I don’t think most fish have complicated enough minds for this to be true.
Just keep adding complexity until you get an intelligent socializer. If an AI can be built, and prosthetics can be built, then a prosthetic that confers intelligence upon another system can be built. At worst, the fish brain would just play an especially small or especially indirect causal role in the rest of the brain’s functioning.
Morality lacks an analogous notion of moral experiment. (We wouldn’t be having this conversation if there were such a thing as a moral experiment; I’d be happy to defer to the evidence in that case, the same as I would in any scientific field where I’m not a domain expert.)
You are deferring to evidence; I just haven’t given you good evidence yet that you do indeed feel sympathy for non-human animals (e.g., I haven’t bombarded you with videos of tormented non-humans; I can do so if you wish), nor that you’re some sort of exotic fish-sociopath in this regard. If you thought evidence had no bearing on your current moral sentiments, then you wouldn’t be asking me for arguments at all. However, because we’re primarily trying to figure out our own psychological states, a lot of the initial evidence is introspective—we’re experimenting on our own judgments, testing out different frameworks and seeing how close they come to our actual values. (Cf. A Priori.)
But in that case I would be tempted to ascribe moral value to the prosthetic, not the fish.
I doubt there will always be a fact of the matter about where an organism ends and its prosthesis begins. My original point here was that we can imagine a graded scale of increasingly human-socialization-capable organisms, and it seems unlikely that Nature will be so kind as to provide us with a sharp line between the Easy-To-Make-Social and the Hard-To-Make-Social. We can make that point by positing prosthetic enhancements of increasing complexity, or genetic modifications to fish brain development, or whatever you please.
this is why I think the analogy to science is inappropriate.
Fair enough! I don’t have a settled view on how much moral evidence should be introspective v. intersubjective, as long as we agree that it’s broadly empirical.
With respect to this human-socialization-as-arbiter-of-moral-weight idea, are you endorsing the threshold which human socialization currently demonstrates as the important threshold, or the threshold which human socialization demonstrates at any given moment?
For example, suppose species X is on the wrong side of that line (however fuzzy the line might be). If instead of altering Xes so they were better able to socialize with unaltered humans and thereby had, on this view, increased moral weight, I had the ability to increase my own ability to socialize with X, would that amount to the same thing?
I would be tempted to ascribe moral value to the prosthetic, not the fish.
Thinking about this… while I sympathize with the temptation, it does seem to me that the same mindset that leads me in this direction also leads me to ascribe moral values to human societies, rather than to individual humans.
It might be worth distinguishing a genetic condition on X from a constituting condition on X. So human society is certainly necessary to bring about the sapience and social capacities of human beings, but if you remove the human from the society once they’ve been brought up in the relevant way, they’re no less capable of social and sapient behavior.
On the other hand, the fish-prosthetic is part of what constitutes the fish’s capacity for social and sapient behavior. If the fish were removed from it, it would loose those capacities.
I think you could plausibly say that the prosthetic should be considered part of the basis for the moral worth of the fish (at the expense of the fish on its own), but refuse to say this about human societies (at the expense of individual human) in light of this distinction.
Hm. Well, I agree with considering the prosthetic part of the basis of the worth of the prosthetically augmented fish, as you suggest. And while I think we underestimate the importance of a continuing social framework for humans to be what we are, even as adults, I will agree that there’s some kind of meaningful threshold to be identified such that I can be removed from human society without immediately dropping below that threshold, and there’s an important difference (if perhaps not strictly a qualitative one) between me and the fish in this respect.
So, yeah, drawing this distinction allows me to ascribe moral value to individual adult humans (though not to very young children, I suppose), rather than entirely to their societies, even while embracing the general principle here.
Just keep adding complexity until you get an intelligent socializer. If an AI can be built, and prosthetics can be built, then a prosthetic that confers intelligence upon another system can be built. At worst, the fish brain would just play an especially small or especially indirect causal role in the rest of the brain’s functioning.
You are deferring to evidence; I just haven’t given you good evidence yet that you do indeed feel sympathy for non-human animals (e.g., I haven’t bombarded you with videos of tormented non-humans; I can do so if you wish), nor that you’re some sort of exotic fish-sociopath in this regard. If you thought evidence had no bearing on your current moral sentiments, then you wouldn’t be asking me for arguments at all. However, because we’re primarily trying to figure out our own psychological states, a lot of the initial evidence is introspective—we’re experimenting on our own judgments, testing out different frameworks and seeing how close they come to our actual values. (Cf. A Priori.)
But in that case I would be tempted to ascribe moral value to the prosthetic, not the fish.
Agreed, but this is why I think the analogy to science is inappropriate.
I doubt there will always be a fact of the matter about where an organism ends and its prosthesis begins. My original point here was that we can imagine a graded scale of increasingly human-socialization-capable organisms, and it seems unlikely that Nature will be so kind as to provide us with a sharp line between the Easy-To-Make-Social and the Hard-To-Make-Social. We can make that point by positing prosthetic enhancements of increasing complexity, or genetic modifications to fish brain development, or whatever you please.
Fair enough! I don’t have a settled view on how much moral evidence should be introspective v. intersubjective, as long as we agree that it’s broadly empirical.
With respect to this human-socialization-as-arbiter-of-moral-weight idea, are you endorsing the threshold which human socialization currently demonstrates as the important threshold, or the threshold which human socialization demonstrates at any given moment?
For example, suppose species X is on the wrong side of that line (however fuzzy the line might be). If instead of altering Xes so they were better able to socialize with unaltered humans and thereby had, on this view, increased moral weight, I had the ability to increase my own ability to socialize with X, would that amount to the same thing?
Thinking about this… while I sympathize with the temptation, it does seem to me that the same mindset that leads me in this direction also leads me to ascribe moral values to human societies, rather than to individual humans.
I’m not yet sure what I want to do with that.
It might be worth distinguishing a genetic condition on X from a constituting condition on X. So human society is certainly necessary to bring about the sapience and social capacities of human beings, but if you remove the human from the society once they’ve been brought up in the relevant way, they’re no less capable of social and sapient behavior.
On the other hand, the fish-prosthetic is part of what constitutes the fish’s capacity for social and sapient behavior. If the fish were removed from it, it would loose those capacities.
I think you could plausibly say that the prosthetic should be considered part of the basis for the moral worth of the fish (at the expense of the fish on its own), but refuse to say this about human societies (at the expense of individual human) in light of this distinction.
Hm.
Well, I agree with considering the prosthetic part of the basis of the worth of the prosthetically augmented fish, as you suggest.
And while I think we underestimate the importance of a continuing social framework for humans to be what we are, even as adults, I will agree that there’s some kind of meaningful threshold to be identified such that I can be removed from human society without immediately dropping below that threshold, and there’s an important difference (if perhaps not strictly a qualitative one) between me and the fish in this respect.
So, yeah, drawing this distinction allows me to ascribe moral value to individual adult humans (though not to very young children, I suppose), rather than entirely to their societies, even while embracing the general principle here.
Fair enough.