You made a statement with undue confidence, and the votes would appear to indicate that at the very least, this large subset is not monitoring this thread.
Utilitarian ethics don’t necessarily imply the moral equivalence of a chimp to a toddler. That’s more a question of personhood criteria, which you can easily express in utilitarian or deontological terms.
I do think LWers would be a lot more likely to make that equivalence, but I suspect that’s more because for various reasons we tend to think of personhood mainly in terms of cognition rather than pattern-matching against appearance and behavior.
They aren’t necessarily related but for lots of reasons animal rights is associated with utilitarianism. In particular, utilitarianism tends to recommend a much lower threshold of intelligence for an animal to be due our moral consideration- since the only requirement is experiencing pleasure/pain or having desires. Personhood is usually an epiphenomenal category in utilitarianism- referring to whatever class of entities we should be morally concerned with. It is often an essential category in deontology and it’s confines much stricter- see Kantianism. Utilitarianism and expanding the sphere of moral concern are historically associated as well- Jeremy Bentham, Peter Singer etc. It is not unreasonably to infer from the popularity of utilitarianism here that animal rights is also popular.
Your reason is a good one too, though. And I’m not speaking from total ignorance here, either. I’ve been around these parts for a few years and I’ve seen plenty of upvoted comments about animal rights and had one or two discussions that bare on the subject. Someone is welcome to make a poll but I don’t really think making the observation is worthy of downvotes.
For what it’s worth, I don’t care that much about animal rights; I think humans mostly care about humans; when they care about animals it’s as a side effect of virtues whose primary purpose is to facilitate cooperation and peace between humans (and caring about animals is a good way of signaling those virtues).
(and I don’t think intelligence and “personhood”, whatever that is, have that much to do with each other.)
when they care about animals it’s as a side effect of virtues whose primary purpose is to facilitate > cooperation and peace between humans (and caring about animals is a good way of signaling
those virtues).
Hmm. Last I checked, I do care about animals, regardless of signalling—indeed, I often take a bit of a signal-hit when people see me help beetles safely across a street, or spend time cosing up to an orangutan through the glass at the zoo (thereby rendering him less-viewable by the other patrons, even though he’s primarily responding to a familiar presence and displays no interest in anyone else).
There’s very little sense of signalling virtue—I’m not a vegan or vegetarian, I don’t adhere to any religion with specific rules about the treatment of animals; I certainly don’t find it to enhance my cooperation with other people (some people admire it, but an awful lot of them find it a bit weird or kooky).
I learned something new in the process of finding you a bit weird and kooky, and thereby no longer do. So, upvoted.
(I wasn’t sure if beetles even had brains, which seemed somehow relevant to their moral standing, so I looked it up- and what do you know, nociception has been demonstrated in insects.)
Yeah, insects have brains. And pain. Many have some degree of personality differentiation, even if the space of possible variance is pretty narrow compared to humans. I certainly can’t prevent most of the insects of the world from experiencing what is, to them, a hideously painful death (and indeed, have sometimes hastened that process for crickets when feeding them to pet mantises), but when I see a little dermestid beetle crawling around where it’ll certainly be hit by a car, my impulse is to save it. To the extent I’m interested in justifying that, it’s that I can make a difference here and now for this organism, and want to do so.
I’m a bit fuzzy about what counts as signalling and what doesn’t, but I think it covers more cases than those involving conscious planning.
But anyway, I’d say you care about about animals because you’re a kind person, but that humans tend to be kind mostly because evolutionarily it’s been a benefit by facilitating cooperation and reciprocation. I don’t know whether evolution just implemented “be kind to everything” instead of just humans because it took less lines of code (kindness to animals as spandrel), or whether kindness to animals was deliberately implemented because of it’s signaling value (it may not be hard-coded, but just learnt as children).
(For what it’s worth, I tend to save small bugs and throw them out of the window instead of killing them, which my wife would prefer. This device is convenient for safely and easily catching bugs, and observing them!)
I have misunderstood your initial comment—it sounded to me like you were saying humans don’t really care about animals, but often find it desireable to signal that they do. Thanks for clarifying!
But true for a large subset of Less Wrong posters’ moralities.
Edit: Why downvotes?
You made a statement with undue confidence, and the votes would appear to indicate that at the very least, this large subset is not monitoring this thread.
Last I checked utilitarians of various sorts were pretty common in these parts.
Utilitarian ethics don’t necessarily imply the moral equivalence of a chimp to a toddler. That’s more a question of personhood criteria, which you can easily express in utilitarian or deontological terms.
I do think LWers would be a lot more likely to make that equivalence, but I suspect that’s more because for various reasons we tend to think of personhood mainly in terms of cognition rather than pattern-matching against appearance and behavior.
They aren’t necessarily related but for lots of reasons animal rights is associated with utilitarianism. In particular, utilitarianism tends to recommend a much lower threshold of intelligence for an animal to be due our moral consideration- since the only requirement is experiencing pleasure/pain or having desires. Personhood is usually an epiphenomenal category in utilitarianism- referring to whatever class of entities we should be morally concerned with. It is often an essential category in deontology and it’s confines much stricter- see Kantianism. Utilitarianism and expanding the sphere of moral concern are historically associated as well- Jeremy Bentham, Peter Singer etc. It is not unreasonably to infer from the popularity of utilitarianism here that animal rights is also popular.
Your reason is a good one too, though. And I’m not speaking from total ignorance here, either. I’ve been around these parts for a few years and I’ve seen plenty of upvoted comments about animal rights and had one or two discussions that bare on the subject. Someone is welcome to make a poll but I don’t really think making the observation is worthy of downvotes.
For what it’s worth, I don’t care that much about animal rights; I think humans mostly care about humans; when they care about animals it’s as a side effect of virtues whose primary purpose is to facilitate cooperation and peace between humans (and caring about animals is a good way of signaling those virtues).
(and I don’t think intelligence and “personhood”, whatever that is, have that much to do with each other.)
Hmm. Last I checked, I do care about animals, regardless of signalling—indeed, I often take a bit of a signal-hit when people see me help beetles safely across a street, or spend time cosing up to an orangutan through the glass at the zoo (thereby rendering him less-viewable by the other patrons, even though he’s primarily responding to a familiar presence and displays no interest in anyone else).
There’s very little sense of signalling virtue—I’m not a vegan or vegetarian, I don’t adhere to any religion with specific rules about the treatment of animals; I certainly don’t find it to enhance my cooperation with other people (some people admire it, but an awful lot of them find it a bit weird or kooky).
I learned something new in the process of finding you a bit weird and kooky, and thereby no longer do. So, upvoted.
(I wasn’t sure if beetles even had brains, which seemed somehow relevant to their moral standing, so I looked it up- and what do you know, nociception has been demonstrated in insects.)
(And beetles do have brains. Sort of.)
Yeah, insects have brains. And pain. Many have some degree of personality differentiation, even if the space of possible variance is pretty narrow compared to humans. I certainly can’t prevent most of the insects of the world from experiencing what is, to them, a hideously painful death (and indeed, have sometimes hastened that process for crickets when feeding them to pet mantises), but when I see a little dermestid beetle crawling around where it’ll certainly be hit by a car, my impulse is to save it. To the extent I’m interested in justifying that, it’s that I can make a difference here and now for this organism, and want to do so.
Me, internally: No way that’s true. But, well, just in case...
(five minutes of googling)
I’m learning all sorts of new stuff today!
That sounds like a perfectly valid reason to me.
I’m a bit fuzzy about what counts as signalling and what doesn’t, but I think it covers more cases than those involving conscious planning.
But anyway, I’d say you care about about animals because you’re a kind person, but that humans tend to be kind mostly because evolutionarily it’s been a benefit by facilitating cooperation and reciprocation. I don’t know whether evolution just implemented “be kind to everything” instead of just humans because it took less lines of code (kindness to animals as spandrel), or whether kindness to animals was deliberately implemented because of it’s signaling value (it may not be hard-coded, but just learnt as children).
(For what it’s worth, I tend to save small bugs and throw them out of the window instead of killing them, which my wife would prefer. This device is convenient for safely and easily catching bugs, and observing them!)
I have misunderstood your initial comment—it sounded to me like you were saying humans don’t really care about animals, but often find it desireable to signal that they do. Thanks for clarifying!
About 35%, two years ago.