Girl Burned Alive: The Quest for Morality in America

[Metsfanmax]

If by your logic, we are pretty much just animals exhibiting natural biological motives

The only point in bringing up that we are the product of evolution is to demonstrate why using a species category for anything other than classification is as fundamental an error as using race as a category for anything other than classification. Species doesn't even have an actual meaning when you're considering issues like this -- what actually is a human? Where is the dividing line between humans and chimpanzees and other animals? Chimpanzees and humans both evolved from a common ancestor. If we trace our lineage back through the generations to that common ancestor, we see a continuous line of creatures that started at something like "chimpanzee + human hybrid" (though it was probably anatomically much closer to modern chimpanzee than it is to modern human), and slowly changes to something that looks like modern humans on one side, and something like modern chimpanzees on the other side. It is purely an accident of history that the descendants of that lineage other than the currently existing humans, chimpanzees and bonobos died out. Suppose that they instead had all survived. Would you be prepared to decide where the species boundary ends for humans, and begins for non-humans? Essentially, even using the term "human" is a fundamental error when having a discussion of morality, because human is not a uniquely defined quantity. All living humans (modulo identical twins) have different genetic code, and human is a term we invented to group together people whose genetic code is highly similar but not exactly identical. The difference between you and me, and you and a chimpanzee, is a matter of degree and not of kind. It's an unavoidable conclusion of evolution. It means that BBS doesn't even know what he is talking about when he says the word human, which is why his moral system is so confused.

None of this means that creatures with the capacity to reason as highly as you or I should be exempt from a moral system. We should act morally, and the fact that we share many common characteristics with other animals doesn't change that.

Very well, but then what about animal cruelty that provides a net gain for humans?
By viciously infecting, dissecting, and grinding up a whole bunch of monkeys, we eventually got the polio vaccine, saving virtually all modern human societies from polio outbreaks. Surely this would be unacceptable to any morality based on a species' sentience or intelligence, yet it was was in humans' best interest, and besides the side effects of the vaccines, had no lasting repercussions for humans. Why or why shouldn't this be seen as a moral act to humans?
How about the countless lab rats that die every day to further science and medicine?

Great questions. Not sure I am prepared to answer them when it comes to the historical development of medicine. I do know that in modern medicine though, there's been a lot of criticism of things like medicine being tested on rats. There's actually not a whole lot of good evidence that rats respond to medicine in a similar way to humans, so there's a huge question as to whether there's much value to lab testing on rats. I can find some references to start that discussion if you want. The discovery of things like the polio vaccine may seem like an unmitigated win for the research if we completely discount the value of the animals' lives, but I'm not so sure. If we are spending many billions of dollars on research that doesn't actually work, we may be wasting a whole lot of resources on dead end research. It is possible right now that we could have had a much better way of testing medicine (like computer simulations or developing human tissue samples in the petri dish) if we had forsaken animal research decades ago and tried something different. I don't know -- I'm just sketching something out that has been argued by some medical researchers. It is not the consensus currently. But it seems possible to me that we are actually doing worse in medical research than we could be because of our animal testing paradigm, a paradigm that is an accident of history that no one has conclusively demonstrated is the most sound way to go about medical research.

[mrswdk]

We all have an incentive to live in a world where others do not infringe upon our own happiness, because that decreases our utility, and we want to maximize our own utility. If we want to maximize our utility and prevent others from harming our utility, how do we do so? It is simple: we live by the categorical imperative, the golden rule: we do not take actions that would harm the utility of others, because we would not want those others to harm our own utility.

In order to establish a peaceful and stable human society we need rules such as 'no killing each other' to ensure that we individuals do not fall foul of the sort of behavior that we wish to avoid. We don't wish to be killed by another person, so we all agree not to kill anyone else either.

Animals, on the other hand, do not need to be taken into consideration for humans to achieve their collective goal of living peacfully. Allowing people to wear leather shoes does not make it okay for someone to skin his neighbor and tan his skin. Allowing us to eat pork does not open up the possibility of someone eating my nephew. The rules only need apply to humans for human society to remain stable and peaceful.

If society reaches a point where things such as wearing fur, using ivory for decoration or beating your dog causes enough unhappiness and conflict among the general population, then it may well get to the stage at which there is greater utility for society to pass laws protecting animals. If society at large doesn't care then there is no need. So, in your example of eating animals, it would seem that not enough people in American society care enough for there to be any need to pass a law preventing people from eating meat.

[Metsfanmax]

If society reaches a point where things such as wearing fur, using ivory for decoration or beating your dog causes enough unhappiness and conflict among the general population, then it may well get to the stage at which there is greater utility for society to pass laws protecting animals.

I agree with you on this point. We are now rapidly approaching a world with a significantly changed and possibly unstable climate, with precious little amounts of fresh water left, with vanishing rainforests and destroyed ecosystems, and it is in large part due to animal agriculture. Society will have no choice but to adapt in the coming decades, because it is too perilous to humans to keep up this ravenous addiction to the flesh of animals. So I do not even agree with you that animals do not need to be taken into consideration -- our use of animals is threatening ourselves in a very real way.

But of course if we restrict the meaning of 'taken into consideration' to mean on their own merits, that is, the consideration of their own interests, I disagree with your argument. I made this point in one of my footnotes: although the fundamental reason we believe in the categorical imperative is because we don't want our utility to be threatened, it is important to recognize that if you're thinking morally, the idea you expressed is not itself the foundation for modern morality. That is, if you are thinking morally, the reason you do not kill another person is not literally because it threatens your own ability to exist -- there are potentially lots of ways to kill someone and get away with it -- it is because you fundamentally believe it is wrong to do so. It is wrong to do so because that other person has also has preferences, and since you don't want your preferences to be violated, it is wrong to violate theirs. This is true regardless of whether you could kill the person without threatening the fabric of society. Now, as a practical matter, I would argue that most people do actually act morally -- they want to be good people, to feel like they are doing the right thing. So it is a little too simplistic to argue that stable human society is built only on the threat of going to jail.

[mrswdk]

That is, if you are thinking morally, the reason you do not kill another person is not literally because it threatens your own ability to exist -- there are potentially lots of ways to kill someone and get away with it -- it is because you fundamentally believe it is wrong to do so.

I don't believe that.

it is a little too simplistic to argue that stable human society is built only on the threat of going to jail.

Oh really? Have you ever been to a lawless part of the world?

[Metsfanmax]

That is, if you are thinking morally, the reason you do not kill another person is not literally because it threatens your own ability to exist -- there are potentially lots of ways to kill someone and get away with it -- it is because you fundamentally believe it is wrong to do so.

I don't believe that.

OK. Does that mean you don't believe it's fundamentally wrong to kill someone who has never harmed you? If so, I'm glad I don't live near you.

it is a little too simplistic to argue that stable human society is built only on the threat of going to jail.

Oh really? Have you ever been to a lawless part of the world?

No. Have you?

[mrswdk]

That is, if you are thinking morally, the reason you do not kill another person is not literally because it threatens your own ability to exist -- there are potentially lots of ways to kill someone and get away with it -- it is because you fundamentally believe it is wrong to do so.

I don't believe that.

OK. Does that mean you don't believe it's fundamentally wrong to kill someone who has never harmed you? If so, I'm glad I don't live near you.

lol. You think just because I don't think something is fundamentally wrong that I probably go around doing it?

No, I don't think killing someone who has never harmed me is fundamentally wrong, but what would I gain from killing them?

it is a little too simplistic to argue that stable human society is built only on the threat of going to jail.

Oh really? Have you ever been to a lawless part of the world?

No. Have you?

I've been to places where the rule of law is significantly weaker than it is in the developed world. Various parts of China, countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and SE Asia. There are some really fucked up people out there. Remove law enforcement from the equation and you get some pretty fucked up societies. I've never been to Guatemala but it sounds almost unlivable.

[Metsfanmax]

lol. You think just because I don't think something is fundamentally wrong that I probably go around doing it?

No. I was making the point that the reason you don't go around doing it is because you do think it is wrong. As it true for most people out there.

No, I don't think killing someone who has never harmed me is fundamentally wrong, but what would I gain from killing them?

Maybe you want their new XBox, and they did not want to give it to you.

I've been to places where the rule of law is significantly weaker than it is in the developed world. Various parts of China, countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and SE Asia. There are some really fucked up people out there. Remove law enforcement from the equation and you get some pretty fucked up societies. I've never been to Guatemala but it sounds almost unlivable.

You are inferring the causality backward. What does not work, if you want to create a stable society, is to insert a dictator that a significant fraction of the society does not support into a law enforcement capacity. That is a recipe for the type of chaos that you see in some of these countries. The way to reach a stable society is for the constituents to come together and agree on the legitimacy of a particular government to enforce the common set of moral rules the society agrees upon -- which means that, at baseline, there does need to be some baseline set of moral rules that most people can agree to. Successful societies are the ones where there is a generally accepted set of legitimate social behavior (that of course doesn't mean they are unchanging -- the social mores can change, it just happens through mechanisms that society has already deemed legitimate). That, of course, is just another way of describing morality. So in essence there's a selection process -- the reason all the stable societies we see are ones where a common morality and the rule of law have strong purchase is because societies that don't believe in a common morality and don't all agree in the legitimacy of a common law enforcer tend to be rather unstable. Another way of saying this is that you cannot just "remove law enforcement" from a society that has it, because that law enforcement is a key part of what defined that society to begin with.

[_sabotage_]

Mets,

You have utterly failed. Sadly, pathetically, unapologetically failed.

Your arguments seem better suited to planet of the apes, and I'm guessing that the truce at the end of the last one is tenuous at best. Your concept is narcissistic: superficial and leading to your own demise. If you spoke in any place with animals, like Australia, Yellowstone, a farm, you'd be culled.

Give it up, show that you aren't an idiot and say, yes guys, I hadn't really thought it through.

[Metsfanmax]

You have utterly failed. Sadly, pathetically, unapologetically failed.

Not sure what you mean. We humans have been consuming animals as food for a very long time. The realization that maybe it's not the best thing to do is a fairly new one in cultural terms. I don't expect to win everyone over in one argument. This isn't failure, because I didn't expect to succeed. I am just planting a seed of some ideas that I want people to consider. This is a discussion that is ongoing, both on this forum and in our society, and I am playing my part in keeping that fire burning and forcing people to think about their actions. BBS may still be eating animals today, but if I have done my job well at least he'll have to think a little more about whether he should be. And there's nothing wrong with that -- we should always be introspective about our actions.

Give it up, show that you aren't an idiot and say, yes guys, I hadn't really thought it through.

The arguments posed against such a societal shift are as demonstrative of a lack of human imagination and ingenuity as the slaveowners of the 1850s who thought that if we let the slaves free, they would destroy our societal order and we wouldn't have the means to produce our cotton and our tobacco anymore. "We've always done this, I don't want to think about how to do it a different way" is as perennially bad an argument as any of the justifications used for trampling on the rights of minorities. You seem to generally be a fan of challenging conventional wisdom -- the only reason you are so perturbed by this particular version of it is because it challenges your own actions.

[_sabotage_]

Comparing animals to slaves is not going to get you anywhere. I don't have any mentally disabled people in my family, but comparing them to a pig, ain't winning you that Eagle Scouts badge any time soon. I do have black family members and comparing animals to their past situation is not table talk we'd engage in.

I'm all for better husbandry, but it is what it is and what it is is the responsibility of people not the rights of animals. If you do manage to gain stronger animal rights, you have done nothing for animals, but placed a greater burden on people.

Anyways, going to buy some lobster for Christmas dinner. Hope all enjoy their meals and our place on the food chain.

[Metsfanmax]

Comparing animals to slaves is not going to get you anywhere.

I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen;—but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—AND I WILL BE HEARD. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal, and to hasten the resurrection of the dead.

I take inspiration from men like these, who were unafraid to speak the truth -- in all its ugliness -- when the situation demanded it.

[_sabotage_]

I get that you want to scream from the mountain tops. You Have a Dream. I can see how it must be hard for you to endure what you perceive to be abuse that happens 24/7 worldwide with or without human involvement. Animal abuse is widespread, and if the dandiest words could just stop one chick from snatching the first down of his sibling and then kicking him out of the nest when he's dehydrated from direct son, then why not?

What I can't see is why you give a shit about animal abuse, as defined by you, towards these same animals, and pose a solution that results in even more abuse to animals, as defined by everybody.

[Metsfanmax]

What I can't see is why you give a shit about animal abuse, as defined by you, towards these same animals, and pose a solution that results in even more abuse to animals, as defined by everybody.

I do not believe that speaking clearly and forcefully about the incredible ugliness of animal agriculture will result in more abuse. What you are seeing is a defense mechanism -- people do not like having ideas which are core to their identity being threatened. And this idea that cows, chickens and pigs are our tools rather than our friends -- sometimes called carnism -- is very fundamental to our identities, because we grew up with it and it remained unquestioned. I do not believe there is anything to do but to directly challenge this dearly-held view; it is the only way to get people to stop clinging to it. In the 1800s, it was a widely held view that blacks were inferior to whites, and Garrison's interlocutors made the same point you are now making -- don't rock the boat, you're only going to make things worse. But that is not how the abolitionist, women's rights, and black civil rights campaigns succeeded. They did not succeed through compromise. They succeeded through demanding the only thing that was reasonable to demand -- full freedom and equal rights for people who deserve them just as much as everyone else. They were right. The skeptics and the naysayers were wrong.

The fight for animal rights is somewhat complicated, of course. Many non-human animals are different from humans. It will be harder to figure out the right way to co-exist. But there is nothing to say for the current situation, a situation in which we have literally bred animals for centuries to be tools for our food. These animals are the complete and total objects of our domination. They are born in captivity and die in captivity. We strip them of all meaning and all reason to live, so that we have something tasty on our dinner plate. We deny them the right that is so basic that other rights can only exist once it is recognized: the right to live and to seek pleasures in a way that the being itself chooses. So I say to you that there is no animal abuse that could possibly come from recognizing the freedom of sentient beings that could ever compare to the eradication of the reason for being. If there is no reason to live, these animals may as well not live. Any situation is preferable to that. Any situation.

[mrswdk]

lol. You think just because I don't think something is fundamentally wrong that I probably go around doing it?

No. I was making the point that the reason you don't go around doing it is because you do think it is wrong. As it true for most people out there.

Well it's not true for me, so try again.

No, I don't think killing someone who has never harmed me is fundamentally wrong, but what would I gain from killing them?

Maybe you want their new XBox, and they did not want to give it to you.

So I'd kill them? Jeez. Is that really how your logic works?

Another way of saying this is that you cannot just "remove law enforcement" from a society that has it, because that law enforcement is a key part of what defined that society to begin with.

Don't be so naive.

[_sabotage_]

Then speak about the abuse of animal agriculture.

You have created an extremely broad category and based it around some serious topics. You have shot every ethical producer of animal products in the back, people in general, black people, disabled people. You've taken a sawed-off and sprayed the good the bad and the ugly.

"Figure out the right way to co-exist"

Are you for real? What do you think has been going on since the first spark of life? Please do not post to me just after ingesting cocaine.

No one is going to pay a doctor who tells them, you just need to find a way to co-exist with cancer.

We are going to improve our agricultural and husbandry methods, clean up our shit, and there are going to be some biological losers along the way, such as AIDS hopefully. Suck it up buttercup.

[_sabotage_]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/24/scien ... .html?_r=0

Scientists are still trying to figure out how much of a difference an ambitious forest regrowth strategy could make. But a leading figure in the discussion — Richard A. Houghton, acting president of the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts — has argued for turning some 1.2 billion acres of degraded or marginally productive agricultural land into forests.

That is an exceedingly ambitious figure, equal to about half the land in the United States. But researchers say it would be possible, in principle, if farming in poor countries became far more efficient. Some countries have already pledged to restore tens of millions of acres.


Mets maybe you can go teach the chicken farmers to be far more efficient: do a nice copy paste.

And if you are not clear what they are saying, they mean kick the small farmers off the land, send them to be city-slummers, let Cargill make some money and call it good.

[Metsfanmax]

Then speak about the abuse of animal agriculture.

You have created an extremely broad category and based it around some serious topics. You have shot every ethical producer of animal products in the back, people in general, black people, disabled people. You've taken a sawed-off and sprayed the good the bad and the ugly.

To see why I cannot agree with this perspective, ask yourself if there could ever have been any such thing as an ethical product of human slavery. There were slaveowners who were fundamentally mostly good people, that is sure; but that did not excuse their participation in a fundamentally unethical system. Owning another sentient being as your property is something I reject straight up.

"Figure out the right way to co-exist"

This post will conclude my discussion with sabotage. It generally seems that his dislike for me is muddling his attempt to seek the truth in this conversation, and so I do not believe that he and I are both on the same terms in this discussion.

However, both he and BBS have made a point that I have not yet responded to. I want to explain my stance on that so that anyone following this conversation does not allow that to impugn my motives. In particular, BBS has made the argument that as a moral consequentialist, he cannot simply ignore what the world after abolitionism would look like. This is a fair stance. I, too, am a consequentialist; I judge the ethics of an action primarily based on what the outcomes are. However, if you pay attention to the argument that BBS is making, you should notice a rather stark seeming contradiction in his philosophy. On the one hand, he advocates for moral consequentialism as a way to judge the outcome of animal abolitionism; on the other, he constantly advocates for well-protected property rights as the baseline for what makes human civil society successful, and progress possible. But how can those two co-exist? One can surely imagine situations in which it would be clearly ethical to violate someone's property rights in the name of the greater good of society, such as stopping a terrorist attack. How can a moral consequentialist even support property rights -- or any absolute rights -- to begin with?

For me, the point of establishing an ethical framework does not start from an understanding of how to judge every single circumstance, because we will never have perfect information to make moral calculations when we are deciding how to act. I agree most with how Peter Singer views ethics for the common person: a set of guidelines that help us in making practical decisions. It is possible to construct fanciful situations that test even the most extreme ethical theory -- but most of us don't regularly engage in that. We need to deal with pressing practical issues like abortion, torture, gay marriage, animal rights, racial justice, and other issues that affect a lot of real people right now. Our ethical theory needs to reliably have good answers for these situations. So even if you could imagine the way to commit the perfect murder, for example, it's still a good idea to agree that murder is generally wrong to do because of the various effects it will have on other people. So how do we steelman BBS' argument to resolve the apparent contradiction? We recognize that the point of an ethical system is to provide for us the right framework, not necessarily the perfect answer in every possible case. This is how a consequentialist can support a rights-based system. A rights-based system will give the right answer for most of the people, most of the time. In some circumstances one can envision a situation where the rights need to be violated for the greater good, such as the imminent terrorist attack. This can be framed in terms of a way to stop one large rights violation by permitting another smaller one. But that's not what most people mean by rights -- they have to be inalienable. That is in contradiction with a utilitarian system in principle, but again -- no ethical system is perfect. The rights-based approach should be the norm, and deviation from those rights should have sufficiently good motivation if it is to be permitted. By largely sticking to a belief in private property rights and certain civil rights, we have constructed a very safe society by all historical standards.

So when BBS or sabotage asks the question of "how are we going to coexist" with these newly freed animals, there is part of me that brushes this aside as being just a defense mechanism uttered by the same type of people who thought that freeing the slaves would lead to a societally destructive racial struggle. But there is part of me that also believes in a system of rights as a way to maximize utility, as does BBS. It won't get the right answer every time, but it maximizes long-run utility. It is not clear to me why BBS insists on throwing away that successful formula in this case.

Suppose one then makes the argument that this is one of those cases that is so potentially perilous that it justifies violating rights. Well, even then, I will disagree. This is the point I ultimately wanted to address to show that I am not blind to the consequences of my actions. The reason I treat it as a meaningless question is outlined above. But the reason I treat it as a silly question is that there are so many ways to solve this problem that don't involve a massive migration of humans that it shows a startling lack of imagination to even suggest it. As an example, if I were to lead this transition, probably what I would do is to shut down all animal agriculture facilities and turn them into sanctuaries for the animals that live there now. These animals were selected for, and raised on, a life that involves not much more than making babies and sitting in a cage. As a result, these animals cannot be successful out in the wild. Therefore simply releasing them doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Instead, one solution I would strongly consider is to simply sterilize all of them; we created this line of unnatural animals that are not meant to exist in the wild, and we can end that line. They would live out there lives in these facilities, and when they died out, we could reclaim the land for other more productive purposes. This program would be paid for, in my view, by reparations collected from every American as a way to make up for the colossal damage we've done. Would this be a non-trivial undertaking? Of course. But it doesn't involve a fundamental change in where we live or how we survive. All it involves is transitioning the way we produce our food. We don't have to overturn modern society to get there.

[_sabotage_]

So you have no plan. Excellent.

I wonder if Monsanto or Cargill are going to have more say in Climate Change agriculture? I wonder if Mets will post in the topic on growing slums and compare agriculture to slavery then?

[thegreekdog]

I think Mets and BBS need to write a book. I'll publish it.

[BigBallinStalin]

. I bring this all up because apparently unlike you, I can actually provide some reasons why my definition of personhood is correct

Okay. Go ahead.

if we are going to have a discussion about morality, we must first agree about what it even means for an action to be judged under the lens of morality. That is, what is the definition of a moral action, as opposed to an immoral action or an amoral action? In order to do this, we must understand what value(s) we wish to uphold. For example, if our value is happiness, then roughly speaking, a moral action (as consequentialists would agree, at least) is one that increases net happiness; an immoral action is one that decreases net happiness; and an amoral action is one which doesn't affect the net happiness of society (i.e. rocks cannot be happy or sad, so kicking a rock is an amoral action). Now, your argument is that instead of valuing happiness in general, we should only value human happiness. You contend that my choice of valuing non-human animal happiness is just as arbitrary as your choice of human happiness.

How can we resolve such an impasse? We can do so if we ask why it is that we value happiness. If we think about it, we can immediately see the reason we value our own happiness: it makes us feel good; it increases our total utility. Selfishly wanting to maximize our own utility is the true fundamental axiom -- the part that we cannot get past. We simply accept that we value our own utilty for its own sake -- we have no choice, it is fundamentally how we think. We all have an incentive to live in a world where others do not infringe upon our own happiness, because that decreases our utility, and we want to maximize our own utility. If we want to maximize our utility and prevent others from harming our utility, how do we do so? It is simple: we live by the categorical imperative, the golden rule: we do not take actions that would harm the utility of others, because we would not want those others to harm our own utility. The reason why this is essentially a unique choice of moral systems is that there is no other way for us to reliably construct a system in which our own utility is consistently maximized.** If our moral compass is instead "rape and pillage whatever we like," we risk getting raped and pillaged in return, and we do not like that. As a result, in this moral system, we respect the preferences of others. (We do so fundamentally because we want our own preferences to be respected, of course, but once we have settled on what our moral system is, the reason for it becomes less prominent.) You believe that everyone is obligated to respect the preferences of anyone else who has preferences, because that is the only way to actually have a consistent system. As a result, the preferences of any being that has preferences should be respected. Since basically all sentient beings have a preference not to feel pain*, we should not unduly inflict pain on them unless we would be OK with having a comparable amount of pain inflicted upon us. That is a direct consequence of the categorical imperative, and this is why arbitrary category determinations such as "race" and "gender" and "species" can never be respected in a self-consistent ethical system that respects preferences, because all of these being have preferences, and each of those preferences is about as important to those individuals as your preferences are to you.*** Thus, you see, I am not merely rejecting one category and substituting a different one. I am arguing for a fundamentally different conception of morality: what we value is pleasure and pain felt by beings that can feel pleasure and pain, and the extent to which a being deserves moral consideration depends on the extent to which it feels pleasure and pain. It follows simply from that, that personhood could not ever be restricted as arbitrary a category as "humans" or "male humans" because these are not the only beings that feel pleasure and pain.

Then you can't punish anyone. For example, in order to enforce your moral standard, you'd have to be willing to cage "people" for x-amount of years whenever they commit a crime. So, if my cat kills a mouse and shows it to me, I'd have to report it to the Metsian authorities so that the cat can be punished. But I wouldn't want to be punished nor would you (since this lowers our utility), and since we have to respect people's preferences (on a variety of means), then what? It doesn't make sense.*

*This is why your Pareto-sounding argument will have problems: all Pareto situations are efficient--e.g. even murder. Besides, utility = f(happiness and other variables). Not everything that increases utility increases happiness--e.g. hard work, pride, duty, etc. Those values incur personal harm but tend to reap personal utility. The pleasure-pain standard is incoherent until you start establishing whose preferences are to be respected under what circumstances.

Again, it goes back to consent. People have to agree on a certain set of rules (i.e. a contract), so that obligation and duty for both parties can be established. Then there's the bedeviling issue of agreement versus acquiescence. "Mutual respect of preferences" isn't the only way to have a consistent moral system (even the moral system you're talking about is inconsistent). You can't establish enough basic rules with a set of a priori synthetic true propositions (Kant failed at this; Mises made a few claims, but they're limited in usefulness--e.g. voluntary exchange ex-ante is mutually beneficial). The best we can do is make institutionally contingent claims (take institutions X as given, then see if the outcomes are permissible). If we refuse all this, then we'll play in the inescapable quagmire of moral relativism.

*Now, we can certainly argue this point if you want. But if we do then it's important to understand that this debate only occurs once we have accepted the premise that preferences matter, and then this becomes an empirical debate about which beings in particular have preferences. I assure you that you would lose such a debate when it comes to animals such as chimpanzees and gorillas. I would almost certainly be correct regarding common domesticated land animals and birds. Insects are a huge grey area. Bacteria, grasses, etc. are essentially certainly not sentient, and thus do not have preferences.

Sure, preferences matter, but to what degree? Also, institutions (rules of the game) matter, so your conclusion currently doesn't follow.

**I want to emphasize that I am distinguishing this from hedonism. This argument is a guide for us to get to a true universalizable moral system, and is not meant to argue that we should pretend as though we respect the preferences of others simply because that generally maximizes our own utility. I am saying that we really should respect the preferences of others, and the reason we should do that is because we know from our own experience that we want our preferences to be respected, and we assume they do too.

Preferences on what? Which preferences should be respected and which ones shouldn't be?

(i.e. what's your scope of tolerable preferences here? E.g. people hold preferences on beliefs. Some people hold really dumb beliefs. I'm not going to respect such beliefs, and it doesn't matter if I expect or want them to respect my preferences. The "mutually respected preferences" standard isn't making much sense).

***Typically at this point a rule-based ethics person might argue for something like the "utility monster." I do not believe that particular example plays a fatal role for preference utilitarianism, but I bring this up because I recognize that preference utilitarianism**** is not a perfect ethical system. We do not have a perfect ethical system yet. Nevertheless, I wanted to explain my beliefs to show you that it's part of a self-consistent moral system that demands that we respect the preferences of non-human animals. You may disagree with the moral system itself but your original argument was that your definition of personhood is as arbitrary mine and this all demonstrates that mine is definitely less arbitrary than yours.

It's still arbitrary. It's essentially based on arbitrariness--i.e. preferences. The pleasure-pain standard is too vague and for nearly all actions cannot be correctly used to evaluate interpersonal comparisons of utility.

****Preference utilitarianism is also not strictly speaking necessary for this exercise. We can go with good old-fashioned utilitarianism where we maximize pleasure. The flaw in your perspective comes from the fact that it is pleasure we are trying to maximize. Therefore if a being is capable of feeling pleasure, that should be included in our moral calculation. The response that it is really human pleasure alone we are trying to maximize then immediately demands an explanation for why the pleasure of some beings does not count, because the reason we wanted to maximize pleasure again comes from the categorical imperative -- we respect the pleasure of others because we want our own pleasure to be respected. In this framework, selecting human pleasure as the unit of utility is as arbitrary as selecting white human pleasure or anything else, because the only starting point we had was that you like pleasure and you wanted it to be maximized, and the existence of that pleasure is not unique to you.

And again we're back in full circle: selecting Metsian Person pleasure as the unit of utility is as arbitrary as selecting white human pleasure or anything else, because the only starting point we had was that you like pleasure and you wanted it to be maximized, and the existence of that pleasure is not unique to you. (for fun, change "pleasure" to "net pleasure." This is what economists mean by "benefit"--it's net benefit. Cost is the highest foregone value of the alternative).

I can just as easily imagine all living creatures having a preference for not being harmed and for wanting to maximize utility (given unmentioned constraints--another problem with your argument). They don't need to be as arbitrarily sentient as you desire (e.g. preferences of insects and plants now matter cuz "mutually respected preferences" principle). Without a standard for delineating established rules (e.g. through consent, through exchanges, through conscious actions), then you're not going to get anywhere.

Besides, that categorical imperative doesn't hold.

[BigBallinStalin]

If by your logic, we are pretty much just animals exhibiting natural biological motives

The only point in bringing up that we are the product of evolution is to demonstrate why using a species category for anything other than classification is as fundamental an error as using race as a category for anything other than classification. Species doesn't even have an actual meaning when you're considering issues like this -- what actually is a human? Where is the dividing line between humans and chimpanzees and other animals? Chimpanzees and humans both evolved from a common ancestor. If we trace our lineage back through the generations to that common ancestor, we see a continuous line of creatures that started at something like "chimpanzee + human hybrid" (though it was probably anatomically much closer to modern chimpanzee than it is to modern human), and slowly changes to something that looks like modern humans on one side, and something like modern chimpanzees on the other side. It is purely an accident of history that the descendants of that lineage other than the currently existing humans, chimpanzees and bonobos died out. Suppose that they instead had all survived. Would you be prepared to decide where the species boundary ends for humans, and begins for non-humans? Essentially, even using the term "human" is a fundamental error when having a discussion of morality, because human is not a uniquely defined quantity. All living humans (modulo identical twins) have different genetic code, and human is a term we invented to group together people whose genetic code is highly similar but not exactly identical. The difference between you and me, and you and a chimpanzee, is a matter of degree and not of kind. It's an unavoidable conclusion of evolution. It means that BBS doesn't even know what he is talking about when he says the word human, which is why his moral system is so confused.

Gee, what other words, with which we use classification, fit into your criticism? The sciences, both social and natural, are a product of evolution. The different sciences are categorized and classified. Therefore, using a science category for anything other than classification is as fundamental an error as using race as a category for anything other than classification.

I can't believe how scientist/specieist they are!

Markets are a product of evolution. Thus, using an economics category for anything other than classification is as fundamental an error as using race as a category for anything other than classification.

Moral philosophy is a product of evolution. Thus using a moral category for anything other than classification is as fundamental an error as using race as a category for anything other than classification.

What does "science" mean? What does "markets" mean? What about "moral philosophy"? What is a "human"?

Even our language is a product of evolution! Using linguistic categories for anything other than classification is as fundamental an error as using race as a category for anything other than classification! OH SHI----aklsdjf asfjae fkajs gkaljsgklerjas kgjkrajgl.

Your game of semantics has led you to nonsense.

[Metsfanmax]

Then you can't punish anyone. For example, in order to enforce your moral standard, you'd have to be willing to cage "people" for x-amount of years whenever they commit a crime. So, if my cat kills a mouse and shows it to me, I'd have to report it to the Metsian authorities so that the cat can be punished. But I wouldn't want to be punished nor would you (since this lowers our utility), and since we have to respect people's preferences (on a variety of means), then what? It doesn't make sense.*

Sure, crimes can still be punished in a (preference) utilitarian system. You are attempting to enforce a symmetry that is non-existent; there is a moral difference between someone who violates the preferences of others, and the organization which has been charged with enforcing the moral order violating the preferences of the violator. To say otherwise is to engage in wordplay that has no real meaning. Even if I agree that we shouldn't have prisons for the sake of retributive justice (and I do), we can still do it for the sake of protecting society at large as a form of rehabilitation. We may violate the preferences of the violator, but this is because this person is likely to violate more preferences in the future, so the net benefit to society is positive.

*This is why your Pareto-sounding argument will have problems: all Pareto situations are efficient--e.g. even murder. Besides, utility = f(happiness and other variables). Not everything that increases utility increases happiness--e.g. hard work, pride, duty, etc. Those values incur personal harm but tend to reap personal utility. The pleasure-pain standard is incoherent until you start establishing whose preferences are to be respected under what circumstances.

Pleasure and pain are not a standard -- preferences are the standard. Seeking pleasure and avoiding pain are just two of many preferences a sentient being might have. The fact that these beings can feel pleasure and pain is why I know they are sentient and thus that they have preferences. They may have more, or not, but that is immaterial for the present argument.

Again, it goes back to consent. People have to agree on a certain set of rules (i.e. a contract), so that obligation and duty for both parties can be established. Then there's the bedeviling issue of agreement versus acquiescence. "Mutual respect of preferences" isn't the only way to have a consistent moral system (even the moral system you're talking about is inconsistent). You can't establish enough basic rules with a set of a priori synthetic true propositions (Kant failed at this; Mises made a few claims, but they're limited in usefulness--e.g. voluntary exchange ex-ante is mutually beneficial). The best we can do is make institutionally contingent claims (take institutions X as given, then see if the outcomes are permissible). If we refuse all this, then we'll play in the inescapable quagmire of moral relativism.

Essentially any moral system is inconsistent if you push it hard enough in specific cases. The point here is that legal rights likely maximize utility averaged over long enough time and spatial scales, which is presumably why you support them.

Regarding the issue of consent: this is a non-starter because any moral system that affects a set of people needs to be agreed to by the people in it (or their representatives, if they are incapable of agreeing to it). Otherwise, it breaks down. Any other system, like a pure set of voluntarily agreed contracts (and who enforces those anyway) breaks down when I'm emitting carbon dioxide that harms people I haven't made a contract with. The fact that moral systems rely on mutual agreement doesn't mean we should abandon them. Some people affected by the system may not agree to the system, and in a perfect world they could simply leave the system and move somewhere else. We shouldn't abandon all hope of having an ethical framework simply because there aren't infinite resources on this planet. In fact, the whole point of an ethical framework is to do the best we can, given those limited resources. If you run at the first sign of trouble, then you missed the point of the exercise.

Sure, preferences matter, but to what degree? Also, institutions (rules of the game) matter, so your conclusion currently doesn't follow.

In this moral framework, preferences are the only things that matter. The institutions are there merely to ensure that preferences are respected to the highest degree possible.

Preferences on what? Which preferences should be respected and which ones shouldn't be?

All preferences should be respected. When this creates a conflict, the outcome is determined by which preference matters more to the respective party. For example, you might have a slight preference for the taste of animal flesh, but the animal providing that flesh has a rather larger preference for its own wellbeing, so the animal's preference wins in that conflict. You should not eat the animal, because you would be doing more harm than good.

i.e. what's your scope of tolerable preferences here? E.g. people hold preferences on beliefs. Some people hold really dumb beliefs. I'm not going to respect such beliefs, and it doesn't matter if I expect or want them to respect my preferences. The "mutually respected preferences" standard isn't making much sense).

Respected doesn't mean intellectually respected, it means that you don't kill them just for having a different belief than you. That is, respect in the sense of allowing them to have whatever belief they want as long as it doesn't harm others.

It's still arbitrary. It's essentially based on arbitrariness--i.e. preferences. The pleasure-pain standard is too vague and for nearly all actions cannot be correctly used to evaluate interpersonal comparisons of utility.

It's only arbitrary to the extent that people have arbitrary preferences. But given that preferences exist, and we want our preferences to be respected, we should act as if we would also respect the preferences of others. Of course the categorical imperative is taken as an axiom, but it's a pretty damn good one. Remember, the point was that you accused me of just choosing a group of people whose rights we should protect, that was just as arbitrary as yours. My point was that I believe in a fundamental moral axiom that dictates exactly who that group is, so the group is not arbitrary from that perspective.

And again we're back in full circle: selecting Metsian Person pleasure as the unit of utility is as arbitrary as selecting white human pleasure or anything else, because the only starting point we had was that you like pleasure and you wanted it to be maximized, and the existence of that pleasure is not unique to you. (for fun, change "pleasure" to "net pleasure." This is what economists mean by "benefit"--it's net benefit. Cost is the highest foregone value of the alternative).

No, you cannot just arbitrarily exclude beings that have preferences from the set of beings whose preferences deserve to be respected. If you do that, then you're not actually abiding by the categorical imperative.

Besides, that categorical imperative doesn't hold.

It is an axiom. The point of this moral framework is that it is an axiom that we basically all agree on intuitively -- don't harm others if they haven't harmed you. So as arbitrary frameworks go, it's the least arbitrary I can think of.

[Metsfanmax]

Gee, what other words, with which we use classification, fit into your criticism? The sciences, both social and natural, are a product of evolution. The different sciences are categorized and classified. Therefore, using a science category for anything other than classification is as fundamental an error as using race as a category for anything other than classification.

What the hell? I honestly don't understand what you are saying. I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you misunderstood the point. The argument here, very simply, is that when you say human, you don't actually know what you are saying. (Prove me wrong. Define exactly what you mean when you say human.) That is because it is a fuzzy concept -- you might have a rough idea of what a human is, but inevitably there will be edge cases where you won't actually be able to draw the line.

In other words, could you draw an ancestral line back from modern-day humans to the chimp-human common ancestor, and select the mother who on one side you would call a non-human and the child on the other that you would call a human? If you can't (and no one can, because species is an arbitrary term) then your description of human as the beings whose preferences you respect is simply not a clearly defined concept. This is no mere game of semantics, but it is a challenge for you to demonstrate where exactly you would draw the line between beings you care about and those you don't. If you can't, why are you so confident that chimpanzees aren't worth protecting?

[patches70]

The argument here, very simply, is that when you say human, you don't actually know what you are saying. (Prove me wrong. Define exactly what you mean when you say human.) That is because it is a fuzzy concept -- you might have a rough idea of what a human is, but inevitably there will be edge cases where you won't actually be able to draw the line.

Hahah, you remind me of an old story told about Plato and Diogenes. Plato defined a man as " A biped without feathers". Diogenes went out and plucked a chicken and brought it back and declared to Plato- "Behold! I bring you a man!"
Plato had to rethink his answer and added "With flat nails".

Anyway, since you can't seem to figure it out, Mets, I suggest you create a thread with these two pictures-



and



and ask everyone if they can pick out the human.