Let’s assume society decides that eating meat from animals lacking self-awareness is ethical, and anything with self-awareness is not ethical to eat, and that we have a reliable test to tell the difference. Is it ethical to deliberately breed tasty animals to lack self-awareness, both before or after their species has self-awareness?
My initial reaction to the latter is ‘no, it’s not ethical, because you would necessarily be using force on self-aware entities as part of the breeding process’. The first part of the question seems to lean towards ‘yes’, but this response definitely sets off an ‘ugh’ field in my mind just attempting to consider the possible implications, so I’m not confident at all in my line of reasoning.
I think any question of the form “Assume X is ethical, is X’ also ethical?” is inherently malformed. If my ethics do not follow X, then the change in my ethics which causes me to include X may be very relevant to X’.
I don’t think anyone who is a vegetarian regardless of self-awareness would be able to answer the question you are asking.
I think the big question that implies this one is “Should we eat baby humans? Why?”
I believe the answer is “No, because there is no convenient place to draw the line between baby and adult, so we should put the line at the beginning, and because other people may have strong emotional attachment to the baby.”
I think the first part of my reason is eliminated by your “reliable test.” If the test is completely reliable, that is a very good place to draw the line.
The second part is not going away. It has been evolved in us for a very long time, however, it is not clear if people will get the same attachment to non-human babies. I think that our attachment to non-humans is much lower, and there is not a significant difference between their attachment before and after self awareness.
However, the question asked assumes that our ethics distinguish between creatures with and without self awareness. If that distinction is caused by us having different levels of emotional attachment to the animal depending on its self awareness, then it would change my answer.
As for the first part, I would say that it’s fairly common for an individual and a society to not have perfectly identical values or ethical rules. Should I be saying ‘morals’ for the values of society instead?
I would hope that ethical vegetarians can at least give me the reasons for their boundaries. If they’re not eating meat because they don’t want animals to suffer, they should be able to define how they draw the line where the capacity to suffer begins.
You do bring up a good point—most psychologists would agree that babies go through a period before they become truly ‘self-aware’, and I have a great deal of difficulty conceiving of a human society that would advocate ‘fresh baby meat’ as ethical. Vat-grown human meat, I can see happening eventually. Would you say the weight there more on the side of, ‘This being will, given standard development, gain self-awareness’, or on the side of ‘Other self-aware beings are strongly attached to this being and would suffer emotionally if it died’? The second one seems to be more the way things currently function—farmers remind their kinds not to name the farm animals because they might end up on their plate later. But I think the first one can be more consistently applied, particularly if you have non-human (particularly non-cute) intelligences.
You could put strict statistical definitions around it if you wanted, but the general idea is, ‘infants grow up to be self-aware adults’.
This may not always be true for exotic species. Plenty of species in nature, for example, reproduce by throwing out millions of eggs / spores/ what have you that only a small fraction of which grow up to be adults. Ideally, any sort of rule you’d come up with should be universal, regardless of the form of intelligence.
At some point, some computer programs would have to be considered to be people and have a right to existence. But at what stage of development would that happen?
Let’s assume society decides that eating meat from animals lacking self-awareness is ethical, and anything with self-awareness is not ethical to eat, and that we have a reliable test to tell the difference. Is it ethical to deliberately breed tasty animals to lack self-awareness, both before or after their species has self-awareness?
My initial reaction to the latter is ‘no, it’s not ethical, because you would necessarily be using force on self-aware entities as part of the breeding process’. The first part of the question seems to lean towards ‘yes’, but this response definitely sets off an ‘ugh’ field in my mind just attempting to consider the possible implications, so I’m not confident at all in my line of reasoning.
Thoughts from others?
I think any question of the form “Assume X is ethical, is X’ also ethical?” is inherently malformed. If my ethics do not follow X, then the change in my ethics which causes me to include X may be very relevant to X’.
I don’t think anyone who is a vegetarian regardless of self-awareness would be able to answer the question you are asking.
I think the big question that implies this one is “Should we eat baby humans? Why?”
I believe the answer is “No, because there is no convenient place to draw the line between baby and adult, so we should put the line at the beginning, and because other people may have strong emotional attachment to the baby.”
I think the first part of my reason is eliminated by your “reliable test.” If the test is completely reliable, that is a very good place to draw the line.
The second part is not going away. It has been evolved in us for a very long time, however, it is not clear if people will get the same attachment to non-human babies. I think that our attachment to non-humans is much lower, and there is not a significant difference between their attachment before and after self awareness.
However, the question asked assumes that our ethics distinguish between creatures with and without self awareness. If that distinction is caused by us having different levels of emotional attachment to the animal depending on its self awareness, then it would change my answer.
As for the first part, I would say that it’s fairly common for an individual and a society to not have perfectly identical values or ethical rules. Should I be saying ‘morals’ for the values of society instead?
I would hope that ethical vegetarians can at least give me the reasons for their boundaries. If they’re not eating meat because they don’t want animals to suffer, they should be able to define how they draw the line where the capacity to suffer begins.
You do bring up a good point—most psychologists would agree that babies go through a period before they become truly ‘self-aware’, and I have a great deal of difficulty conceiving of a human society that would advocate ‘fresh baby meat’ as ethical. Vat-grown human meat, I can see happening eventually. Would you say the weight there more on the side of, ‘This being will, given standard development, gain self-awareness’, or on the side of ‘Other self-aware beings are strongly attached to this being and would suffer emotionally if it died’? The second one seems to be more the way things currently function—farmers remind their kinds not to name the farm animals because they might end up on their plate later. But I think the first one can be more consistently applied, particularly if you have non-human (particularly non-cute) intelligences.
‘This being will, given standard development, gain self-awareness’ is a common reason that I missed.
I am partially confused by it, because this notion of “standard development” is not easily defined, like “default” in negotiations.
You could put strict statistical definitions around it if you wanted, but the general idea is, ‘infants grow up to be self-aware adults’.
This may not always be true for exotic species. Plenty of species in nature, for example, reproduce by throwing out millions of eggs / spores/ what have you that only a small fraction of which grow up to be adults. Ideally, any sort of rule you’d come up with should be universal, regardless of the form of intelligence.
At some point, some computer programs would have to be considered to be people and have a right to existence. But at what stage of development would that happen?