I think among some people that are frustrated with the human world for whatever - either personal or abstract - reason, there's a feeling of misanthropy that colors their thinking, and so they try to belittle humanity.
To simply state that humans are best adapted at certain traits is true, but humans have tended to think of themselves as "special" in that "we're not even animals, but beings made in the image of God and given divine right to conquer Nature and do with it what we will." That anthropocentric bias has led to a multitude of evils and scientific falsehoods, and that's what needs to be corrected. It's got nothing to do with misanthropy.
How about we're the only species which we hold to a moral standard? Unless you're going to hold other species to that standard, you have to admit that we're special.
I think we need to recognise that we are, at least, unique. And that we have a unique ability to affect the world, for good or ill, that sets us apart from other animals. That shouldn't be an excuse for hubris, but it should be reflected in how we view ourselves as a species.
Agreed. Human animals will always find pseudo-rational reasons to do nefarious things.
We are animals, and everything we do is part of nature.
Nature isn't either inherently good or evil, and natural processes can be self-destructive.
And while we probably don't have qualitatively unique features we distinguish ourselves quantitatively on many axes, especially when it comes to storing and transmitting information and therefore influencing the rest of the world.
We may be more powerful than other species, but I'm afraid that on the knowledge/wisdom scale, we're only good enough to be dangerous. Seeing ourselves as a part of nature is necessary to limit the damage we do.
Evidence is increasingly showing us that the qualities we believed differentiated us from animals, that made our lives more worthy of respect, aren't actually unique to us.
If you're going to come back at that with "we're better at these things than they are", then that philosophy suggests again that there are lesser classes of human being as well, the ones that aren't as good as others at whatever metric you happen to be using.
It is natural that we seek to justify behavior on which our living standards are dependent, but that doesn't make our reasoning sound.
And you're right. If other animals were self aware enough to recognize their own exceptional qualities I'm sure they'd be proud of them. Humans have an awful sense of smell. Our vision is good, but animals have better vision. Same for hearing.
But we are extremely good at thinking and cooperating with other members of our species. We're special because we form a highly dynamic super-organism like an ant colony, which amplifies our individual exceptionalism.
In some cultures eating horse meat is normal, in others vegetarianism is the honourable goal. Have you ever asked yourself why you eat or why you don't eat some animals? It is typically a product of the culture we grew up in, rarely the product of an intentional thought process.
Would you eat another human? What about another ape? An elephant? A monkey? A cat? A rabbit? A cow? Where do you draw the line?
I once decided that the "mirror test"[1] was my litmus test for eating or not an animal. But then as I looked more into it I realised that that test isn't as straight forward as I thought, lots of false positive, methodology issues (eg: some animal start passing the test after being exposed to mirrors for a long time). And the final blow was that most humans under 6 months fail the test and I decided not to use this test rather than starting to eat human infants.
Thing about consciousness, in the philosophical sense that you clearly mean it, is that it is completely unempirical and therefore does not exist within the scientific model. I know I have consciousness because I experience it, I assume you have consciousness because you are very like me, you assume these low IQ animals don't have consciousness because they are not like you. There exists no objective measurement of consciousness.
no, we wouldn't eat humans who do not have IQ of 1-3 year old, because we would recognize that they are human and don't have that IQ from disease or misfortune, not because of their inherent incapability of having it.
Your original claim implied that you believe this is because lower IQ equates to a lack of consciousness, which as I've already described cannot be objectively determined and is therefore a poor metric. If I understand you correctly, you are now saying that it's really the species that determines consciousness, which is equally invalid.
Either you are taking it on pure faith that certain species have consciousness and others do not, in which case there is little point in further discussion, or you are trying to claim that certain species are worth more than others because they seem to have a greater aptitude in certain categories. For some reason, this does not apply on an individual basis. How convenient for you, then, that these categories align perfectly with all the areas your species has great aptitude!
I invite you to consider this possibility: Your belief is not based on rational reasoning, you are just rationalizing your behavior.
You are not making rational logical arguments. You have started with your preferred conclusion and are employing rationalization to justify it. Every time I show you that your philosophy allows for things you find uncomfortable, you move the goalposts.
Case in point:
>Also, discussing whether or not I would eat a human is silly because I can't go to the supermarket and buy human flesh. So, let's keep this discussion away from meaningless hypotheticals.
This is a copout that means "I am afraid of what my philosophy actually means, so let's just ignore it". You could easily acquire and consume an infant if you wanted. There'd be severe consequences for doing so, of course, but that doesn't mean you can't do it. People do do it. None of that is relevant to the question of whether or not it is morally permissible to do so, now is it?
But you, you're not interested in making sense. You're uncomfortable, so you rationalize. Oh, it's not ok to eat infants even though they're well below my IQ threshold, even though it's completely possible, because they aren't sold in the grocery store!
Please.
The level of intelligence plays little role, as long as the animals don't use it to actively try to fight back or escape. E.g. pigs are no less smart than dogs.
And on your point about pig vs dogs: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_meat
I just think thad dog meat can't be anything but an expensive delicacy, because to produce one unit of dog meat you already need many more units of other meat, to feed the dog.
This helps dogs and cats stay pets, largely protected from eating by human emotional attachment, while cows or pigs get pushed to the cattle sector, emotionally detached for food purposes.
I'd say it's rather simple, the issue is most people are unwilling to make the sacrifices required to live morally.
Given their clear intelligence and ability to suffer the ease with which people deny that animals are moral beings is disgusting.
This is why I am saying that one needs to draw a line, and that it isn't necessarily easy. It sounds like you made your choice and that it was easy for you, but that isn't the case for everybody.
[1]: https://www.wired.com/2013/12/secret-language-of-plants/
Would you accept a plantation owner claiming slavery's immorality was not obvious because there were arguments to be had about the ethics of "wage slavery" etc?
>but that isn't the case for everybody.
This is a moral failing.
If this were not true why are we repulsed by the beating of an animal? Why do we invent such paradoxical concepts as the "humane" slaughterhouse?
Our moral intuition leads us to the answer but cultural norms and casuistry let us avoid it.
Attempting to quantify subjective matters is arguably one of the big reasons so many of the social sciences are facing replication crises. There are so many factors in play that the quantifications, or justifications, we provide to explain social phenomena like this are not very meaningful even if we think they are! The most important thing is to be aware of the facts, so much as possible, but beyond that simply to take your opinion as what it is - a subjective view based on a complex series of mental interactions that even you are not fully privy to.
Was it just a subjective discussion with no right or wrong answer?
What about another ape or an elephant?
To combine the eating of other animals, a rational brain and a mind at peace, you need some amount of self deception. Without it, you can only pick two.
For evolutionary reasons, it's obvious why eating meat is very beneficial. Today, it might not even be necessary for good health.
i'm at peace with killing animals for food. i know that they feel pain, but life is pain in general. maybe i'm a terrible person or something, but a good bbq is def worth more than the life of a pig or a cow.
Not necessarily. Many people who eat animals do so because they are not in a position where their nutritional needs can be met by a purely vegetarian diet (largely this is a problem of availability). When it comes to survival, I have a difficult time judging others from my comfortable position of not being in mortal danger.
If not for the development of animal husbandry, would pigs, chickens, and such be as successful (from a total population pov)? I think not. Many animals have the chance to be alive, only because they are supported by humans. This relationship is not only one-way: they are protected from predators, sheltered, and fed.
Of course this doesn't justify mistreatment. But it puts in perspective the idea that turning vegetarian, and banning meat would be good for those animals in question. It wouldn't: they wouldn't be alive in the first place.
By the way, even animal husbandry is not specific to humans. Ants for example, have "farmed" aphids for millions of years. They milk them for honeydew and eventually eat them.
It's highly arguable whether they are better off being "alive", when this "aliveness" is so far off what they are genetically programmed to enjoy as a normal life.
For example, if an alien species took over Earth's biosphere and treated humans like we treat cows, raising them in overcrowded pens, feeding them food that occasionally contains human meat, forcefully inseminating the females every year and separating them from their young 24 hours after birth, then killing the females when they reach their mid-twenties because their fertility drops, and basically using a tiny proportion of males to make sperm and slaughtering the rest at a young age... would you make the argument that there's a two-way relationship there? That humans are benefitting in some way?
Even if they took these domesticated humans and spread them to the stars, ensuring their survival for millions of years, and protection from other predator alien species, so long as these "humans" were treated in this way we would not consider this to be beneficial to our species in any way. At least I wouldn't: better extinction than such a "life".
Obviously we can't ask the cows what they would prefer (or perhaps we can, we just don't have much interest in figuring out how to do it). If we did ask them, though, I doubt they'd see this relationship as beneficial to them in any way.
> when this "aliveness" is so far off what they are genetically programmed to enjoy as a normal life.
I assume, just like humans, other animals can adapt and even enjoy a life partly controlled and radically different from natural conditions.
I think the basis should be: are they better off than in the wild? In terms of pain, comfort and stress. And I'd argue that we can give them a better life. But, especially with factory farming, we often don't.
In your specific example of aliens raising humans. If aliens let them live in decent conditions, with some added benefits: say diseases, illnesses and poverty completely eradicated, and wars forbidden. But with the caveat that aliens do decide when you die. (Somewhat similar to Logan's run...). I think many may see it as better than our current life.
Acknowledging both the blindingly obvious point that we are the apex species on this planet and that we do a lot of complicated, interesting things we have yet to observe in others does not mean observing similarities to other species somehow diminishes humanity. On the contrary, telling ourselves just-so stories that appeal to our arrogance and need to be special discourages research and progress. If I "know" that we're the only species that talks (because some other human convinced me that god, some super-researcher or whoever said so), I'm not very likely to go looking for counterexamples.
Drifting into aesthetic/religious/philosophical territory for a second, I personally feel that humans are deeply interesting because of what an odd mishmash of traits we have. If one is prone to anthropomorphizing evolution, one way to still appeal to human vanity is to view it as a pretty risky slow-burn strategy that, after succeeding, made us our own worst predator/environmental risk[1]. If we were just some toy made by $deity for whatever reason, it becomes a lot less interesting of a story.
[1] Of course, evolution doesn't work that way, but it makes a nice story.
A good read, especially on the last page the paragraph beginning with, “The history of science contains, one after another, a series of blows to mankind’s anthropocentric ego.”