Utilitarianism, Animal Rights, Kooky Ideas About How People Relate to Things, Etc.

(Continuation of a wildly inappropriate discussion in the Random Thoughts thread. I cast summon Nute SuperJay OZ 4.0 jerri blank Ozzo Jibble Kalle TheTrunkDr QuantumBit Creole Ned shift6 Lhowon Rot U.S. Millie Ingmar Elyscape JoshV Aeon221 AaronSofaer whew that's a lot of summons hope I got everyone.)

This post really confounds me. On the one hand, it seems completely clear at this point that you're definitely a robot, but on the other hand a robot should have a better grasp of logic than this. But here, I'll help you out: the first and most basic reason that it's not "simple logic" is that you moved the goalposts. While it is true that loving someone is, in a sense, based on what you get out of them (although this occurs at a brain chemistry level, which isn't really what you're talking about so you're not really right about that either), that isn't what you originally said or what jerri blank objected to. Rather, that post used the phrase "care about," which is a completely different thing. I care about billions of people I've never met and from whom I will never extract any utility at all. I care about people who haven't yet been born and who won't be until I'm long dead. Utility has nothing to do with it.

First like!

AHA! But don't you feel good about caring? Therefore caring does provide utility. AHA!

In calling Nute a nihilist, I think I bypassed a lot of intermediary stages that you also did in calling Nute a robot. A lot of ideas seem to boil down to the idea that life runs on some level of "force" cause and resultant effect, which is at its base a simple imperative based effect. Some people end up as nihilists at this, feeling that free will and choice is merely an illusion. However the workings of this illusion isn't known, and anything that can't be charted, can't be known, so therefore the illusion is the reality. And my own philosophy on life is a run-off of what Nute is getting towards. I believe in hedonism. I think that the purpose of life is happiness and pleasure. The corollary is that true happiness and pleasure can only be achieved in others' happiness and pleasure. And because other people are a variable we are unable to account for, free will and choice exists. Other people are my reason to be happy as much as they are the reason I have the freedom to be happy.

Edit: And as Mr. T. Pratchett would say, there's always quantum. But I don't understand any of that.

Look, buddy, I'm an egoistic epicurean solipsistic wannabe-rationalist sort-of-utilitarian, and if there was a medicine that cured all forms of cancer but could only be extracted from [insert horrific thing that must be done to an animal here], that would not be a difficult choice for me to make.

But absent that, yeah, I give a fuck about things, creatures, and people.

I'm sorry but I'm not particularly interested in engaging with what's either an incredibly effective bout of trolling on the part of Nute or an impressively infantile take on the already reductive philosophy of utilitarianism.

Neither is particularly exciting and honestly even I have better things to do.

babby's first tautology itt.

I suspect it's actually neither, at least not intentionally. I don't think Nute is trolling (though if you are bravo, Nute!) but I don't that prior to the discussion Nute had consciously subscribed to utilitarianism.

I think many people at some point in their life think about fate vs free will and consider the possibility of determinism without having been explicitly exposed to the philosophy. I suspect Nute came to his views in a similar manner but never dug deeper into them or thought about any of the specific implications of the philosophy. It seemed right to him and ultimately not that important to his life.

I think this goes back to my opinion that motivations are irrelevant. I'm going to make some assumptions here and if I'm wrong (or worse, personally offensive) feel free to correct me.

You care about people in the general sense, meaning (I assume) that you want their needs taken care of and wish for their state of affairs to be a pleasant one. I can't guess as to your motivation for this, whether it's based in religion or humanism or a personal ethical code. But I can assume that you factor in their potential needs and happiness into the big picture of your decisions.

I'm not that different - my motivation, irrelevant as it may be, is that I believe each of those people has value to someone, even if it's not me. I don't personally care about those people, I don't feel anything about them at all. But it's important to me that someone does, and I feel that means something. A side example - posit a species of endangered tortoise. This tortoise doesn't secrete a chemical that cures bladder cancer, its shell isn't prized as decoration, it's not even good eating. Personally, this tortoise means absolutely nothing to me and I have no investment whatsoever if it goes extinct. Now, a friend of mine comes up to me and asks me to donate five bucks to a fund that will help save the tortoise. I don't care one whit about the tortoise, but the fact that helping out will make my friend happy makes it a worthwhile proposition for me. I don't think it matters in the end why I put the five bucks in the box - the end result is that five bucks is five bucks, and my "profit" is that my friend is happy, which is what I care about.

You called me a robot - I'm guessing that's meant to be derogatory because I try to root my own actions in some form of reason or rationality rather than gut emotional response. I don't like acting on gut emotional response - it's imprecise, it's undependable, it's random, there's no merit to it. I still do it all too often and I hate it every single time. So if I come across as unemotional or rigid or robotic, it's because all too often the other option in my brain is swinging to the other extreme and shouting FUCK YOU YOU'RE WRONG YOU FUCKING MORONS AAAAAAAAAH! - which accomplishes nothing.

And yes, I know the world isn't matters of extremes, everything isn't cleanly black-and-white, not everything is an all-or-nothing proposition. I know that, but knowing something and being able to live by it aren't always automatically conflated.

U.S. Millie - you called me a nihilist, and I think that's slightly inaccurate. Yes, I do believe everything is based at the most basic level on cause and effect. A therefore B. I think this is the fundamental underpinning of the universe and all of everything. For every B there must be an A, even if it is not immediately evident. What the A is may not always be relevant to me, but I find it important to acknowledge that there is an A. But in my experience, A therefore B doesn't automatically mean A then always B. Life has too many other variables. Those tend to piss me off a lot.

tl;dr - I'm not necessarily an asshole, I just want things to make sense and I get irrationally angry when they don't. Including me.

This is not a winnable argument, because it's a restatement of the age-old philosophical argument that all human thoughts are inherently selfish. Either you believe, like Nute, that even "altruistic" acts are selfish because yourmotivation for doing them is that being nice makes you feel good, or you don't believe that, like most people. The Nutes of the world think the rest of us are deluding ourselves, and the rest of us think the Nutes are somewhat frighteningly sociopathic and incapable of experiencing "normal" human emotion.

Either way, discussion can go nowhere.

I can understand that. However you're undermining yourself in saying A doesn't always equal B. You're just thinking in too small a parameter for A. Even if A is made up of trillions of small Xs it is still definable (although this is where infinity would have a problem.) So all those components result in a single A that causes with certainty B. But if A is complex to the point of never being able to understand it (short of singularities) then the fact that A results in B is essentially meaningless, it can't be defined therefore it's irrelevant.

And then you get onto ideas about how the universe's purpose is to understand itself, and figure out why it exists. And if it does ever understand itself it will cease to exist. And then you get onto theories of Xen and loads of other philosophies and quasi-religious ideas. And the really fun idea I heard about a year ago about how everything is understandable and it's just a matter of time versus knowledge (excluding entropy.) And if we have infinite computing power, we will be able to create infinitely complex simulations that are universes unto themselves within a greater universe. And if this is possible, it has already happened, and we are simply a universe running alongside an infinitely powerful computer alongside an infinite number of infinitely complex universes, and all of us will eventually reach a point of infinitely powerful computing where we create an infinite amount of universe simulations running within our infinitely complex computers, etc. And this has to and can't happen because it's infinite, and has to happen.

Edit: Look at me! Not even a first year university module in philosophy and I sound like someone who has taken a first year university module in philosophy. And even that's giving me a lot of credit.

In short, I dunno, but this stuff sounds fun. I'm sure someone with a physics PhD will be along to laugh at me soon, and shortly after someone with a mathematics degree will be along to laugh at the physics PhD.

I think everyone agrees that acting in the greater good is a good thing, right? As to the existence of altruism, I don't think it's sociopathic to say that doing good feels good. Acknowledging that isn't a bad thing.

Right, but most people aren't thinking consciously about getting a psychological bump as the reason for doing good.

Aren't they? I think that if people honestly assessed philanthropic motives, there's always a degree of self-interest or self-preservation there.

I disagree. They both imply the same set of actions, and therefore are equivalent and interchangeable, and any distinction between them is meaningless.

Well that's something I feel too, although it isn't the only reason I care about things. But given that you've said (if I haven't misunderstood you) that this is coming from the notion that all relationships are based essentially on self-interest, why do you care about that?

Well maybe this is the answer to the above. That's not really the same as caring about something because it means something to somebody though--in this case, what you care about is your relationship with your friend, for whatever reason, so there's your utility. But what I'm talking about are people and things that will never pay me off in the future, however indirectly. What are your feelings on those?

And to play Devil's Nute's Advocate here, I suppose you could say that even though you know that the vast majority of people and things in the world to which you are not directly connected will never have utility for you, you never know which ones so you should care about them all. That's a real bad value proposition though, caring about billions of things because ten of them might pay you back someday. I preemptively reject that as a reason that people care about things.

It was more a joke than an insult. The more serious criticism was the other part: that you aren't arguing very logically at all. Which doesn't really jibe with this paragraph. I think if you take a step back, you can probably even see it yourself in all the exceptions and redefinitions you end up coming up with response to peoples' objections to what you're saying. You're basically starting from this idea about how the world works and trying to make things fit with it, and that's pretty much the opposite of logical argument.

Nute the point of the mug was that by the point of view you are espousing, one's only duty is to oneself, and that duty is fulfilled by behaving toward others in rational accord with their utility or value as perceived by the self. Duty free, except to the self.

No, it isn't a bad thing. Doing good does feel good, but that's not the only reason people do good and it's certainly not the only reason people care about things that don't affect them. You only have to think of one thing, large or small, that you care about that doesn't affect you directly and that you also haven't taken any action to support to prove that. And if you don't have any of those, take my word for it that other people do.

Okay, that makes some sense. Now, a serious question: is that a bad thing?

So, I wasn't in on the back-discussion that preceeded this, but I have a pretty basic disagreement with a rationalist/first principles approach that I think bears on (ie disagrees with) Nute's perspective, even though I'm a (more or less) rational materialist if I had to summarize my philosophical views:

Caring - about loved ones, other people, animals, things, or concepts - existed prior to rationality. That isn't to deprecate the importance of (rational) thought in conjunction/interaction with emotion. But starting out as if we began as cartesian information processors sprung from Athena's brow misses that.

This article about young babies "caring about justice" in a primitive way is relevant. Upshot from that, as far as my philsophy/science-of-mind guesswork goes, is evolutionarily and developmentally, we got/get our nobler sentiments before we got/get logical minds that make them more complex. Which, for me at least, is vaguely heartening, compared to some horrible "we just do it because hedonism" explanation.

I don't mind that there are genetic reasons for savvy genes to be carried by altruistic organisms, because I'm the organism, not the gene. And at any rate, the interaction of these traits with the (also rather accidental, as far as my understanding of evolution goes) conscious mind leads to lots of random non-self interested behaviors including stuff like non-kin altruism.

I wouldn't say a bad thing. It just doesn't fit my view of the world.

I think the disagreement comes in when you try to define 'the greater good'. My definition does not prioritize humans over all other creatures, for example.

It is if you don't take my corollary. That they only way to be truly happy is by being with other people who are truly happy. And the only way for that to happen is for everyone to be truly happy.

It's like an argument I was part of with a quite religious person. She maintained that anyone that got to heaven would have true happiness bestowed upon them, unbelievers wouldn't get to heaven and believers would. The argument was that if a believer went to heaven and their unbeliever spouse didn't, how could they be truly happy (taking the idea that the believer would never be happy without their spouse.) I think this applies to humanity. It is impossible to achieve true, 100% happiness without having A.) A medical condition or B.) without the people around you (for all lengths and aspects of "around you") also being 100%.

This neatly fits into my idea that people are intrinsically good (it is a truism of humanity that we want to be happy, or seek utility as you put it.) And it is the mistakes people have made in their assumptions and logic in seeking happiness that have resulted in people being unhappy. Whether those mistakes result in the individual being unhappy, or others around them.

Fair enough. My worldview does, because for better or worse, it is humans and humans alone that can change the course of the planet and beyond. Dolphins will not create machines to travel on land and colonize inland seas, elephants will not figure out how to mine helium from the upper atmosphere (I had to fit it in, you know it), et cetera.

I think that's a matter of priorities - not everyone has the happiness of others as an intrinsic goal (which is not to say that it is not a noble goal, I think it's a wonderful one). Out of curiosity, how would you view a hermit who chooses an ascetic life away from the rest of humanity? Can such a person be truly happy?

I haven't kept that abreast of animal rights stuff but IIRC someone who was interested was telling me recently that for people like me happy with ad-hoc philosophical expedients, "(capacity for) suffering" was a pretty sensible one for thinking about moral conduct vis a vis animals.

And this is a moral quality how, exactly?

I hold progress as a laudable goal, over that of stagnation. Animals cannot progress (evolution and adaptation notwithstanding), or at least not at the rate humans do. If you're asking me why I think humans should be considered as the most important life form on the planet, I would state that we've earned it, and until the whales voice an objection I think we're pretty much solid on that point.

That being said - I accept the validity of alternate viewpoints. I can understand (although I do not share) the view that humanity is of no more import than the armadillos or the peccaries. So long as that world view does not lead those who hold it to take actions that have a direct negative impact on humanity (i.e. "Let's pour rotavirus into the reservoir to kill off ten million people so that the spotted owl can recolonize the area!") then I have no real issue with it.

I'm not seeing the relevance, all of that is still possible even if every single person on the planet became a vegan.

I have heard arguments that worldwide veganism is not ecologically feasible or sustainable (And I am looking to try and find where I read this - I can't remember if it was an article or a conversation, so I am not quoting it as gospel truth) and there are certainly a lot of proponents that claim a vegan lifestyle is less ecologically damaging than the current methods of animal production.

Morally, however, I do not see a problem with using animals as a food resource. I can certainly understand the reasoning behind moral veganism, but I don't feel that we have an obligation to stop eating meat any more than we have an obligation to stop eating vegetables. Animals, in my world view, are a resource.

I have no idea what the relative "importance" of species has to do with the moral treatment they're entitled to, but for what it's worth it's empirically true that very few animal species are less important to their ecosystems than humans are.

If you think animals can't progress, you never tried to train a Schnauzer from puppyhood. At this rate, my dog will be starring in his own sitcom in another couple of years.

Not really the point, the point is that technological progress doesn't require the destruction of other animals and that being capable of technological advancement doesn't necessarily endow humans with a greater right to existence.

I agree, the morality comes from how the animal is treated while it's alive, killed and what's done with it afterwards. Also how we manage a species on the larger scale. This however is irrelevant to the who has a greater right to exist. We eat them because we're the top of the food chain, not because we have some greater defacto right to existence. The wolf has no more right to exist than the rabbit, both serve a purpose.

I think that it does endow us with greater rights - or at least it gives us the right to be the decision makers by dint of the fact that we can make the decisions. I do agree that it does not necessitate the pointless destruction of other forms of life (so that we can include things like slash-and-burn agriculture and deforestation in the argument) but there's a definite cost-analysis that needs to be taken into account.

To that end, I have tried to make a lot of my purchases when it comes to food support sustainability and more ethical methods. I could probably do more on that score, though. Thanks for the guilt trip, DICK.

How did i get summoned for this slapfight? I think all I did was pile on with one of the X -Y = Nute equations. It would probably make for a more fun thread if this thread consisted entirely of forum member equations.

Do you enjoy making it difficult to have a philosophical conversation? What food you decide to purchase has little to do with discussing rights of existence. The point isn't to influence your habits or inflict guilt, it's to discuss your particular set of beliefs.

The problem with this is that I don't think "top of the food chain" really translates into "we can do whatever we want," given that our capabilities extend far beyond those of other apex predators. Nobody but us wants to do anything with stuff lower on the food chain besides eat it or ignore it. And that's what this whole discussion is really about, right? Establishing a moral limit to our actions because "anything goes" is unconscionable even though that's exactly the (non-)boundary that nature has set for us.

(Question + Self-answer - Content) * Suggestion for joke thread = JoshV

Sorry, I was mostly agreeing with you in principle and trying to be humorous.

I'm curious - not trying to denigrate your views here - but what's your basis for believing that other animals have the same rights of existence that humans do? Is it a "why should they not?" reason? (I have no problem if that's it, I'm just interested)

Our intelligence is quirk of evolution not a granting of absolute power given to us by nature. We are a product of nature and our intelligence does give us a greater control over nature than any other species but that doesn't endow rights over those other species. What it does is impose responsibility, we have the power to destroy this planet and it's our responsibility to make sure we don't. All of nature is part of a single system, we've been able to step outside of that system to a degree but that doesn't give us the right to destroy it, doing so would ultimately destroy ourselves anyway.

Your position ultimately boils down to might makes right, which is a philosophy I cannot condone. You're ultimately advocating that the strong have the right to destroy the weak. The ultimate extrapolation of this line of thought would extend to people as well and make actions such as genocide morally acceptable as the strong are simply eliminating the weak.

You're taking the position that there's an equality between humans and animals - our intelligence may be a quirk of evolution but its source is irrelevant to its existence. We are greater than the animals, that's a simple fact, regardless of how we became so. You cannot have rights without responsibility, that much I agree with - but I also believe the converse to be true. When you accept a responsibility, you are entitled to the rights that come along with it. We have the ability - and yes, the right - to use animals as a resource. We also have the responsibility to do so ethically and humanely. Whether that's as beasts of burden, educational/aesthetic exhibits in zoos, or as a food course - we should do so as humanely as possible.

I think you're arguing to extremes here - in no way is butchering a cow for steak tantamount to genocide, nor does it necessarily invoke the slippery-slope argument.