With very high confidence I know what I want. And for the most part, I don’t infer what I want by observing my own behavior, I observe what I want through introspection.
There’s an aphorism that says, “how can I know what I think unless I say it?” This is very true in my experience. And I don’t experience “introspection” to be significantly different from “observation”; it just substitutes speaking out loud for speaking inside my own head, as it were. (Sometimes I also find that I think easier and more clearly if I speak out loud, quietly, to myself, or if I write my thoughts down.)
I’m careful of the typical mind fallacy and don’t want to say my experiences are universal or, indeed, even typical. But neither do I have reason to think that my experience is very strange and everyone else introspects in a qualitatively different way.
I know some of what other people want when they tell me what they want.
Speaking (in this case to other people) is a form of behavior intended (greatly simplifying) to make other people do what you tell them to do. This is precisely inferring “wants” from behavior designed to achieve those wants. (Unless you think language confers special status with regards to wanting.)
Believing that a chicken doesn’t want to be killed is something for which there is less evidence than with humans.
Both people and chickens try to avoid dying. People are much better at it, because they are much smarter. Does that mean people want to avoid dying much more than chickens do? That is just a question about the definition of the word “want”: no answer will tell us anything new about reality.
Me, I figure the chicken is just running on automatic pilot and isn’t thinking about whether it will be killed or not, very possibly doesn’t have a concept of being killed at all, and is really demonstrating that it doesn’t want to be
caught.
Does this contradict what you previously said about chickens?
we shouldn’t kill things that don’t want us to kill them
the only things that might even conceivably want things are things that have central nervous systems.
Can you please specify explicitly what you mean by “wanting”?
I know some of what other people want when they tell me what they want.
Speaking (in this case to other people) is a form of behavior intended (greatly simplifying) to make other people do what you tell them to do. This is precisely inferring “wants” from behavior designed to achieve those wants. (Unless you think language confers special status with regards to wanting.)
On the one hand you suggested that plants “want” not to be killed, presumably based on seeing their behavior of sucking up water and sunlight and putting down deeper roots etc. The behavior you talk about here is non-verbal behavior. In fact, your more precise conclusions from watching plants is that “some plants don’t want to be killed” as you watch them not die, while based purely on observation, to be logical you would have to conclude that “many plants don’t mind being killed as you watched them modify their behavior not one whit as a harvesting machine drove towards them and then cut them down.
So no, I don’t think we can conclude that a plant wanted to not be killed by watching it grow any more than we can conclude that a car engine wanted to get hot or that a rock wanted to sit still by watching them.
Both people and chickens try to avoid dying. People are much better at it, because they are much smarter. Does that mean people want to avoid dying much more than chickens do? That is just a question about the definition of the word “want”: no answer will tell us anything new about reality.
You have very little (not none, but very little) reason to think a chicken even thinks about dying. We have more reason to think a chicken does not want to be caught. We don’t know if it doesn’t want to be caught because it imagines us wringing its neck and boiling it. In fact, I would imagine most of us don’t imagine it thinks of things in such futuristic detail, even among those of us who think we ought not eat it.
Speaking (in this case to other people) is a form of behavior intended (greatly simplifying) to make other people do what you tell them to do.
That’s a lot to assert. I assert speaking is a form of behavior intended to communicated ideas, to transfer meaning from one mind to another. Is my assertion inferior to yours in any way? When I would lecture to 50 students about electromagnetic fields for 85 minutes at a time, what was I trying to get them to do?
Speaking is a rather particular “form of behavior.” Yes I like the shorthand of ignoring the medium and looking at the result, I tell you I want money, you have an idea that I want money as a result of my telling you that. Sure there is “behavior” in the chain, but the starting point is in my mind and the endpoint is in your mind and that is the relevant stuff in this case where we are talking about consciousness and wanting, which are states of mind.
This is precisely inferring “wants” from behavior designed to achieve those wants. (Unless you think language confers special status with regards to wanting.)
I tell you I want money and I want beautiful women to perform sexual favors for me. Here I am communicating wants to you, but how is my communication “designed to achieve those wants?” I submit it isn’t, that your ideas about what talking is for are woefully incomplete.
Can you please specify explicitly what you mean by “wanting”?
Its a state of mind, an idea with content about the world. It reads on what I am likely to do but not super directly as there are thousands (at least) of other things that also influence what I am going to do. But it is the state of mind that is “wanting.”
And so if a chicken wants to not be killed AND you think that something’s wanting something produces a moral obligation upon you to not thwart its desires, then you ought not catch a chicken (and kill it and eat it) if it doesn’t want to be caught. The actual questions, does a chicken want anything? Does it in particular want not to be caught? Does what a chicken wants create an obligation in me? These are all IMHO open questions. But the meaning of “a chicken wants to not be caught” seems pretty straightforward, much more straightforward than does figuring out whether it is true or not, and whether it matters or not.
There’s an aphorism that says, “how can I know what I think unless I say it?” This is very true in my experience. And I don’t experience “introspection” to be significantly different from “observation”; it just substitutes speaking out loud for speaking inside my own head, as it were. (Sometimes I also find that I think easier and more clearly if I speak out loud, quietly, to myself, or if I write my thoughts down.)
I’m careful of the typical mind fallacy and don’t want to say my experiences are universal or, indeed, even typical. But neither do I have reason to think that my experience is very strange and everyone else introspects in a qualitatively different way.
Speaking (in this case to other people) is a form of behavior intended (greatly simplifying) to make other people do what you tell them to do. This is precisely inferring “wants” from behavior designed to achieve those wants. (Unless you think language confers special status with regards to wanting.)
Both people and chickens try to avoid dying. People are much better at it, because they are much smarter. Does that mean people want to avoid dying much more than chickens do? That is just a question about the definition of the word “want”: no answer will tell us anything new about reality.
Does this contradict what you previously said about chickens?
Can you please specify explicitly what you mean by “wanting”?
On the one hand you suggested that plants “want” not to be killed, presumably based on seeing their behavior of sucking up water and sunlight and putting down deeper roots etc. The behavior you talk about here is non-verbal behavior. In fact, your more precise conclusions from watching plants is that “some plants don’t want to be killed” as you watch them not die, while based purely on observation, to be logical you would have to conclude that “many plants don’t mind being killed as you watched them modify their behavior not one whit as a harvesting machine drove towards them and then cut them down.
So no, I don’t think we can conclude that a plant wanted to not be killed by watching it grow any more than we can conclude that a car engine wanted to get hot or that a rock wanted to sit still by watching them.
You have very little (not none, but very little) reason to think a chicken even thinks about dying. We have more reason to think a chicken does not want to be caught. We don’t know if it doesn’t want to be caught because it imagines us wringing its neck and boiling it. In fact, I would imagine most of us don’t imagine it thinks of things in such futuristic detail, even among those of us who think we ought not eat it.
That’s a lot to assert. I assert speaking is a form of behavior intended to communicated ideas, to transfer meaning from one mind to another. Is my assertion inferior to yours in any way? When I would lecture to 50 students about electromagnetic fields for 85 minutes at a time, what was I trying to get them to do?
Speaking is a rather particular “form of behavior.” Yes I like the shorthand of ignoring the medium and looking at the result, I tell you I want money, you have an idea that I want money as a result of my telling you that. Sure there is “behavior” in the chain, but the starting point is in my mind and the endpoint is in your mind and that is the relevant stuff in this case where we are talking about consciousness and wanting, which are states of mind.
I tell you I want money and I want beautiful women to perform sexual favors for me. Here I am communicating wants to you, but how is my communication “designed to achieve those wants?” I submit it isn’t, that your ideas about what talking is for are woefully incomplete.
Its a state of mind, an idea with content about the world. It reads on what I am likely to do but not super directly as there are thousands (at least) of other things that also influence what I am going to do. But it is the state of mind that is “wanting.”
And so if a chicken wants to not be killed AND you think that something’s wanting something produces a moral obligation upon you to not thwart its desires, then you ought not catch a chicken (and kill it and eat it) if it doesn’t want to be caught. The actual questions, does a chicken want anything? Does it in particular want not to be caught? Does what a chicken wants create an obligation in me? These are all IMHO open questions. But the meaning of “a chicken wants to not be caught” seems pretty straightforward, much more straightforward than does figuring out whether it is true or not, and whether it matters or not.