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Comment by dalbasal | Hacker News Reader

When I was about 17 I read a Peter singer book on his ethical philosophy. It was all about grounding ethics rationally in principles. It made me enroll in a philosophy degree.

He flirted with all sorts of wierd conclusions. Babies are less conscious/intelligent/etc than ravens or apes. Does that mean they have the same moral standing as apes and birds?

However you try to rationalize human exceptionalism (or ethics in general), you can usually find examples where they don't apply to all people, or some other rational conclusion that doesn't feel right.

Anyway... I don't think our morals are or can be grounded in morality. Ultimately, "Man is the measure of all things." Morality applies where we decide it applies. There is no higher truth, no underlying rules we can unvover. There is only subjective human judgement and our attempts to rationalize it.

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> There is only subjective human judgement and our attempts to rationalize it.

I feel that the very realization of that fact is the first step in becoming a more moral person. Now that the previous model of morality has been shown to be fundamentally flawed, one can begin building the next.

Quite. Recognising that animals have many of the same experiences as us should inform but not necessarily dictate our moral position concerning them. I believe humans evolved form a common ancestor with apes, so for me it is completely unsurprising and to be expected that we share many of the same behaviours, sensations, experiences and feelings because I believe we inherited those from our pre-human ancestors. So when I see a human exhibit emotional responses and an ape displaying similar responses, that seems natural to me and I believe they have a common root in our evolutionary biology.

That doesn’t mean I have to assign apes moral equivalence to humans. Rights also imply responsibilities and apes are not capable of fulfilling the responsibilities of a human being. But then you hit the argument that some human beings aren’t capable of fulfilling those responsibilities either. Well, we are communal and social beings. We have a tendency to treat members of our community differently from outsiders, and generally better. For example we treat citizens differently from non-citizens. Family differently from non-family. I think it’s reasonable to treat humans differently from non-humans and grant them enhanced rights.

However I do still accept our common biology and experiential and emotional lives with some animals. I can accept that when an ape or a human sit watching a sunset, relaxing and not actively thinking about anything, that they have fundamentally the same kind of experience. I think that reasonably extends to a bias against causing unnecessary suffering for example. How we treat others and how we treat animals says something about our character.

Our experiences may differ most from other animals in the degree to which we are aware of having them, and we assume that other people are similarly aware of having their own experiences and similarly assume that they are thinking the same of us -- we have a theory of mind (and in addition, we can discuss it, with both ourselves and other people, using language.)

a surprisingly wide range of species display something similar in some cases, though it is hard to say how aware they are of it, or how important it is to their lives.

If animals behave as though they have a theory of mind (empathy, love, self-sacrifice, etc) without actually having a theory of mind, that raises very prickly problems concerning human evolution. After all if you don’t have to have a theory of mind to exhibit the behaviours of having one, did our common ancestors exhibit this behaviour before they developed a theory of mind? Presumably the answer would have to be yes, because all of our close evolutionary relatives exhibit this behaviour. It would be extraordinary to suppose that this behaviour evolved completely independently in all these animals and that our common ancestor didn’t have this behaviour.

So if our non-human ancestors exhibited this behaviour, but did not actually have a theory of mind, how come we can say that our equivalent behaviour does flow from having a theory of mind? That makes no sense. So we develop the behaviour first, then we develop a theory of mind, and it’s a pure co-incidence that the behaviour flowing from having a theory of mind just so happens to be completely indistinguishable, even though the cause is completely different? I just don't see how that can be credible.

The only coherent account, to me, is that the behaviour we have which we believe flows from having a theory of mind, if exhibited by other animals, must be evidence that they posses a theory of mind as well.

Firstly, let me make it clear that I am not saying that only humans have a theory of mind, and I am also not saying that it is a binary property, either you have it in full or not at all.

Having said that, one can still consider when, where, how and how often it evolved. For example, there are many species that cache food. Some (some squirrels and also scrub jays, for example) will either only pretend to cache the food they are carrying, or move it later, if they notice they are being observed. Is that an application of a general theory of mind at work, or an instinct that evolved for one particular circumstance? As far as the ethical treatment of animals is concerned, I have no objection to assuming the former, but if we want a scientific understanding of what is really going on, that assumption cannot be made without further evidence.

What you are overlooking, I think, is that there are several possible explanations for the externally-observable behavior, and once you recognize that, there should be no paradox. In our case, we, as privileged observers of our own minds, can see our theory of mind at work, and, through language, we can talk to other people and ask how it seems to them. Neither of these lines of inquiry are an option when it comes to studying other species.

There is an interesting parallel in ethics: some people are well-behaved because they are fearful of punishment or ostracism, while some do so out of respect for other people. You can't always tell motive from actions alone.

I’m aware of the idea of parallel evolution. You’re quite right, it’s entirely plausible and not something we can dismiss out of hand.

With species like squirrels that are more remotely related to us, there is more scope for an argument of parallel evolution, sure. Maybe their similar behaviour developed independently and has a different cause especially when other mammals do not exhibit this behaviour.

With our much closer relatives such as apes though that exhibit so many more behaviours that are very close to ours it’s much less plausible. If all of them exhibit a common pattern of social behaviour with ourselves, arguing all of them could have independently developed this behaviour separately from us and each other, to appear indistinguishable, that seems highly implausible.

Even with squirrels though, as mammals they exhibit many behaviours common to all mammals. Behaviours we exhibit as well. So if all mammals have these behaviours and we do too, if our behaviour has a different cause, at some point our ancestors must have switched from exhibiting the behaviour due to the common mamalian cause to exhibiting it due to this new cause unique to us. I don’t find that account very plausible either.

Did our ancestors stop exhibiting this behaviour first, then develop new neurological mechanisms that happened to replace the lost behaviours? When did that happen, before or after we diverged from other apes? Maybe they have these behaviour for the same reason as us but other mammals don’t? Did we develop a parallel mechanism and the behaviour transitioned to the new causal mechanism? I’d expect to see some residual evidence in our neurology or behavioural patterns of that having happened.

Parallel or convergent evolution is coincidental to the point I was making, which is that you cannot assume a theory of mind from observations that might be consistent with it; you also have to give due consideration to the other possibilities, such as it being an instinctive behavior evolved for a particular situation.

>Even with squirrels though, as mammals they exhibit many behaviours common to all mammals. Behaviours we exhibit as well. So if all mammals have these behaviours and we do too...

Here you are combining speculation with an argument from the general to the specific. There are some behaviors common to all mammals, but are there any theory-of-mind-like behaviors in that category? No, so the rest of that paragraph and the one following are built on a false premise.

I am no expert, but FWIW, I happen to think that apes, or at least chimpanzees and orangutans, do have a nascent theory of mind, and that it was more developed in the various hominins that are now extinct.

Rationalizations of morality may be more or less flawed, but the golden rule is a pretty good basis for practical ethics, regardless of its philosophical status.

Even "do unto others" assumes you're already decided on who/what counts as "others." Are apes others? What about snails, aliens, ai?

Well, it doesn't actually assume that - it raises the issue, and provides a basis for discussing it.

When it comes to other animals, I personally tend to give them the benefit of the doubt, though I don't think there is much room for doubt, in the case of snails, as to whether they have inner lives (for example, I think cone snails are dangerous, but not evil.)

AI is an interesting case because the discussion of AI ethics is almost always about having AI behave ethically towards us.

Humans are not rational beings. A tremendous fraction of our thought processes arise from instinctual programming from survival in an era much different than our current environment. A fully rational being would look at a burning house and decide the 70 year old man is more worth saving thnn the five day old infant,but thinking like that isn't going to result in maximum reproductive success for your genes in the dangerous, resource - scarce environment we evolved in.

> Anyway... I don't think our morals are or can be grounded in morality. Ultimately, "Man is the measure of all things." Morality applies where we decide it applies. There is no higher truth, no underlying rules we can unvover. There is only subjective human judgement and our attempts to rationalize it.

That's pretty much the antithesis of, for example, Derek Parfitt's work, I would say. A lot of moral philosophers would disagree with this.

I dont think we can just say morality applies where we want it to apply because you it will always be a part of the equation whether you want it or not. I would rather say that no moral system is perfect, and that there are many decision where you just have to pick the lesser of several wrongs. Just because we in certain situation chose not to look at them through a moral lens doesn't mean they a void of moral consequence .

What Singer book was it that you read?

I think it was "practical ethics," basically a collection of essays.

There are plenty of arguments against the "babies are less conscious than ravens" position. One of the most prominent being "Future like ours" and "thread of life" argument. A human baby may be less conscious than a raven, but he will eventually grow up to reach his adult potential which will easily outstrip that of ravens. There are plenty of other arguments which I'm sure you are familiar with if you majored in philosophy.

I agree with you on "subjective human judgement". I'd even suggest that morality is ultimately pure human selfishness. What we find "moral" and "immoral" changes as our interests change. Morality is what we feel relatively benefits us the most. It is selfish rationalization.

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