I'm not sure what argument invoking the food chain could possibly serve. When we broke with the natural world, inventing morality was part of that. So we learn nothing useful about the way things should be by looking at any aspect of the food chain. The choice is very simple. We can embrace the artificial, logic and reason, or we can call it all bullshit and try to live like animals.
Who also use logic and reason. Sure, they don't formally train the logic they have in schools, but animals can form logic chains. It's how they work out how to e.g. get the steak thawing out on the counter by using impromptu parcour they've never used before.
Besides which: we're neither as logical nor as reasonable as you might think. A lot of emotional input goes into all out decisions. Just as any cognitive scientist who's seen the temporal cortex light up for no apparent reason during bone dry isometric tests specifically set up to be not that emotionally engaging.
edited 19th Jul '16 6:43:42 AM by Euodiachloris
They don't use logic and reason. The vast majority of the time. They use trial and intuition. So do humans most of the time. Logic and reason are different. It is absolutely a beautiful thing to behold when someone actually demonstrates it. And particularly when animals do.
Reason requires several things to be reason. First, the subject must construct a theory. Second the subject must use deduction to construct a model from the theory. Third, the subject must guess a behaviour of the modelled subject based on the mental trials performed in the model.
Animals that demonstrate tool use and pass the mirror test might be demonstrating the construction of theories.
I hate to bust your bubble, but we're not the only mammals with frontal lobes that do work.
And, birds and squid organise things differently, but they can reason and logic. Which is distinct from abstract symbolic thought. Which many do have some grasp of.
Seriously, it's becoming increasingly apparent that our cognitive apparatus isn't as unique as we'd like to think it is. Sure, anthopomorphising other creatures at random is a bad move (because they're not all mammals, let alone apes); but, so is denying what the evidence is increasingly suggesting. We animal; they animal — we all animal brain.
Although, hey: still number one in tool construction! Until we build tools that are better at building tools.
Oh, and about using tool construction as a marker... It's rather funny that the further back in time evidence places it, the greater the push to diminish the relative importance of it...
Just in the same way that the so-called speech barrier kept getting pushed back and was suddenly dropped as a metric for uniquely human when it turned out that Archaic Erectus had everything in place, forget just Neanderthals.
And, now tools predating our genus Homo by a significant order of magnitude? Yeah: brains not much differentiated from the human-chimp split were busy knapping tools. Which suggests wrists and pinches being rather more intregral there than sheer brain volume and bumps. <_<
Sapience doesn't rely on vocabulary, logic, tools or an environment conducive to using fire. It helps to have those things so you can communicate that you are you to other idiots around you, though.
edited 19th Jul '16 9:12:29 AM by Euodiachloris
Symbol use and logic are somewhat orthogonal to each other. Symbol use is required for human style encoded communication. It is also required for formal logic.
Humans are great at symbol use. But they are still terrible at logic and reasoning most of the time. If there is no evidence of a constructed theory, and no evidence of deduction, and no evidence of prediction, then there is no evidence of reasoning.
Are we approaching the point where, rather than define some animals as sapient, we're going to define most humans as non-sapient?
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Also, I wouldn't say we're any different from most animals in the trying to remove predators department. Most animals try to do that if given the opportunity. That we're better at it than every other creature and mostly free of any adverse effects it might cause us directly isn't really the point.
edited 19th Jul '16 9:23:32 AM by LSBK
Given the prevalence for dehumanizing and othering people in the modern political state, one might argue that we already do.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.I have little doubt that some animals tread the line of sapience, or even cross it. I didn't think we were debating that, though; I recall the original topic being about whether we could classify such creatures as cows, house cats, and alligators as sapient, and as far as I can tell the answer is clearly no.
Learned behavior + capacity for social interaction + ability to manipulate environment != sapience, although I suppose it depends on how you define the term. I see it as "having a sense of selfdom", which doesn't really sync up with the definition on Google: 1) "wise, or attempting to appear wise"; 2) "of or relating to the human species".
Apparently sapient means "resembling humans", so it's annoyingly self-referential.
edited 19th Jul '16 2:29:23 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
I disagree with that on the basis that we have a shoddy track record at gauging the sapience of others with anything near accuracy. In this area, going for the null has repeatedly proved misleading. :/
Exhibit A: Francis Galton
without whom correlation and standard deviation wouldn't be what they are today. Just... don't look into his views on the lesser races of human and eugenics (he coined the term) too much: you might get a bit sick.
That wasn't that long ago. And, boy did he and others get a whole lot wrong about sentience, sapience and intelligence in humans...
We're still crap at coming up with unbiased metrics in this area for our own species, let alone others. <_< The legacy of Galton et al is, unfortunately, still alive and well.
edited 19th Jul '16 6:05:41 PM by Euodiachloris
Your post doesn't make any sense in context with what I posted. I'm saying that the dictionary definition of "sapient" means "human-like", which is tautological enough to be completely useless for purposes of the discussion we are supposedly having. The other definition is "wise, or appearing to be wise", which is almost as vague, since we can only define wisdom self-referentially.
The definition that seems to be in play in this topic is, "possessed of intellectual agency", which is extraordinarily hard to judge, and largely meaningless except for allowing certain people to declare that humans are horrible monsters for having the balls to eat meat or keep pets or whatever.
edited 21st Jul '16 1:24:12 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
I think your last point gets address something I probably should have mentioned when I made this thread: if you're just working under the assumption that every animal is sapient and thus it's wrong to ever eat or own, have anything to do with their lives, it's probably not going to be conductive.
The whole definition of "human-like" while tautological and not very helpful should probably used to define a sapient animal as any animal you possess a quality, normally treated as if restricted to humans (and sometimes not even all humans) that it does make it wrong to eat, hunt, own, etc, because they're "closer" to us than others.
i don't know if that's very helpful, but I've felt like I've needed to say something like this for awhile.
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If you want to switch to a definition of wisdom, wisdom does not have to be defined self referentially. The problem though, is that there are several competing definitions of the word.
Some of those definitions do have objective measurable metrics.
For example definition No. 4:
The ability to apply relevant knowledge in an insightful way, especially to different situations from that in which the knowledge was gained.
This definition can be called invention for lack of a better word. One objective metric is the number of inventions a person has made.
It is also possible to test how well a person takes information learned in one context and applies it to a context they have not yet been in.
I don't consider your definition useful for one key reason. It is egocentric. Anything that uses man as standard is automatically problematic and usually baseless. Man vs woman. For example. Take one as standard and you run into sexism. Man versus superintelligent life form. Great. Now we run into the linguistic problem where our word for "smart" doesn't apply to the hyperintelligint alien life form.
I know this is not the thread for this, but there is only really one reason to defend animal rights. And that is they have no voice of their own. Most of the other groups in this world have a voice. Which automatically through the free hand of the society balances the scales, so to speak. It is very hard to ignore something that just keeps on talking. (Notably, this is the primary reason 100% literacy is important.)
Animals have no voice. So it is incredibly convenient to just ignore them when it is inconvenient not to. Because of human nature, this means it is probable that animals receive far less respect than they deserve on balance.
...Um, you're the one who decided to phrase that as "man" apparently referring specifically to human adult males, apparently, I didn't do that. And I said it was problematic, that was the entire point of the post.
And on your last point, that's not just "human nature" that's the nature of most creatures. That we even take the time to think about other creatures that aren't our own species says something about us, as well as the few others species we've observed to do the same thing.
edited 21st Jul '16 3:54:32 PM by LSBK
If one measures the intellectual maturity of a species in terms of its capacity for altruism (an arbitrary measure, but let's go with it), then there's at least some way to apply it empirically via observed behavior. But one must then have to be careful to distinguish altruism from instinctual or learned social behavior. My cat doesn't groom me (well, mine doesn't, but some do) because of a noble concern for my health; it does so as a way of building social bonds, which is part learned behavior and part instinct. More importantly, it doesn't know it's doing it for those reasons.
The problem, however, is not whether we can hypothetically devise some test for "has sufficient agency to be worthy of consideration as a human-like being"; the problem is that most people who bring up the issue in the first place are not arguing from a position of scientific rigor; they just want to protect the fuzzy cutie wuties from mean people while playing the Humans Are the Real Monsters card.
I cannot and will not respect that. If you make the personal choice to eschew meat or not keep pets or not swat flies or whatever, that's your business. It's when you start trying to tell me that I should behave as you do because of some preachy moralistic nonsense that I get annoyed.
edited 21st Jul '16 6:47:56 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"And, I can't. "Sapient" doesn't mean "humanlike" — that would have "andro-" or "anthro-" in there, for starters. What it does mean is "personhood; the ability to perceive self; defining Me from Them; self-reflection". And, don't even have a very good grasp on how we do what we do, let alone how many flavours of variance are available in our own species.
And, I'd argue that even woodlice can manage the very basics: there are not only distinct personalities you can actually design tests to show in woodlice (as defined by consistent behaviour patterns that follow recognisable types followed by specific individuals), but they have a very solid grasp on when Me is under threat from Them or That. Of course, they can't do the mirror test for toffee, but I personally think too much weight is often put on that thing, anyway — it relies a lot on visual processing, for starters; not many animals invest as heavily into that as we do. If we could present them with mirror smells, we might get some interesting responses... Sounds, too.
In short, I don't think there's a simple line dividing sapience from nonsapience. Every critter that moves has the basic foundations for it. Some of us just build more and different stuff on them, that's all.
Also, there's nothing inherently wrong about eating a "OK — this one can jump through mental hoops we think are creepily close to ours" sapient creature: animals eat animals every day. We get eaten, even by our own kind; not as often as we used to, but we do. Squid and octopus wind up as meals every day — and, they have a colour-coded language and social structure with what looks suspiciously like culture, for crying out loud! Torturing the poor blighter what can process the thought "oh, shit: I'm about to die" to death for the jollies of seeing them having a bad day? That's a problem...
I do honestly suspect most animals pass the "oh, shit: I'm about to die" test for reasons more compellingly complex than "instinct says pain is bad; avoid pain". The trouble lies in setting up a null-compliant way to test it.
And, that's the rub: with sapience, sentience and personality (no, I'm not suggesting they're the same things) even in humans, the empirical requirement to doubt and assume for testing purposes that "nothing" is the clearest baseline has caused us to screw up. Repeatedly. Assuming "no" so you can find proof of "maybe yes" has some terrible implications if the question you're shoddily addressing is "is this subject with a different skin tone/ body shape/ lineage/ socioeconomic background as sapient as me?". <_< Because our own Me, Us and Them processes get in the way. -_-
And, we do this with other animals all the time. Heck, we do it to babies and others who fail arbitrary tests of personhood... like those with developmental disorders or dementia. If humans can be deemed nonsapient (because no baby is going to pass the mirror test in their first six months, nor will somebody with visual issues like various blindnesses pass it, and so on)...
edited 23rd Jul '16 8:05:17 AM by Euodiachloris
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I wonder, though, if you can distinguish between an argument you don't like and a poorly constructed argument. In the first case, the argument is giving you information that would inconvenience you if it were true. In the second, the argument is just noise. And the internet is flooded with people who don't know what they are talking about.
If someone came along and showed, without comparison to humans or human standards that animals need to be protected, would you be able to accept it? If one rejects the notion that morality is anything but arbitrary, then there is no real world basis for moral systems. Merely the choice is to go along with human morality or not. And since human morality is convenient, that is the thing to do most days. But there is nothing inherently wrong with going against human morality. That is fine, because morality is arbitrary and not based on anything.
Although the question of whether or not animals are sapient is an interesting one, the answer is useless. Animals are what they are. Trying to figure out if we will define them as sapient or not does not change whether or not they need respect.
Instead, the only useful question here, is how intelligent an animal is. This may affect whether or not they need to be respected. Although, it is definitely not the only relevant factor. As stated previously, sentience is also relevant.
But if you don't think that humans need to be respected, then we are fully in agreement. As I believe animals require a significant percentage of the respect that humans require. So unless you absolutely require that humans must be respected, I have no argument for the same for animals.
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Yep and yep. Arbitrary standards are useless, as shown when I make men the standard for mankind. And I didn't account for the nature of other species because it isn't important to the argument I was making there.
Please, don't come over to my place and kill me for food.
edited 23rd Jul '16 10:16:29 AM by war877
Why would I? Protein may be protein, but I'm not about to eat you... Any more than I choose to kill or eat squid or pigs.
But, if I get offered a full breakfast by somebody meaning well, I'm not going to make a fuss about the sausage or bacon: that boat sailed before the meat reached the plate. And, short pork is a lot less likely to carry dangerous prions or parasites than long pork.
I do, however avoid buying pork myself: pigs be smart people, yo!
I'm aware of the hypocrisy: sheep might be as thick as bricks, but they probably do have an appreciation for "Me is Me". But, see "thick as bricks". Having personality means little if you can't think your way out of a gate beyond "jump!".
edited 23rd Jul '16 12:02:25 PM by Euodiachloris
I wish we could just jump straight to cloned or even straight up artificial meat and get rid of this particular issue altogether.
Still a great "screw depression" song even after seven years.The definition that seems to be in play in this topic is, "possessed of intellectual agency", which is extraordinarily hard to judge, and largely meaningless except for allowing certain people to declare that humans are horrible monsters for having the balls to eat meat or keep pets or whatever.
I would agree with everything in this post. "Sapience" is a fairly meaningless concept normally invoked by people who want to shame other people for various arbitrary acts that people normally do.
However, I think I would come to the opposite conclusion as you from that. You seem to believe that sapience should be defined in some more rigorous scientific manner so it can't be abused like that, but I think the whole notion should be dropped entirely, since it serves no intellectual purpose other than that. How could we possibly benefit from rigorously and scientifically defining "sapience"?

Someone, Fighteer I think, invoked the food chain
◊ at some point. I call bullshit on that argument because in most cultures we're not doing our part in it: We remove or neutralize our natural predators on sight, and when we do die we either burn the bodies or endeavour to preserve them as long as possible with coffins and chemicals. We claim animal bodies as our food but do everything in our power to deny the use of our bodies to the next link in the chain, even after death.
"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."