I’m still considering the main point of your article, but one paragraph got me thinking about something.
If I’m happy to arbitrarily weight non-human animals lower, just because I don’t like the implications of considering their interests equal, I would have been free to do the same when considering how much the experiences of out-group persons should matter. When deciding my values, I want to be using an algorithm that would’ve gotten the right answer on slavery, even given 19th century inputs.
Could it be that slavery was wrong, not because the ethical intuition “it is ok to force creatures less intelligent than you to serve you” is incorrect, but because we were putting in the wrong input? Your paragraph made me think of this quote by C.S. Lewis:
But surely the reason we do not
execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things. If we
did-if we really thought that there were people going about who had sold
themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return
and were using these powers to kill their neighbours or drive them mad or
bring bad weather, surely we would all agree that if anyone deserved the
death penalty, then these filthy quislings did. There is no difference of
moral principle here: the difference is simply about matter of fact. It may
be a great advance in knowledge not to believe in witches: there is no moral
advance in not executing them when you do not think they are there. You
would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so
because he believed there were no mice in the house.
In the 19th century, people believed that African humans were less intelligent than white men, and had the intelligence of mere animals. This factual statement was incorrect. Is that, rather than the then-accepted belief that coercion was acceptable, the root of the evil of slavery?
Although it also has occurred to me that this reason why slavery was acceptable is quite likely to be rationalization. Which makes me suspicious of my own arguments.
Even if there were a race that was actually inferior, would it be okay to enslave them, or otherwise mistreat them? Or let’s say instead that we had excellent genetic tests that predicted someone’s intelligence. How should the identifiably stupid people be treated?
I think their preferences should still receive equal weighting. Peter Singer’s fond of this quote by Sojourner Truth in relation to this point:
“They talk about this thing in the head; what do they call it?” [“Intellect,” whispered some one loudly] “That’s it, honey. What’s that got to do with women’s rights or Negroes’ rights? If my cup won’t hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn’t you be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?”
This rather depends on whether intelligence relates to the sorts of feelings involved. I’m not sure we can have an absolute divide between ‘sentient’ and ‘self-aware’ by your measurement, and I think there might be some other meaningful question about whether more intelligent species have a wider/deeper range of preferences. So neither I nor a sheep likes having a leg crushed, but the pain I feeled is combined with a sense of regret about what I’ll miss out in in life, shock to my sense of identity, whatever.
I’m not sure if this is just a way to try to justify my inuitive presumption in favour of humans and then more intelligent animals, though.
There was more to slavery than estimations of intelligence—the justifications varied wildly, were usually absurdly simple to disprove, and often contradicted each other (“they were designed by God to be enslaved by superior races” vs “they have weaker self-control and would kill/rape us if left unchecked”, for example.)
However, the point that it was a failure of rationality, not ethics, is still valid. Unfortunately that was the OP’s point as well.
Good argument: and I’ve always liked that Lewis quote. It’s frustrating when people use moral criticism on people who are actually simply working off different factual preferences.
In terms of rationalisation, I would expect there to be an element of both. It’s not very surprising that 19th century Westerners would honestly believe that the Africans they came across were less intelligent: people often mistake people from another culture as lacking intelligence, and that culture being less scientifically and socially (if that can be meaningfuly measured) developed wouldn’t help. On the other hand, you have to look down on people when you mistreat them, or else hate them. In fact, I think I remember reading about a psychological experiment where people disliked people simply because they’d victimised them in some constructed game. I’ll try to root it out...
I’m still considering the main point of your article, but one paragraph got me thinking about something.
Could it be that slavery was wrong, not because the ethical intuition “it is ok to force creatures less intelligent than you to serve you” is incorrect, but because we were putting in the wrong input? Your paragraph made me think of this quote by C.S. Lewis:
In the 19th century, people believed that African humans were less intelligent than white men, and had the intelligence of mere animals. This factual statement was incorrect. Is that, rather than the then-accepted belief that coercion was acceptable, the root of the evil of slavery?
Although it also has occurred to me that this reason why slavery was acceptable is quite likely to be rationalization. Which makes me suspicious of my own arguments.
Even if there were a race that was actually inferior, would it be okay to enslave them, or otherwise mistreat them? Or let’s say instead that we had excellent genetic tests that predicted someone’s intelligence. How should the identifiably stupid people be treated?
I think their preferences should still receive equal weighting. Peter Singer’s fond of this quote by Sojourner Truth in relation to this point:
This rather depends on whether intelligence relates to the sorts of feelings involved. I’m not sure we can have an absolute divide between ‘sentient’ and ‘self-aware’ by your measurement, and I think there might be some other meaningful question about whether more intelligent species have a wider/deeper range of preferences. So neither I nor a sheep likes having a leg crushed, but the pain I feeled is combined with a sense of regret about what I’ll miss out in in life, shock to my sense of identity, whatever.
I’m not sure if this is just a way to try to justify my inuitive presumption in favour of humans and then more intelligent animals, though.
There was more to slavery than estimations of intelligence—the justifications varied wildly, were usually absurdly simple to disprove, and often contradicted each other (“they were designed by God to be enslaved by superior races” vs “they have weaker self-control and would kill/rape us if left unchecked”, for example.)
However, the point that it was a failure of rationality, not ethics, is still valid. Unfortunately that was the OP’s point as well.
Good argument: and I’ve always liked that Lewis quote. It’s frustrating when people use moral criticism on people who are actually simply working off different factual preferences.
In terms of rationalisation, I would expect there to be an element of both. It’s not very surprising that 19th century Westerners would honestly believe that the Africans they came across were less intelligent: people often mistake people from another culture as lacking intelligence, and that culture being less scientifically and socially (if that can be meaningfuly measured) developed wouldn’t help. On the other hand, you have to look down on people when you mistreat them, or else hate them. In fact, I think I remember reading about a psychological experiment where people disliked people simply because they’d victimised them in some constructed game. I’ll try to root it out...