I would be surprised if iguanas find things meaningful that humans don’t find meaningful, but maybe they desire some things pretty alien to us. I’m also not sure they find anything meaningful at all, but that depends on how we define meaningfulness.
Still, I think focusing on meaningfulness is also too limited. Iguanas find things important to them, meaningful or not. Desires, motivation, pleasure and suffering all assign some kind of importance to things.
In my view, either
capacity for welfare is something we can measure and compare based on cognitive effects, like effects on attention, in which case it would be surprising if other verteberates, say, had tiny capacities for welfare relative to humans, or
interpersonal utility comparisons can’t be grounded, so there aren’t any grounds to say iguanas have lower (or higher) capacities for welfare than humans, assuming they have any at all.
I would be surprised if iguanas find things meaningful that humans don’t find meaningful, but maybe they desire some things pretty alien to us. I’m also not sure they find anything meaningful at all, but that depends on how we define meaningfulness.
Still, I think focusing on meaningfulness is also too limited. Iguanas find things important to them, meaningful or not. Desires, motivation, pleasure and suffering all assign some kind of importance to things.
In my view, either
capacity for welfare is something we can measure and compare based on cognitive effects, like effects on attention, in which case it would be surprising if other verteberates, say, had tiny capacities for welfare relative to humans, or
interpersonal utility comparisons can’t be grounded, so there aren’t any grounds to say iguanas have lower (or higher) capacities for welfare than humans, assuming they have any at all.