computation cannot generate feeling (understanding) when he uses implementation-independence to become the hardware that's running the software that supposedly feels.
Before today's lecture I too was wondering about "plant feeling" and if plants can feel pain or experience discomfort in ways such as we humans and animals undoubtedly can. However, after the lecture it really made sense to me that yes, perhaps plants feel and we could expand the Other Minds Problem to plants as well - stating that we can't be sure that plants don't feel so we should operate as if they do. However, if it is concluded that they feel we would not be *able* to operate in any different way aka it would still be necessary to eat/consume plants and plant products. The reason why it is not unmoral to harm(?) and kill plants is because it is *necessary*. As it has been pointed out the morality issue stems from causing harm which is unnecessary.
DeleteHowever, just how their is excess harm done to animals (much more than is necessary), there is excess harm done to plants. There is unnecessary harm or killing of plants done to supply capitalistic flow of supplies to us, causing excess damage to plant wildlife. Much of the plants that are cut down/used will not be beneficial to anyone - they are being utilized without purpose and many of the items that these plants are used for will be useless for us. In fact, it will cause more damage to people and animals. As Kevin said above, deforestation is a big issue because this also causes immense harm (and non-directly - death) to animals. For example, one of the biggest contributing reasons for deforestation is to create spaces for beef production. In fact, beef production is the biggest cause of deforestation in the Amazon. Therefore, perhaps if we cut down on meat production (eating meat that is) this would directly lead to less excess harm of plants as well.
I agree completely about deforestation, not just because it harms people and sentient animals, but because -- sentient or not -- plants are alive. In an insentient world, what happened to them would not matter because there was no sentient being for it to matter to. But in our sentient world the wanton harming of insentient life increases the inclination to harm life, sentient or not.
DeleteAnd even that does not cover all the reasons we have (and should have) empathy for trees.
Simon Leadbeater, "In Defence of Tears"
“Descartes’s scientific hypotheses are of no more interest today than other inchoate hunches from the 17th century, especially in biology, and especially when tainted with theology.”
ReplyDeleteI think this is an important point when reflecting on Descartes writings. Many of Descartes’ arguments attempted to rectify the gap between new scientific theory and established Christian theology of his time. I don’t think we can necessarily infer whether or not Descartes truly believed the opinions he wrote on animal consciousness (he mostly likely was not trying to enrage the Church), but we can still disagree with the position he represents. Descartes largely wanted to deny animals feeling because he argued that if you bestowed consciousness on one non-human animal, we would likely have to bestow consciousness of all non-human animals, even ones that seems least likely to have a mind such as mussels. Descartes believed this because he thought consciousness was directly linked to our eternal soul that God gave humans. He argued that God either gave only humans souls, or all animals souls; He surely would not have selected some animals to have minds and others to be zombies.
Today, science does not have to tip-toe around theology, and we can argue that consciousness may not be all-or-nothing. There can be degrees to feeling. Humans would most likely represent the “all”, in which feeling is fully realized. Mussels may represent an animal closer to “nothing” in which there is potential sensations but no self-cognition. Dogs and cats may lie somewhere in between. Animal sentience is an extremely interesting field and I’m excited to see the findings it pumps out.
What kinds of things a feeler can feel can vary in quantity and quality.
DeleteHow intensely a feeler feels what it feels can vary in degree.
But whether or not an orgaism feels anything at all is an all-or-none matter: It either is or is not a feeler (sentient).
Our (limited) mind-reading capacities are the most sensitive for our fellow mammals; strong but less detailed for birds; weaker; still there for lower vertebrates and higher invertebrates (especially the cephalopods).
But do we really have any sense of how intensely a lobster suffers when boiled alive?
Do we have any basis other than ignorance for thinking mussels' pain is close to "nothing"?
The OMP is a moral problem because we cannot feel others' pain.
Re: Consequences of Error
ReplyDeleteNot to change the topic too much, but this reminds me of Pascal's Wager, with the main difference being that Pascal's Wager is centered on one affecting themselves instead of one affecting another's experience. But there is a parallel in the sense that being wrong has so much more to lose being right has to gain. Pascal chose to follow Christianity because he would rather be wrong about the existence of God and have followed Christianity than choose not to follow, be wrong, and spend eternity in Hell. The parallel is that this particular argument it choosing between two outcomes given an unknown, and hedging on the side that would be the least harmful if the unknown were to be true. A counterpoint I can see coming is that it's easier to tell animals feel than it is the existence of God, but I just wanted to draw attention to that parallel. All this being said, the argument preceding this one, "Benefit of the doubt" despite Key's objections is a good reason based off the evidence at hand. I just think the Consequences of Error isn't the strongest point to make given the other information.
I agree with you regarding the resemblance to Pascal's Wager, and you were right to predict a counterpoint being that it's easier to tell animals feel than it is to tell whether God exists however, I don't think that's quite the reason why their similarity starts to fade.
DeleteBlaise Pascal decides to follow Christianity because the consequences of him being wrong (eternal damnation) would not be worth the risk. However, he is choosing to follow something extremely unlikely to be true, in the absence of any sort of concrete evidence of it being true. It would be similar to someone telling me that everybody that I know is secretly a lizard person out to steal my eternal soul unless I stop going to university. The consequences of being wrong would be way worse than what I could gain from finishing my education, but no one would disagree with me that it would be foolish to drop out of university on the off chance that everyone is a lizard person. For this reason, I don't think Pascal's Wager holds up.
Also, assuming fish feel is not the same as assuming God exists. Assuming God exists, as I've said, is assuming a truth in the absence of evidence, but in the case of fish, it would be assuming that fish do not feel that would be assuming a truth in the absence of evidence. We know that we, ourselves, feel, and assume other people do as well because there is no contradictory evidence and so, we extend this assumption to fish as well.
Good point, Gabe. Others, too, have noted the applicability of Pascal's Wager (a cost/benefit analysis of the options) to other problems, such as smoking, climate-change and meat-eating.
DeleteYou are right, too, that a big difference is: whose costs and whose benefits? With my smoking, they're all mine. With meat-eating, the benefits are enjoyed by me and the costs are suffered by the victims.
And, as Johnny points out, Pascal's Wager is vacuous in the original theological context, since there can be rival forms of religious voodoo: My gods can make your soul burn in hell forever, if you don't follow their rules; your gods could make the fire hotter, or split your soul into an infinity of souls, all feeling one another's burning forever, etc. etc. All you need to do to win the wager is up the ante by, say, doubling the intensity of the costs, since that just depends on your imagination and say-so. The true likelihood of lung cancer, climate collapse and animal suffering, in contrast are not just dependent on anyone's imagination and say-so...
And Johnny is right, too, that Key has the real probabilities flipped.
I think eating other animals was a natural part of human evolution. In an environment where plant resources are limited, the ability to hunt has represented a fitness advantage for our specie. In the Paleolithic ice age, Homo Sapiens’ abilities to hunt with relatively sophisticated tools and to use fire as a cooking method might have been crucial to our survival. I don’t think carnivorism is a bad when done for subsistence. Harnad indeed points out the case of Felidae that are obligate carnivores and will die if they don’t eat meat. I think the problem arises when killing is not done for subsistence anymore but rather performed as some accessory activity.
ReplyDeleteFirst nations’ relationship with nature was respectful and compassionate before Europeans arrived with their fur trades and fashion industries. Indeed, first nation communities were grateful for each resource they took from nature-- including animals. Let’s take the case of Innuits that lived and still live up north; hunting was essential for their survival. Each kill was optimized, fat was used as a combustible, skin was used to built house or clothes, and bones were used as tools. The real problem is the industrialisation of killing. The mass exploitation and butchering of animals that is not necessary for survival. Most of animals are not happily leaving on a pasture until their last day. Most of industries keep animals in captivity and isolation, malnourished and exploited until they die.
If my one of my neighbors has hens that are free and live happy hen lives, I don’t see a problem in buying eggs from that neighbor. Same goes for wool. My aunt has a farm with alpacas that run around all day and live in amazing conditions but need to be shaved every summer because of the temperature. I don’t see a problem in buying wool from her knowing that the animals have been treated with respect and compassion. *Notice that these examples did not include any killing and my argumentation doesn’t stand for cases in which animals suffer* The real problem is that we don’t go directly to the farmer anymore, we rely on big industries to provide us with derived products and we have no clue about the life conditions of the animals from which is derived these products. Here is a video that represents the conditions in which are kept “commercial” animals. Spoiler alert, these conditions are far different from my childhood Fisher-Price Little People Farm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeyHBNodwOk&list=LLjq-fAgFYIdGTCM-Zgs1_Gg&index=6&t=0s
Yes, eating animals was a natural part of human evolution -- in the ancestral environment. It is no longer necessary for our survival and health today except in the few remaining subsistence cultures. (Please read other Replies.)
DeleteYes, hunting and fishing is still necessary for survival and health in the few remaining subsistence cultures today. (Subsistence means you can't survive without doing it.) But most of us are not living in subsistence cultures today. And most of the animals eaten by humans are being slaughtered in non-subsistence cultures.
Most of the wool industry today involves monstrous cruelty.
The idea of saving hens from factory farms and raising them under happy conditions for their full lives, and just taking their eggs to eat them sounds innocent enough, but it does not scale up to the worldwide demand for eggs, so it is simply not relevant to the mostrous scale of the real problem.
Neither is scaling the world back to traditional subsistence cultures. Nor would that be necessary, since 40% more of the world population could be fed from plants raised on the land now used to produce grain for feeding animals, whom we are then slaughtering and eating.
I totally agree with that a lot of businesses in animal husbandry involves monstrous cruelty. And I totally sympathize with their suffering (or in fact deep inside I do not, I just claim so but do not behave accordingly, since I still nonchalantly consume all the products provided in this way...).
DeleteHowever, I'm not sure I can fully agree with the idea that we can live on only plants rather than both meat and plant. Maybe we can, given that we can always get enough energy from whatever the food is. However, there are certain micronutrients that can only be supplied by meat, and no plants can help us with that. In terms of simply survival, of course only plants would work for us, or even just one or two types of plants would be enough. But in terms of a complete health (also including mental health) and life quality, I doubt whether meat is dispensable.
There are a few nutrients (especially B12, but also D3, iron, zinc, calcium, and omega 1-2-3 with DHA & ETA) that vegans (and many meat-eaters too) should take as supplements. They are all available from non-animal sources.
DeleteThis is generic public information that anyone can get from reliable internet sources, books or journals. The fact that many people don't know about it is not because there is any objective uncertainty; it is rather because of cognitive dissonance, which makes people want to keep believing it's unhealthy in some way.
American Dietetic Association. (2003). Position of the American Dietetic Association and Dietitians of Canada: vegetarian diets. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 103(6), 748. [I've highlighted a few points in the abstract in boldface]
Abstract: It is the position of the American Dietetic Association and Dietitians of Canada that appropriately planned vegetarian diets are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Approximately 2.5% of adults in the United States and 4% of adults in Canada follow vegetarian diets. A vegetarian diet is defined as one that does not include meat, fish, or fowl. Interest in vegetarianism appears to be increasing, with many restaurants and college foodservices offering vegetarian meals routinely. Substantial growth in sales of foods attractive to vegetarians has occurred, and these foods appear in many supermarkets. This position paper reviews the current scientific data related to key nutrients for vegetarians, including protein, iron, zinc, calcium, vitamin D, riboflavin, vitamin B-12, vitamin A, n-3 fatty acids, and iodine. A vegetarian, including vegan, diet can meet current recommendations for all of these nutrients. In some cases, use of fortified foods or supplements can be helpful in meeting recommendations for individual nutrients. Well-planned vegan and other types of vegetarian diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including during pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence. Vegetarian diets offer a number of nutritional benefits, including lower levels of saturated fat, cholesterol, and animal protein as well as higher levels of carbohydrates, fiber, magnesium, potassium, folate, and antioxidants such as vitamins C and E and phytochemicals. Vegetarians have been reported to have lower body mass indices than nonvegetarians, as well as lower rates of death from ischemic heart disease; vegetarians also show lower blood cholesterol levels; lower blood pressure; and lower rates of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and prostate and colon cancer. Although a number of federally funded and institutional feeding programs can accommodate vegetarians, few have foods suitable for vegans at this time. [SH: This has changed enormously in the decade and a half since 2003]Because of the variability of dietary practices among vegetarians, individual assessment of dietary intakes of vegetarians is required. Dietetics professionals have a responsibility to support and encourage those who express an interest in consuming a vegetarian diet. They can play key roles in educating vegetarian clients about food sources of specific nutrients, food purchase and preparation, and any dietary modifications that may be necessary to meet individual needs. Menu planning for vegetarians can be simplified by use of a food guide that specifies food groups and serving sizes.
(1) I don’t understand why “our rational, observational and empathic mind-reading skills” are underscored as being superior to other species. Yes, we have biological predispositions that lead us to develop bonds with and care for our young, and I see the potential for this to enable us to extend that empathy towards other species as well. However, I see no indication of these skills being more developed in us as opposed to other examples of cross-species bonding, such as a dog adopting kittens as its own etc. Our bonds are not stronger than theirs.
ReplyDeleteI follow your logic and I think it’s well argued. I suspect that some students who are still holding on to their habits of meat-eating may not react favourably to an argument for veganism being made in the context of a classroom, but I think this is simply the typical resistance that surfaces when people have their behaviours challenged or when they experience cognitive dissonance. I see how this is a reasonable conclusion based on the study of cognitive science and the Other Minds problem. I do admittedly also see how the use of this course as a platform can fulfill an ethical duty to inform others and make the case for not causing unnecessary suffering (... of which MOST of the suffering qualifies as). I will be disappointed (but not surprised) if the well-formulated explanation as to why it is reasonable to infer feeling states in animals is dismissed by some on the basis of it preaching a belief or attempting to convert people towards a change in behaviour. However, I don’t consider this course to be making any more of an argument for inferring feeling in other organisms than Feminist Theory courses are making for gender equality. Feminism is progressively less easily dismissed as an emotion-based position and appropriately seen as a proper discipline that explores important experiences of marginalized voices. I think academic work regarding the welfare of other species is equally valid.
(2) On a personal note, this led me to have an interesting conversation with my partner. We do not eat meat at home, but he eats meat on occasion when we visit his family or if we eat out. His focus is on moderation, and my approach has generally been to not be confrontational and instead lead by example. But my choice is certainly also influenced by a desire to avoid conflict, despite how important I believe it is not to kill. My lack of assertiveness could be described as sometimes cowardly and other times purposefully geared towards approaching the topic while not triggering people’s defensiveness. With this in mind, I think it was important that I took this opportunity to explicitly state that I am in fact disappointed that he still eats meat. While I also understand that it’s seemingly reasonable to take a moderate approach (and certainly any improvement towards less suffering is a good thing) I don’t think framing this issue in that way is appropriate. It isn’t the same as not turning on a light to save energy. Any meal that includes animals products matters to the individuals who are being sacrificed. If someone would not condone needless suffering, than an occasional killing is not a reasonable option. It’s easy to sound preachy when the cause literally includes life and death consequences, but that’s simply the reality. My partner said that they imagined they would eventually continue to progress towards less consumption but did not have an explicit plan to cease entirely. I pointed out that in no other area of his life would it sound sensible to expect to arrive somewhere eventually without actively taking measures to achieve that goal. But I think what is reaching him more than anything else is his new proximity to my dogs. He had never had the opportunity to have a pet, and it is understandably easier to feel farther removed and less concerned with the welfare of animals when you do not have any attachment to them. Seeing how one of my dogs suffered and showed fear when she suddenly started experiencing seizures was an unavoidable example for him of how animals do feel. I certainly think that viewing dogs s part of the family has helped bring into focus for him how their feelings are no less significant than our own.
DeleteThe notion that our kin-bonding can be the source of change to reconceptualize how other species’ feelings are impacted by our choices is very interesting. This is certainly a powerful approach and holds much more potential than logic alone or shaming. As frustrating as it is, people have an amazing ability to remain willfully ignorant or not change in the face of cognitive dissonance. On behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves, thank you for your work in helping to plant seeds of change.
(3) I'm curious as to your view on pet ownership. I once read an opinion piece in the Gazette about how the love that pets show to us is comparable to Stockholm Syndrome and felt an enormous swell of cognitive dissonance. I remember thinking, "I see your point... But I love them so much!", which is of course selfish if it is not in the best interest of the animals. I certainly think puppy mills are out of the question. But I think adopting pets has a value in that it directly fosters the development of bonds across species. Thoughts?
DeleteResponse to (1)
DeleteI agree with your point that human mind-reading skills are not necessarily superior to that of other species. This point was also addressed by Kiley-Worthington in her commentary on this article. The author argues that the mind-reading ability of animals like elephants, buffalos and antelopes, is better than her own, since they could infer her intentions and emotional states from reading contextual cues (posture, muscle tension, facial expression, gaze direction etc.), without even having been exposed to a human beforehand. She also mentions ‘Clever Hans’, a horse that was thought to be an arithmetic genius, but in reality was just picking up involuntary cues from the body language of individuals in the audience. Arguably, these accounts are only limited to mammals, and we can doubt whether a centipede can infer a human being’s intentions to the same extent (but we obviously don’t know for sure because of the OMP).
I think the one distinguishing trait that does set our mind-reading ability apart form all other animals is our language ability. Through this capacity to verbally report on our feelings, dreams, memories and intentions, others can gain a very precise picture of what is going on in our minds, which may be much more detailed than inferring it from behavioral observation alone.
Hi Rachel!
DeleteResponse to (3)
I absolutely believe that my dog loves me. I adopted my dog from a shelter. He was 4 years old when I found him. Before meeting me, my dog had already gone through 3 different homes and had been abused and abandoned by the last one. When I first met him, he resented humans. He always kept his distance and would get aggressive quickly when he was feeling uneasy about a situation. The shelter warned me about his past and his tendency to resort to aggression, but none of this mattered to me. I thought that this dog deserved a chance to live a better life. Why should anyone blame the dog for not trusting humans and being skeptical of them? I would probably be the same way if I was mistreated like he was. This dog’s feelings were completely valid and I acknowledged this. All this being said, adopting him was one of the greatest decisions I have ever made. I love him so very deeply and I believe he feels the same. I believe this because of the strong and unbreakable bond that my dog and I have formed over the past 4 years. I believe that if anyone were to observe my dog and I together, they would agree that he loves me and enjoys my company.
What shocked me the most about the adoption process though, was that the person at the shelter kept telling me that I have two weeks to bring back the dog if I were to be unhappy with him… This disturbed me deeply! I could never imagine adopting a dog to bring him back… this seems so incredibly wrong to me. I, as a feeling being, could never do that to another feeling being. This clause almost implies that the dog’s feelings do not matter in this process. It is completely dismissing the pain, hurt and trauma that this dog will have to endure because his feelings are being overlooked (dare I say trumped) by our own feelings. Despite my immediate disgust to this idea, I do understand that the shelter might think it would be important to repeat this statement. I guess it would technically be better for a dog to be returned to the shelter after 2 weeks than to be abandoned or mistreated. Still, it is sad that this needs to be said in the first place.
Lastly, I would like to state that I agree with your point about puppy mills being out of the question. There is no need for people to purchase an animal from a breeder when there are so many animals in the world desperate to find homes. This in my opinion is extremely unethical.
Rachel:
Delete(1) one on one and without language I'm pretty sure other species are better mind-readers than we are. (The elephant-whisperer, Marthe Kiley-Worthington, said as much in her commentary, and she, and you, are right.)
But the reason humans are undeniably better mind-readers overall is language. We can share and cumulate what we learn about nonhuman animals through word of mouth. This is not one person's perception. It's our joint knowledge. We have "ethograms" for countless species. No other species can do that, for themselves, other species, or us. (Nothing to brag about: we haven't used our cumulative knowledge to help other species much...)
(Erica, I see you've made exactly the same points below!)
About feminism: nothing wrong with a feeling-based position, if the feelings are right.
(2) For many years I hardly spoke up either. Now I realize that because although I knew about the horrors, I didn't yet feel them. Now I feel them, and I'm ashamed -- especially seeing people even younger than I was when I stopped eating meat, and they don't just go vegan, but they become activists, which we all should be, as long as the horrors go on. In the climate-change march a few weeks ago the one leading our (huge) animal-rights contingent was an 11-year old vegan, chanting as if her heart would burst.
(3) Puppy mills are monstrous. Pure-bred kennels are not much better. Vulnerable, sentient creatures are being bred for sale and use. Sometimes they end up with a decent family, more often not. Dogs have co-evolved with us so much that they are probably better off with us than in a feral pack. But they're best off if we stop breeding them altogether. They are hopelessly distorted and no longer have an ecological niche of their own.
That said, dogs are wonderful, and everyone who wants one should adopt one from a shelter. And yes, they are essential for sensitizing people to animal sentience and vulnerability. Oddly enough, cats, though much more independent and less social, are, if anything, even better at opening up people's hearts.
But pigs, chickens, cows, sheep -- they're all wonderful, and non deserve their monstrous, hellish fate.
Rats and mice too... and fish... and snails...
Amanda, I understand and agree with every word you wrote.
And of course your dog loves you. How could anyone who ever knew a dog doubt that?
In this article, I find myself in agreement with everything. However, I see how this stance could be hard to hold in the face of strict empirical evidence that is usually used to defend to opposing view. I’m always vigilant when arguments are based on empathy; it can become less objective when emotions get involved, but I believe this article was very well articulated to get out of that, especially when it came to the other-minds problem. I think depicting the pain of the animals in the frame of their being outside of what they evolved to live in was very clever and avoided the touchy-feely background that empathy-driven arguments can sometimes have. I was wondering, out of curiosity, what kind of feedback this article received, especially from people who come from more basic science? For example, in Key’s article, it’s quickly dismissed as a bad type of argumentation, but did other scientists give it actual credibility and still found a way to dismiss it? I’m really curious to read about that.
ReplyDeleteNothing wrong with empathic feelings.
DeleteThe paper got some comments and citations, but I was disappointed there weren't more. Maybe it was partly because it was not a target article but an editorial.
Re: Marianne Rochette November 18, 2019 at 7:37 PM
DeleteOne specific sentence of your skywriting really jumped out at me: “I’m always vigilant when arguments are based on empathy; it can become less objective when emotions get involved.” I understand where you are coming from and what you are trying to say, but how could emotion not be involved when you are looking at animals’ ability to feel?
You are definitely not alone in holding science in high esteem, and seeing it as something that is neutral, where we just observe whether things as they are. However, what we chose to study study, how we study it, which conclusions we draw from that are all subjective decisions, and you can go even further into p-hacking and other unethical practices that certain researchers use to find the findings they want to find.
Science is not neutral. It is filled to the brim by feelings and opinions, and considering it “objective” or “neutral” is inacurate and I would argue that we should acknowledge that emotion drives most of human endeavors, including within academia.
If we were intelligent (e.g., T3-competent) zombies, i.e., we could do everything we can do, but we did not feel, then everything would be objective -- and nothing would matter.
Delete"Mattering" (and hence morality -- right vs. wrong) is based on feeling in the sense that if there were no feeling, there would be no right or wrong.
But that does not mean that feeling alone will tell you what's the right or wrong thing to do, any more than taste alone will tell you what is safe to eat. That's where objectivity (and sometimes "science") comes in.
But science is just facts (or what evidence so far indicates to be facts). Science can't tell you what's right or wrong except if you give it moral premises, such as "How do I bomb this village so as to minimize collateral damage?" It cannot tell you whether or not to bomb the village (except with still more moral premises). The premises don't come from science; they can only come from feelings. (Nor does that mean they are right!)
"If organisms do have minds, the hard problem is to explain how and why such survival/reproduction machines would evolve minds: What is the added causal role and adaptive value of having a mind."
ReplyDeleteDuring evolution, it is obvious that what hurts us eventually hurts our possibility of survival, so we feel pain which urges us to avoid it. On the other hand, what gratifies us increases our ability to survive and reproduce, so we feel pleasure which pushes us to enjoy more of it. Can these be the adaptive value of our feelings? Also, in terms of having a mind, intelligence substantially helps us survive and live better. I certainly understand these cannot be, and is nowhere closer to the solution of the hard problem, but why is the hard problem still so hard given there indeed are distal causes of our feelings and intelligence?
Hi! I think insofar as escaping dangerous situation, if evolution really is lazy, which it is, it would be so much simpler to just give the individuals the genetic mutations that help them seek or avoid the positive and negative rewards in their environment. I think your commentary is valuable, and I’m as keen as you to hear the answer to the question of distal causes. There might be something to be said about the environment changing so quickly around us (our ancestors) that genetic adaptation was too long to come about, and something else emerged to speed the process. However, intelligence is also not always adaptive if we consider that, without it, the Earth and humankind would probably be in way less danger than it is right now, so I really don’t know what to think. The hard problem is hard.
Delete"During evolution, it is obvious that what hurts us eventually hurts our possibility of survival, so we feel pain which urges us to avoid it. On the other hand, what gratifies us increases our ability to survive and reproduce, so we feel pleasure which pushes us to enjoy more of it. Can these be the adaptive value of our feelings?"
DeleteJunlin, to appreciate how and why the hard problem is hard, here is your question with the circular parts replaced by neutral ones, to highlight how there is no causal explanation of feeling at all there, only the "easy" explanation of doing.
"During evolution, it is obvious that what harms us eventually harms our possibility of survival, so we detect harm which causes us to avoid it. On the other hand, what benefits us increases our ability to survive and reproduce, so we do it more which causes us to benefit more from it. Can these be the adaptive value of our feelings?"
No, they are the adaptive value of being able to do what needs to be done, and to learn through trial and error (supervised learning). Not a clue as to why any of it needs to be felt.
Same here:
"in terms of having a mind, intelligence substantially helps us survive and live better"
Intelligence (cognitive capacity, i.e., capacity to do: learn, remember, speak, etc.), yes, but how and why is any of it felt?
Marianne, the advantages you describe are those of learning, which lazy-evolution has already discovered. The question is why any of it is felt, rather than just done.
"But what about species like fishes, who cannot scream? Or invertebrates, like worms or clams, some of whom can hardly even struggle? Fish, reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates, if they feel, are further handicapped by the fact that even to our acute mind-reading sense, they look robotic"
ReplyDeleteAs was stated earlier in the article, mind-reading of other species becomes more and more difficult the more dissimilar they look to our own species. It's relatively easy to predict what another person is feeling. We can't know for certain (because of the OMP) but we have a good guess.
Reading this portion brought up a lot of vague memories from early childhood, a time where (from what I know) we are so focused on the self, and all of the harmful things I have admittedly inflicted directly on other beings (smashing lightning bugs on the ground to watch them glow, stepping on ants, etc). Many of my other young peers did this too, because of exactly what was stated-- they don't resemble humans at all. Especially bugs, as they are very dissimilar to us. I don't do this now for fun anymore, obviously. But I am curious as to what the stance is on bugs as a vegan (I am not a vegan). This might be a silly question, I know that most do not consume honey, but what do you do about something like bug infestations in your place of living?
The stance is simple: don't harm sentient organisms needlessly.
DeleteThis piece of skywriting is less aimed at either poking holes in this article or getting answers about a particular theoretical question as it relates to the article. I don’t have any gripes with it, I agree with it.
ReplyDeleteMy question is more one of curiosity. I’ve seen many articles online from bloggers and regular people alike who used to be vegan, and had to transition to a low-meat diet (which, of course, does include some level of meat-eating) due to health concerns. I’ve heard a few different versions of it; iron deficiency is the one that comes to mind right now. My sister is actually an example of this.
Now in my mind this feels like an understandable exception if it’s really true that there is no way to supplement/change your diet if, for example, you are vegan and lacking in iron to stay vegan but to accommodate for that deficiency. I’m wondering if it is at all possible for a human person to NEED meat in their diet.
I’m curious what others in this course think of this.
Re: "I’m wondering if it is at all possible for a human person to NEED meat in their diet."
DeleteHi Véronique! I definitely had the same thoughts as you. What are the ethical implications of eating meat if an individual's health necessitates it? I thought of the example of individuals with severe epilepsy using a ketogenic diet (high fat, high protein) to regulate their symptoms.
We discussed the question in class (which I know followed your post) but to clarify: Professor Harnad asserts that these rare cases constitute a necessity, a matter of life or death, and therefore is comparable to lions eating gazelles. The lion is not morally responsible for killing prey because it simply needs that form of sustenance. However, I believe that through strict regulation and extensive research, one can find vegan substitutes for iron-rich and high-fat/protein content foods. For example, iron deficient individuals can increase their intake of beans, dark green leafy vegetables, and dried fruit and will absorb the same amount of iron as someone who eats red meat. We also mentioned that these extreme examples may not be a concern in the future because if the general population shifts toward veganism, researchers will be motivated to find solutions to these dietary restrictions.
Ultimately, the problem with humanity's meat product consumption is that it causes unnecessary suffering. The other-minds problem demands that we cannot know someone else's pain, but even then, who are we to decide whether another entity feels or does not feel? Professor Harnad's article, "My orgasms cannot be traded off against others' agony", potently reminds us that no one has the right to trade some individual/population's pleasure for another's pain; "pain and pleasure are incommensurable".
Véronique, for a normal, healthy person, please read the reply from the American Dietetic Association above. There the reply is no; but I would add that it is wiser to take some supplements, including B12 and iron. (I do.) The required doses are known.
DeleteFor people who are ill, and need medicine that can only be derived from animals, the right answer is that vegans should take the medicine, because it is necessary for health.
Those vegans who go back to eating meat instead of just taking a supplement are under the influence of cognitive dissonance.
Vivian, with the possible exception of Vitamin B12, supplements for a normal, healthy vegan are a precaution, not a matter of necessity. I started taking the supplements I mention above in the discussion of the American Dietetic Association even though in a carefully planned vegan diet you don't need them because I didn't want to bother with careful planning! Taking the right supplements is as easy as taking a cab instead of walking (but without the bad environmental effects!)
Coming to appreciate the other minds problem through this class has really shifted my perceptions and understandings of what sentience looks like and means - especially with non-human species. Growing up however, the only people I knew who were vegans or vegetarians did so because of religious reasons. To my family, refusing to eat meat was interpreted as disrespectful and as a lack of appreciation for what they were able to provide for me. My now deeper understandings of the moral implications of assuming non-sentience in other beings (and the environmental impacts associated) affirms to me that it is important not to harm species needlessly. I feel the majority of people around me have converted to veganism for health and environmental reasons versus appreciating animal sentience. What are some ways to 'open peoples hearts' to believe that ALL animals are possibly sentient (without having to recite the majority of this course)? For me personally, it is understanding the deeper moral implications of assuming non-sentience that has most convinced me to change my behaviour.
ReplyDeleteMadeleine, the vast majority of this course was on the Easy Problem, not the Other-Minds Problem or the Hard Problem.
DeleteI think that for mammals and birds, most people already know they feel. What they don't know is (1) how much they suffer to become what we eat, and (2) how that suffering is unnecessary, because eating them is unnecessary.
(Fish and invertebrates feel too, but fewer people already know it.)
I am in full agreement with everything discussed throughout the reading. In my previous skywriting I talk about the consequences of a false positive vs. a false negative in relation to Key and fish. This neatly translates to ‘the consequences of being wrong’ in Harnad’s paper titled Animal Sentience.
ReplyDeleteI would like to propose several questions that extend beyond the literature:
1. How does the Research Ethics Board go about weighing the costs and benefits of an experiment involving animals? Is there a one to one correspondence between one member of a nonhuman species and a human (risk the life of one mouse to save the life of one human)? A few years back, I researched genomic expression of dendritic growth on C. Elegans (a nematode a.k.a. an animal). Should the lives of these simpler, sentient organisms be valued less than more complex organisms?
2. The debate ensues about whether or not plants are sentient. If we obtain conclusive evidence of plant sentience, what does that mean for vegan diets? Without plants or animals in our diet, humans would be malnourished and eventually die. So, come the advent of this discovery, should we then value the lives of animals over plants? This seems like a form of speciesism .
3. Another debate relates to abortion rights. Under the same ethical framework, if an animal is sentient, we should not inflict any ‘suffering’ (broader term for pain used in Harnad’s paper). We still are unaware of when a bundle of cells in the (human) womb gains sentience, however, in the US you can get an abortion until roughly 24 weeks. If these fetus’ are sentient, should we allowing abortions? I was curious what PETA had to say about the issue, but they refrain from stating a position because they deal with only nonhuman animals.
4. Lastly, (without taking into consideration the exploitation of female chickens on farms) why wouldn’t vegans be ok eating a non-sentient chicken egg?
William:
Delete1. I've never been on a research ethics board, so I don't know how they go about it, but I'm pretty sure that it's far from what the animals deserve. And the criteria are bound to be approximate, vague, sometimes even arbitrary. But where the numbers and suffering are the worst, and there is no question that none of it is necessary, is in the breeding, transport and slaughter of animals for food and fur. We'll assess life-saving research more honestly when we've all stopped non-life-saving slaughter.
2. It's almost certain that animals feel, and suffer. It's almost certain that plants do not. So while we're still really causing agony to really sentient animals is not the time for hypotheticals about what if it turned out...? There are answers, but you can be sure that if a meat-eater wants to debate you about plants, it's cognitive dissonance, not a sincere wish to stop causing needless suffering.
3. For the same reason, those who want to debate about abortion rights are following another thread of cognitive dissonance rather than a sincere wish to stop causing needless suffering. Again, there are honest answers to all of 1-3 (if one reflects a little on what has already been said here -- especially the issue of conflict of vital interests, one can find the answers for oneself). But the point here is that these are all very familiar defensive debating points from meat-eaters, not addressing the real question -- which is whether to go on eating animal protein, since it is unnecessary for human survival and health and causes untold suffering to countless sentient victims everywhere, every second...
4. Why not eat nonsentient eggs? Derya has given the answers: Because to get them, terrible things are done to countless sentient chickens [including the 50% that are killed as baby roosters, Derya, so they never make it to the "free range"].
[The usual follow-up is: What if I rescued a hen in a refuge for life? would it be alright if I ate her unfertilized eggs? Answer is, yes, but it's trivial and doesn't scale, so why even talk about it? Ditto for milk. (Besides, your body converts to a plant-based metabolism faster and more fully once you don't eat any animal protein at all; I can attest to that, based on personal experience: during almost 50 (shameful) years as a vegetarian, I never lost my taste for meat; but when I became vegan and cut out animal protein completely, I lost that taste (within about 8 months), and it has instead become an aversion; I had still been a carnivore all those years; only now am I really a herbivore; and the bonus is that everything plant-based tastes infinitely better than it had before! So when it comes to "innocent" eggs, my answer is: "no thanks"; not for ethical reasons: I want to keep my herbivore metabolism!]
In the paper, Harnad reviews Descartes claims about thinking (which he reframes better as feeling) and addresses the gap in Descartes initial claims about whether organisms other than humans feel.
ReplyDeleteI like the distinction that Harnad makes between the certainty of knowing that I feel, versus the high probability that you feel or that a certain scientific theorem is correct. So, anything else that we feel to be true may not be true. This distinction is an important scientific assumption to make, one that affords more objectivity to research on sentience.
I also like the argument that when the consequences of an error are high it is ethically better to assume that the other feels to ensure that we do not hurt them in case they do feel. And highly applaud the effort the Animal Sentience journal is making to encourage further research and conversation on how, why and whether animals feel in varying conditions. Understanding the answers to these questions will not only inform how humans engage with other species, but also shed light on feeling itself. For instance, we can then investigate what levels of complexity in anatomy and behavior can we examine to infer whether and how an organism is feeling.
The practice of open peer commentary is also important in science. Often times research groups working on related topics have comments and thoughts on a new experiment/research topic. However, this opportunity to have an open conversation with another research group is limited to conferences or university visits. Having an online platform that enables this, especially one that is integrated to a journal, will help further at a quicker pace, and also bringing about a deeper understanding of the research topic.
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The conversation about the Other Minds Problem and sentient beings, also brings to mind the poverty that we see across the world. According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each day due to poverty. Our species provide rights to its members, but despite these rights and organisations that work to protect them, the percentage of the population that falls below the poverty line is increasing globally. It seems to be the case that despite having the faculty of language to share our experiences and perhaps thus address the issue of OMP, we have not yet tackled it fully. A species as empathic our own should be able to devise mechanisms that distribute resources more equally. And yet, research shows that the rich-poor divide is one of the hardest to empathise across. Just as in the case of animal cruelty, this, paints the picture of another empathic divide that humans struggle with to date.
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Interestingly, and perhaps more philosophically (than general topics covered in cognitive science), there is a line of thought in certain spiritual practices that asks what makes certain feelings bad feelings? They argue that humans can transcend pain if we do not attach certain judgements to specific bodily sensations. The premise is that every feeling (whether “good” like happiness, or “bad” like pain) is a sensation, and only the judgement makes it good or bad. What we call pain can then be decomposed to sensations of heaviness, or stinging or even heat. And not labelling it as pain removes a lot of the mental suffering associated with the sensation, in effect, reducing the “pain” itself. And in long term practitioners even removing the notion of pain. Research has also shown that practitioners of certain forms of meditation tend to have a higher pain threshold. This line of thought makes me wonder about how much of our pain is purely physical (perhaps very little), and how much is a result of mental judgement/categorisation of a feeling as pain.
P.S: I posted the earlier one without realising I'm not signed in
Anna, the two certainties are the analytical truths of fomal maths and the Cogito (Sentio) (not scientific (empirical) hypotheses, which are only probable, not certain).
Delete(Open Peer Commentary (skywriting!) is very useful, for many reasons, related to the origin of language, speech (the "oral tradition") and writing, but to exploit its full potential we would also have to have Open Access to peer-reviewed scholarly and scientific journal articles -- and in efforts to get that to come to pass across the last 30 years I personally have been spectacularly unsuccessful!)
Yes, there are huge empathic divides not just between us and other species, but within our species too. The culprits are two: (1) the OMB: we do not feel another's pain and (2) egoism, which is suppressed by lazy evolution in mammals for progeny and next of kin, but not for strangers...
There are some meditative practises that can sometimes suppress pain -- in oneself, but alas not in other humans, let alone in other animals.
“Our rational, observational and empathic mind-reading skills in general are far more extensive and acute than those of any other species. All mammals (at least 1 ) do have some degree of mind-reading ability, especially concerning the needs of their young; social species have even more of it. Some researchers have attributed organisms’ mind-reading abilities to their having “mirror neurons,” which are active both when an organism itself does (and, presumably, feels) something and when the organism observes another organism doing (and, presumably, feeling) the same thing (Gallese & Goldman 1998; Vogeley et al. 2001; Rizzolatti & Craighero 2005; Singer 2006). But whatever its neural basis, human beings are the planet’s unrivalled champions in mind-reading one another.”
ReplyDeleteI am a little confused about this claim in terms of on what grounds can we derive this conclusion. By saying that humans can read minds better than other species, aren’t we again falling back to the other minds’ problem? Since the mechanism of species are vastly different, and since mind reading is not such an overt capacity like swimming and running, how can we, as human beings who do not know what is going on in other species’ mind, say that human being has the most acute mind-reading ability? Does that only rely on the measurement of some anthropocentric measures that human beings deem as ‘mind-reading’? For example, I admit that human beings have language, which is a very unique and powerful tool in mind reading. However, other species also have their way of communication, which cannot simply be said being superior or inferior to human ones. For example, bats have the mechanism of echolocation and bees have their dances, and since we don’t know how much they can understand each other through communication (the OMP), how could be said, that their mind-reading abilities are not as good as ours?
As a child I used to think of the other mind problem in a very simple way – how do I know that my blue is the same as your blue? How do I know that you experience the world the same way as I do? What if we have learned to use one common descriptor between us to describe something that in fact we experience very differently? Growing older I obviously noticed that there is some form of a common experience, in humans able to communicate there is only a certain amount of questionable experiences that we are unable to fully communicate about or formulate into words: like thoughts for example.
ReplyDeleteOn the example on birds in the text: With other people, there is a level of inference from behaviour that can occur to understand another person’s experience, because we can compare it to our own. With other species however, there is nothing past observing behaviour, biology, anatomy that can be done to understand their experience. As shown by the way that you study categorization – this biological approach is not very informative, especially alone, when looking into experience.
"**So it turns out that the other-minds problem is not our problem: It’s the problem of other species**, if they do have minds — if they do indeed feel, yet have the misfortune that our species does not know they feel, or does not believe it. Pain is the negative feeling that comes to mind first: The other-minds problem is a catastrophe for any sentient species that we are hurting because we are sceptical about whether they feel pain. But there is far more to negative feeling — let us frankly call it suffering — than just the infliction of brute pain. There is also stress and fear and loneliness — and being deprived of the other things a species may need: the habitat for which they have evolved; the possibility of seeing, hearing, tasting, touching and doing the things for which their sensory and motor systems are adapted and that they are designed to expect; and of course being deprived of freedom — and of their lives, which, if they feel, may feel every bit as precious to them as ours feel to us." (Emphasis mine)
ReplyDeleteThis paragraph, particularly the first sentence spoke to me more than the rest of it. While the other minds problem does explain why we find it difficult at times to relate to the suffering of others and other species in particular. The problem is exasperated when the other species shares wildly different communication mediums than those that we are familiar with. While I do not know how to understand the meaning of a dog's bark or the moew of a cat, I know that the squeal they make when they are in pain means. I understand on a fundamental level what they are communicating despite not knowing the details. Similarly for more living creature, if they rely on auditory communication mediums it is quite easy for me as a human to deduce some basic meaning as that is the means of communication that we are most familiar with. Then consider a bee, or a worm or any other creature that doesn't make sounds to communicate. We have no sense of their suffering or their pain. When I try to shew away a bee or a fly, they have no means of communicating their reaction to this event and while we find it difficult to understand the mind of other animals, the limited communication capabilities to us of some species exasperate the other minds problem to levels that frankly seem to be beyond any hope of understanding at any level.
The other minds problem is an interesting progression from Descartes cogito (that we can only be certain that we are sentient, that we can feel what it is like to think). It stipulates that we can never be certain about whether anyone else, but ourselves, can think, feel or in fact is sentient. Conversely while we cannot be 100% sure that anyone else is sentient, thinking and feeling. However we do get close with other humans because of our shared communicative ability of language, because of behavior inferences of others that we can make based on our own experiences of feeling, and finally because of the ‘mind-reading powers’ that Harnad (2016) speaks fondly of. As such, while never being 100% certain that whoever is reading this is not a robot, I can make the educated guess that I am indeed not in the Matrix.
ReplyDelete“Picking the more likely option is partly the answer; but in the case of feelings, there is something far more important at stake than just the truth, namely, the consequences of being wrong: There is incomparably more at stake for others if we assume that they don’t feel, yet they do, than if we assume that they do feel, yet they don’t.” (Harnad 2016).
ReplyDeleteI really think this is the most important aspect of the moral ramifications of the other minds problem. As well, if I may be so bold to assume, this is likely one of the many motivations professor Harnad and other vegan cognitive psyc experts might indeed share – ‘what is at stake if we don’t take feelings for granted?’. For all of my childhood I had grown up in a family of carnivores. Meat and potatoes were the staples, bbq on Saturdays etc. and for the most part I was really okay with it. It has only been a recent revelation of mine that a carnivorous diet is not only an ecological nightmare, but also a nightmare for the beings consumed – presenting moral implications I had need to face. The factories of flesh completely destroying not only our environment, but also our humanity, predicated on some perverted capitalist hogwash of meat as a must for all of our meals has come to totally ruin my appetite. While I don’t think I could ever become a vegetarian, the moral ramifications of the other minds problem require me to be honest with the pain and suffering I am perpetuating when I participate in the flesh-eating exercise. I know I have some convenient mental gymnastics put in place so I don’t feel like a horrible person when I eat my steak, but I have been engaging in a severe cut to my consumption, perhaps so I can selfishly feel better, or perhaps to contribute to some wider movement against the factory farms. All that being said, when our capitalist self-interest is tied up with animal suffering, everyone loses.
The other-minds problem is clearly the big idea behind this paper and animals are no exception from this paradigm. I think it is very sad how we do not treat them as beings, but as ends for our pleasures. Also, the fact that they cannot talk to tell us how they feel is maybe why so many people don’t believe that they get hurt also.
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