Twelve years after stepping down from the editorship of BBS I have accepted an invitation from the Humane Society of the United States to serve as editor in chief of Animal Sentience, a new journal just about to be launched that is devoted to understanding and protecting the feelings of other species. I hope the findings reported in this journal will help inspire us to “do the right thing to the right kind of thing” so that we can at last put an end to the greatest moral shame of our own species – and the greatest agony of all the others.
Leadbeater, Simon (2019) In Defence of Tears. Ecological Citizen.
Wiebers, David and Feigin, Valery (2020) What the COVID-19 crisis is telling humanity. Animal Sentience 30(1)
Summary: The planet is in a global health emergency exacting enormous medical and economic tolls. It is imperative for us as a society and species to focus and reflect deeply upon what this and other related human health crises are telling us about our role in these increasingly frequent events and about what we can do to prevent them in the future.
Cause: It is human behavior that is largely responsible for the alarming increase in lethal zoonotic diseases that jump the species barrier from animals to humans: (1) hunting, capture, and sale of wild animals for human consumption, particularly in live-animal markets; (2) massive overcrowding of animals for human consumption in stressful and unhygienic industrial “factory farm” environments, a major direct cause of new disease outbreaks and mounting antibiotic resistance; (3) vast numbers of wildlife species threatened with extinction from habitat destruction and incursion.
Action: The trade and consumption of wild animals in live-animal markets should be banned in all countries. Intensive confinement of animals in factory farm operations should be discontinued worldwide for the sake of animals, humans, and the environment, and we should rapidly evolve to eating other forms of protein that are safer for humans. Additional investment in plant-based agriculture to grow crops to feed humans rather than livestock for human consumption will feed more people while utilizing far less land and water, allowing for the preservation of vital ecosystems for innumerable species.
Each of us can have a positive impact, beginning with mindfulness about what we eat and how all of our daily choices and actions may be affecting animals and natural habitats. Rather than simply attempting to react to crises like COVID-19 after death and destruction are already upon us, we need to address underlying causes and act now to prevent future disasters.
Videos from 2018 Summer School on Animal Sentience and Cognition
Harnad bridges his research in categories with his moral stance: categories let us ” do the right thing with the right kind of thing". The right thing, or our predicate, is to not kill or cause suffering when it isn't vital; the subject, or kind of thing, is sentient beings. So it logically follows that if animals are sentient, they should be categorized and treated as such. Not just for categorical purposes, but moral ones as well.
ReplyDeleteObjections challenge this assertion’s subject or predicate: critics say, respectively, that animals can't be sentient, or that it is sometimes alright to harm or murder sentient beings in non-vital cases. That first belief is widespread, and based on historically and culturally reinforced beliefs about non-human things.
We undoubtedly inherited, at least to some extent, this belief from Cartesian stories of how animals were only mindless machines. We've since come a long way from clockwork and automata - as technology advances, we suspect that machines may one day be capable of sentience - machines of the computational and the animal kind. Who knew that the Turing Test, designed to prompt us to re-think the way we categorize AI, would push us re-think the categories of our earthly co-habitants.
Moreover, who can imagine what purpose that standard may serve in the future - after all, when AI becomes smarter than us, there’s nothing stopping them from bunching us in the same category as our genetic siblings. After all, at the end of the day, we're only animals too – this we shouldn’t forget while studying animal sentience. So, foresight and the Turing Test may not just lead us to recategorize machines and animals; it may help us recategorize humans too.
"it is sometimes alright to harm or murder sentient beings in non-vital cases". Can you explain that a little bit?
ReplyDeleteBefore I do offer an answer, let me make clear that as far as the thought experiment for this post goes, I am not defending it, saying whether it is valid or whether it even applies to animal sentience. All I seek to do is offer a possible scenario where we murder sentient beings in non-vital cases. The thought experiment is Thomson's violinist experiment (disclosure, it comes from their defence of abortion argument: https://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm):
DeleteLet’s say you were to wake up, and unbeknownst to you, overnight you were brought to a hospital and the Society of Music Lovers plugged a violinist’s circulatory system into your circulatory system. Upon waking, the doctor explains that without your circulatory system, this violinist would die due to their own kidney problems. There is no other way to save this violinist’s life. However, so long as you are plugged into them, you are confined to the hospital bed.
Question: are you morally obliged to stay in that bed? And if so, for how long?
Again, due to the controversial nature of the topic, I stress that I am *not* saying whether or how this applies to animals’ suffering. What I am doing is replying to Harnad’s question – this is one non-vital scenario where some people say that it is alright to murder a sentient being. Any further extrapolations or thoughts, I’m happy to engage with, but I neither do nor mean to do anything other than reply to Harnad’s question in this post.
The best advice I can give, Julian, is to use your judgment and avoid facile philosophy -- especially in the field of ethics, where there is far too much of it.
DeleteAbortion is a far more profound moral problem for vegans than it is for the vast majority of the human population who eat meat (just as life-saving biomedical research on animals is). But it can't be finessed with contrived thought-experiments.
Ricard's criterion of vital necessity stands, even if (like so much else) it is only an approximation.
“But I believe that human minds and hearts can be opened to the reality of animal sentience—and especially animal suffering, which is what matters most—through a variant of the Turing Test I mentioned earlier.” (quote from the interview)
ReplyDeletePrevious to this reading, I was not explicitly connecting the Turing Test to the other minds problem. I was mainly thinking about the Turing Test as a standard for our reverse-engineered cognition candidate to meet. If you are able to create a successful candidate, then it seems fair to say that you have solved the easy problem and have a way of explaining how and why we do what we can do. This week, the connection between the Turing Test and the other minds problem (and animal sentience!) was made clearer. Our judgement and our degree of confidence in whether other beings have minds also relies on indistinguishability. I am certainly not consciously proctoring a Turing Test with every person that I meet in my life to decide whether or not they have a mind – I take this as a given – because if someone behaves as I do, the question doubting their mind never even forms in mine.
Two things that I am wondering:
Are our mind-reading abilities (not just whether or not others have minds but specifically what is on their mind) also related to Turing indistinguishability? In the sense that if I observe a behaviour that is indistinguishable from one I know I also exhibit, then I have a sense of their feeling? I want to make sure I am not over-applying/over-complicating the Turing Test.
The other point that I am wondering about is how much we would have to vary the Turing Test in order to help us believe in the minds of other organisms. The indistinguishability criterion would certainly have to be relaxed because certain animals for instance do not blink, but this does not mean they are mindless (footnote 5 of the 11b reading discusses blinking as a cue we use in mind-reading). To apply the Turing Test to animal sentience I think would require people to be really open-minded and challenge implicit biases (like blinking) on recognizing the minds of other beings.
Mind-reading (aka "anthropomorphism") is a talent, a biological trait evolved through lazy evolution that helps the species that have it (mostly altricial, social species) to survive and reproduce by nurturing their young (which carry the nurturing parents' genes). The nurture requires detecting the needs of their young, and giving them an urgent priority, sometimes even greater than the needs of the parent.
DeleteEgg-laying and -leaving precocial, asocial reptiles and fish don't need this telepathic trait the way mammals and altricial birds do, but even some of them have it to some degree: sterile female worker ants do not reproduce, but they carry identical genes and they rescue and nurture their sisters. (This is inclusive fitness" and there are interesting examples of "lazy evolution" in action.)
Do insects feel? (Increasingly probable.) Do ants feel empathy when they help their injured sisters? Is feeling itself a symptom of the laziness of evolution?
This is mostly speculation, but in our day-to-day “Turing-Testing,” mirror-capacity (being able to feel what you feel from perceiving what you do that I do and what I feel when I do it) would seem to be an important component.
Like many other capacities — from distinguishing mountains from valleys to the continuous variation in OG — unsupervised learning (repeated passive exposure to input frequencies and feature correlations) would quickly allow adjusting to a baby that does not blink. Why not the same for fish that don’t blink? The rest of the cues are all there.
Like objects and the thousand words that try to describe them, all feature-detection is approximation.
Stephanie, your comment really helped clear up some of my confusion regarding the connection to the Turing Test too! So thank you :)
DeleteI wonder what it is about the other-minds problem that causes people to kind of base it off of indistinguishability from oneself? I guess maybe it stems as a result from Cogito - I know that I feel. And that thing kind of looks like me and reacts like I would in certain situations, so they probably also feel too? Like Professor Harnad writes in your reply, being able to have a stronger empathetic connection to things that look/act similar to you would also lead to the most successful passing on of genes. Could something like this (this being this evolutionary perspective) be a possible step towards answering the WHY to the hard problem??
OMP relies on mirror neurons, but that doesn't help with the HP!
DeleteI think another element (in addition to indistinguishability) that impacts our beliefs about animal sentience, is familiarity and connection with the animal in question. I would argue that one would be much more likely to attribute sentience to their pet, who they have gotten to know via vast amounts of time spent together. People attribute personalities, desires and even thoughts to their pets. They take care of their animals and often conceptualize them as members of their family!
DeleteEsther — I agree with the idea that perhaps we utilize indistinguishability when contemplating the others minds problem, as a result of the cogito. The more similar we are to someone (or something) else, the greater the level of connection and empathy we feel. We are able to see ourselves in them and therefore attribute the same sentience we feel ourselves.
Claire, yes intimate familiarity is the best way to reach the heart (and the only justification for having a "pet"). It was falling in love with a cat that converted Eddie Lama in Witness.
DeleteFor our mind-reading and mirroring/empathy skills it's lazy evolution we have to thank.
“They may believe animals are not sentient, or that their sentience, unlike ours, somehow does not include the capacity to suffer.”
ReplyDeleteI don’t think most humans actually think this. About 70% of US households own a pet. (Most) pet owners want what is best for their animals. They feel a sense of shame when they accidentally step on their dog’s paw or cat’s tail. They want to comfort their animal afterwards. I think most pet owners believe their pets can suffer. Why else are they so protective of these animals?
But there is definitely some cognitive dissonance when it comes to the animals we eat. We turn a blind eye and pretend that factory farm conditions aren’t that bad. They can’t be that bad, right? There are laws against animal cruelty, right? (Spoiler alert : https://animalequality.org/news/why-factory-farming-is-the-largest-cause-of-animal-abuse-in-history/ )
“we torture and kill 2 billion animals every week. 10 thousand entire species are wiped out every year because of the actions of one species. We are now facing the 6th mass extinction in cosmological history. If any other organism did this a biologist would call it a virus.”
Would you be upset if the 2 billion animals we killed each week were puppies and kittens? Would you still eat them?
I agree with you completely. The question is: What can be done to save the victims and abolish the horrors (as we have outlawed cannibalism, slavery, genocide, murder, rape, torture, sexism, and racism)?
Delete(Alas the puppy/kitten challenge fails... in the many countries where people eat puppies and kittens.)
“I now realize that there was a lot of self-deception and hypocrisy in my reasoning [of being vegetarian], and I am deeply ashamed. I am also now vegan, not just vegetarian.” (Harnad)
DeleteI am writing this as a reply because it is not super in line with the core concepts of this course. But just as we believe T2 might require T3, I think being vegetarian might require veganism. T2 needs sensory capacities for symbol grounding, and Harnad thinks that without these symbols being grounded, T2 can’t exist. Well, as far as I know vegetarianism is about not causing animals to die for your food. And perhaps in principle it is possible to only milk a cow when she is nursing her calf a few times a year and only collect the eggs from a laying hen when she is laying, and then permitting these animals to live the rest of their lives until their natural deaths, but this is extremely inefficient. No factory farms do this, and your uncle’s farm in Saskatchewan doesn’t do this either. He wouldn’t make any money if he continued to feed his hens long after they stopped laying. So instead, these animals’ lives are cut short, and their bodies are consumed. When a milking cow gives birth to a male, he is immediately taken away and slaughtered for veal. As soon as her milk production or quality begins to decline, a mother cow is then eaten. But wait, doesn’t that go against vegetarianism? The vegetarian might not be paying for the animal’s flesh and might not consume it themself, but they are still supporting an industry that kills animal for food. (Not to mention the lives of dairy cows and egg hens are often much worse than those of animals raised for meat.)
Animals are conscious, just like us, and they don’t deserve abuse. The taste of animal products will never justify animal suffering. So, “Ethical vegetarianism” doesn’t exist. Vegetarians might not cause the demise of pigs, goats (as long as you don’t drink their milk), and rabbits, (not including sheep here, because the same principle occurs when we take a sheep’s wool), but they are still causing mass suffering, mass abuse and mass cruelty to cows and chickens. The only way to consume animal products without killing animals, is to stop consuming animal products all together.
And sure, you can be vegetarian for different reasons. I was vegetarian for 7 years for the environment, (although I was still supporting the dairy and egg industry, some of the leading causes of greenhouse gases in animal agriculture), but why not help the environment even more AND save a few more animals while you’re at it?
Hi Katherine, I agree with both your comments and find your first one particularly insightful. What you said about cognitive dissonance really rang true. I (like I know many others have) have thought about this on and off throughout my life, and I think most of us know that the bottom line is that what we do to animals is wrong. I don't think Prof Harnad is wrong in saying that "the needless hurting and killing of sentient beings is the greatest moral shame of our species—the only species that has any choice in the matter, and the species that is doing all the needless hurting and killing, on a monstrous and still mounting scale." And the interesting thing is that when you press people (and when I press myself), everybody basically agrees on this. Everybody basically agrees that what we do to animals is terrible and unjust and unnecessary, and it often feels like the people who try to mount arguments justifying our treatment of animals do it half-heartedly; these arguments often revolve around dubious claims about the "inherent superiority" of the human race, which is supposed to justify the needless torture of those who can't defend themselves.
DeleteSince everyone basically knows that it's wrong, the interesting -- and terrible -- question is, why do we keep doing it? I think part of the reason is that we've been subjugating other animals since the beginning of humanity, so it's incredibly deeply ingrained. But so was slavery, racism, sexism, etc., so who's to say we couldn't at least start to overcome our cruelty towards animals? The cognitive dissonance is also a factor. Most of us enjoy animal products -- especially food -- and what's more is that it is socially rewarding to enjoy these products! We're encouraged to sit together and eat meals, the vast majority of which are not vegan, and the lone vegan at the dinner part is more often than not an outcast (unless of course one is in a vegan circle), who has to excuse themselves for not eating the meal generously provided by their host. In short, we like meat and dairy, and our society makes it easy and fun to eat animal products and relatively inconvenient not to.
I was a vegan for a short time before, out of laziness, dissonance, and a selfish desire for animal products, I capitulated and started eating meat and dairy again. One thing I noticed while I was vegan was how much more cynical I felt about people's eating habits and people in general. I was more focussed on what I was eating and why I was constraining my diet, and I constantly thought about the cruelty behind everything everybody was eating. I felt somewhat resentful that I was making an effort (and putting myself at an inconvenience) to do the right thing while others, who should know better, were going ahead and enjoying highly unethical animal products. I was wondering if any vegans or former vegans had had a similar experience and how animal rights activists like Prof Harnad avoid total cynicism driven by the complete lack of caring most people show with respect to using and enjoying animal products...
Katherine, I agree completely with every word you wrote.
DeleteAlex, very candid and clear reflections. I have no doubt that you will again become vegan, for good.
How to avoid cynicism? Because it would betray the victims' only hope: That we will stop hurting them.
Interesting analogy with Pascal's Wager:
Pascal's Wager was that it is a better bet to live in accordance with the dictates of Christianity, whether or not Christianity is true:
(T) If it's true, but I think it's false, so I don't live according to its dictates, I end up burning in Hell, forever.
(F) If it's false, and I live according to its dictates, my one short life will be a bit more constrained than otherwise, but I will not end up burning in Hell, forever.
So, whether T or F, I're better off if I live according to its dictates.
[Pascal's argument is correct in spirit, but technically incorrect: ask me if you want to know how and why.]
The analogy about cynicism is this:
It is either true or false that because of cognitive dissonance (or psychopathy) most people can never be persuaded to stop hurting animals.
(T) If it's true, then I will have been a vegan activist, in vain, for one short life.
(F) If it's false, but I believe it's true, I will have abandoned animals to burning in Hell forever.
Remember that the other-minds problem is not my problem.
It's the other mind's problem, if I make the mistake of believing that it does not feel, when in fact it does feel.
Pascal's Wager has become the "Precautionary Principle".
The other-minds version of the Precautionary Principle is:
Birch, J. (2017). Animal sentience and the precautionary principle. Animal Sentience 16(1)
Hi Alex, it is true that being vegan is exhausting. You said, "I felt somewhat resentful that I was making an effort (and putting myself at an inconvenience) to do the right thing while others, who should know better, were going ahead and enjoying highly unethical animal products".
DeleteDo you now feel this resentment towards yourself? Yes, I hate being angry at meateaters. I hate constantly getting upset that so many humans don't care about animal suffering. I hate arguing with meateaters! If you met me you would notice how shy I am. I usually keep to myself. But I cannot stay silent when trillions of animals are being abused. Change is never easy, and the animals deserve so much better. So I'll keep fighting for them.
I wonder if part of the issue is that we're so far removed from the reality of factory farms and what exactly happens to animals before people consume them (or their milk, eggs etc). We all know on some level that factory farming is unethical, we've all watched a video or two that made us feel horrified until we forgot about it the next day. When we buy meat at the grocery store, we're not reminded of exactly what happened before it was neatly wrapped up and presented on the shelf.
Delete"we forget about it the next day"
DeleteThat's why I think ag-gag is the biggest obstacle, and why I think real-time CCTV and web-streaming 24/7 from everywhere that animals are bred, used, transported and slaughtered should be mandated (as it is beginning to be in Europe and UK). Seeing real-time suffering is harder to forget; citizens can serve as inspectors; and it will make everyone much more receptive to a meat-tax to help resolve their cognitive dissonance.
Claire, I completely agree with your point! I have been a vegetarian for 4.5 years (mostly vegan but that isn’t always possible when I visit family) and my main reason was always that I placed myself in the shoes of farmers and butchers. Would I still be eating meat if I had to be the one to raise and kill the animals? Growing up around animals, my answer was always no. I knew that animals could feel and suffer, and I knew I would not be able to live with myself if I was the source of that suffering. The only reason why I continued to eat meat was because I did not have the burden or ending its life myself. The hypocrisy of that state of mind pushed me to stop eating all forms of meat and only rarely eating dairy and eggs.
DeleteBut my experience raises yet another issue with human beings, one I see too often in those that oppose the vegan debate. As Harnad mentioned, the other minds problem isn’t our problem, it’s the problem of all other species that we feel comfortable harming because of it. I was a victim of this myself. I didn’t actually focus on if hurting and killing an animal is ethically acceptable (which it is not); I just focused on how those actions that hurt animals would make ME feel. It was easier for me to imagine how I would feel, because placing myself in the shoes (hoofs?) of those animals was too painful to imagine. Even when attempting to be empathetic, I still found myself behind a species barrier between the human mind and the animal mind. A barrier which is completely arbitrary and promoted by our society’s perception that humans are superior to other sentient beings. I think Harnad’s CCTV solution is a good one, because the suffering would be much harder to ignore. But I think that the big hurdle will be this species barrier and the other minds problem. By working on these, hopefully more people can be convinced to become vegan.
Hi everyone, this was a very interesting discussion to read, so thank you! :) I was shocked to learn about these ag-gag laws in class. I also think that the CCTV 24/7 surveillance and meat tax are excellent solutions, too. Another tool could be encouraging anthropomorphism from a young age. For example, my little sister has a duck plushie that she loves very much. She has many other toys to play with, but she is especially attached to her stuffed animals. Before COVID, my family and I would buy groceries together on the weekends. The first time my sister saw the row upon row of packaged meats in the store (and realized what might have happened to all of those innocent animals), she became extremely upset. When I asked her why, she replied with something along the lines of, "They hurt my friends." I understand that over-anthropomorphizing can sometimes lead to detrimental consequences; though, it is an easy way of educating children about animal sentience as well as promoting empathy and compassion towards other sentient beings.
DeleteAnthropomorphizing is using our evolved cognitive capacity to mind-read. No doubt it evolved so that we help our progeny and kin (hence out own genes), but lazy evolution forgot to draw a boundary.
Delete"As I mentioned, a lot of the hurting and killing we do of lab animal victims is not even justifiable as potentially life-saving or pain-reducing for humans. That kind of research should not just be better regulated, but not conducted at all." (Bekoff, M., & Harnad, S. (2015))
ReplyDeleteWhat would you suggest to be the alternative here? I know I sound very selfish saying this, but I rationalize the use of animal models in science for developing and ameliorating our lives. For example, how do we know if the COVID vaccines are safe for humans? I feel like it is more "acceptable" to first do clinical trials on mice rather than testing it straight on humans. In other words, how do we make clinical trials possible in the absence of animals?
That sounds like it would fall under "potentially life-saving or pain-reducing for humans."
DeleteHi Wendy — this thought also came to mind when I was reflecting on animal cruelty... I have been a vegetarian since elementary school and was vegan for a few years as well (after this discussion, it's something I'd like to return to!) and think everyone can agree, there's no need to consume animal products.
DeleteThings start to get dicey for me when it comes to medical testing.. I think of my sister who has severe juvenille arthritis and the treatment she receives (that was undoubtedly tested on animals) that significantly reduces her pain and has allowed her to gradually regain her mobility. I have a hard time arguing that we should not conduct tests on animals for medical reasons, because I'm not sure how else we would go about testing treatments before administering them. I suppose we could test on humans? But I don't think very many people would agree to that.
Perhaps we can focus on only utilizing animals when it is utterly necessary (I suppose this brings into question what exactly is "necessary", which will be a never ending debate) and treating them with the utmost respect when we do so.
Claire,"necessary," here, means vitally necessary: necessity for survival and health. There is so much suffering being caused with no vital necessity that it hardly makes sense to address life-saving medicine while we most of us are still doing that.
DeleteIt is truly interesting to take a step back and acknowledge how much manipulation of animals has occurred due to the pursuit of understanding ourselves. Furthermore, how are animal studies anything more than correlational, just as in the case of observing and measuring brain events (which Prof. Harnad points out is "actually the least informative" technique his lab uses to conduct research)?
ReplyDeleteAlthough I believe that animal research can be reduced to vital/necessary reasons only, how does this relate to our efforts in the course so far? Is the take-home message that we can do our best work by using neural nets, robots, and Turing Tests and not by conducting animal experiments?
What is the variant of the Turing Test that is spoken about in the interview? I know Stephanie's comment relates to this question but I am still left a little confused. If we made an animal robot with capabilities indistinguishable from the real-life version of the animal, why would that change anyone's opinion considering how many people continue to not be vegetarian or vegan despite knowing of the cruelty of certain industries?
Matt, observing and mind-reading animals without harming them is harmless, and can be as useful to our understanding ourselves and them as observing and mind-reading humans can be. Mind-reading is not reverse-engineering.
DeleteAnimal research (including clinical neuroscience) sometimes helps cure illness.
But cogsci (and most other scholarly and scientific research) is driven by curiosity, not curing. That's ok, of course. But is it ok to hurt sentient beings to satisfy our curiosity? (Especially where the power of computation can test hunches "in virtuo" rather than in vivo?).
The variant on the daily turing-testing we do on one another is witnessing the animal agony behind our consumption -- and letting our mirror neurons tell as the rest.
“It is wrong to hurt or kill a feeling being if it is not vitally necessary.”
ReplyDeleteAlthough I think the point that Harnad makes here is more or less unambiguous to when it comes to field such as what food choices you make and the role that animal studies should play in science, I think there are some areas in which vital necessity is unclear. For instance, there are many situations that have arisen in the Anthropocene in which a certain population of species in a given ecosystem is overpopulated due to the direct or indirect interference of this ecosystem by humans. Some examples include when predators such as wolves and bears in the forest are driven out are died out, leaving herbivores to overpopulate, such as deer or rabbits. A more ludicrous example is how Pablo Escobar brought hippopotamuses to South America where due to an abundance of food, are thriving and impinging upon the ecosystem there.
What role do humans have in ‘correcting’ this imbalance? For the cases I presented, unlike an instance where an invasive species starts spoiling all our crops, which would lead to famine, getting rid of the deer or the hippos would not be of vital necessity to us, and so would killing these beings be wrong considering that they do feel? But if we do not act, it could lead to a depletion of the resources in that ecosystem, leading to the death of not only the overpopulated species but a significant if not all the individuals in that ecosystem. So, is there a utilitarian argument to be made here in that killing this overpopulation threat, even though they do constitute feeling beings, would help save more feeling beings on the long stretch. Or is the direct implication of killing feeling beings to control the population even worse?
What do you guys think?
Hey William, that's a bit of a tricky question! My gut reaction when I read your scenario was to say that I think it would be wrong to kill the overpopulating species to "correct" our mistake... I guess each situation is unique and that's what makes this hard. But if an ecosystem has been that disrupted due to human actions, I would say that more human action would not be the right answer and that eventually, the ecosystem would eventually sort itself out. Also, I guess it makes you wonder then: what is "back to normal"? Even if one species was (unfortunately) wiped out, who would we be to say that a new ecosystem without that one species is necessarily wrong... if it could balance itself out and find a new equilibrium (without human influence)?
DeleteI feel like I was kind of talking in circles but I hope that made sense :)
William, as Esther notes, we know so little about the knock-on effects of human tampering with ecology that the main dictate of the Precautionary Principle is "Don't Tamper."
DeleteAnd Charity Begins at Home: Let's stop breeding and hurting purpose-bred domestic "livestock," which we know how to undo, before tampering with the damage we've done by tampering with "wildlife."
Utilitarianism is mechanical (rather the way evolution is). What's needed is mercy: less counting; more compassion.
So I didn't read the actual paper by Wiebers & Feigin, but the abstract alone brought up really intriguing points. From a healthcare point of view, sometimes it can seem like a huge waste of resources to focus so much on the curative end of things, instead of preventing illnesses and diseases from happening altogether. I think that what the authors bring up about the increase in "zoonotic diseases" as a result of human action is super interesting and something that is definitely NOT talked about very often.
ReplyDeleteWithin the past couple years, I've slowly switched to consuming less meat (I never cook meat at home anymore and especially in light of COVID, I don't eat out very often anymore either) but I've never felt super pressured to change my habits completely to vegetarian/vegan. All of the papers for this week about animal sentience + this piece about also the huge impact that animal domestication has had on humans is causing me to really re-think my eating habits.
I think something I want to learn more about would be (if possible) the eating habits of humans before huge farming became the giant industry it is. We are told stories of "hunter gatherers" working together to take down a big animal - which kind of propagates this narrative that humans have always focused on having meat. But maybe in reality it was something like "oh humans ate meat once every two months because it was really hard to catch animals, they would instead mostly eat fruits/veggies and other plant-based protein sources". Maybe if this ever became the mainstream narrative, people would shift away from eating so much meat now.
Hunting and eating other animals was definitely adaptive in the evolution of our species. So was homicidal aggression, rape, subjugation of women, slavery, torture, imperialism and theft. None are either necessary or biologically adaptive today (although they are still effective for amassing wealth and power at the expense of other beings).
DeleteWe've outlawed causing needless suffering to other human beings. Is it not time to decide to outlaw causing it to all sentient beings?
Esther, your mention of hunter gatherers made me think about an article (which I sadly could not find) that I read some time ago. The hunter gatherer argument is a common narrative as you mentioned and this may have played a role in perpetuating the notion of humans as inherently meat-eaters. This is just a variant of other common naturalistic fallacies. Now back to the article I read. It was mentioned in that article that anthropologists and archeologists may be biased to interpret the pre-agricultural revolution human as having a heavily meat-based diet. The bias originates from a simple fact: the remains that allow them to make inferences about our ancestors' diets are mostly remains that fossilized (e.g. bones, tools, etc). Most plant-based sources of nutrition don't get fossilized since they tend to desintegrate more easily than bones or the like. So it may very well have been the case that prehistoric human diets were much more plant-based than they were meat-based! On the other hand, with DNA analysis techniques it is now possible to have an idea of what humans were really eating back then.
DeleteThis study is interesting: Weyrich, L., Duchene, S., Soubrier, J. et al. Neanderthal behaviour, diet, and disease inferred from ancient DNA in dental calculus. Nature 544, 357–361 (2017).
Solim, actually, for Ricard's vital-necessity criterion it is irrelevant whether meat-eating was once a vital necessity for our species. What matters is that in the vast prosperous parts of the earth today, it no longer is.
DeleteThe article "What the COVID-19 crisis is telling humanity" is interesting as it underlines the important role human treatment of animals played in the generation of the COVID-19 pandemic, arguing that inhumane treatment of animals is not only unethical but represents an ongoing health risk to humans. The authors mention that the coronavirus likely jumped from animals to humans in a wet market in China, where animals are kept in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, and the HIV virus was likely caught while hunting chimpanzees. It is important, I think, to frame the issue of our unethical treatment of animals not only as an ethical concern but also as a concern for our personal safety, as it gives human society a selfish incentive to improve its treatment of animals.
ReplyDeleteOne barrier in the way of improving our treatment of animals is that the use of animals and their products is often associated with progress and societal benefit––we think that the clothes and food we get from animals help us, and this makes it harder to make the case that we should end animal exploitation, as this would be seen by many as a reversal of progress. However, if we can begin to reframe the issue not only as an ethical dilemma but also as a key part of our own health, safety, and self-interest, then maybe we can start to make the argument that bad treatment of animals is bad to a broader group of people than would otherwise be possible. Wiebers & Feigin certainly take a step in that direction in their article.
"Whatever induces human beings to stop making nonhuman beings suffer needlessly is welcome" says my inner pig.
Delete("Stevan Says": I agree, but I am just a bit disappointed if the only thing that can make us stop hurting them is if it hurts us too.)
By 2050, as many people will die due to antibiotic resistance as are currently dying to cancer. 80% of America's antibiotics go towards keeping animals alive in terrible conditions only long enough so that we can slaughter them and eat them. The meat industry will be the cause of these millions upon millions of human deaths. If meateaters don't care about the animals, they should at least care about the humans.
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnQL-brI-9I&ab_channel=EarthlingEd
True; and see the Wiebers & Feigin article above about covid-19.
DeleteI might be being cynical but I don't actually think the role of meat eating in the COVID-19 crisis or the deaths that will be caused by antibiotic resistance will change many people's dietary habits. I think a lot of the current marketing of the animal product industry is based on perpetuating misinformation/hiding information about the treatment of animals and the necessity of animal products to our diet (something that's relatively easy to do considering how uncomfortable the truth is and the fact that people don't want to accept that all the suffering they've cause up to now have been for nothing). Even when faced directly woth the truth, we're notoriously good at lying to ourselves and I don't think this will be the exception. It's a lot easier to tell yourself "yeah COVID-19 is a result of animal markets but not the ones I shop from" than it is to accept responsibility, I think.
Delete"One further fundamental source for the increasing threat of pandemics and other human health crises is habitat destruction. Vast numbers of wildlife species are threatened with extinction from cutting down forests and expanding urban areas and industrial activities."
DeleteI think the self-serving public health rationale is useful for shifting our thinking and practices around meat and consumption, but I think we can go further and expand the scope of in what we have to change. I think the above quote/section on habitat destruction and ecosystems also vital to this shift. Beyond the conditions of factory farms/wet markets, other industrial practices and the habitat destruction that enables factory farming also inflicts suffering on the lives of non-human animals, not just the slaughtering and unjust conditions in which the animals live. The even rings true for the destructive practices for many types of crop agriculture – we deforest land to mono-crop and have completely depleted the quality of soil in many places; in turn, we devastate whole ecosystems. I think in order for us to change our ways, we potentially need to adopt a more biocentric/ecocentric point of view that values the ecosystem as a whole. The ripple effects of the meat industry don’t just come back to bite us, they extend to all surrounding life. However, getting people to see the moral and intrinsic value of other forms of life beyond selfish reasons still remains a question.
I agree, Ada. 75% of Americans think they only buy humanely sourced meat (what's humane about killing an innocent animal?) but only 1% of America's meat did not come from a factory farm. No one wants to believe they are the problem.
Deletehttps://plantbasednews.org/culture/factory-farms-study/
I thing phrasing the other minds’ problem as being (in this case) the animals’ problem is really powerful. We often feel free to make judgements regarding others, sometimes even in cases of huge uncertainty, and it’s important to remember that these decisions (for example: animals are just reflexive machines) that are made so quickly can have huge impacts on others. My thoughts on the hard problem are that until we have a way to measure feeling, we can’t really do much. This doesn’t mean feeling isn’t important, in fact prof Harnad would argue that feeling, and specifically negative feelings are the only things that matter. But for now, with where we’re at in cognitive science, we haven’t figured out a way to address this issue, appropriately deemed the hard problem. That being said, I don’t know if the other minds’ problem should be a problem, I think we collectively accept the idea that animals are sentient and spare them any more research attempting to prove otherwise –I know, easier said than done
ReplyDeleteHi Lyla,
DeleteI agree with you, that until we measure feeling, there's not much else that we can do than guess whether others feel based on their doing capacities. However, I disagree with your thought that "we collectively accept the idea that animals are sentient".
Switching out sentience for feeling - some argue that certain animals don't feel at all, while others don't feel enough emotions or the right emotions to warrant care. In other words, many don't treat feeling (or sentience) as an all or nothing (regardless of if it is or isn't). Instead, they consider animal feeling a matter of degree and dimensions, and as such they insist on deciding the rules for how to treat animals based on these details (that may or may not matter). The plethora of articles in “Animal Sentience” alone demonstrates that questions about animal sentience (feeling) are tackled at so many levels in so many ways.
So, I don't think animal sentience is something we collectively accept. If we do, then we certainly don't agree on what we mean by sentience.
should** my bad. That last sentence should say "I think we should collectively accept the idea that animals are sentient and spare them any more research attempting to prove otherwise –I know, easier said than done"
DeleteYeah unfortunately this isn't the case currently :(
Lyla, measuring feeling is the OMP, not the HP. (And even if there were a way we could measure feeling, that would not solve the HP!) The connection between the HP, OMP and mattering is that even if we cannot solve the HP, feeling matters, and is the only thing that matters.
DeleteJulian: A "feeling" organism and a "sentient" organism means exactly the same thing. "Sentience" means "feeling."
The notion that it is a matter of degree whether an internal state is a felt state is incoherent. What is a matter of degree is how intense a feeling feels, not whether it is felt at all. (Psychophysical detection thresholds are the wrong way to think about this: can you see why?)
I don't think there is any honest disagreement about whether it hurts mammals or birds or fish if you kick them. People disagree on whether they care -- in other words, about whether it matters (to the kicker; not the kickee).
In cognitive dissonance about this, what's at stake is hence whether to give the benefit of the doubt to the kicker (oneself) or the kickee (the victim)...
As Harnad discusses in his article, the true impetus to becoming vegan is the moral stance. Unless vitally necessary, it is immoral to cause harm to other living organisms. A simple dictum that rings true to many people's ear until it is discuseed in terms of dietary choices, thereby generating inner conflict. We see ourselves and want others to see us as moral but faced with the immorality of our dietary choices, we often choose to invent a story to defend our choices. A perfectly human thing to do. I don't think that arguing against the moral stance of veganism is easy, if one were to venture down that path. I take it to be a perfectly valid stance to defend.
ReplyDeleteWhat Weiber & Valery's article indirectly points to is that there are other reasons (especially for those who are sadly not so convinced by the moral argument of veganism) to reduce/omit consumption of meat and other animal products. They discuss the increasing frequency of zonotic diseases which seems to be caused by animal related practices and wildlife habitat destruction.
There are many reasons to stop eating meat apart from the moral argument. Meat consumption and animal product consumption is not environmentally friendly. Industrial farming is one of the most polluting industries. And not only because of methane expulsions from cows. Feeding livestock is extremely resource demanding. We are destroying forests to have more land to grow crops to feed animals when that same land could be used to directly feed the humans! With human population growth and developing countries starting to mimick the Western lifestyle (aka Americanized lifestyle, in reality a horrible but very comfortable lifestyle...), meat consumption is bound to increase.
There are also obvious health benefits to reducing or potentially eliminating meat and animal product consumption in one's diet. I will discuss this last point in another post though because I think it is an interesting one but I have too much to say about it for just this post...
I turned vegetarian around 12 after reading a book about it and have been on and off ever since. Interestingly enough, I feel like I was much more dedicated to it back then. As we age, we become increasingly desensitized to the issues surrounding meat consumption (even as former young vegans/vegetarians) and societal norms make it even easier to justify to ourselves eating animal products.
" I will discuss this last point in another post though because I think it is an interesting one but I have too much to say about it for just this post..."
DeleteSolim, did you ever do that other post?
Yes, it's interesting that there seems to be a critical period for sensitivity to animal suffering (pre-adolescent), and yes, like other critical period traits, there's an element of "use it or lose it." But there are plenty of examples of late-bloomers too.
But there's no better way to make sure it sticks for life than -- after becoming vegan -- to become a vegan activist... I am ashamed that I only began that about 10 years ago.
As the professor points out, there was a time in the course of human history where eating animal protein was necessary for our survival but that is no longer the case. The fact that the vast majority of people continue to consume animal products reminds me of the sugar example we've so often brought up in class to exemplify distal and proximal causes. Sugar was beneficial to us in the past because it provided a large amount of glucose that our bodies could convert into useful energy needed to survive (distal cause) but now we eat it because we like the taste (proximal cause). Similarly, one could conceptualize the modern human affinity for meat as a leftover from when we needed animal protein to survive.
ReplyDeleteAs many have pointed out, the moral argument for veganism is strong and there other arguments to be made as well including the preservation of ecosystems and improving climate outcomes. So why do so many people (who are in positions to be able to make a choice) continue to consume animal products? I think it’s a really complicated question despite the simplicity of it from a moral perspective. I think a lot of it has to do with the normalization of animal product consumption by the vast majority of people. People really do tend to “follow the herd” so to speak and it’s not unusual for people to feel empowered to do morally wrong things simply because it wasn’t condemned by the majority (I’m sure we can all think of many examples). Veganism is a relatively new idea (roughly 1944?) and is not practiced by the majority so there remains a strong insulation from moral responsibility for a lot of people (not to mention in many places we’ve chosen to invest a lot of money in meat and dairy corporations).
It really is astounding that we so strongly anthropomorphize our pets but don’t imbue other animals with the same unique characteristics and personalities we feel our pets have. The world has an astounding amount of problems and I’m glad this course has caused me to reflect on this one more than I ever have before.
I don't know if veganism is a relatively new idea or not... maybe its name came about in the 20th century, but many Buddhist monks have been vegans for centuries, as far as I can tell. I digress, because there's another point you brought up that I would like to build on.
DeleteYou said, "So why do so many people (who are in positions to be able to make a choice) continue to consume animal products?" I would say that this has become a tradition at this point, one that is passed down through instruction. There are no instances in our lives where unsupervised or supervised learning would morally tell us to kill an animal and eat it, right? I think this is just an example of the nuclear power of language and how it can override many things, including telling us to do harm. Much like advertising tells us to buy milk: even by merely seeing how these cows are treated, one would (or should) be repulsed by how they are treated.
So, I think the world needs more people to use their nuclear power of language to speak their mind and expose the truth to the rest of the world. This is how we could change the world to a higher vegan population (or ideally, all).
The biggest difference between sugar and meat is that sugar hurts us (a little) and meat hurts them (mortally).
ReplyDeleteYes, if we like the taste and others are doing it and it's not illegal, we keep doing it, even when we know it's wrong. That's very much the way it was with slavery, feudalism, colonialism, racism and the subordination of women. We eventually renounced and outlawed all that.
But how much and how long must the victims of our appetites keep suffering before we have mercy on them too?
Nor is herbivory new: biologically, simians and nonhuman primates -- descended from insectivores -- eat mainly fruits, plants, pulses, nuts, and grains. And it's at least 3000 years old as a human cultural practise to renounce carnivory.
We've always been facultative omnivores: we can choose.
Humans cognize, and so do animals. If a machine could pass the Turing Test, we would not be able to say that it was not a sentient being. If Ting (the robot)'s behaviour sufficiently resembled that of our own, we would consider her to be one of us. In the same way, animals exhibit a range of behaviours which although they are not always identical to ours, display different levels/types of cognition. Animals do not pass the Turing Test: they are not human. However, we do not know at what point/whether sentience is related to cognition. We cannot know whether other beings feel/how they feel due to the OMP. In the same way that we make abstraction of this and choose to treat our fellow human beings decently under the assumption that they feel the same way as we do, we need to act the same way towards animals. We cannot explain how/why they feel, the same way that we cannot explain the hard problem in humans.
ReplyDeleteI feel like this course and the way in which it has demystified the mind has helped me see animals in a different light. I will never again assume that an animal does not feel, or even impose arbitrary limits to what they may feel (for e.g. my pet may feel happy when I pet him, but is he able of feeling annoyed?)
And considering the horrible consequences of our assuming an animal does not feel when it does, the Precautionary Principle (and Pascal's Wager) is to give the animal the benefit of the doubt. (See the prior Replies about this.)
DeleteIn this interview, Harnad is asked about his career, about the choices he has made in research projects and about the moral stance regarding animals that he has rigorously and vigorously been defending for most of his life. A message to be extracted from this interview is that “it is wrong to hurt or kill a feeling being if it is not vitally necessary”. Consuming meat is not a vital necessity as humans are not solely carnivorous like other species are (Felidae for example) and because humans have resources in their hands to live a healthy live without consuming meat and causing the suffering of feeling beings (a healthy being like Harnad who is vegan is an example). Inflicting suffering on animals in the context of scientific research is not morally justifiable as scientific researches and what is at stake in those researches are not of vital interests. Harnad argues that regulations on the food industry are far too little, far too weak and “compliance monitoring is almost inexistent”. Professor defends the idea that killing and hurting sentient beings is the greatest moral shame of our species. He points out two reasons why people would agree with the fact that hurting or killing if not vitally necessary is wrong but would not necessarily become vegan and/or engage in affirmative actions to change the way things are. The reasons would be that “(1) the hurting and killing is vitally necessary, or that (2) the beings don’t really feel the hurting, nor lose anything in the killing”. To the first reason, Harnad admits to not being the right person to respond and to the latter, he believes that humans can be open to the reality of animal sentience through variants of the Turing Test (it is not hard to recognize that animals do indeed feel, any dog or cat owner already firmly knows it).
ReplyDeleteI do not think there has ever been a time in my life where I have questioned my dietary choices as I do now. Reading this paper has made me take a hard look at my willful ignorance - I think on some level we know how harmful meat, dairy and eggs are on animals and the environment, but it is something most of us choose to ignore. It is easier to ignore it, and to conform with cultural and family traditions, than to learn about the suffering your actions cause and sit with it. After reading Harnad’s paper, it is becoming increasingly difficult for me to justify my actions, and I’d like to make a change. I agree that it is important to let people see what is happening. Watching documentaries of animal slaughter is not something most people do on their own, but it makes it so much easier to turn a blind eye to what is happening. For my part, I am cutting back on my animal product consumption to try and transition into veganism, and committing to making at least one vegan meal a day. I know this is not a large change but I am convinced from this class that it is a step in the right direction, and I am eager to share what I learned about animal sentience with friends and family. It is pretty clear that we are causing suffering, and we need to make choices to protect those beings with feelings and the environment itself.
ReplyDeleteBeing completely vegan is ridiculously easy. Don't make a big deal of it; once you do it you won't understand why you thought it was a big deal...
DeleteYou wrote to ask what was wrong with Pascal's Wager, technically: It's that religious metaphysics (heaven, hell, deities, reincarnation, etc. etc.) are all fictions. All it takes to defeat the threat of hell is to raise the ante for your own rival religion, and make it even worse than the christian hell... Then it becomes a better bet to do it your way.
But not so for the Other Minds Problem.
I believe these last two articles, while short, actually summarize the course quite well.
ReplyDeleteWith categorization being defined as "doing the right thing with the right kind of thing", and Harnad stating that the meaning of life is to minimize and reduce suffering (as much as we can) and to help others whom are in need, we can see that morality is centered around proper categorization. The fact that our nutritional intake is centered around meat and that the overwhelming majority of those animals whom are slaughtered for our dietary needs/wants are treated so improperly that it can lead to the spread of disease (despite disease being a problem in the first agrarian societies, we still haven't found a way to circumvent the issue, nor are we taking it seriously enough, we simply tolerate and accept the fact that we have to deal with disease because of factory farming and wet-markets). This is a clear indication that things are seriously wrong, and that we are not doing the right things with the right kind of things in terms of treating our animals (that we greatly depend on).
This is further combined with the fact that we are actually disregarding the fact that the animals we kill, feel. Not only are those who eat meat and recognize and acknowledge that their decision contributes to the suffering of other living beings engaging in a form cognitive dissonance, but they are possibly engaging in a form of willful ignorance. The former is certainly the case for many, but if the latter is the case as well, then it is safe to say they are engaging in those mental activities as a defensive reaction to the discomfort they feel when discussing the subject matter of the maltreatment of animals. Thus, we can say that there is an error in the way they categorize their decisions; as it is more probable that they are living in a state of luxury than a state of necessity. And those who live in a state of luxury are morally obligated to help elevate those in a state of necessity into a state of luxury (or some reasonable state that doesn't make them experience privation).
Therefore, we can conclude that the act of eating meat (when not in a state of necessity) is antithetical to the meaning of life and categorization.
When I had first registered for the course, the topic of this final week had immediately grabbed my attention, and I had read the interview assigned for this week on my walk home from work. To my surprise, I was in tears by the time I made it home.
ReplyDeleteFor the past couple of years, I’ve worked on a small farm located on the grounds of a summer camp. We grow a bunch of vegetables, and try to help the children reconnect with nature and their food through fun activities. My first year on the farm team, we also raised two pigs.
The pigs came from an organic farm nearby. The person in charge of caring for their pigs was leaving that year, and so it was their last cohort of piglets. The deal was that we would care for the two pigs, and at the end of the season they would be slaughtered and we would return one to them and keep the other.
The goal was for the pigs to be integrated into the ecosystem of the farm, helping with fertility and clearing underbrush, as well as to help manage the camp’s food waste by using it to feed them. More importantly, they were meant to be educational for the campers, raising awareness about where meat comes from (it was shocking how uninformed they were!). We wanted them to see firsthand how alive and sentient, not to mention intelligent and affectionate, these animals are.
On the farm, I quickly became their de facto caregivers, spending many hours lugging leftovers with the campers, moving their pen around the periphery of the farm, and giving them belly rubs. At our harvest event, I was in charge of leading a “goodbye to the pigs” station, inviting the children and adults to come spend some final moments, to talk and reflect on what was going to happen, and leave some notes and drawings to the pigs on a bulletin board.
It was a very painful day, as was the following day.
Although I was never fully comfortable with the project, I rationalized what we were doing based on the fact that we weren’t breeding or funding their breeding, that they came from a place where we knew they were well-cared for, and they received even more care with us. The pigs’ counted days also seemed to make the message we were trying to transmit to the campers much more real. Watching the slaughter certainly made the reality of eating animals very real for me.
Reading Professor Harnad’s unequivocal stance on what it is that we ultimately, kill without vital need, brought up a lot of emotions for me, as what I lived with those pigs that summer is something that I continue to struggle with. However, think that it is very important not to shy away from these painful emotions. After all, this issue stems from our ability to detach ourselves from what we viscerally know is wrong.
Thank you Professor Harnad for doing the right thing and making this a part of your courses!
"except in subsistence cultures where there is not yet any choice today, killing for meat (or fish; or hurting and killing for milk or eggs) is not necessary for either our survival or our health"
ReplyDeleteI take no issue with the arguments against harm and suffering, and for practices which reduce and minimize harm and suffering as much as possible. But what I find myself returning to is how this issue of diet sans meat is tied up in capitalist interests which feed and perpetuate classism in economic and nutritional inequalities. Any movement seeking to reduce harm and suffering has a responsibility to negotiate and address socioeconomic inequalities that reinforce excessive dependence on cheap, processed meats generating the apparent high demand for industrialized slaughtering of animals. Even if it is a misconception that people need protein from meat or that families can save money by buying fast food because fresh produce is more expensive and less caloric, to change these dynamics which reinforce the drive to supply and capitalize on meat and other animal products, we cannot exclusively discuss it as a matter of moral decision making.
Again, I am not really taking issue with what Prof. Harnad /did/ say throughout the course and in the interview with Bekoff, but rather with what was not said. The quote I started with is the only mention of human need for subsistence. Places and peoples without (or apparently without) access to other dietary choices are not limited to subsistence cultures. In order to properly combat needless killing and suffering, we have to intentionally contend with other pieces of the puzzle we are trying to solve. I believe the meat and dairy industries, all animal product dependent industries, are as huge, horrible and destructive as they are today because of the socioeconomic inequalities and capitalist exploitation.
I would second the importance of acknowledging and addressing socioeconomic impacts of these issues, as I am in a position to reduce my harmful impact through my purchases and consumption (which I try to do) but that is not achievable for everyone, not only in instances of being forced into opting for cheap fast food, but also more extreme circumstances like wet markets were fish are kept alive and suffering out of water so that they stay fresh long enough to be eaten by those who need it to survive. There are massive sweeping changes that must occur with so many practices and accessibility for so many people throughout the world to make animal wealth fare feasible in so many instances.
DeleteThe interconnectivity of human and animal wealth fare is important, and also I like to think that perhaps more people would be rallied to the causes is they realized that there were intertwined.
Yes, capitalism is as morally blind (indeed psychopathic) as the Blind (and Lazy) Watchmaker.
DeleteBut don't let abstract ideology blind you to concrete pain.
"From each according to their ability to each according to their need"
is virtually synonymous with
"do the right thing."
The tricks that cognitive dissonance plays on us are designed to excuse us from doing it.
"when we consider conducting and publishing animal research in BBS or any other journal, what is usually at stake is not vital interests, not research that will save—or will lead to research that will save—lives or ease pain. It’s much more likely to be curiosity- or career-driven research"
ReplyDeleteThis quote, and the interview in general really resonated with me because it addressed a lot of the growing doubts about cognitive science - and neuroscience in particular - that I have acquired in my course of study. Particularly in this course, I have been led to question why lots of cognitive neuroscience research - namely correlational studies and fmri localization of certain functions - matters. Certainly, it is useful in a clinical context to understand where certain vital areas are, and what to avoid as a surgeon; yet much of the research I have encountered in my undergrad is, as Professor Harnad states, mainly curiosity based or career driven.
For instance, last winter I took a class on pain, which split focus between clinical studies of chronic human conditions and drug treatments, and countless studies of animal suffering - including research conducted on mice, cats, and non-human primates (clearly sentient). It was alarming to me then and continues to be disturbing to me now the lengths which animals are routinely harmed to answer our curiosity, or make scientists look clever. As Harnad states, in many areas knowledge for knowledge's sake is perfectly valid, but it cannot be valid when it necessitates harm of sentient beings.
In addition, this reading made me think about the basic principles of ethics we apply to human medical research. In particular, I was drawn to consider not only the principle of not harming (beneficence), but also the principle of justice. In human research, under the principle of justice, it is acceptable for the subjects of clinical trials to undergo some ordinate amount of risk, so long as the research is in fact to their benefit e.g. research for advancing chemotherapy should be performed on cancer patients, or those at high risk; marginalized populations should not be exploited for the benefit of wealthier, whiter patients.
ReplyDeleteIn the context of animal research, the principle of justice is nearly never observed - animals suffer and humans (sometimes) benefit. While this injustice may be somewhat inescapable, in the context of life saving interventions and research, such as the development of the COVID 19 vaccine, in other cases such as curiosity driven research I think that considering the ethical principle of justice, as well as other ethical principles of human research as applicable and relevant to animal research could prove valuable for developing more compassionate and strict regulations.
I couldn't have said it better, Siena.
Delete