It sounds like you understand ‘content’ to mean ‘pain-free and suffering-free’, whereas I imagine it as something more like ‘suffering-free’. I have masochist friends who are content (or far more than content) to experience pain, because of the positive valence they ascribe to (or associate with) that pain. How does your empathy for chickens that feel pain but don’t care respond to human masochism?
The article seems to me about not playing god, but I don’t worship the blind idiot god.
I think Sandel’s argument is that we might have a basic, not-culturally-constructed anti-tampering moral intuition that doesn’t depend on there being a God whose authority we are impinging on (any more than the thankfulness we feel when something spectacularly good happens in our life presupposes that there is a metaphysical being out there who is the Object Of Our Thanks). Which I don’t find psychologically implausible, though if it’s a harmful intuition and can’t be brought into reflective equilibrium with our other moral intuitions then it might deserve suppression.
I have masochist friends who are content (or far more than content) to experience pain, because of the positive valence they ascribe to (or associate with) that pain.
It’s my impression that the typical masochist associates positive valence with pain only in certain circumstances. The person who enjoys being flogged by a lover may still dislike stubbing a toe every bit as much as the non-masochist.
Yes. We can focus just on the instances of pain that are seen as desirable (or a matter of indifference). Or we can imagine a masochist who enjoys all pain. The analogy only depends on there being some possible instance of this; we then have to ask, if we permit this in the case of humans, why we would find it abhorrent in the case of chickens.
I have masochist friends who are content (or far more than content) to experience pain, because of the positive valence they ascribe to (or associate with) that pain. How does your empathy for chickens that feel pain but don’t care respond to human masochism?
I don’t have enough data about how masochism feels from inside, so I don’t feel qualified to answer this. (I know about cases where people cause themselves pain to forget some other pain, physical or mental. I don’t know if a typical masochist is like this, or completely different, and in the latter case, how specifically it feels from inside.)
I’m not exactly a masochist, but I suspect my perception of physical pain is a little wonky sometimes.
Example: I took a massage class in college once. The other student I usually worked with told me I tended to get really impressive knots in my shoulders, and I could tell it hurt a lot when they were worked on. I also remember not really minding most of the time, and getting bored when I didn’t have many knots because the pain kept things interesting. (But uh, I do respond normally to pain in most circumstances, so if anyone reading this meets me in real life, please don’t test it.)
The way this feels from the inside is pain is just another sensation, like heat, cold or pressure. I suspect it would be similar for a non-suffering chicken, if done right. (Though I have no idea about some of the other changes that would be required, like feeling content in a small cage.) Maybe imagine if you put clothes on the chickens, and the chickens got used to the feeling of having fabric on them (pressure sensation) and didn’t mind it. I don’t actually understand your rejection to morphine chickens, though, so I’m not sure whether you’d consider this an acceptable solution.
It sounds like you understand ‘content’ to mean ‘pain-free and suffering-free’, whereas I imagine it as something more like ‘suffering-free’. I have masochist friends who are content (or far more than content) to experience pain, because of the positive valence they ascribe to (or associate with) that pain. How does your empathy for chickens that feel pain but don’t care respond to human masochism?
I think Sandel’s argument is that we might have a basic, not-culturally-constructed anti-tampering moral intuition that doesn’t depend on there being a God whose authority we are impinging on (any more than the thankfulness we feel when something spectacularly good happens in our life presupposes that there is a metaphysical being out there who is the Object Of Our Thanks). Which I don’t find psychologically implausible, though if it’s a harmful intuition and can’t be brought into reflective equilibrium with our other moral intuitions then it might deserve suppression.
It’s my impression that the typical masochist associates positive valence with pain only in certain circumstances. The person who enjoys being flogged by a lover may still dislike stubbing a toe every bit as much as the non-masochist.
Yes. We can focus just on the instances of pain that are seen as desirable (or a matter of indifference). Or we can imagine a masochist who enjoys all pain. The analogy only depends on there being some possible instance of this; we then have to ask, if we permit this in the case of humans, why we would find it abhorrent in the case of chickens.
I don’t have enough data about how masochism feels from inside, so I don’t feel qualified to answer this. (I know about cases where people cause themselves pain to forget some other pain, physical or mental. I don’t know if a typical masochist is like this, or completely different, and in the latter case, how specifically it feels from inside.)
I’m not exactly a masochist, but I suspect my perception of physical pain is a little wonky sometimes.
Example: I took a massage class in college once. The other student I usually worked with told me I tended to get really impressive knots in my shoulders, and I could tell it hurt a lot when they were worked on. I also remember not really minding most of the time, and getting bored when I didn’t have many knots because the pain kept things interesting. (But uh, I do respond normally to pain in most circumstances, so if anyone reading this meets me in real life, please don’t test it.)
The way this feels from the inside is pain is just another sensation, like heat, cold or pressure. I suspect it would be similar for a non-suffering chicken, if done right. (Though I have no idea about some of the other changes that would be required, like feeling content in a small cage.) Maybe imagine if you put clothes on the chickens, and the chickens got used to the feeling of having fabric on them (pressure sensation) and didn’t mind it. I don’t actually understand your rejection to morphine chickens, though, so I’m not sure whether you’d consider this an acceptable solution.