Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Wowbagger]

This thread is mainly adressed to people who have internalized that speciesism is wrong. People who believe that there's no justification for giving a being less ethical consideration simply because it looks different, has a different amount of legs, or has different DNA. People who don't share this view are welcome to comment as well, but they might have a hard time accepting the arguments that follow, because they'll be quite counterintuitive.

In River out of Eden, Richard Dawkins wrote the following:

“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.” 
[My emphasis]

His "it must be so" is merely a factual observation regarding the nasty to truth of how evolution works. But what if we interpret "it must be so" as an ethical statement? Isn't it a preposterous thing to say? Why should the world have to be full of suffering? There is no plan in nature, no ultimate good. Nature is all about the successful copying of genes, not about the well-being of individuals. Gaia theory views, or group selectionism (by which I don't mean multilevel selection) are completely wrong and have been disproven. These views that romanticize nature have been exploiting the human bias for wishful thinking. As for why these views are wrong, the long answer can be found in books on evolutionary biology, i.e. The Selfish Gene. The short answer can be found here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/kw/the_tragedy_ ... lectionism http://lesswrong.com/lw/l5/evolving_to_extinction/

Nature is full of suffering. For those not yet fully convinced, check out the following presentation that illustrates examples: http://www.utilitarian-essays.com/LifeI ... 120307.pdf Or the graphic videos on wild animal suffering here: http://www.utilitarian-essays.com/serio ... ering.html I wasn't aware of this, but when people make nature documentaries for TV, they often cut out scenes because they're too cruel. The audience might enjoy the lion chasing the zebra (after all, the Romans had also greatly enjoyed the cruel fights in the Colosseum), but once the chase is over, who really enjoys watching how the zebra is twitching and still alive while being eaten, sometimes for twenty minutes or more? There is a video of a wildebeest being killed by hyenas, it's really disturbing. A woman filming says towards the end "Oh at least one's going for its neck now, thank god for that!" I don't think I've ever heard a more ironic statement.

So again, nature is full of suffering. And by the principle of anti-speciesism, that suffering *matters*. If you oppose factory farms, you should also oppose what happens to animals in the wild. Suffering doesn't become less bad just because it happens for natural causes. On some farms, animals have a life much better than similar species are having in the wild. They still suffer unnecessarily from all the procedures that come with exploiting animals for profit, so this isn't an argument that can be used against veganism. But it can be used against the view that nature is all good. We've been indoctrinated to believe that, but it's not true.

Humans also suffer from status quo bias. We like things the way they are, no matter what way they are. For those interested, scroll down to the podcast by Nick Bostrom: http://www.neuroethics.ox.ac.uk/bio-ethics_bites He gives tricks as to how we can spot status quo bias, and how it can be countered. I believe that status quo bias plays a big role for why people are extremely reluctant to approve of intervention in nature.

If human beings on the planet are dying from thirst, hunger and diseases, we want to help them. If a street dog attacks a group of toddlers, we'd instantly kill the dog in order to save the toddlers. Why should any of that change when the victims are non human animals?

Forget all the technical difficulties for the moment. If there was a magic button that would instantly turn nature into a vegan paradise, where predators eat vegan food (or artificial meat magically created), and where overpopulation is not an issue, would you press the button?

My hope is that vegans and vegetarians, and even meat eaters, will answer "yes", even though the issue might seem counterintuitve at first.

We are already intervening in nature on a massive scale. Some of the intervention is destruction because of human greed. That's not what we want, even though a case could be made that non-existence is better than a life in suffering. Vegans would accept that for farm animals -- after all, if the world goes vegan, there'll be much less cows, pigs and chicken. So this argument could be brough in support of habitat destruction. However, it would be counterproductive to advocate something like that because opposition would be huge. And there are also empirical difficulties, rainforest destruction leads to more global warming, and global warming might well increase the overall amount of sentient life on earth (becaus there'll be more energy ready to get converted). Instead of getting rid of nature, we should focus on making nature more humane (a very ironic word in this context).

The other way in which we already massively intervene in nature is conservation biology. Conservation is a harmful ideology. If only two pandas are left in the world, and you had to choose between violently killing the pandas or violently killing hundreds deer, would the pandas be worth more just because they belong to the species "panda"? A species doesn't have interests, only indviduals have interests. Only individuals can suffer and be harmed. Conservation biology cares only about the abstract concept of "species", not about the actual individuals. Yes, there is indirect value in biodiversity and "healthy" (wich means cruel and full of suffering) ecosystems, and in the pleasure it gives us humans to know that there are cute pandas. But let's not confuse intrinsic value with indirect value, and let's understand that human aesthetic preferences in no way compare to vital interests of animals to not want to be eaten alive, for instance.

We have now explored the main aspects of the problem. What can be done about it? It seems important to replace conservation biology by compassionate biology. In the following text, David Pearce gives an outline for this project: http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/pearce20120225 I talked about some of what he wrote in that text already, but he mentions many more details and additional arguments, the text is strongly recommended. He outlines how populations could be micro-managed through immunocontraception and even advanced technology, and he also talks about reprogramming predators.

As of now, our knowledge of ecosystems isn't big enough, and our technologies aren't powerful enough to enable us to compassionately intervene large-scale in nature. No one is proposing to rush through with something if it is going to mess things up. Whenever I talk about this to people, they bring up all kinds of practical objections. Practical objections are here to be taken care of. Let's influence science and politics to give more funding towards studies in compassionate ecology. We need an international research project.

Technology grows exponentially, and on some not unplausible estimates, we're only decades away from the point were we could make it happen. In the meantime, the most important thing that can be done is to spread awareness. Mainly among vegans, vegetarians, and rationalists who read Dawkins' books on evolutionary biology. Here's btw a video with Dawkins interviewing Peter Singer, the moral philosopher who popularized the term "speciesism":

Maybe the time isn't yet right to also mention this to people who don't care about animals, as they're only looking for (more) reasons to consider vegans insane. But note how it is often meat eaters who bring up wild animals, as reductio ad absurdum. By that, I don't mean the idiotic "but lions eat meat too" (ducks "rape", and chimps do all kinds of nasty stuff), I mean the: "Should we feed foxes with tofu? Should we save gazelles from cheetahs?" See the short funny video:

Some people object on the grounds that large-scale intervention in nature is "playing god", and that that's somehow something bad. They say it is "arrogant to press our human standards on nature". But the argument doesn't work. Once we have the technological means to do it, we will be "playing god" either way, whether we do something or not. With power and knowledge comes responsibility. When we decide to not do anything, we'll be implicitly judging nature "ideal". We'd be forcing our moral standards on all the animals in nature in the sense that we let their suffering go on forever even though we could change it. The idea that "pressing our morality on them" is bad can only work if nature is somehow good. As I argued earlier, this view is simply mistaken, but unfortunately very common. The "arrogance objection" is also common because humans are indeed arrogant, or rather, selfish, in that they're destroying the planet. Many people who care about animals and the environment (see the "and" here? Isn't it incompatible to care about both, at least if the idea is to leave the "environment" untouched?) have a low regard of their fellow human beings. But even if you hate humans because you love animals, if the arguments I put forward here are sound, humanity happens to be the only hope for wild animals. (Except maybe a life-ending asteroid.)

I recently saw a sticker saying "Veganism: 51 billion animals like this" (with a Facebook thumb-up symbol). If vegans care about wild animals too, the number of animals liking it will go up into the trillions! The scale of the issue is huge, beyond imagination.

If you agree with the main arguments here, please consider spreading the meme to philosophical-minded people. Comments and criticism are very welcome, even though I fear that the length of this post might scare people away...

[Bigstew]

Hello Wowbagger,

Interesting article, and I applaud you for making such a bold claim. It should be an interesting discussion.

I agree with many of your premises e.g. suffering is bad, and the well being of all animals count.

The most intriguing part of the argument, I found, is the non-speciesist principle. From how I interpret you, it is unreasonable to argue on the basis of species, that we ought to conserve near extinct animals. But this might not actually follow.

When people say speciesism is unreasonable, they are saying that assigning different value on the basis of morally irrelevant physical characteristics is unjustified. So to say a human's moral claim matters more than a non human animals moral claim, just because they are human, is unjustified. But couldn't species still have inherent value? Some people might switch "species" with "life form" although the two are near synonymous. If this follows, it wouldn't be unreasonable to try to conserve near extinct species, given that all species have an inherent sense of value.

So this is just one thought, and again I thank you for bringing up a thought provoking discussion. Regarding other parts of the article, I hope to re read again and bring up any other considerations soon. Just thought I would get started on our understanding of speciesism first, and build from there.

[Wowbagger]

Thank you, Bigstew, I'm glad you find the topic interesting!

When people say speciesism is unreasonable, they are saying that assigning different value on the basis of morally irrelevant physical characteristics is unjustified. So to say a human's moral claim matters more than a non human animals moral claim, just because they are human, is unjustified.

Yes, that's it exactly.

But couldn't species still have inherent value? Some people might switch "species" with "life form" although the two are near synonymous. If this follows, it wouldn't be unreasonable to try to conserve near extinct species, given that all species have an inherent sense of value.

Yeah, if you believe that species do have inherent value, then species membership could be ethically relevant in some cases and it wouldn't necessarily be speciesist to take this into account. Anti-speciesism doesn't imply some absolute prohibition against treating animals of different species differently, it's just the rejection letting arbitrary and ethically irrelevant attributes (as you stated) influence our judgement.

Here an example to clarify: Animals differ in their degree of sentience and in the likelihood that they are sentient. For instance, I assign quite a low probability to insects being sentient, and even if they are sentient, a single insect probably couldn't suffer as much as a cow. And that's an ethically relevant criterion, it isn't speciesist of me to worry more about a cow than I worry about a fruit fly, because I have reason to believe that the cow can be hurt in more significant ways. If I knew for sure that insects could suffer, and if there was a case where a group of insects combined suffer much more than a cow, I would then care more about the insects.

Or another example relevant for wild animals: Suppose reprogramming predators, or feeding them with vegan food / artificial meat isn't feasible. The best option would then be to get rid of predators. I argued for this on an animal rights site once, and I got many people calling me speciesist, because they thought I'd be "giving more value to prey animals than predators", and that this would be discrimination against predators "just because I don't like them and their way of life". But my point is the following: Within its life, the predator cruelly kills dozens of prey animals. If people want to let this go on, they must value the "freedom / life / well-being" of the predator dozens of times more than that of a prey animal. If you value them equally, the lesser evil would be to kill the predator. So actually, it would be speciesist to not kill the predator, because then one would implicitly value it more than the prey animal.

It's good that you asked this question, it's really important that it is clear what is meant by "speciesism", because a large part of my argument rests on it. Turning to the question of whether species have inherent value: In my initial post, I just stated that a species doesn't have interests and that it can't suffer, only individual members of a species can do that. The argument isn't conclusive because you might wonder whether there are things that matter ethically that aren't directly related to sentience. My position is that only sentience matters.

In order to get rid of indirect reasons that might influence our judgement, I propose the following thought experiment: Suppose there is a really boring species that no human on earth cares about. If the species would go extinct, people would be completely indifferent. Suppose further that the species has no important function in its ecosystem, if it is gone, the ecosystem will still work. And finally, the species has nothing to contribute to human knowledge, even if in the future geneticists were to study it, they wouldn't find anything of interest. There are 1000 members of that species left, and if we leave them alone, the population will remain constant and not go extinct. An evil, masochistic spirit shows up and forces you to make a cruel choice: He will either torture and kill all the 1000 last members of that species, or torture and kill 1001 members of some other species that is not in danger of going extinct. Suppose that both species have the same degree of sentience, they'd be hurt equally by the torture, and killing them would deprive them of the same average amount of happiness and suffering for the rest of their lives (in case you consider this relevant). Which should you choose? If you choose to preserve the species, why exactly would species conservation justify that extra suffering of the one being? How far would one be willing to go, if 1001 is increased to 1002, 1003, ..., 2000, ..., 10'000 ...? I think one would need very good reasons to cause extra suffering, and I just don't see why the conservation of an extra species would be something good.

Another argument against species being inherently valuable is the following: If it is bad if there are less species, wouldn't it consequently be good if there were more species? Why is no one proposing that we artificially create more species, then? It seems to me that this view is just a variety of "nature is good" combined with status quo bias. An unsupported belief that it is bad to cause changes.

[wanabe]

There is no good and bad in nature, this is a human construct. I would not press this magic button; what we see as suffering has a purpose in nature: it keeps things from becoming stagnant. We as a living thing have the purpose to live our lives to the fullest and help other life to do the same. Maintaining biodiversity is paramount to this.

To intervene in nature, to direct it in some way, is by definition not nature. It doesn't have to be as extreme as playing god, it's simply illogical(to change the definition of nature). The only option, if we want to preserve the natural world, to some degree; is to seal off as best we can what is left of it, and allow it to do it's own thing. You don't preserve nature by changing it to what you think it should be, that makes it something else.

I am vegan because it is ethical to the animals of the farm, and to the ecosystems that the farms take up, is which where wild animals could be living. It is a stance of nonintervention in the larger scale of natural process, one the preserves nature as is.

Intervention in this case is a conscious alteration of nature. It is more apt to say that we have an effect on nature. We do not think about what we are doing it is not a conscious choice. To consciously intervene, naively thinking we know what is best for nature is folly. Our responsibility as humans, to nature is to do as little as possible to effect nature negative of positive.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

This thread is mainly adressed to people who have internalized that speciesism is wrong. People who believe that there's no justification for giving a being less ethical consideration simply because it looks different, has a different amount of legs, or has different DNA.

[emphasis added]

Can you define wrong and ethical consideration?

Also, by your latter statements especially in your followup posts, am I correct in concluding you do not consider it 'speciesism' insofar as DNA (i.e. membership in a species) provides a strict, and presumably causal, correlation to whatever it is upon which one does value lives and would-be suffering such as the sentience, intelligence, conscious ability and so forth as opposed. It's only 'speciesism' when the distinctions between any given species are clearly irrelevant such as number of legs as opposed to relevant such as one species being more intelligent, more brain-oriented and presumably more mindful/sentient/conscious? If so, I think almost everyone including me can accept this, but most people would still not be vegetarians or such because most people including me do not value the lives and suffering of almost all if not all non-human animals the same as humans not simply because they are a different species but because of what it is specifically that distinguishes all those other species from humans.

Forget all the technical difficulties for the moment. If there was a magic button that would instantly turn nature into a vegan paradise, where predators eat vegan food (or artificial meat magically created), and where overpopulation is not an issue, would you press the button?

Great question. If elaborated to make it so the production hypothetical artificial meat would be at least no more expensive in terms of money and environmental impact to produce and would taste just as great, then I cannot imagine much of anyone would not press the button. It's a wise point you make, I think, because anyone who admits to pressing the button admits to having some consideration for animals even if in real everyday life they have estimated that consideration to be outweighed by the moderate convinces of eating meat and not saving animals from suffering or death.

***

Anyway, I think your argument is two-fold. First your argument is the animal rights argument which you make as a utilitarian in support of giving or recognizing the same rights in some, most or all animals as we do in some, most or all humans or recognizing those rights but to a lesser degree. Then, you have another argument which is not exactly about animals per se. This second argument I think you sum up with your statement, "Suffering doesn't become less bad just because it happens for natural causes." Your post focuses on the suffering and killing of animals by other animals in the wild, which you wisely point out and support with evidence and examples. But that itself is an example of that overarching point regarding inaction to save lives or prevent suffering.

We can isolate the second issue from the first by instead considering situations with humans. Even when speaking of would-be human suffers, there is a significant difference between one causing pain or murdering a person as opposed to one choosing not to charitably save a human from pain or suffering caused by someone or something else. For example, many people like me want it to be criminalized for one to push a second person into a well where the second person will surely suffer and slowly die, but we still want it to be legal for the first person to simply choose not to help the second person or donate to the get-her-out-of-the-well charity if she falls into the well by some accident or by being pushed by some other third-party. That's not to say we support the person's choice to be uncharitable or that we do not dislike it, but I think there is near unanimous agreement to not being as opposed to the same degree in any of various ways in regards to actively hurting someone as opposed to not helping someone even if the consequences are the same. You might be asking, 'why not save animals from suffering in the wild,' but with issue of so-called speciesism taken out, the remaining issue is, 'why not save humans from suffering or death that we are not personally causing,' or in example, 'why not give to charity individually to save some or all of the 18,000 human children who starve to death each year?'

Ironically, even if we disagree philosophically as to why, I grant you most of us do happen want to save starving children to some extent, and thus those considering animals lives equal to humans would rationally want to save animals in the wild suffering by the actions of other animals to the same degree they want to save those starving human children. We might have different reasons for wanting to save those children -- and possibly by extension all those suffering animals. For instance, one of us may be an amoral but self-interestedly compassionate person who donates to world hunger charities or the Jimmy Fund because it makes him feel pleasure emotionally to do it and feel displeasure not to do it; another one of us may be religious and believe there is a very powerful supernatural being who commands humans to behave charitably and they do it to avoid having that allegedly existing supernatural being use it's powers against them and yet another one of us may have some sort of "moral" belief that there is some sort of mystical court with rules that judge people's actions and they for some reason want to do what is "morally" right according to this mystical court and their "moral" beliefs in some way make them think it is "morally" good whatever that means to give to charity (though this third example seems like an elaborate interfaith generalized version of the second example); another person may just want the tax breaks. Some people's reasons may depend on something more objective (e.g. the alleged objective existence of some certain god-figure) and others may be more subjective (e.g. the emotions felt by a potentially compassionate person). All in all, for different reasons, we almost all seem to agree that we want to charitably help those starving human children or any humans suffering not by our active doing, but we almost all also seem to agree that it is not as important or as disgusting as actually actively causing the suffering.

***

[...] let's understand that human aesthetic preferences in no way compare to vital interests of animals [...]

I'm not sure about that. I kill spiders simply because my wife dislikes their presence in my home. It is true the spiders vital interest to live does not compare to my wife's minor, somewhat aesthetic desire to not have subjectively icky bugs in the house is that in my opinion my wife's relatively minor desire is still way more important than the spider's most vital desires. This same concept explains why even thought I am a vegetarian there are many not-that-unrealistic hypothetical situations in which I would eat meat or kill animals such as cute bunnies and kitty cats. The moderate inconvenience of vegetarianism is worth saving the lives and suffering of animals in the particular circumstances in which I live such as the fact that most restaurants have something decent that is vegetarian on the menu; it's a long list of pros and cons for me that I roughly estimate. Yet if I found myself on a desert island and the choice was between killing kitty cats with my bare hands every day to feed my family the meat or letting them die malnutrition or for that matter suffer from deep hunger pains and non-terminal malnutrition-related illness, I would gladly kill hundreds of kitty cats with my bare hands even for some hard to imagine reason it was always a slow painful death for the kitty cats. My points is sure that at least in my opinion in what would effect and determine my decisions to me sometimes the vital interests of some animals is way greater than some of the very minor interests of humans, but other times no because overall human interests matter more to me not because of speciesism but rather because of what happens to be the difference between humans and these other species.

Ultimately, this gives us four different things one could do and to make it simple I will use the example of torture and murder:

A. torture and murder a human B. opt to do nothing instead of saving a human from being tortured and murdered by someone or something else C. torture and murder a non-human animal such as cow D: opt to do nothing instead of saving a non-human animal such as a cow from being tortured and murdered by someone or something else

The arguments regarding speciesism only regard how, why and to what degree if at all to distinguish between A/B and C/D. The second issue of the difference between actively harm as opposed to not helping regards how, why and to what degree if at all to distinguish between A/C and B/D how, why and to what degree at all if all to distinguish between A/B and C/D

For my part, I'd be opposed to doing them in that order except in some situations I might flip-flop B with C. In other words, I'd be most opposed to A and least opposed to D. I'd usually be more opposed to B then C but sometime maybe more opposed to C than B depending on the circumstances.

[Wowbagger]

Thanks for sharing your views wanabe. I find it interesting that you give a definite "no" as answer to the question with the magic button.

[...] what we see as suffering has a purpose in nature: it keeps things from becoming stagnant.

I don't see how the vegan paradise would be stagnant. But if it somehow were, depending on what you mean by it, would "not being stagnant" really be worth all the suffering? I came to philosophy from science, I spent the later part of my youth reading, among others, books on evolutionary biology. With that background, I just don't see any kind of "purpose" in nature at all.

This thread is mainly adressed to people who have internalized that speciesism is wrong. People who believe that there's no justification for giving a being less ethical consideration simply because it looks different, has a different amount of legs, or has different DNA.

[emphasis added]

Can you define wrong and ethical consideration?

As for "wrong", just replace speciesism with sexism, reflect on most people's current attitude against sexism, and insert a description of that attitude. That way we avoid the ethical talk you notoriously dislike. (I could also say that wrong is "whatever fails to make the world better", but then I'd have to explain "better" and that would take long, but I do think there are objective criteria for that, see the thread "Objections to Utilitarianism".) "Giving a being less ethical consideration": To give less consideration to a being's well-being, i.e. exemplified through one's actions. (However, actions may also be speciesist even though the person is against speciesism, in that case there is cognitive dissonance, in that case the person would be thinking: "My behavior is inconsistent with the things I really value, but I'm just too selfish, if I were less selfish I wouldn't do this".)

Also, by your latter statements especially in your followup posts, am I correct in concluding you do not consider it 'speciesism' insofar as DNA (i.e. membership in a species) provides a strict, and presumably causal, correlation to whatever it is upon which one does value lives and would-be suffering such as the sentience, intelligence, conscious ability and so forth as opposed.

Correct, but only if the correlation is strict! You may then still look at it as if species membership is irrelevant because ultimately you're looking at the significant criterion you have established a correlation for. An example: Through an accident of nature, or an ingenuous scientific experiment, a cow is turned into a p-zombie cow that for certain doesn't have any interal experiences (qualia) whatsoever. In such a case, I'd be more concerned about the well-being of a fly than of that cow, because the fly might have qualia, whereas the cow ex hypothesi certainly does not.

It's only 'speciesism' when the distinctions between any given species are clearly irrelevant such as number of legs as opposed to relevant such as one species being more intelligent, more brain-oriented and presumably more mindful/sentient/conscious? If so, I think almost everyone including me can accept this, but most people would still not be vegetarians or such because most people including me do not value the lives and suffering of almost all if not all non-human animals the same as humans not simply because they are a different species but because of what it is specifically that distinguishes all those other species from humans.

The "most people" you're talking about are then being inconsistent. You mention "humans" as if it were some uniform group, but it's not. Cows, pigs or chicken have the same level of sentience, awareness, or intelligence (even though we wouldn't consider intelligence relevant; i.e. we wouldn't allow Einstein a higher right to well-being than to some mentally handicapped person) as human toddlers or late-stage demented people. I'm quite certain that those "most people" you're talking about would object if human toddlers or late-stage demented people were i.e. transported like farm animals, slaughtered like farm animals, brandmarked like farm animals, castrated like farm animals, ..., ..., ..., . Even if the people in question are foreigners to them. In case of toddlers, one might argue with "potentiality" (I think we had this discussion once), but I'm very confident that I can reduce all arguments on potentiality ad absurdum. And I believe the people bringing up arguments on potentiality don't even believe them themselves, they just seek ad hoc justification of their perceived speciesism. For instance, someone who thinks it's okay to kill a pig but not okay to kill a toddler most likely wouldn't instantly change her mind about the toddler when she discovers that the toddler has a genetic condition that will prevent it from ever developping the attributes potentiality is relevant for (i.e. self-awareness, "personhood"). The person would most likely still be against killing the toddler, but then it really just comes down to looks and DNA! Anti-speciesism is only internalized once people start seeing cows, pigs or chicken as "human toddlers in different bodies". And only vegans really live accordingly.

By the way, this argument doesn't by itself dictate that cows or toddlers have a right not to suffer, or a right to life. One could be consistent and reject it for both, as Kant did, and as some contractualists are willing to do to justify their meat eating behavior when you really press them on the issue of speciesism. But I don't think any sane human is comfortable with the thought of torturing infants. Killing however is a different issue, and personally I'm in favor of late-term abortions, and because "being inside or outside the womb" doesn't change the relevant characteristics of the infant, I'd also have no intrinsic problem with infanticide. Actually, as a hedonistic utilitarian (as opposed to preference utilitarians like Singer) I don't even have intrinsic problems with persons being killed painlessly in their sleep, for that matter (but that would be very wrong for strong indirect reasons). But that's mainly irrelevant for most practical issues, including the issue we're discussing here.

Oh, another "by the way", wanna hear the coolest argument in favor of assisted suicide or doctors killing severely disabled infants that are in agony and have no prospect of a decent life, either because their condition is untreatable or because they'll die soon anyway? Here it goes: It's not just speciesist to treat humans better than animals just because they're human, it's also speciesist to treat them worse.

Anyway, I think your argument is two-fold. First your argument is the animal rights argument which you make as a utilitarian in support of giving or recognizing the same rights in some, most or all animals as we do in some, most or all humans or recognizing those rights but to a lesser degree.

Indeed, my argument is two-fold. I'm making the speciesism argument as a utilitarian, but note how it works just as well for any other ethical theory! That's the beauty of it, in order to be consistent, all the major normative theories would have to take it up. Many animal rights people are in fact deontologists, and some, like Mark Rowlands, are even contractualists.

Then, you have another argument which is not exactly about animals per se. This second argument I think you sum up with your statement, "Suffering doesn't become less bad just because it happens for natural causes." Your post focuses on the suffering and killing of animals by other animals in the wild, which you wisely point out and support with evidence and examples. But that itself is an example of that overarching point regarding inaction to save lives or prevent suffering.

Exactly, I didn't point this out explicitly, but my argument ignores the "act-omission" distinction, or at least it presupposes that positive duties exist, even if one may think they're weaker than negative duties. I know you dislike talk about duties, and in this case I do to, I'm just mentioning them because it's the official terminology of deontological and contractarian ethics. As you wisely point out later, people aren't really willing to say that it's totally okay for a wealthy person to never give to charity. Humans want to help. And if we want to help humans, and think everyone should be doing it, then by the principle of speciesism that also applies for animals.

Speaking of which: one dollar donated to Vegan Outreach expectedly prevents between 100 days and 51 years of animal suffering in factory farms. See: http://www.utilitarian-essays.com/vegan-outreach.html And it also raises awareness for suffeirng and speciesism. From a utilitarian point of view, this is definitely one of the best ways to spend money, if not the best.

As an argument in favor of taking "positive duties" seriously and saving human lives, I usually just refer to the following video:

(It's also interesting to note that even if soemoen rejects positive duties, they then aren't really "opposed" to helping. Libertarians don't want to make it illegal to donate to charity.)

You might be asking, 'why not save animals from suffering in the wild,' but with issue of so-called speciesism taken out, the remaining issue is, 'why not save humans from suffering or death that we are not personally causing,' or in example, 'why not give to charity individually to save some or all of the 18,000 human children who starve to death each year?'

I think both is important. And it's actually not 18'000 human children that starve to death each year, that sounds more like the figure per day. I think it's 27'000 children dying preventable deaths daily, many of them are due to diseases though and not just starvation. That's why I linked to the "The Life You Can Save" video. Currently the costs are 2000 dollar per human life, which also contains huge life improvements for an additional number of children (but the conditions there would otherwise not have led to death): http://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities That's a lot of good one can do with money, but compared to animal charities it's still very inefficient. (But donating to animal charities will likely help prevent human starvation too, because vegan food is more efficiently produced, and that would lower the prices on the world's markets).

Ironically, even if we disagree philosophically as to why, I grant you most of us do happen want to save starving children to some extent, and thus those considering animals lives equal to humans would rationally want to save animals in the wild suffering by the actions of other animals to the same degree they want to save those starving human children. We might have different reasons for wanting to save those children -- and possibly by extension all those suffering animals.

That's a very good point you make, thank goodness that this is the case!

All in all, for different reasons, we almost all seem to agree that we want to charitably help those starving human children or any humans suffering not by our active doing, but we almost all also seem to agree that it is not as important or as disgusting as actually actively causing the suffering.

That's certainly the case, but I for one am really of the opinion that it's the same to cause something bad to happen and to not prevent something bad from happening. I think our intuitions are just flawed in that regard. "Causing somethign bad to happen" is bad because of the suffering it leads to. And why should suffering suddenly be less bad just because it was caused in some other way? But this is a question that belongs into the debate on utilitarianism, for this thread here I'm already happy if people have a basic interest in helping.

[Insext]

I honestly see no issue here. Veganism & related ethical stances are about reducing human & animal suffering, within a carefully delineated sphere of human influence. Same as how medicine is about reducing suffering, or how pacificism is about reducing suffering to a point.

None of these ethics imply that we must impose peace on all wild-animals or wipe our disease & infection in all wild-animals. Indeed, these ethics promote the exact opposite - leave the wild animals to be wild, because intervention will only cause more suffering (e.g. if you stop males fighting for females you will likely prevent proper reproduction & end the species. e.g. if you prevent carnivores from eating their prey, they will die-out, etc. etc.).

Veganism encourages the wild, it implies a "small ecological foot-print", it tempers human interference.

[Bigstew]

Hey again Wowbagger. You offer some good points, and I'll try and offer some of my own.

Yeah, if you believe that species do have inherent value, then species membership could be ethically relevant in some cases and it wouldn't necessarily be speciesist to take this into account.

If I knew for sure that insects could suffer, and if there was a case where a group of insects combined suffer much more than a cow, I would then care more about the insects.

There has been scientific studies done with African bees that suggests that bees do feel pain.

Balderrama, N. et al. (biologists) (1987). Behavioral and Pharmacological Analysis of the Stinging Response in Africanized and Italian Bees. Neurobiology and Behavior of Honeybees. R. Menzel & A. Mercer (eds.). New York: Springer-Verlag.

But this is just an aside. I think what is most worth adressing is whether life has any value.

Part of the consideration for life having value has to do with how we define interests, and how we understand normative reasons. According to the traditional understanding of interests, only sentient beings have them. And since sentient beings have wants, aims, and desires, these psychological facts constitute valid interests. But is a certain psychological wherewithal necessary to have an interest? Enviromental ethicists think this criterion is too restrictive, and there might be strong reasons for this. If you're interested, Robin Attfield has done some interesting work in this area. he has developed a consequentialist and bio centric ethical theory. I know utilitarianism interests you and I am interested in consequentialist theories so checking him out might be worth it. The wiki entry on bio-centrism is short but it might give you an idea:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biocentrism_%28ethics%29

Or another example relevant for wild animals: Suppose reprogramming predators, or feeding them with vegan food / artificial meat isn't feasible. The best option would then be to get rid of predators. I argued for this on an animal rights site once, and I got many people calling me speciesist, because they thought I'd be "giving more value to prey animals than predators", and that this would be discrimination against predators "just because I don't like them and their way of life". But my point is the following: Within its life, the predator cruelly kills dozens of prey animals. If people want to let this go on, they must value the "freedom / life / well-being" of the predator dozens of times more than that of a prey animal. If you value them equally, the lesser evil would be to kill the predator. So actually, it would be speciesist to not kill the predator, because then one would implicitly value it more than the prey animal.

I can see why people disagreed with you because you do make quite a bold claim, but I do find it interesting. And it gets people thinking.

I agree that the well being of all animals count. And I agree with you that suffering counts as well. But one point that might be missing are the interests of predators. Their need to survive is a valid interest. I think you would agree with that. Another thing worth mentioning is the use of "cruelty". I'm not quite sure we can say that predators act cruelly. When we say an act is cruel, we usually mean that someone is undeservingly suffering at the hands of a moral agent. If a moral agent isn't involved, we would probably say that there is suffering, and this suffering would vary in degree. Since animals are not moral agents, I'm not quite sure there is any reason to describe the act of predators hunting prey as cruel, but I could be wrong. What constitutes a cruel act is definitely something I should think about more.

Still, I understand the point you raise. Both predator and prey make moral claims. On the basis of suffering alone though, it is a difficult issue to resolve because both suffer. Prey will suffer if we allow predators to hunt, and predators suffer if we prevent them from hunting. To resolve this, you offer an argument based on compassionate biology. This could be one way of settling the issue, but many people might have a difficult time with nature being engineered in such a significant way. We might also have to look at the non-normitive reasons such as in ecology and see what merit these reasons have. I guess what we have to do is look at all the reasons, and decide then.

On a personal level, I have to admit that while we have the ability to control life on this planet, there might be good reasons for not having direct control over all of the life on this planet. But even so, I am not completely sure. You make a strong point worth considering, and I will continue to think about this.

I havn't responded to other parts of your argument because I think the fubdamental points at issue are layed out above. If the points I've raised have ignored points you have already made, please feel free to let me know and I will address them, if possible.

[wanabe]

As for the magic button. Animals don't need to change their behavior, humans do, animals didn't cause the problems we have now.

I don't see how the vegan paradise would be stagnant.

It's not nature by definition, what you are talking about is a new age zoo. In a zoo animals are required to be fed by humans(in your case reprogrammed by humans). Suffering is has a purpose, for every bit of scarcity that is created there is a surplus somewhere else. Humans understand this concept, but fail in execution. With a back round in academic biology you can't see purpose in nature, to see it purpose requires total immersion in nature it self.

Insext explains this well.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Wowbagger, you suggest replacing sexism and I'll throw in racism too to explain what you mean to be condemning about speciesism. In one sense, the reason I have negative feelings and measurably oppositional reactions to various instances of sexism and racism and the reason I generally try to avoid engaging in sexism and racism myself (which like an alcoholic trying not to drink I think we can agree in our doubt that anyone is perfect at doing) is because I believe that the premise called upon by racism and sexism is factually false. Whatever the qualities are that we distinguish between people in a certain situation, I believe as a matter of fact that generally it is simply an incorrect assumption to believe race and gender correlate strictly enough to those qualities. For instance, I think it makes more sense to approve the college application for the person who has a higher SAT score -- among other factors -- than the person who happens to be of a certain race or gender, nor as a matter of fact do I think that there is an inherent link between academic achievement/potential and race such that one can conclude from the fact that simply because someone is of a certain race that there scores and the factors determining admission are too low or that we can be satisfied with a significant racial or gender academic achievement gap on the grounds that it represents the manifestation an inherent difference between the DNA of genders or races. In contrast, there are instances where discriminating on race and gender would be appropriate. For instance, an anti-rape self-defense class might be wiser to market to women. Sun-tanning salon would probably be foolish in the name of non-racism to market to black people. To me, it's a matter of whether the fact assumed by the discrimination or more generally by the overall racist person is true or not.

In a more pertinent example, if someone suggested legalizing the sport torturing/hunting of people of a certain race or gender while still giving the other race or gender the legal right to life currently provided to a large extent in the first world to almost all citizens, I would disagree and I think at this time in our world the person would be laughed away. The reason for my disagreement is that I believe it is sexist or racist because the qualities that in my opinions and/or in my beliefs of alleged facts that determine how valuable if at all a person's life is, to what degree and if ever it is tolerable to hurt and torture a certain person, and the extent of that persons ability to consciously suffer and the undesirability of that suffering do not correlate significantly to gender or race or the inherent DNA differences and manifestations of race and gender.

However, in the case of non-human animals, especially if exclude the few smartest with the most communication ability and/or seemingly most human-like consciousness like dolphins, I as a matter of fact believe that those qualities do correlate according to the fact of one being a member of a certain species and to the manifestations of the inherent differences in DNA. Depending on what one means by speciesist that could be speciesist in the sense that marketing a tan-salon to non-black people is racist or marketing an anti-rape class to women is sexist or criminalizing sex between a 40-year-old man and 10-year-old girl is ageist, but I don't think that is how you and I would use the term speciesist, sexist, racist or ageist because it seems we reserve those terms for when the discrimination is irrelevant and/or based on allegedly factually incorrect correlations. So in conclusion the fact that I as a rule I would rather have 10 average cats suffer and die rather than have one average human is either not speciesism OR is speciesism but still is not "wrong" in the way that sexism and racism at least usually are "wrong". By your response earlier I think the former is the case, i.e. you think it is not speciesism to discriminate based species insofar as there is as a matter of fact a strict correlation between those qualities and species and its DNA.

***

I agree with you that it at least arguable that people are generally inconsistent when it comes to for instance valuing the lives of human infants more than that of a relatively smart animal like maybe a pig or even more compellingly a dolphin or sign-language speaking monkey. Indeed, I think we have discussed that in the topic eating babies. Although, I did explain some reasons in that topic why I am not fully convinced on that point.

In regards to the example of late-stage dementia, I bet people do value their lives less than the average adult human. Consider the cliche boat example: If 5 people were on a boat that for the sake of argument would certainly sink and kill them all unless they push 1 person overboard and there were 4 roughly typical adults from various races, genders and religions and 1 late-stage dementia patient, who do you think they would push off? It's not just that they value the lives of the 4 people over the 1, but that they have made a decision that 1 person's life is least valuable of the 5. We can also replace the fat man from the well-known train/trolly hypothetical with a fat dementia patient and make it so pushing him into the tracks would only save 1 life but the life of someone of good mental and physical health. I think a lot more people would be willing to push the dementia patient into the tracks than a mentally healthy person. So maybe most people aren't as inconsistent in this regard as alleged. This helps explain why animals aren't equal and why if it wasn't 4 average humans a dementia patient on the boat but 4 humans and a pig why they would sacrifice the pig to save the human lives.

***

Exactly, I didn't point this out explicitly, but my argument ignores the "act-omission" distinction, or at least it presupposes that positive duties exist, even if one may think they're weaker than negative duties. I know you dislike talk about duties, and in this case I do to, I'm just mentioning them because it's the official terminology of deontological and contractarian ethics. As you wisely point out later, people aren't really willing to say that it's totally okay for a wealthy person to never give to charity. Humans want to help. And if we want to help humans, and think everyone should be doing it, then by the principle of speciesism that also applies for animals.

[emphasis added]

Moral terms aside, I agree with the thrust of this. However, it also explains why I wouldn't and why I think most people wouldn't actively hurt humans to live up to my desire to actively help animals as opposed to choosing inaction such as robbing a terrified old lady at gun point giving her a painful and ultimately deadly heart-attack to save some animals from being tortured and killed. Not only do I value the lives of animals less than humans, but all things the same I would still choose inaction over an alternative that is slightly better in a utilitarian sense which requires my committing active harm.

So overall, I agree that I want to help animals -- but not as much as I want to help humans and in both the case of humans and animals not as much as I want to not actively hurt them respectively. Out of the four options listed in my previous post, helping animals in the way you have proposed is the last on the list. First I want to stop hurting humans, then help humans, then stop hurting animals (e.g. by doing things like becoming a vegetarian which I have), then help animals suffer from non-human harm. I'd sacrifice any of the latter to help achieve more of the former, such as kill 10 cats to feed my family on the desert island or giving no money to PETA and instead giving it all to a charity for world hunger of human children. It's that so-called "positive duty" being weaker than the so-called "negative duty" which might more explain how most people think since most people aren't amoralists like I but with me of course I don't think I actually have any such duty but rather subjective preferences and a amoral self-inflicted codes-of-conduct that I attempt to follow.

[Wowbagger]

I honestly see no issue here. Veganism & related ethical stances are about reducing human & animal suffering, within a carefully delineated sphere of human influence. Same as how medicine is about reducing suffering, or how pacificism is about reducing suffering to a point.

That seems like arguing by definition, and that's not very interesting for the philosophical discussion. Why should the ethics that imply veganism also imply that it's just man made suffering that is bad? This point needs to be argued for, not just assumed by definition.

None of these ethics imply that we must impose peace on all wild-animals or wipe our disease & infection in all wild-animals. Indeed, these ethics promote the exact opposite - leave the wild animals to be wild, because intervention will only cause more suffering (e.g. if you stop males fighting for females you will likely prevent proper reproduction & end the species. e.g. if you prevent carnivores from eating their prey, they will die-out, etc. etc.).

In the normative discussion, we needn't worry about potential side-effects. Let's assume that populations are taken care of etc..

By the way, those opposed, have you looked at the "seriousness of suffering" link I provided in the initial post? I know when I include so many links that people most likely don't use them. Here it goes again: http://www.utilitarian-essays.com/serio ... ering.html I recommend the last video about the hyenas and the wildebeest. Warning: It's pretty graphic.

If you're interested, Robin Attfield has done some interesting work in this area. He has developed a consequentialist and bio centric ethical theory. I know utilitarianism interests you and I am interested in consequentialist theories so checking him out might be worth it.

Thanks for the suggestion and the link. I've read a couple of texts on deep ecology and related positions some time ago, but to be honest I'm not very interested because I have dismissed this position long ago -- it just doesn't make sense to me. But I might revisit it, especially since you mention that someone consequentialized it. I'm actually very interesting in how this is done. I think there are interesting things (i.e. regarding consistency and commensurability) to be learned in studying non utilitarian consequentialist frameworks.

By the way, you might enjoy the third presentation here on "Environmentalism and Speciesism", starting at 43:15. It also mentions biocentrism. The speaker, Oscar Horta, is a leading authority on anti-speciesism and an ardent opponent of environmentalism. He isn't a utilitarian though, which shows that the argument I'm presenting doesn't only apply within the utilitarian framework. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... Gg3Hqp_kbk Towards the end of the talk there are interesting examples of instances where humans felt compelled to help wild animals even though it is against policy of i.e. wildlife parks.

This may also be of interest to insext and wanabe.

I agree that the well being of all animals count. And I agree with you that suffering counts as well. But one point that might be missing are the interests of predators. Their need to survive is a valid interest. I think you would agree with that. Another thing worth mentioning is the use of "cruelty". I'm not quite sure we can say that predators act cruelly. When we say an act is cruel, we usually mean that someone is undeservingly suffering at the hands of a moral agent. If a moral agent isn't involved, we would probably say that there is suffering, and this suffering would vary in degree. Since animals are not moral agents, I'm not quite sure there is any reason to describe the act of predators hunting prey as cruel, but I could be wrong. What constitutes a cruel act is definitely something I should think about more.

Yes, I do take into account the interests of predators. Sometimes one just can't make it right for everyone though. (For instance, people find it okay to restrict the freedom of violent psychopaths.) If predators can be reprogrammed to eat vegan food, or if micro-managing the planet with artificial intelligence bots and cultivated meat is possible, then predators won't be harmed at all. Another scenario one could consider is sterilizing them without violence. No individual predators interests would then be thwarted, yet still they'd go extinct.

Regarding the word "cruel", I didn't mean to imply the connotations you mention. I should've used a different word, I was thinking about "violent and horrible", "gruesome" would have fit better. I don't think predators are to blame, and as I said earlier, I want them to be happy too, if possible.

On the basis of suffering alone though, it is a difficult issue to resolve because both suffer. Prey will suffer if we allow predators to hunt, and predators suffer if we prevent them from hunting. To resolve this, you offer an argument based on compassionate biology.

Yes, the hope is that it works without the use of violence. That way the largest number of people with different ideologies could find reasons to support the project.

However, I think the ethical case still stands even if we'd have to kill all the predators. Even deontologists would agree that one is allowed to kill an attacking bear in self-defense, or in defense of other humans. If they accept that, it follows qua anti-speciesism that we should kill predators in order to spare prey from suffering.

Suffering is has a purpose, for every bit of scarcity that is created there is a surplus somewhere else.

Can't that particular function of suffering exist without the intrinsic hedonic awfulness? Again, it just seems to big of a price to pay to me, especially if the same things can be had without it.

Wowbagger, you suggest replacing sexism and I'll throw in racism too to explain what you mean to be condemning about speciesism. In one sense, the reason I have negative feelings and measurably oppositional reactions to various instances of sexism and racism and the reason I generally try to avoid engaging in sexism and racism myself (which like an alcoholic trying not to drink I think we can agree in our doubt that anyone is perfect at doing) is because I believe that the premise called upon by racism and sexism is factually false. Whatever the qualities are that we distinguish between people in a certain situation, I believe as a matter of fact that generally it is simply an incorrect assumption to believe race and gender correlate strictly enough to those qualities.

I wouldn't define racism as the view that race correlates with intelligence (or laziness etc.). That would be a scientific question, then. But it's an ethical question. Suppose race difference DID correlate strongly with intelligence, would that justify lynching dumb people in the streets? Not unless you also think it's okay to lynch the dumb people of your own race! I recommend to you the following essay by Singer, where he first introduced speciesism in analogy to racism: http://www.animal-rights-library.com/te ... nger02.htm That would clear up for you what exactly is meant by speciesism. He also shows in the essay why intelligence is completely irrelevant for the question whether a being's suffering should count. (I might as well spell it out here since it's a pretty short argument: Would a class system based on people's IQ scores, where the lowest scoring people are enslaved, be ethically defensible?)

In contrast, there are instances where discriminating on race and gender would be appropriate. For instance, an anti-rape self-defense class might be wiser to market to women.

In such a case it wouldn't be "discriminating" because there are relevant differences. But yeah, you are right to point this out, it's the same point I have pointed out in my two examples (fly vs. cow and predators vs. prey) in response to Bigstew.

The reason for my disagreement is that I believe it is sexist or racist because the qualities that in my opinions and/or in my beliefs of alleged facts that determine how valuable if at all a person's life is, to what degree and if ever it is tolerable to hurt and torture a certain person, and the extent of that persons ability to consciously suffer and the undesirability of that suffering do not correlate significantly to gender or race or the inherent DNA differences and manifestations of race and gender.

This sounds a bit complicated, but if I understand it correctly then that's exactly the point. Do you notice, then, that speciesism is a valid concept, and that it poses a huge problem in the world? If you think that babies deserve to not have to suffer, then the criteria you give for that will also apply to non human animals. (On a side note, I'm really freaking glad that humans aren't born self-aware and intelligent. It would be so damn difficult to convince people to not hurt animals.) If you accept the argument, animals for empirical reasons become the number one priority in ethics: http://masalladelaespecie.files.wordpre ... pecies.pdf

However, in the case of non-human animals, especially if exclude the few smartest with the most communication ability and/or seemingly most human-like consciousness like dolphins, I as a matter of fact believe that those qualities do correlate according to the fact of one being a member of a certain species and to the manifestations of the inherent differences in DNA.

Do you think it's okay to torture babies? Or people with severe mental impairements? I think it's okay and consistent if you think infanticide is okay but not the killing of adults, that's about Peter Singers position since he considers "ability to care about the future" as a relevant criterion in regard to killing. But for the mere fact of whether a being's well-being matters or not, does the being have to be intelligent?

1781, when people were racist, sexist savages, and when a certain guy by the name of Immanuel Kant wrote a whole lot of nonsense (Kant doesn't think babies matter), another guy, Jeremy Bentham, already had the crucial insight:

“It may one day come to be recognised that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason?, nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”

Depending on what one means by speciesist that could be speciesist in the sense that marketing a tan-salon to non-black people is racist or marketing an anti-rape class to women is sexist or criminalizing sex between a 40-year-old man and 10-year-old girl is ageist, but I don't think that is how you and I would use the term speciesist, sexist, racist or ageist because it seems we reserve those terms for when the discrimination is irrelevant and/or based on allegedly factually incorrect correlations.

No, that wouldn't be speciesism, I agree.

So in conclusion the fact that I as a rule I would rather have 10 average cats suffer and die rather than have one average human is either not speciesism OR is speciesism but still is not "wrong" in the way that sexism and racism at least usually are "wrong". By your response earlier I think the former is the case, i.e. you think it is not speciesism to discriminate based species insofar as there is as a matter of fact a strict correlation between those qualities and species and its DNA.

The question of death complicates the issue, because a consistent position that attributes value to preferences could come to the same conclusion. Since cats do have rudimentary future interests though, there would be some number of cats that would force you to reverse your judgement even on that position. And given that ten cats each would have to suffer, the number might even be less than 10, depending on the suffering. There is just no good reason whatsoever to weigh the suffering differently. And if you leave out the killing, the case would be crystal clear in favor of killing the human. It seems to me that your position is speciesist, in the bad, discriminatory sense.

In regards to the example of late-stage dementia, I bet people do value their lives less than the average adult human. Consider the cliche boat example: If 5 people were on a boat that for the sake of argument would certainly sink and kill them all unless they push 1 person overboard and there were 4 roughly typical adults from various races, genders and religions and 1 late-stage dementia patient, who do you think they would push off? It's not just that they value the lives of the 4 people over the 1, but that they have made a decision that 1 person's life is least valuable of the 5. We can also replace the fat man from the well-known train/trolly hypothetical with a fat dementia patient and make it so pushing him into the tracks would only save 1 life but the life of someone of good mental and physical health. I think a lot more people would be willing to push the dementia patient into the tracks than a mentally healthy person. So maybe most people aren't as inconsistent in this regard as alleged. This helps explain why animals aren't equal and why if it wasn't 4 average humans a dementia patient on the boat but 4 humans and a pig why they would sacrifice the pig to save the human lives.

I could agree with that since it's about killing. But things are very different when it comes to suffering. Also, note that you picked an extreme example where there is a life-threatening conflict of interests. There's no such thing in the case of ovo-vegetarians, lacto-vegetarians or meat eaters. In these cases suffering and death is inflicted even though there's no emergency situation whatsoever, as there are vegan food alternatives.

So overall, I agree that I want to help animals -- but not as much as I want to help humans and in both the case of humans and animals not as much as I want to not actively hurt them respectively. Out of the four options listed in my previous post, helping animals in the way you have proposed is the last on the list. First I want to stop hurting humans, then help humans, then stop hurting animals (e.g. by doing things like becoming a vegetarian which I have), then help animals suffer from non-human harm. I'd sacrifice any of the latter to help achieve more of the former, such as kill 10 cats to feed my family on the desert island or giving no money to PETA and instead giving it all to a charity for world hunger of human children. It's that so-called "positive duty" being weaker than the so-called "negative duty" which might more explain how most people think since most people aren't amoralists like I but with me of course I don't think I actually have any such duty but rather subjective preferences and a amoral self-inflicted codes-of-conduct that I attempt to follow.

I'm glad that you want to help animals. And I think what you truly want (haha, note how I'm avoiding ethical terms here!) is to want to help animals just as much as you want to help humans. I think there's an inconsistency in your values, as I argued regarding the relevance of suffering, and if you resolve the inconsistency you will find that helping animals is just as important as helping humans. Especially once you add considerations of priority and cost-efficiency. Take the case of donations: 2000$ for a human life and great life improvements for about 5 more people (that is, if you pick your charities perfectly; if you just pick an average charity it'll cost you dozens of times more), versus 100 days to 51 years of factory farm suffering prevented by a single dollar in the case of Vegan Outreach. Multiply that by 2000, and you have the comparison. Even if you value human suffering ten times more, it would still be much more important to focus on animals.

[wanabe]

Wowbagger,

Can't that particular function of suffering exist without the intrinsic hedonic awfulness? Again, it just seems to big of a price to pay to me, especially if the same things can be had without it.

It could, but that wouldn't be nature. There will always be suffering. Again it's not about your, or any persons perception; it's about the actuality of nature.

You are taking an extreme and making it more extreme, I applaud your efforts, but the backlash will be comparably extreme if we we to force all animals to be vegan and not suffer. This is an unnatural extreme, as a rule of thumb we should not test the limits of nature because if natures fails the test so do we. We may play god but we are still on this earth, not in the havens, thus we are not safe from the repercussions.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

The reason for my disagreement is that I believe it is sexist or racist because the qualities that in my opinions and/or in my beliefs of alleged facts that determine how valuable if at all a person's life is, to what degree and if ever it is tolerable to hurt and torture a certain person, and the extent of that persons ability to consciously suffer and the undesirability of that suffering do not correlate significantly to gender or race or the inherent DNA differences and manifestations of race and gender.

This sounds a bit complicated, but if I understand it correctly then that's exactly the point. Do you notice, then, that speciesism is a valid concept [...]

It's a valid and non-moot concept insofar as two species are being valued differently even though the alleged facts that determine how valuable if at all a creature's life is, to what degree and if ever it is tolerable to hurt and torture a certain creature, and the extent of that creature's ability to consciously suffer and the undesirability of that suffering do NOT correlate significantly to membership in the allegedly discriminated species. However, it is a moot and perhaps invalid concept insofar as the alleged facts that determine how valuable if at all a creature's life is, to what degree and if ever it is tolerable to hurt and torture a certain creature, and the extent of that creature's ability to consciously suffer and the undesirability of that suffering DO correlate significantly to membership in the allegedly discriminated species, which on Earth I believe to be the case to generally set humans apart from almost all if not all other animals with possible exception of some of the smartest and in terms of those qualities most human-like such as dolphins and maybe even primates.

A simple viewing of Planet of the Apes can provide a great example of this. If I found myself standing alongside Charleston Heston, the dramatic politics of the movie aside, I would presumably not find it anymore tolerable to torture or brutally murder one of those talking apes with roughly modern-human-level intelligence and sophisticated conscious identity than a human in real life. Even though speciesism may be a 'valid concept', insofar as most people feel similarly in that they would consider the hypothetical feelings of those talking, intelligent, human-level conscious apes, then speciesism is a relatively moot concept since most people are not speciesist and the reason people do not give real life animals equal consideration as the typical human is not because of speciesism but rather because of the difference between those animals and both humans and those hypothetical apes. If you don't like the Planet of the Apes example, change it to the hypothetical discovery of an island on which a slightly evolved intelligent descendents of the Neanderthal still live with human-like communication abilities and human-like mindfulness but who in biological terms still happen to be a different species that for the sake of argument are incapable of mating with homo sapiens.

[Do you see that speciesism] poses a huge problem in the world?

No. Even if we accept that animal suffering both human-caused and/or non-human-caused is a huge problem, I don't think speciesism is the usual cause for the reasons explained above.

If you think that babies deserve to not have to suffer, then the criteria you give for that will also apply to non human animals.

Perhaps, or perhaps not. I'm not convinced either way on this point for the reasons I explained in the topic Eating Babies.

But for the mere fact of whether a being's well-being matters or not, does the being have to be intelligent?

Subjectively speaking, I think the answer is yes. One of the qualities and factors that makes me value the life of something and empathize with it is intelligence, but that is not the only quality/factor. More importantly, it is not black and white. If creature A is significantly more intelligent than creature B and creature B is significantly more intelligent than creature C then that does not mean I only care about A or that I absolutely do not care about C, assuming C is still more intelligent than a rock. Remember, even an ant has some intelligence and thus some value however small or negligible in my heart, but all things the same an ant not as much as a gerbil, a gerbil not as much as a cat and a cat not as much as a typical human; and that's not speciesist because it is true that being a member of each of these species correlates strongly to one's level of intelligence both in absolute range and on average.

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. Also, though I am less certain on this point, as explained in the topic Eating Babies, I think a special kind of potential created by latency and/or temporary suspension via extenuating circumstances of certain qualities such as that in an unconscious, sleeping person unable to feel pain as a result of anesthesia is also a factor of that intrinsic quality that makes a life subjectively valuable to me. In practical terms, the list of what can make a creature's life or suffering more or less valuable or desirable in a more extrinsic sense is much longer and includes things like the creatures ability to survive independently without charity, to be a productive member of current civilization and to have a long, full life.

So in conclusion the fact that I as a rule I would rather have 10 average cats suffer and die rather than have one average human is either not speciesism OR is speciesism but still is not "wrong" in the way that sexism and racism at least usually are "wrong". By your response earlier I think the former is the case, i.e. you think it is not speciesism to discriminate based species insofar as there is as a matter of fact a strict correlation between those qualities and species and its DNA.

The question of death complicates the issue, because a consistent position that attributes value to preferences could come to the same conclusion. Since cats do have rudimentary future interests though, there would be some number of cats that would force you to reverse your judgement even on that position. And given that ten cats each would have to suffer, the number might even be less than 10, depending on the suffering. There is just no good reason whatsoever to weigh the suffering differently. And if you leave out the killing, the case would be crystal clear in favor of killing the human. It seems to me that your position is speciesist, in the bad, discriminatory sense.

First, let's remember that I do not believe it is "unethical" or "morally bad" to cause suffering. To let me understand your argument you have defined your statement, "speciesism is bad" as "speciesism is like sexism [and racism]". Anyway, let's put the death aside for a moment. I would rather torture 10 average cats than 1 average human or 1 hypothetical Ape from the movie Planet of the Apes; I'd rather do neither but for the sake of argument if I had to choose between the two. The reason is not based on their species per se -- as demonstrated by the Planet of the Apes hypothetical, but rather based on other factors such as their intelligence and the sophistication of their consciousness and the degree of their sentience as best estimated by me. Thus, no my position is not speciesist, in the so-called "bad", discriminatory sense. I'd also rather torture 11 sheep than 10 cats or 12 spiders than 11 sheep or 13 ants rather than 12 spiders. Again, this isn't speciesist because it is not based on their species per se but rather their intelligence which I am able to logically conclude as at least probable if not certain based on their species much like that self-defense class marketing predominately to women.

I could agree with [valuing the life of a late-stage dementia patient more than a typical human] since it's about killing. But things are very different when it comes to suffering.

Okay, then let's make it about suffering. If for some crazy reason I had to choose which person of a group of 5 had to be infected with a very painful illness that wouldn't quite kill them but make them suffer for a set period of time, and four were relatively typical adult humans from various races, genders and ages and the other was a late-stage dementia patient. I would choose the late-stage dementia patient. I think most people would choose similarly. I value his suffering, his desires (and more realistically speaking his life) less less than that of the typical person. Obviously, that isn't speciesism. 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.

I'm glad that you want to help animals. And I think what you truly want (haha, note how I'm avoiding ethical terms here!) is to want to help animals just as much as you want to help humans. I think there's an inconsistency in your values, as I argued regarding the relevance of suffering, and if you resolve the inconsistency you will find that helping animals is just as important as helping humans. Especially once you add considerations of priority and cost-efficiency. Take the case of donations: 2000$ for a human life and great life improvements for about 5 more people (that is, if you pick your charities perfectly; if you just pick an average charity it'll cost you dozens of times more), versus 100 days to 51 years of factory farm suffering prevented by a single dollar in the case of Vegan Outreach. Multiply that by 2000, and you have the comparison. Even if you value human suffering ten times more, it would still be much more important to focus on animals.

Suffering isn't all that matters to me, lest I might donate to suicide assistance programs. I actually value life itself and while I want animals suffering in factory farms to not suffer and I want starving children to not die in the misery of world hunger, I more want to save the child than the animal because I value the child's life and child's desire's more than that of the animal, not out of speciesism but because of other qualities that I believe happen to correlate to the fact of one being a human or non-human animal in the real world such as but not limited to intelligence.

I'd much rather spend $X to permanently save a human child's life than give it to a hospital to use an unnecessarily anesthesia and pain medication or give it to a charity attempting to reduce the amount animals suffer in factory farms or least of all but more relevant to this forum topic suffer at the actions of non-human predators in the wild. Once none of the 18,000 children currently dying each day from world hunger are saved, and the adults and then all the people dying from lack of clean water or preventable disease or other aspects of poverty, and once there does not seem to be much of anything left to do on the saving human lives front such as by investing in research into disease cures, then I would have to consider in financial terms the dollar-by-dollar ratio of animal suffering prevented by the charities you mention versus for instance a charity that provides unnecessary anesthetic and pain medication to hospitals into the ratio of how much more I care about humans than animals since only then it would seem only suffering would matter to me. Even you seem to agree, such as with my lifeboat example of the late-stage dementia patient, that when the value of lives and death comes into play that the numbers are skewed by the complex factors that make human life so much way more valuable than animal life. Still, even at that point when the issue of death is taken out and 0 people are dying from world hunger and such, I still care more about humans than animals; thus the vegan charity would have to save not just a few more but rather a lot more animals from suffering per dollar than the human anesthetic and pain medication charity because I still care more about humans even though I do care about animals.

If my family was stranded on a desert island and knew we would be rescued in a few weeks and knew we could survive without eating for those weeks but in great pain and unhealthiness, I would jump at the chance to brutally slaughter numerous animals such as a kitty cat or bunny rabbit even for some reason that animal would suffer greatly while I for some reason had to slowly killed it as opposed to quickly. I would much rather many, many animals suffer than my wife or human children (3 people) feel hunger pain. Say it wasn't my wife and kids I was stuck with but some other helpless adult stranger and two other kids. I still would kill the animals to feed them. I happen to be a vegetarian but that's a choice made of 2 factors: (1) how convenient it is to be a vegetarian which is not intrinsic but circumstantial, (2) the ratio of estimated suffering/death imposed on animals compared to the moderate inconvenience to me to be a vegetarian. I have determined that in the modern civilized society in which we live with my economic conditions it is actually very easy to be a vegetarian, only a slight inconvenience. Additionally, especially with the general propensity of factory farming and particularly inhumane practices that could be avoided in meat production, the suffering imposed is great. The point is that I do care about animals and I do not like to kill them or cause them suffering. But I care a lot more about humans. A lot more. With the exception maybe of some of the smartest most humanly-conscious few like dolphins. That's not speciesist because it's based on the qualities that happen to distinguish animals from humans in the real world such as intelligence and sophistication of consciousness.

[Wowbagger]

However, it is a moot and perhaps invalid concept insofar as the alleged facts that determine how valuable if at all a creature's life is, to what degree and if ever it is tolerable to hurt and torture a certain creature, and the extent of that creature's ability to consciously suffer and the undesirability of that suffering DO correlate significantly to membership in the allegedly discriminated species, which on Earth I believe to be the case to generally set humans apart from almost all if not all other animals with possible exception of some of the smartest and in terms of those qualities most human-like such as dolphins and maybe even primates.

(I'm assuming that we're only talking about suffering here, not about killing.) I still don't see why smartness is relevant for whether we want to avoid inflict suffering on a being or not. It seems you think personhood increases the seriousness of suffering in some way, and that you also think potentiality matters. I'll get to these two later, but before that, I'd like to bring up a thought experiment that's supposed to change your view on this:

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? (The "another race" part isn't necessary to my analogy, but I included it because it prevents empathy, I'm assuming that people in that hypothetical society are quite comfortable with the practice because those babies aren't "theirs".) Or Epsilons from Brave New World, would it be okay to exploit them, assuming they're not smarter than pigs? If I'm not misrepresenting your statements (and please tell me if I am), I think I must conclude that you would in that hypothetical society act as I describe. Does that make you feel uncomfortable? (BTW, I value consistency and I won't think it says anything bad about you if you bite the bullet, as a negative utilitarian I've bitten extremely counterintuitive bullets, I'm just wondering whether this is really your opinion, with all its consequences, or whether you might want to reconsider after thinking it through thoroughly.)

If you think that babies deserve to not have to suffer, then the criteria you give for that will also apply to non human animals.

Perhaps, or perhaps not. I'm not convinced either way on this point for the reasons I explained in the topic Eating Babies.

As I said, I fail to see why personhood should matter for suffering. I can see how one could attach a "right to life" to it, but for suffering? Some people who believe in rights say things like "rights come with duties, and animals can't have duties, so they can't have rights". One could apply this to babies too (but these people usually don't do that, which is really annoying. I don't remember who it was, maybe Russell, who said that "the rarest of all human qualities is consistency".), but you don't seem to believe in rights so that probably isn't your reasoning. Why do you differentiate between the suffering of differently intelligent beings? --> After reading on, I notice that your arguments seems to boil down to your intuitions. Do the thoughts I raised about the hypothetical baby-farming society maybe call your intuitions into question?

Even if I grant you that intelligence matters for suffering (which I heavily disagree with), you still need the case for potentiality to include babies (at least those without genetic defects) in your consideration. I looked at the Eating Babies thread again, at some point you admitted that your reasons are quite ad hoc, as a defense of your intuitions. I noticed that I hadn't replied to your last post there, but essentially you were just rephrasing what you said before. I think your argument is unconvincing, especially if we add biases.

More importantly, it is not black and white. If creature A is significantly more intelligent than creature B and creature B is significantly more intelligent than creature C then that does not mean I only care about A or that I absolutely do not care about C, assuming C is still more intelligent than a rock.

I'm quoting this to point out that I have acknowledged this, I don't intend to misrepresent your views. You don't want to say that suffering is totally irrelevant when it happens in dumb beings like i.e. chicken. But I'm not letting you off the hook here, this is a dangerous slippery slope. People who think it inconvenient to stop buying eggs will just put an arbitrary limit to the relevance of chicken so they just about get to go on with their customs. If the suffering doesn't count fully, it might as well not be counted, as far as most practical implications are concerned.

First, let's remember that I do not believe it is "unethical" or "morally bad" to cause suffering. To let me understand your argument you have defined your statement, "speciesism is bad" as "speciesism is like sexism [and racism]". Anyway, let's put the death aside for a moment. I would rather torture 10 average cats than 1 average human or 1 hypothetical Ape from the movie Planet of the Apes; I'd rather do neither but for the sake of argument if I had to choose between the two. The reason is not based on their species per se -- as demonstrated by the Planet of the Apes hypothetical, but rather based on other factors such as their intelligence and the sophistication of their consciousness and the degree of their sentience as best estimated by me. Thus, no my position is not speciesist, in the so-called "bad", discriminatory sense. I'd also rather torture 11 sheep than 10 cats or 12 spiders than 11 sheep or 13 ants rather than 12 spiders. Again, this isn't speciesist because it is not based on their species per se but rather their intelligence which I am able to logically conclude as at least probable if not certain based on their species much like that self-defense class marketing predominately to women.

I acknowledge that as well, so it's the case that our disagreement does not lie on whether speciesism is acceptable or not. You are not endorsing speciesism in your reasoning. We just disagree on the relevance of both sentience and potential in regard to suffering. If I grant you your position on these two, your above reasoning is consistent. However, it would look quite arbitrary regarding the numbers. How many cats would you torture instead of one human? More than ten, also more than thirty? Is there are formula? Is x amount of human suffering always more important than any number of cats who each suffer x amount of pain (but not more, or even if more)? Or is it just about "what feels right, given informed intuitions?" I said you aren't endorsing speciesism, but you might still be influenced by speciesism in the sense that your intuitions are speciesist. The extent to which your arguments seem far-fetched and ad hoc in regard to human infants seem to indicate this to me, no offense.

I could agree with [valuing the life of a late-stage dementia patient more than a typical human] since it's about killing. But things are very different when it comes to suffering.

Okay, then let's make it about suffering. If for some crazy reason I had to choose which person of a group of 5 had to be infected with a very painful illness that wouldn't quite kill them but make them suffer for a set period of time, and four were relatively typical adult humans from various races, genders and ages and the other was a late-stage dementia patient. I would choose the late-stage dementia patient. I think most people would choose similarly. I value his suffering, his desires (and more realistically speaking his life) less less than that of the typical person. Obviously, that isn't speciesism. 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.

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?

I'd much rather spend $X to permanently save a human child's life than give it to a hospital to use an unnecessarily anesthesia and pain medication or give it to a charity attempting to reduce the amount animals suffer in factory farms or least of all but more relevant to this forum topic suffer at the actions of non-human predators in the wild. Once none of the 18,000 children currently dying each day from world hunger are saved, and the adults and then all the people dying from lack of clean water or preventable disease or other aspects of poverty, and once there does not seem to be much of anything left to do on the saving human lives front such as by investing in research into disease cures, then I would have to consider in financial terms the dollar-by-dollar ratio of animal suffering prevented by the charities you mention versus for instance a charity that provides unnecessary anesthetic and pain medication to hospitals into the ratio of how much more I care about humans than animals since only then it would seem only suffering would matter to me.

This seems to suggest that you value personhood infinitely more. At least in this case, you can adduce the issue of life vs. death again, which makes it more difficult for me to convince you. But you'd have to say why death is bad for persons, and if you (the most sensible appraoch imo) say it is because of (future related) desires / preferences being thwarted, then you'd have to acknowledge that animals have preferences as well, at least the preference not to suffer, and in some cases many more. Then you'd have something to compare, and valuing human children infinitely more would not be consistent. Given the evolutionary continuum (for which it doesn't matter whether evolution actually happened, a hypothetical continuum would be just as fine), it seems impossible to justify valuing it infinitely more, unless you believe in souls or something like that.

Even you seem to agree, such as with my lifeboat example of the late-stage dementia patient, that when the value of lives and death comes into play that the numbers are skewed by the complex factors that make human life so much way more valuable than animal life. Still, even at that point when the issue of death is taken out and 0 people are dying from world hunger and such, I still care more about humans than animals; thus the vegan charity would have to save not just a few more but rather a lot more animals from suffering per dollar than the human anesthetic and pain medication charity because I still care more about humans even though I do care about animals.

It isn't "just a few more", it *is* a lot more. When it comes to reducing suffering, the best animal charity is nearly 1000 times more effective than the best human charity. I cited the estimates above.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

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.)

***

More importantly, it is not black and white. If creature A is significantly more intelligent than creature B and creature B is significantly more intelligent than creature C then that does not mean I only care about A or that I absolutely do not care about C, assuming C is still more intelligent than a rock.

I'm quoting this to point out that I have acknowledged this, I don't intend to misrepresent your views. You don't want to say that suffering is totally irrelevant when it happens in dumb beings like i.e. chicken. But I'm not letting you off the hook here, this is a dangerous slippery slope. People who think it inconvenient to stop buying eggs will just put an arbitrary limit to the relevance of chicken so they just about get to go on with their customs. If the suffering doesn't count fully, it might as well not be counted, as far as most practical implications are concerned.

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.

***

However, it would look quite arbitrary regarding the numbers. How many cats would you torture instead of one human? More than ten, also more than thirty? Is there are formula? Is x amount of human suffering always more important than any number of cats who each suffer x amount of pain (but not more, or even if more)?

Yes, human actions are usually not so mathematical. I believe the science of economics shows that fact -- even when one accepts the 'rational consumer' idea of the going economic models. That is, people make the rational choice mathematically speaking based on estimations generally for the sake of time-management rather than on exact amounts. For instance, rather than whip out a calculator and a list of exact prices from each grocery store, people usually just take a rough estimate of whether the gallon is being sold at reasonable price. It's like guessing the number of jelly beans in jar; it's an estimation. Someone who has the time and incentive to count the number of jelly beans will be able to give an exact number to use for calculations. But if someone offers to trade you a jar of jelly beans for a big bag of clementines, you may base your value of each group based on an estimate of the number of beans in the jar and fruits in the bag rather than take the time to carefully count them out which you then rationally determine which choose to make based on a calculation using the estimates (i.e. which bag is worth more in total by multiplying the known value of each item by the estimated number of items); this would be different than someone who is a non-rational consumer whose behavior is not mathematical not because of a so-called good faith estimate but because the person doesn't even try to behave in a calculated manner.

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?

***

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?

You are right that there is a certain theoretical threshold at which the torture against the hypothetical demented person -- or non-human animal -- would if increased reach an equilibrium with the non-increased level of torture being done to a normal adult human. For example, perhaps stabbing the demented person 10 times with a needle is equal to stabbing a non-demented, typical person 1 time and maybe stabbing a monkey 11 times is equal to stabbing a normal person 1 time. 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.

For the sake of clarity, from now on in this topic I will attempt to use the phrase outward suffering to refer to suffering measured by the acts done such that for example the outward suffering of stabbing a late-stage demented person or gerbil with a pin is roughly equal to the outward suffering of stabbing a typical human adult with a pin whereas the outward suffering of stabbing 2 demented persons is roughly double that of stabbing one typical human adult. I suppose, thus, that considered, inward suffering refers to the considered experience of pain by a creature, such that for example the considered, inward suffering of a late-stage demented patient or animal facing the same amount of outward suffering, e.g. number of stabs with a needle, as a typical person results in less considered, inward suffering for the late-stage demented person. 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.

This seems to suggest that you value personhood infinitely more. At least in this case, you can adduce the issue of life vs. death again, which makes it more difficult for me to convince you. But you'd have to say why death is bad for persons, and if you (the most sensible appraoch imo) say it is because of (future related) desires / preferences being thwarted, then you'd have to acknowledge that animals have preferences as well, at least the preference not to suffer, and in some cases many more. Then you'd have something to compare, and valuing human children infinitely more would not be consistent. Given the evolutionary continuum (for which it doesn't matter whether evolution actually happened, a hypothetical continuum would be just as fine), it seems impossible to justify valuing it infinitely more, unless you believe in souls or something like that.

I'm not sure that I value personhood combined with human-level intelligence infinitely more. Rather, I think I just value it a whole lot more. In practice, it may have same effective results, yes since I will never have the chance in practice to choose between de-limbing without anesthetic one typical human versus a googol of chickens let alone multiple googols of chickens which would still be infinitely away from infinite. Also, remember that I was excluding the smartest few of the animals like dolphins and at least many primates.

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

When I say that being a vegetarian causes me a slight inconvenience I mean that it causes me in a sense a minor amount of suffering or more correctly it costs me a certain tiny degree of personal happiness. In my estimation, that tiny amount of suffering/unhappiness is worth the drastic conditions leading to eventual slaughter it causes for animals. In my estimation, the lives or outward suffering of 10 pigs is not even close to worth my life or 1/10th of the outward suffering caused to me; but the choice to be vegetarian does not threaten my life or cause nearly as much outward suffering on me to the degree that in my estimation it is comparable even adjusting for my selfishness to the animal's welfare. So no, I do not value human-like personhood infinitely more just a whole whole whole lot more. If I was to create a false dichotomy and say animals either count equally or not all as quoted earlier in this post, then I would not count animals at all and not be a vegetarian in real, practical everyday life. Luckily for some animals, my thinking isn't so black and white as that. While I only consider their lives or outward suffering to only be equivalent to a tiny fraction of the equal outward suffering in a normal human, I do consider that at least in practical situations where it does in fact come up.