“but certainly none of the things that we (legally) do with animals are bad for any of the important reasons why torture of people is bad.”
That seems very overconfident to me. What are your reasons for believing this, if I may ask? What quality or qualities do humans have that animals lack that makes you certain of this?
Sorry, could you clarify? What specifically do you think I’m overconfident about? In other words, what part of this are you saying I could be mistaken about, the likelihood of which mistake I’m underestimating?
Are you suggesting that things are done to animals of which I am unaware, which I would judge to be bad (for some or all of the same reasons why torture of people are bad) if I were aware of them?
Or something else?
EDIT: Ah, apologies, I just noticed on a re-read (was this added via edit after initial posting?) that you asked:
What quality or qualities do humans have that animals lack that makes you certain of this?
This clarifies the question.
As for the answer, it’s simple enough: sentience (in the classic sense of the term)—a.k.a. “subjective consciousness”, “self-awareness”, etc. Cows, pigs, chickens, sheep… geese… deer… all the critters we normally eat… they don’t have anything like this, very obviously. (There’s no reason why they would, and they show no sign of it. The evidence here is, on the whole, quite one-sided.)
Since the fact that humans are sentient is most of what makes it bad to torture us—indeed, what makes it possible to “torture” us in the first place—the case of animals is clearly disanalogous. (The other things that make it bad to torture humans—having to do with things like social structures, game-theoretic incentives, etc.—apply to food animals even less.)
I (strongly) disagree that sentience is uniquely human. It seems to me a priori very unlikely that this would be the case, and evidence does exist to the contrary. I do agree sentience is an important factor (though I’m unsure it’s the only one).
I didn’t say that sentience is uniquely human, though.
Now, to be clear: on the “a priori very unlikely” point, I don’t think I agree. I don’t actually think that it’s unlikely at all; but nor do I think that it’s necessarily very likely, either. “Humans are the only species on Earth today that are sentient” seems to me to be something that could easily be true, but could also easily be false. I would not be very surprised either way (with the caveat that “sentience” seems at least partly to admit of degrees—“partly” because I don’t think it’s fully continuous, and past a certain point it seems obvious that the amount of sentience present is “none”, i.e. I am not a panpsychist—so “humans are not uniquely sentient” would almost certainly not be the same thing as “there exist other species with sentience comparable to humans”).
But please note: nothing in the above paragraph is actually relevant to what we’ve been discussing in this thread! I’ve been careful to refer to “animals I eat”, “critters we normally eat”, “food animals”, listing examples like pigs and sheep and chickens, etc. Now, you might press me on some edge cases (what about octopuses, for instance? those are commonly enough found as food items even in the West), but on the whole, the distinction is clear enough.
Dolphins, for example, might be sentient (though I wouldn’t call it a certainty by any means), and if you told me that there’s an industry wherein dolphins are subjected to factory-farming-type conditions, I’d certainly object to such a thing almost as much as I object to, e.g., China’s treatment of Uyghurs (to pick just one salient modern example out of many possible such).
But I don’t eat any factory-farmed dolphins. And the topic here, recall, is my eating habits. Neither do I eat crows, octopuses (precisely for the reason that I am not entirely confident about their lack of sentience!), etc.
Could you elaborate? It seems to me more accurate to say that whether there is, in fact, any “guilt” is dependent on whether there’s sentience. Where is the hypocrisy?
“but certainly none of the things that we (legally) do with animals are bad for any of the important reasons why torture of people is bad.”
That seems very overconfident to me. What are your reasons for believing this, if I may ask? What quality or qualities do humans have that animals lack that makes you certain of this?
Sorry, could you clarify? What specifically do you think I’m overconfident about? In other words, what part of this are you saying I could be mistaken about, the likelihood of which mistake I’m underestimating?
Are you suggesting that things are done to animals of which I am unaware, which I would judge to be bad (for some or all of the same reasons why torture of people are bad) if I were aware of them?
Or something else?
EDIT: Ah, apologies, I just noticed on a re-read (was this added via edit after initial posting?) that you asked:
This clarifies the question.
As for the answer, it’s simple enough: sentience (in the classic sense of the term)—a.k.a. “subjective consciousness”, “self-awareness”, etc. Cows, pigs, chickens, sheep… geese… deer… all the critters we normally eat… they don’t have anything like this, very obviously. (There’s no reason why they would, and they show no sign of it. The evidence here is, on the whole, quite one-sided.)
Since the fact that humans are sentient is most of what makes it bad to torture us—indeed, what makes it possible to “torture” us in the first place—the case of animals is clearly disanalogous. (The other things that make it bad to torture humans—having to do with things like social structures, game-theoretic incentives, etc.—apply to food animals even less.)
(No edit was made to the original question.)
Thanks for your answer!
I (strongly) disagree that sentience is uniquely human. It seems to me a priori very unlikely that this would be the case, and evidence does exist to the contrary. I do agree sentience is an important factor (though I’m unsure it’s the only one).
I didn’t say that sentience is uniquely human, though.
Now, to be clear: on the “a priori very unlikely” point, I don’t think I agree. I don’t actually think that it’s unlikely at all; but nor do I think that it’s necessarily very likely, either. “Humans are the only species on Earth today that are sentient” seems to me to be something that could easily be true, but could also easily be false. I would not be very surprised either way (with the caveat that “sentience” seems at least partly to admit of degrees—“partly” because I don’t think it’s fully continuous, and past a certain point it seems obvious that the amount of sentience present is “none”, i.e. I am not a panpsychist—so “humans are not uniquely sentient” would almost certainly not be the same thing as “there exist other species with sentience comparable to humans”).
But please note: nothing in the above paragraph is actually relevant to what we’ve been discussing in this thread! I’ve been careful to refer to “animals I eat”, “critters we normally eat”, “food animals”, listing examples like pigs and sheep and chickens, etc. Now, you might press me on some edge cases (what about octopuses, for instance? those are commonly enough found as food items even in the West), but on the whole, the distinction is clear enough.
Dolphins, for example, might be sentient (though I wouldn’t call it a certainty by any means), and if you told me that there’s an industry wherein dolphins are subjected to factory-farming-type conditions, I’d certainly object to such a thing almost as much as I object to, e.g., China’s treatment of Uyghurs (to pick just one salient modern example out of many possible such).
But I don’t eat any factory-farmed dolphins. And the topic here, recall, is my eating habits. Neither do I eat crows, octopuses (precisely for the reason that I am not entirely confident about their lack of sentience!), etc.
I apologize, Said; I misinterpreted your (clearly written) comment.
Reading your newest comment, it seems I actually largely agree with you—the disagreement lies in whether farm animals have sentience.
It’s kind of funny and hypocritical that we measure our guilt based on sentience.
Could you elaborate? It seems to me more accurate to say that whether there is, in fact, any “guilt” is dependent on whether there’s sentience. Where is the hypocrisy?