Vegetarians & Sympathizers: What about the Wild?

I oppose factory farming of animals in the real world, just not as much as I oppose the non-consensual causing of suffering on humans and world human hunger and human poverty in real human society. Thus, the answer to the hypothetical is an obvious yes assuming the word oppose is being used loosely. (Incidentally, 3 is very old in this regard. My two year old son is smarter and more mindful and more communicative by any relevant accounts than any non-human animal and was so before he even turned 2, especially if exclude the smartest most humanely conscious animals like dolphins and maybe primates.)

Okay, if you consider my argument in it's strongest possible form, we can instead imagine a farm practice less horrible than factory farming but still bad. And yes, I agree that 3 is very old, we can cut down that number to 1.5.

That's a false dichotomy.

It's also not the kind of irrationality that can be thrown away when dealing 'in practice' since it fails to explain how potentially rational people act such as the many people who wanted Mike Vick to go to prison for dog fighting but who would have wanted him to go to prison even longer if he was making human preteens fight rather than dogs.

I'm just saying it opens a huge window for arbitrariness and selfish desires. Since it is we who have to propose how much their suffering weighs, who's really going to come up with a figure that would significantly impact the course of their live?

(This has nothing to do with our discussion, but the people who are against the dog fighting while consuming animal prodcuts from factory farms are incredibly hypocritical.)

What's the ratio of spiders you would painfully de-limb rather than 1 bunny rabbit? Would you rather have 1 million spiders painfully de-limbed than just 1 bunny rabbit? A billion? A trillion? What if it wasn't spiders but ants?

Maybe 500'000. I'm trying to be low on purpose because I know my intuitions are heavily biased towards the mammal. I don't think spiders are sentient, but I can't with absolute confidence assign them a probability for that lower than 0.1%. And then it also depends on what they would feel, if they feel something at al, how strong their pain can get.

The thing is that I know exactly what to consider, even though it is incredible difficult to do so in some cases. Your view seems to contain more variables, not only do you need to think about the suffering of spiders, you're also thinking about a coefficient by which to multiply it by -- where does that come from?

Okay, but be carefuly to not mis-imagine the thought experiment. You might be thinking that the demented person suffers less because of the lack of awareness, or suffers less because she can't understand the situation or think about it later on. But that's prohibited ex hypothesi! We're talking about the same amount of suffering, so if the above is indeed the case, and healthy people suffer more for slightly indirect reasons, then the momentary suffering of the demented person would have to be increased to provide equality again. In order to really put your views to the test, imagine that the suffering of the demented person would be slightly worse, when all qualia are considered. Still convinced?

The rest seems to be semantics i.e. whether we say the demented person or animal suffers less for indirect reasons during each outward unit of torture (e.g. each stab with the needle) or that the demented person suffers the same amount for each outward unit (e.g. each stab) but his suffering counts less. In any case, those 'indirect reasons' which make it so the seemingly same amount of torture (e.g. number of stabs with a needle) causes -- depending on how one wants to work the semantics -- the demented person to either suffer less per needle prick or suffer the same but have each unit of suffering not receive are some of the same indirect reasons that makes me have less consideration for non-human animals. Whether we say it is because I do not care about their suffering as much or because I believe they just do not suffer as much is a matter of semantics to me.

That's interesting, I think it's very important to be clear about the semantics here. You say these indirect reasons are *some* of the same reasons you have less consideration for non persons. I fully agree with that, but it wouldn't lead to less consideration per internal suffering. I've always been talking about internal suffering. It then comes down to an empirical question! I wonder what's left from the reasons why you rate persons' suffering stronger than that of non persons.

Suppose Richard Dawkins is right about the following: "[...]most of us seem to assume, without question, that the capacity to feel pain is positively correlated with mental dexterity - with the ability to reason, think, reflect and so on. My purpose here is to question that assumption."

"[...]Without going into the interesting literature on Animal Suffering (see, for instance, Marian Stamp Dawkins's excellent book of that title, and her forthcoming Rethinking Animals), I can see a Darwinian reason why there might even be be a negative correlation between intellect and susceptibility to pain. I approach this by asking what, in the Darwinian sense, pain is for. It is a warning not to repeat actions that tend to cause bodily harm. Don't stub your toe again, don't tease a snake or sit on a hornet, don't pick up embers however prettily they glow, be careful not to bite your tongue. [...] It is an interesting question, incidentally, why pain has to be so damned painful. Why not equip the brain with the equivalent of a little red flag, painlessly raised to warn, "Don't do that again"? In The Greatest Show on Earth , I suggested that the brain might be torn between conflicting urges and tempted to 'rebel', perhaps hedonistically, against pursuing the best interests of the individual's genetic fitness, in which case it might need to be whipped agonizingly into line. I'll let that pass and return to my primary question for today: would you expect a positive or a negative correlation between mental ability and ability to feel pain? Most people unthinkingly assume a positive correlation, but why?

Isn't it plausible that a clever species such as our own might need less pain, precisely because we are capable of intelligently working out what is good for us, and what damaging events we should avoid? Isn't it plausible that an unintelligent species might need a massive wallop of pain, to drive home a lesson that we can learn with less powerful inducement?

At very least, I conclude that we have no general reason to think that non-human animals feel pain less acutely than we do, and we should in any case give them the benefit of the doubt. Practices such as branding cattle, castration without anaesthetic, and bullfighting should be treated as morally equivalent to doing the same thing to human beings."

Source: http://boingboing.net/2011/06/30/richar ... -on-v.html

Would that be enough to reverse your judgement? Would non human animals then count more than adult humans in terms of suffering? Probably not, so what's left? Would it at least increase the consideration you give to non human animals?

In these terms even a utilitarian might have a justification for torturing animals for the benefit of humans such as Mike Vick's dog fighting ring, but I'm not a utilitarian and suffering is not all that matters to me.

You'd have to think that dogs have almost no experienced feelings to believe that. That to them, losing a violent fight and bleeding out on the floor feels like me kinda wanting a to eat chicken wings but not being able to do so, or me kinda being bored and wanting to get a kick out of animals fighting. I think Daniel Dennett is someone who might take this as a serious possibility, but for most philosophers, the idea is completely absurd, even sociopathic.

(Also note that even if it were the case that animal sentience is "very low", it would still pay from the utiltiarian perspective to raise awareness against speciesism because the number of animals in the wild is huge. And a low number multiplied by a really huge number is still pretty big.

Do you value the outward suffering of rabbits infinitely more than spiders? What about ants?

No, as I said, as a (negative) utilitarian I know exactly what to measure. Sure, if I was certain that spiders didn't feel pain and were, in that regard, like plants, then I would value their outward suffering (which then would just be a mechanical description of tearing their limbs off) not at all. But my certainty isn't high enough for spiders to not be sentient at all. It also depends on the spider species btw, they're quite divers, if it's i.e. a jumping spider I might assign it higher probability than if it's some tiny mundane spider. Jumping spiders have displayed some pretty impressive skills in behavioral experiments. Ants are quite sophisticated as well, I once had a theory about eusociality being negatively correlated with awareness (because naked mole rats apparently can't feel pain on their skin), but I discarded that after further research (the pain thing is still true for mole rats, but their eusociality is most likely not the cause), so I don't have much reasons to assign ants a lower probability than spiders. Maybe slightly lower.

[Scott]

Wowbagger,

You would delimb roughly 500,000 spiders rather than delimb 1 rabbit. I might delimb roughly 500,000 rabbits rather than 1 human. It seems to me we are on the same page a lot here, but just not about how much the relevant degree of difference between humans and rabbits roughly matches the relevant degree of difference between rabbits and humans.

In a hypothetical society where babies of another race, with (in order to exclude potentiality for the moment) a genetic defect that makes it impossible for them to reach the age of three, are factory farmed, would an identical copy of you, Scott, be arguing in favor of that practice, or at least not oppose it?

I oppose factory farming of animals in the real world, just not as much as I oppose the non-consensual causing of suffering on humans and world human hunger and human poverty in real human society. Thus, the answer to the hypothetical is an obvious yes assuming the word oppose is being used loosely. (Incidentally, 3 is very old in this regard. My two year old son is smarter and more mindful and more communicative by any relevant accounts than any non-human animal and was so before he even turned 2, especially if exclude the smartest most humanely conscious animals like dolphins and maybe primates.)

Okay, if you consider my argument in it's strongest possible form, we can instead imagine a farm practice less horrible than factory farming but still bad. And yes, I agree that 3 is very old, we can cut down that number to 1.5.

Even at 1.5, there are differences between humans and most animals, excluding the smartest most humanely conscious species such as dolphins. To scratch the surface, a 1.5 year-old can communicate with words, walk (bipedally), be potty-trained, use tools like spoons, toothbrushes and forks, follow an incredible number of directions including uniquely compiled separate concepts (e.g. eat... the peas), enjoy gazing at his reflection, and create scribble art. However, that may all be irrelevant because as I said I do oppose hurting animals just not as much as humans so the the thought experiment involving the non-factory farming of terminal babies is unnecessary.

What I think you're getting at is this: Yes, if I had to choose and if I was more of a utilitarian, I would rather 1 month old babies with a terminal illness making it so they would certainly die within 6 months anyway be farmed in a way that causes them pain for some purpose rather than have typical humans farmed in the same way. However, just like how I am a vegetarian in the real world, I wouldn't be eating the babies in that crazy hypothetical world and indeed would be (and am!) opposed to the killing of terminally ill babies.

The thing is that I know exactly what to consider, even though it is incredible difficult to do so in some cases. Your view seems to contain more variables, not only do you need to think about the suffering of spiders, you're also thinking about a coefficient by which to multiply it by -- where does that come from?

Well, we have three issues:

Outward suffering by which I really just mean the amount of possible harm measured by some simple external degree such that we can agree delimbing 10 spiders is equal in outward suffering to delimbing 10 severely demented half-conscious elderly humans and both are equal in outward suffering to delimbing 10 typical humans.

Internal suffering - This is the actual pain felt by the being, measured presumably by how unpleasant it is for the being.

The degree consideration of internal suffering - This is the "coefficient by which to multiply" the internal suffering.

The problem I have explaining my thinking is that I'm not certain whether our mutually guesstimated calculations differ on the degree of internal suffering or the degree consideration of internal suffering or both. Is it that a spider, bunny or severely demented, half-conscious human being delimbed feels less internal suffering than a typical human or that he feels the same Internal suffering but his internal suffering counts less? To really answer that question, I think internal suffering would need to be defined better than I can do. For one thing, I'm not sure how the issue of consciousness comes into play. You seem to think the spider very probably doesn't suffer at all, but if it suffers from being delimbed than it suffers roughly as much as dog from being delimbed. I can say I don't think consciousness is so black-and-white. I think a spider feels pain. In fact, in some sense of the words, I think a plant being denied sunlight might feel pain evidenced by the way it bends towards the sun. I just think they are progressively less conscious particularly in the ways comparable to typical human consciousness. If consciousness was black and white, it could be mixed into your view since for you the question is simply whether or not a spider (or plant or rabbit) is conscious. However, I don't think of consciousness as black-and-white. I think a typical human is more conscious than a severely demented person or a newborn baby. I think a typical human is more conscious than a cat, a cat more than a cow, and a cow more than an ant and an ant more than a plant and a plant more than a microbe. But there is a huge gap between the typical human and all other species of life currently living on Earth right now.

With all that said, what might go into this coefficient? Overall, I'd say the degree to which the being is conscious and/or the sophistication of that consciousness marked in part by things like the degree of ability to communicate, to use abstract concepts, to perform complex problem solving, to imagine, to plan for the future and to build and/or maintain a sense of self and a theory of mind. Most of all, though, I think one big thing to consider is the ability of the creature to feel deep happiness, wonder and joy. This might be lost when we focus so much on simple physical suffering because it's more than the simple mechanical plant-like reaction to evolutionarily-determined negative stimuli -- consciously recognized. The capacity for special happiness, wonder and joy -- for human-like hopes, dreams, fantasies, glories, awe at art, knee-shaking amazement at the beauty of a sunset -- I suspect isn't something that's already there in spiders and rabbits and such that is (more) consciously recognized in (more) conscious beings but that it is itself something that comes from the special sophistication of consciousness. My 3 month old daughter giggles. Maybe evolution has learned how to fake it so that her reaction to my comedy is much like a spider crawling to food or a plant bending towards the sun -- a mechanical survival instinct in a weakly conscious or allegedly unconscious being; but I think otherwise. I think there is something uniquely human, uniquely sophisticated, about her budding consciousness that makes her giggle, that her giggling cannot be one-dimensionally graphed next to the pleasure a rabbit feels while it is pet, that it is a different kind of pleasure all-together not simply a different degree of pleasure.

The mental experience of humans and higher-order animals like dolphins might seem more comparable to animals like cows and rabbits and maybe spiders if we look at physical pain from being stabbed with a pin a couple times because that is a basic response that all those creatures are roughly equally capable of having. But the sophisticated consciousness of a human or maybe a dolphin has a wider spectrum of possible conscious experiences and feelings. When you use some unexplained algorithm to collapse this multidimensional spectrum of emotion down into simply a one-dimensional spectrum from feelings that are considered to feel bad to those that are considered to feel good. It's no wonder that on a such a oversimplification the enormous difference not only in degree but in dimension between humans and lower order animals like rabbits is represented by a practically infinite gap on that one-dimensional over-simplification.

My considered reaction to speciesism is that I happen to be a human being with my prime loyalty to humanity, Therefore I would not press the magic button , because I want life to continue on Earth. Pain and fear are necessary for natural selection to work among the sentient kinds. I want humanity to continue to exist also and therefore I want humanity to reign back its irrational and death-dealing ideas of taking too much from the natural environment.

One death-dealing ideas is that other species don't matter. This idea results in brutalisation of the human who may then be cruel to all species including members of her own species, if and when she perceives them to be different from herself.Different skin colour, different religion, different gender etc.


Brutalisation of the human is contrary to human nature which is capable of advancing in knowledge, judgement and empathy.

I say all this rationalisation from a position of prejudice, that many-legged insects are really little persons in funny clothes, but so be it and there is no harm in that, and my rationalisations,first three paragraphs, of my prejudice are probably true.

I think that animals should certainly have rights; and it must be acknowledged that many states have laws that govern the care and treatment of animals. In this the law both confers rights and imposes duties. Ethically, if you consider whether or not animals should have rights, it would be difficult to justify our assertion of such mastery over them.

One of my favorite books about the natural world is by Henry Beston, who, I think, may have come closest to the truth about man and his place among the animal kingdom when he wrote:

“We need another and wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken a form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren; they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth." - Henry Beston, The Outermost House (1928)

You would delimb roughly 500,000 spiders rather than delimb 1 rabbit. I might delimb roughly 500,000 rabbits rather than 1 human. It seems to me we are on the same page a lot here, but just not about how much the relevant degree of difference between humans and rabbits roughly matches the relevant degree of difference between rabbits and humans.

No, we're on completely different pages. It seems reasonable to assume that a spider has much lower probability of being sentient, and that if they are sentient, delimbing them would hurt less than delimbing a rabbit. And it seems reasonable to assume that the expected suffering, when those two factors are taken into account, is hundred thousands of times less severe than that of the rabbit.

You, on the other hand, have no grounds whatsoever to think that rabbits suffer hundreds of times less than humans. In fact, that's not even your claim.

My position is simply that intelligence adds nothing to whether suffering should be given more weight or not. There are some forms of suffering (i.e. existential crisis) that only highly intelligent beings can undergo, but if you're a laying hen that has it's beak cut, the resulting chronic pain from that will be far worse than some existential angst. And as I argued here before, I think appeals to potentiality are flawed in that they would lead to conclusions no one would be willing to accept.

Belinda, was your last post meant seriously?

I think that animals should certainly have rights; and it must be acknowledged that many states have laws that govern the care and treatment of animals. In this the law both confers rights and imposes duties. Ethically, if you consider whether or not animals should have rights, it would be difficult to justify our assertion of such mastery over them.

One of my favorite books about the natural world is by Henry Beston, who, I think, may have come closest to the truth about man and his place among the animal kingdom when he wrote:

“We need another and wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken a form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren; they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth." - Henry Beston, The Outermost House (1928)

The beginning of Earthlings. Nice!

If we can get the button to ensure all species will eveolve the same as they would have, if predation had continued, I think I will press it... So no more burgers for me either? Can the button make me some test tube prime rib as well?

...man, I have my finger right over it, but it's shaking pretty bad... want... to... push... button.... I pushed it.

Do I get to stop buying dog food now, too?

If we can get the button to ensure all species will eveolve the same as they would have, if predation had continued, I think I will press it... So no more burgers for me either? Can the button make me some test tube prime rib as well?

The button gives you the outcome of a vegan world without negative side-effects. Stripped down of all the empirical difficulties, whether you push it or not will answer whether there is, according to your view, a moral reason for humanity to work on the problem, if it's ever possible to do so. If you consider it a negative consequence if evolution doesn't go on as it would have, then the button can surely include that as well. But I don't see what's negative about evolution taking a different course. Evolution has no plan, no foresight. (See books by Dawkins, "The Blind Watchmaker" or "The Selfish Gene") Haha, no hamburgers that were produced under animal suffering. Test tube prime rib? I want that too! If the button is powerful enough to remodel all the ecosystems, I'm sure it would be powerful enough to give us some delicious cruelty-free animal products as well!

...man, I have my finger right over it, but it's shaking pretty bad... want... to... push... button.... I pushed it.

There you go!

Do I get to stop buying dog food now, too?

Your dog food is vegan now, and the dog will like it just as much as normal dog food. That actually applies to most dogs even today. It's more difficult with cats, while some of them like vegan cat food, a lot of them do not. Maybe the cats can get test tube meat as well.

That would be sad, if cats were disappointed


Does the button depend on humans being on the planet, to provide the preds with non-meat-substitutes? Or will it continue after we die out/leave/blow ourselves up/turn into zombies/whatever?

I mean, as long as the button is working, evolution be dammed! ...But if it has a limit, and will one day stop working... the fittest animals may be as fat and lazy as us at that point, but with no foodstamps

That would be sad, if cats were disappointed

Indeed, but not nearly as sad as what happens to the poor animals that become cat food nowadays. Or not as sad as wild animals being devoured by members of the cat family.

Does the button depend on humans being on the planet, to provide the preds with non-meat-substitutes? Or will it continue after we die out/leave/blow ourselves up/turn into zombies/whatever?

The button is magical, so it can do whatever you want it to do. The question is whether something that works like the button can ever be done without magic. I think it will one day be possible to micro-manage ecosystems automatically, using advanced artificial intelligence.

I mean, as long as the button is working, evolution be dammed! ...But if it has a limit, and will one day stop working... the fittest animals may be as fat and lazy as us at that point, but with no foodstamps

Haha, one would have to ensure that animals don't get too fat and lazy But what's bad about evolution being damned? Evolution is nasty. In my introductory post for this topic, I quoted Richard Dawkins from "River out of Eden":

"The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the 
minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, others are 
running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are being slowly devoured from within by rasping 
parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst and disease. It must be so."

"It must be so" for natural evolution to work. But it doesn't have to be like this for life to work. We can make this a better place for all sentient beings, and evolution will then be artificial instead of "natural". Why would that be problematic?

[Scott]

You would delimb roughly 500,000 spiders rather than delimb 1 rabbit. I might delimb roughly 500,000 rabbits rather than 1 human. It seems to me we are on the same page a lot here, but just not about how much the relevant degree of difference between humans and rabbits roughly matches the relevant degree of difference between rabbits and humans.

No, we're on completely different pages. It seems reasonable to assume that a spider has much lower probability of being sentient [that a rabbit], and that if they are sentient, delimbing them would hurt less than delimbing a rabbit. And it seems reasonable to assume that the expected suffering, when those two factors are taken into account, is hundred thousands of times less severe than that of the rabbit.

It seems to me just as reasonable to assume that a rabbit has much lower probability of being sentient than a human, and that if they are sentient, delimbing them would hurt less than delimbing a human. And it seems reasonable to assume that the expected suffering, when those two factors are taken into account, is hundred thousands of times less severe than that of the human.

What do you mean be "sentient"? Is this black and white, or as you use the term are there degrees of sentience?

You, on the other hand, have no grounds whatsoever to think that rabbits suffer hundreds of times less than humans.

What are your grounds whatsoever to think that spiders suffer hundreds of times less than rabbits?

Again, intelligence isn't the only factor for what makes a creature's life valuable and the prevention of suffering in a creature intrinsically desirable to me subjectively speaking. I also believe I take into account the creatures ability for sentience, sophisticated consciousness, to have a theory of mind and a concept of self.

[...]

This explains why I and most people can value the interests and lives of humans more than that of animals without it being speciesist: the determination can be based on things like intelligence, ability to communicate and degree of existence of sophisticated, coherent consciousness.

My position is simply that intelligence adds nothing to whether suffering should be given more weight or not.

This is where the distinction I made in my previous post matters:

Outward suffering by which I really just mean the amount of possible harm measured by some simple external degree such that we can agree delimbing 10 spiders is equal in outward suffering to delimbing 10 severely demented half-conscious elderly humans and both are equal in outward suffering to delimbing 10 typical humans.

Internal suffering - This is the actual pain felt by the being, measured presumably by how unpleasant it is for the being.

The degree [of] consideration of internal suffering - This is the "coefficient by which to multiply" the internal suffering.

Your position isn't clear to me because you have said suffering without specifying what suffering you mean exactly.

I am saying intelligence in part correlates to the degree that outward suffering correlates to consideration of internal suffering. Whether or not you want to say this is because the creature actually suffers less internally or that the creature suffers equally internally but that it doesn't count because the creatures consciousness/sentience of it is limited is a matter of semantics and mainly rests on whether you want to think of sentience and/or consciousness as black and white or as something one can have in degree. [b]In other words, intelligence does seem to adds something "to whether [outward suffering] should be given more weight or not" whatever you mean by "should" if "given more weight" means that it is ultimately amounts to more considered, internal suffering -- leaving it as mostly semantics whether we say it is because the less intelligent, less consciously sophisticated, less sentiment (or less likely to be sentient if you think of sentience as a black-and-white thing) has less internal suffering in ratio to external suffering or because the internal suffering is the same as external suffering but counts less.

I never said intelligence is all that matters, in my ways it matters so much because it correlates to the many others things that matter, which are all the other parallel differences between spiders and rabbits and between rabbits and humans such as sophistication of consciousness, presence and degree of sophistication of theory of mind, and presence and degree of sophistication of a concept of self, and degree of sentience (or if you define 'sentience' as black-and-white than what you call "probability of being sentient"). Even if you say intelligence doesn't matter at all, with which I don't agree, then it would still arguably be the most effective way to measure that other more vague set of qualities that do matter that distinguish in a non-black-and-white way a plant from an ant, an ant from a spider, a spider from a rabbit, a rabbit from an ape and an ape from a human.

Scott, I'm always talking about what you call "internal suffering" as I've said before. In my comment from May 6th, 2012, 7:03 am, I quoted a link by Dawkins that gives strong reasons against a correlation between advanced intelligence and capacity for suffering.

Humans and rabbits are both mammals, evolutionarily, the differences in their suffering circuits isn't too great. The brain areas where suffering happens are evolutionarily ancient. Not ancient enough for arthropodes though, yet maybe they have functionally identical structures. But we don't know, and it seems unlikely. It's not unlikely that rabbits are conscious (I'd assign them somewhere between 95-99% probability of being sentient), it is unlikely that spiders are (I'd assign them a 0.1-1% probability of being sentient). That already makes a huge difference. And IF spiders are conscious, the intensity of their experiences would presumably be lower than that of mammals, as there's not really much space for suffering to happen in their brains / bodies.

Regarding my terminology: A being is either sentient, or it is not. Either it "feels like something" to be that being, or it does not. However, there are of course different degrees of sentience. The peak experience of a blue whale is probably much more intense than that of a human toddler. Even though the correlation isn't necessarily all about brain size, most likely architecture matters too.

[Scott]

It's because spiders are arthropods? With points like that, I might mistake you for a speciesist! Or a Phylumist as the case may be.

What about the Mantis shrimp? It's an anthropod. It seems hard to say it's so much more different than a rabbit, in degree of sentience and sophistication of consciousness, than a rabbit to a human. Take a look at this video:

Humans and rabbits are both mammals, evolutionarily, the differences in their suffering circuits isn't too great. The brain areas where suffering happens are evolutionarily ancient.

This is vague. Pain/suffering is made up of two components:

The physical component, nociception, which spiders and at least almost insects clearly have. This is why they react physically similarly to rabbits or humans when presented with a would-be painful event, avoiding it, jolting away from it, writhing around during it and such.

Then there is the conscious aspect of it, which isn't particularly about pain at all. This is the question of whether the being is conscious of the suffering and actually has subjective experiences, which would presumably be negative when combined with physical nociception. Indeed, some people believe in p-zombies and are solipsists such that they do not even think other humans have this quality.

So when you talk of suffering wiring, you must not be talking about suffering in the sense of nociception but rather just consciousness, i.e. whether the creature has subjective experiences at all. We both agree that this comes in degrees, that it is not black-and-white. In other words, we agree that the same nociception in 5 different creatures can result in 5 different levels of considered, internal suffering because the creatures each have a different degree of sentience/consciousness.

Let's say X is the degree or probability of sentience or consciousness of the typical adult mantis shrimp, Y is the degree or probability of sentience or consciousness of the typical adult rabbit and Z is the degree or probability of sentience or consciousness of the typical adult human. What makes you so sure that X/Y is so much less than Y/Z? I don't see it all. If anything, I think X/Y is greater than Y/Z. You seem to be saying that if Z = 100 then at the least Y = 95 and at the most X = 1%. That means the degree (taking your "probability of sentience" as degree of sentience) a rabbit is sentient or conscious is 95 times greater than that of the mantis shrimp? And the difference between a human and a rabbit is only about 5% as big proportionally as that between the mantis shrimp and a human? I don't see it. It seems like if anything that mantis shrimp from the video was more mentally rabbit-like than a rabbit is mentally human-like, let alone so grossly disproportionate the other way. (If you want me to adjust the numbers for the mantis shrimp if you give them different numbers then a spider, let me know, but then it seems to me you will need to come up with a different argument than arthropod evolutionary one.)

You will notice in the equations above I have combined probability with degree to create equations that avoid our next disagreement about degree vs. probability which I will now address:

It's not unlikely that rabbits are conscious (I'd assign them somewhere between 95-99% probability of being sentient), it is unlikely that spiders are (I'd assign them a 0.1-1% probability of being sentient).

Is probability of sentience the issue? Or is it degree of sentience? To say, with humans being a benchmark of 100%, there is a 99% chance rabbits are sentient/conscious at all even if to a tiny degree compared to humans, seems to be low to me. I'd say we can be as certain they, and spiders, are conscious as we are about other humans, and especially at least 1-year-old children. This seems to be another point we disagree on in addition to the equations above.

Using the equations above, and averaging your ranges, you seem to think that where there is a 100% chance that Z = 100:

There is a 97% chance that Y = 100, a 3% chance Y = 0, a 0.55% chance X = 100% and a 99.45 chance that X = 0.

That doesn't make sense to me since you admit that there are degrees of sentience. I on the other hand think that where there is a 100% chance Z = 100:

There is a 100% chance that Y > 0, a 100% chance Y < 100, a 100% chance X > 0 and a 100% chance that X < 100.

If my estimation of the combined probability and degree was like yours, I would say:

Y = 97 and X = 0.55

However, I'd actually put the numbers more in line with X/Y ≈ Y/Z and use your lower estimation of X as 0.1, so that:

Y = 3.16 and X = 0.1

See, I don't think there is a nearly 77% chance rabbits aren't conscious or sentient at all, in fact unlike you I don't even think there is a roughly 3% chance that they aren't conscious or sentient at all. I am much more positive than you that they are sentient and/or conscious, but to a fractional degree.

I don't see how you can justify your nearly black-and-white views regarding sentience, which you admit can come in degrees, nor justify your solipsist-like vast probabilities that these creatures are not sentient or conscious at all even to a fractional degree compared to the typical human like I suggest.

Scott, I consider two relevant factors, so my view about sentience really isn't black-and-white.

1. Probability of sentience. Whether you take 100% or 95% doesn't make much of a difference.

2. Intensity of sentience, *if* sentient. That's what you say is EXTREMELY low in rabbits, i.e. a hundred thousand times less than in humans. I think that's patently absurd. I don't think it's much lower in rabbits than it is in humans. But I think it would be quite low for insects, for one thing because their tiny nerve clusters are unlikely to be able to generate peak experience as e.g. a rabbit having ripped its legs off.

So for instance, let's take rabbits. How likely is it that it feels like something to be a rabbit? They show obvious pain behavior, they're evolutionary relatively closely related to us, their brain areas where suffering happen are similar to us, they display a wide enough range of different behaviors for suffering to evolutionarily make sense. Seems like altogether, it's extremely unlikely that they aren't sentient. However, I once read a paper by Dennett where he pointed out some interesting things about rabbits, e.g. that their left eye doesn't "know" what their right eye learned in lots of experiments. Dennett has an extreme view that consciousness requires self-awareness. I think that's implausible, but I wouldn't quite assign rabbits a 100% probability of being sentient, so I'm a bit more cautious. But let's take 97% for that.

Now, what would be the worst pain a rabbit can be in, compared to a human? Humans have bigger brains, and they have a self-aware component to their suffering, i.e. they can ask stupid questions like "why me?". I really don't know what number to put here, but I don't see why it should be lower than 0.1. It might even be higher than 0.5. Sure, since humans have a longer life-expectancy than rabbits, they'd suffer longer from having no legs anymore, but lets just consider the immediate pain, plus a couple of hours suffering without legs. Let's assign rabbits 0.3 for intensity of sentience. So we have .97*0.4, which is around 0.3. According to these estimates, it would be speciesist to let four rabbits undergo the torture if one could instead choose to do it with one human. Of course, we're assuming that everything is restored after a couple of hours, as taking death and life-expectancy and quality into account would make things complicated.

For insects, it would be 0.01 (probability) times 0.0001 (intensity), which would give one millionth in this case.

Do you really, with confidence, estimate the intensity of sentience for rabbits to be lower than 0.00002? (Which would be one fifty thousandth, if I counted the zeroes correctly, lower than I assigned for insects.) Do you see why I think your comment about hundred thousands of rabbits being tortured instead of one human is speciesist?

Good point about shrimps, I'm not a phylumist Of course we gotta look at individuals. I actually assign a non negligible probability to shrimps being sentient, due to studies like these, where experts actually recommend that shrimps ought to deserve protection in scientific experiments: http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/doc/292.pdf

[Scott]

Incidentally, I'm pretty sure neither spiders nor mantis shrimp are insects.

Please excuse me for quoting your post in bits and out of order at that:

Humans and rabbits are both mammals, evolutionarily, the differences in their suffering circuits isn't too great. The brain areas where suffering happens are evolutionarily ancient. Not ancient enough for arthropodes though, yet maybe they have functionally identical structures. But we don't know, and it seems unlikely. It's not unlikely that rabbits are conscious (I'd assign them somewhere between 95-99% probability of being sentient), it is unlikely that spiders are (I'd assign them a 0.1-1% probability of being sentient). That already makes a huge difference. And IF spiders are conscious, the intensity of their experiences would presumably be lower than that of mammals, as there's not really much space for suffering to happen in their brains / bodies. [Emphasis added by Scott.]

What about the Mantis shrimp? It's an anthropod. It seems hard to say it's so much more different than a rabbit, in degree of sentience and sophistication of consciousness, than a rabbit to a human.

Good point about shrimps, I'm not a phylumist Of course we gotta look at individuals. I actually assign a non negligible probability to shrimps being sentient, due to studies like these, where experts actually recommend that shrimps ought to deserve protection in scientific experiments: http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/doc/292.pdf

But doesn't that negate your argument about rabbits having a way higher probability and/or more intense sentience than anthropods, in fact exponentially greater than the difference between rabbits and humans, simply on the grounds that rabbits are closer to humans evolutionary than anthropods?

Now, what would be the worst pain a rabbit can be in, compared to a human? Humans have bigger brains, and they have a self-aware component to their suffering, i.e. they can ask stupid questions like "why me?". I really don't know what number to put here, but I don't see why it should be lower than 0.1. It might even be higher than 0.5. [...]

For insects, it would be 0.01 (probability) times 0.0001 (intensity)

Okay what about for spiders and mantis shrimp which are both anthropods? How can you say that you don't see why the number for intensity of sentience for rabbits would be lower than .1 but I don't see why the number for intensity of sentience for spiders and mantis shrimp would be, if it isn't for rabbits. I don't see any more reason to believe the intensity of a rabbit's sentience is so much exponentially higher than that of a mantis shrimp but so much little below that of a human.

Let's look at your reasons:

They show obvious pain behavior

So do spiders and manti shrimp. This refers to nociception. It seems to me that is undeniable in spiders, mantis shrimp and even at least most insects. The question of intensity doesn't seem to be whether nociception, the physical aspects of pain exist, but rather the degree of presences of a mental being 'observer' with subjective experiences who feels bad about the mechanical reactions of pain.

they're evolutionary relatively closely related to us, their brain areas where suffering happen are similar to us,

Again, this seems to be bordering on speciesism, or phylumism. The issue doesn't seem to be the area of the brain where suffering in the physical sense, nociception, occurs, since spiders, mantis shrimp and even insects have that. The issue is consciousness, the presence of an actual ongoing mental experience (which can be good or bad) and intensity of experience which is presumably a different part of the brain then the one that deals with pain, nociception.

they display a wide enough range of different behaviors for suffering to evolutionarily make sense.

It seems to me that so do spiders and mantis shrimp.

Do you really, with confidence, estimate the intensity of sentience for rabbits to be lower than 0.00002?

IF spiders and mantis shrimp are lower than 0.00002, which you seem to be claiming, THEN yes I estimate the rabbits at a similarly very low number based on a relative equation to spiders and mantis shrimp since rabbits seem more like spiders and mantis shrimp in the relevant matters to me than to humans.

Sure, since humans have a longer life-expectancy than rabbits, they'd suffer longer from having no legs anymore, but lets just consider the immediate pain, plus a couple of hours suffering without legs. [...] Of course, we're assuming that everything is restored after a couple of hours, as taking death and life-expectancy and quality into account would make things complicated.

[...]

Do you see why I think your comment about hundred thousands of rabbits being tortured instead of one human is speciesist?

Sure, if I said that under the false assumptions such as everything would be restored after a couple of hours.

In the same way, why isn't your preference to torture hundreds of thousands of anthropods like mantis shrimp or spiders speciesist? How can you really with confidence say that the intensity (adjusted for what you describe as probability of being sentient/conscious at all) spiders and mantis shrimp have so much less than 0.00002 of an intensity of experience? You call it patently absurd when I suggest that rabbits are so low compared to humans, but you seem to say anthropods like mantis shrimp and spiders are even lower. I think that's patently absurd. It not only says that the intensity of rabbits conscious experience is more comparable to humans than anthropods like mantis shrimp or spiders but that it is exponentially more similar. It seems the difference between humans and rabbits, according to you, is only a teeny tiny fraction of the difference between rabbit and mantis shrimp? That seems patently absurd to me, especially after watching that video and considering the clear presence of nociception in all these difference species about which we have talked. That could have been a rabbit in a mantis shrimp costume for all I know, except I don't think rabbits are as smart or able to communicate as well as mantis shrimp.

Maybe we shouldn't spend so much time discussing empirical matters in a post on ethics. But I find it an interesting subject nevertheless, so one more round:

But doesn't that negate your argument about rabbits having a way higher probability and/or more intense sentience than anthropods, in fact exponentially greater than the difference between rabbits and humans, simply on the grounds that rabbits are closer to humans evolutionary than anthropods?

Not negate. It was a probabilistic argument that gives some support to my statement. It can't settle the debate by itself though, obviously.

Okay what about for spiders and mantis shrimp which are both anthropods? How can you say that you don't see why the number for intensity of sentience for rabbits would be lower than .1 but I don't see why the number for intensity of sentience for spiders and mantis shrimp would be, if it isn't for rabbits. I don't see any more reason to believe the intensity of a rabbit's sentience is so much exponentially higher than that of a mantis shrimp but so much little below that of a human.

I didn't comment on the intensity of sentience for mantis shrimps. (But if I had to, I'd estimate it about a tenth of rabbits, so significantly more than for spiders.) Just considering their size is enough to warrant a huge difference. Or do you think insects, if sentient, can feel just as much pain as a blue whale getting harpooned? And then add to this that mammals have a "fancier" brain architecture, for what that's worth. Obviously I can't tell you for sure that these things are relevant, and to what extent they are, but doesn't it seem the most plausible estimate if we take these factors into consideration?

Let's look at your reasons:

What you quoted were reasons I gave for "probability of sentience", not intensity thereof. And they're all probabilistical, not absolute. I know most animals show nociception, but that's not necessarily equal to full pain behavior. For instance, there are insects that go on eating normally while they have their legs ripped off!

Since we can't measure qualia, we have to use indirect evidence to see whether beings have them. Holding evolutionary relatedness important isn't phylumism, it's a valid probabilistic argument, given that WE certainly are sentient, and given that small changes to brain architecture are less likely to change that than large changes. That doesn't mean that beings in different phyla can't be sentient, of course.

Sure, if I said that under the false assumptions such as everything would be restored after a couple of hours.

Okay!

In the same way, why isn't your preference to torture hundreds of thousands of anthropods like mantis shrimp or spiders speciesist? How can you really with confidence say that the intensity (adjusted for what you describe as probability of being sentient/conscious at all) spiders and mantis shrimp have so much less than 0.00002 of an intensity of experience? You call it patently absurd when I suggest that rabbits are so low compared to humans, but you seem to say anthropods like mantis shrimp and spiders are even lower. I think that's patently absurd. It not only says that the intensity of rabbits conscious experience is more comparable to humans than anthropods like mantis shrimp or spiders but that it is exponentially more similar. It seems the difference between humans and rabbits, according to you, is only a teeny tiny fraction of the difference between rabbit and mantis shrimp? That seems patently absurd to me, especially after watching that video and considering the clear presence of nociception in all these difference species about which we have talked. That could have been a rabbit in a mantis shrimp costume for all I know, except I don't think rabbits are as smart or able to communicate as well as mantis shrimp.

High intelligence or self-awareness might not increase how much it hurts you when you get hurt. Why would it? Brain size seems most relevant, and mammalian vs. arthropod brain architecture too seems relevant. Picture a spider and a rabbit, doesn't there seem to be an order of magnitude of difference? As for humans and rabbits, sure, in many regards the differences are huge as well. But are they so in regard to how intense suffering is experienced? That's not at all clear to me.