I don’t have a perfect reply to that suggestion, but here’s a start, which perhaps is good enough for the case at hand. I loosely paraphrase Peter Singer.
Let’s suppose we know what it means for ourselves (humans) to suffer—we could get really specific about what that means, but we seem to have a kind of intersubjective consensus that suffices for the moment. Now, unless we believe we have immortal souls or something that enables us uniquely to suffer, our suffering (if, say, someone decided to kill and eat us) is due to our neurological makeup and is demonstrated externally by various kinds of observable behaviors.
So, when we see that other organisms have neurological systems that are rather similar to ours (as most vertebrates do), and exhibit similar behaviors when injured or killed, a good hypothesis is that they are experiencing something like we are when we suffer.
This is another case where, it seems to me, rather tortured reasoning is required to argue that other animals aren’t really suffering even when we have every reason to think they are. Surely we want to err on the side of not causing the kind of suffering we ourselves would feel if injured or killed?
How far up the evolutionary tree do you believe suffering extends? Primates? Mammals? Vertebrates? Any animal with a nervous system? What about plant suffering? Does an overworked computer suffer as it frantically swaps memory between RAM and disk? Are you sure you’re not committing the mind projection fallacy.
Also, while we’re on the subject why should suffering be the basis of morality, as opposed to something like subjective experience?
This is another case where, it seems to me, rather tortured reasoning is required to argue that other animals aren’t really suffering even when we have every reason to think they are.
I suspect your definition of “tortured reasoning” amounts to any complex reasoning that leads to conclusions you don’t like.
I’m doing my best not to commit these fallacies, though of course not claiming to be infallible.
I mean, we know a fair bit about what causes pain for humans in the physiological/neurological sense—we know about nociceptors and how they work—and we also know what kinds of behavior we expect to see when a human is in pain. We also know that mammals have the same kinds of physiological mechanisms that humans do for pain, and we know they respond to injury with the same kinds of external behavior that humans do when injured.
(All this could not be said of plants, computers, or even quite likely non-vertebrate animals (although I do err on the side of caution with those and don’t eat them either).)
So, yes, I am claiming that there is a lot of evidence that pain and suffering for non-human mammals is a similar kind of thing to the pain and suffering that humans experience. And I am suggesting that when we cannot possibly know another being’s subjective experience as if from the inside, but everything we do know about that experience (the neurology and the behavior) is consistent with it being the kind of thing we would normally hold ourselves ethically obligated to avoid, then we are ethically obligated to avoid it.
(Disclaimer: although it’s still under development, my current moral system is based on satisfying the preferences as many entities as possible.)
I believe it is possible that any of the above experience suffering. But I recognize that attempting to consider every possible source of suffering is impossible. So I’m using my best judgment based on how I know that I personally experience suffering, and how other creatures are likely to be similar to me. I am assuming that suffering requires a fairly complex nervous system, and that it is unlikely to have developed in lifeforms that don’t respond much to stimuli.
I eat clams, because as far as I can tell there is no reason for them to have developed the ability to suffer. They also (as far as I know, although it is possible I am wrong here) usually farmed in a manner that’s most independent of the rest of the ecosystem. (Whereas I’d be okay with eating shrimp, but they are harvested from the ocean, not only catching other animals in the process but disrupting the food chain of creatures that eat them).
I don’t have a perfect reply to that suggestion, but here’s a start, which perhaps is good enough for the case at hand. I loosely paraphrase Peter Singer.
Let’s suppose we know what it means for ourselves (humans) to suffer—we could get really specific about what that means, but we seem to have a kind of intersubjective consensus that suffices for the moment. Now, unless we believe we have immortal souls or something that enables us uniquely to suffer, our suffering (if, say, someone decided to kill and eat us) is due to our neurological makeup and is demonstrated externally by various kinds of observable behaviors.
So, when we see that other organisms have neurological systems that are rather similar to ours (as most vertebrates do), and exhibit similar behaviors when injured or killed, a good hypothesis is that they are experiencing something like we are when we suffer.
This is another case where, it seems to me, rather tortured reasoning is required to argue that other animals aren’t really suffering even when we have every reason to think they are. Surely we want to err on the side of not causing the kind of suffering we ourselves would feel if injured or killed?
How far up the evolutionary tree do you believe suffering extends? Primates? Mammals? Vertebrates? Any animal with a nervous system? What about plant suffering? Does an overworked computer suffer as it frantically swaps memory between RAM and disk? Are you sure you’re not committing the mind projection fallacy.
Also, while we’re on the subject why should suffering be the basis of morality, as opposed to something like subjective experience?
I suspect your definition of “tortured reasoning” amounts to any complex reasoning that leads to conclusions you don’t like.
I’m doing my best not to commit these fallacies, though of course not claiming to be infallible.
I mean, we know a fair bit about what causes pain for humans in the physiological/neurological sense—we know about nociceptors and how they work—and we also know what kinds of behavior we expect to see when a human is in pain. We also know that mammals have the same kinds of physiological mechanisms that humans do for pain, and we know they respond to injury with the same kinds of external behavior that humans do when injured.
(All this could not be said of plants, computers, or even quite likely non-vertebrate animals (although I do err on the side of caution with those and don’t eat them either).)
So, yes, I am claiming that there is a lot of evidence that pain and suffering for non-human mammals is a similar kind of thing to the pain and suffering that humans experience. And I am suggesting that when we cannot possibly know another being’s subjective experience as if from the inside, but everything we do know about that experience (the neurology and the behavior) is consistent with it being the kind of thing we would normally hold ourselves ethically obligated to avoid, then we are ethically obligated to avoid it.
(Disclaimer: although it’s still under development, my current moral system is based on satisfying the preferences as many entities as possible.)
I believe it is possible that any of the above experience suffering. But I recognize that attempting to consider every possible source of suffering is impossible. So I’m using my best judgment based on how I know that I personally experience suffering, and how other creatures are likely to be similar to me. I am assuming that suffering requires a fairly complex nervous system, and that it is unlikely to have developed in lifeforms that don’t respond much to stimuli.
I eat clams, because as far as I can tell there is no reason for them to have developed the ability to suffer. They also (as far as I know, although it is possible I am wrong here) usually farmed in a manner that’s most independent of the rest of the ecosystem. (Whereas I’d be okay with eating shrimp, but they are harvested from the ocean, not only catching other animals in the process but disrupting the food chain of creatures that eat them).
When it stops being under development, will you describe it in a top-level post?
It is not clear what you mean by this statement. Are you suggesting subjective experience is a better alternative or that both are equally absurd?
It has already been interpreted to be the former at least once.