(I might be using words oddly or slightly wrongly; apologies if so.)
My understanding of the phrase “moral patient” is that it means “an entity that’s morally relevant.” So for the median human, a cow is not in practice a moral patient, but for a vegan or ethical vegetarian or Hindu, it definitely is.
One way that a person can argue for things like slavery or patriarchy is by either insinuating or outright claiming that the oppressed person is less of a moral patient than the oppressor; a sort of utility-monster-adjacent situation where the suffering of the losing party is outweighed by the gain of the winning party.
That’s how one might get from “sure, the male oppressors lost something when the women started getting basic human rights” (which is true) to “and we should care about, or have sympathy for, their loss” (which is false, because their loss was of territory they should not have had control over in the first place, because it required treating other sentient agents as not moral patients).
So what I meant by “treat all sentient agents as moral patients” is something like “start from a baseline wherein every sentient agent is clustered in the same order of magnitude, in terms of what amount of dignity and care and autonomy our society should support them having, and enforce via its norms.”
If you start from a baseline where women and men are not substantially different in how much goodness they deserve, then it’s impossible to feel all that sad about the males in Taliban-controlled society losing their tyrannical power over women.
Does this imply that sub-sentient agents are fractional moral patients?
Your elaboration mostly makes sense, the issue seems to be who gets to define ‘sentient agents’?
For example, there might be extremists that feel justified in their views that cows, cats, dogs, whales, etc., are ‘full moral patients’ in the sense your describing because of their minority views of what counts as ‘sentient agents’.
(And if they adopt Taliban methods one day, might be too large of a group to meaningfully suppress without frightful implications.)
I think that you are reading me as meaning, by the word “sentient,” “sapient.”
I meant “sentient.”
I think I’m not super interested in carrying this conversation further; I mainly wanted to say “if you meant that we should feel sympathetic to the Taliban because they now have less power over their victims, idgaf,” with a subpoint of “if you didn’t mean to say that, you might want to clarify, because it sounded like you meant to say that.”
I think that you are reading me as meaning, by the word “sentient,” “sapient.”
I meant “sentient.”
No? My comment wouldn’t make sense if by ‘sentient’ I thought you really meant ‘sapient’.
Since the category of “cows, cats, dogs, whales, etc.,” includes animals that are not usually considered sapient by anyone, at least on LW.
EDIT: And I’m usually quite picky about clarifying ambiguity, as you might have guessed from the comment chain, so I would have asked about it if there was confusion.
Okay well in that case I have no idea what you might possibly mean by “sub-sentient agents” unless you’re asking about, like, slime mold.
I’m finding this thread exhausting and anti-rewarding (since it’s entirely one-way, with you putting in zero effort to clarify whatever the heck it was you were saying); please don’t reply further.
(I might be using words oddly or slightly wrongly; apologies if so.)
My understanding of the phrase “moral patient” is that it means “an entity that’s morally relevant.” So for the median human, a cow is not in practice a moral patient, but for a vegan or ethical vegetarian or Hindu, it definitely is.
One way that a person can argue for things like slavery or patriarchy is by either insinuating or outright claiming that the oppressed person is less of a moral patient than the oppressor; a sort of utility-monster-adjacent situation where the suffering of the losing party is outweighed by the gain of the winning party.
That’s how one might get from “sure, the male oppressors lost something when the women started getting basic human rights” (which is true) to “and we should care about, or have sympathy for, their loss” (which is false, because their loss was of territory they should not have had control over in the first place, because it required treating other sentient agents as not moral patients).
So what I meant by “treat all sentient agents as moral patients” is something like “start from a baseline wherein every sentient agent is clustered in the same order of magnitude, in terms of what amount of dignity and care and autonomy our society should support them having, and enforce via its norms.”
If you start from a baseline where women and men are not substantially different in how much goodness they deserve, then it’s impossible to feel all that sad about the males in Taliban-controlled society losing their tyrannical power over women.
Does this imply that sub-sentient agents are fractional moral patients?
Your elaboration mostly makes sense, the issue seems to be who gets to define ‘sentient agents’?
For example, there might be extremists that feel justified in their views that cows, cats, dogs, whales, etc., are ‘full moral patients’ in the sense your describing because of their minority views of what counts as ‘sentient agents’.
(And if they adopt Taliban methods one day, might be too large of a group to meaningfully suppress without frightful implications.)
I think that you are reading me as meaning, by the word “sentient,” “sapient.”
I meant “sentient.”
I think I’m not super interested in carrying this conversation further; I mainly wanted to say “if you meant that we should feel sympathetic to the Taliban because they now have less power over their victims, idgaf,” with a subpoint of “if you didn’t mean to say that, you might want to clarify, because it sounded like you meant to say that.”
I think that goal has been achieved.
No? My comment wouldn’t make sense if by ‘sentient’ I thought you really meant ‘sapient’.
Since the category of “cows, cats, dogs, whales, etc.,” includes animals that are not usually considered sapient by anyone, at least on LW.
EDIT: And I’m usually quite picky about clarifying ambiguity, as you might have guessed from the comment chain, so I would have asked about it if there was confusion.
Okay well in that case I have no idea what you might possibly mean by “sub-sentient agents” unless you’re asking about, like, slime mold.
I’m finding this thread exhausting and anti-rewarding (since it’s entirely one-way, with you putting in zero effort to clarify whatever the heck it was you were saying); please don’t reply further.