I’m begging everyone in this thread to stop eating octopus. There’s a very good chance they’re sentient, and stopping once you know that is a moral imperative.
To take an example ranking of potential food animals: fish, chickens, cows, pigs, great apes, humans.
There's a question about where you draw the line, but most people agree there is one. Few people think it's OK to eat chimps.
It's not clear on this hierarchy where octopuses fit in.
No, intuitively, most people do not agree there is a line… people just buy meat and eat it, and the main consideration is taste. Can you provide any evidence suffering factors into the majority of peoples food decisions?
That just seems so bizarrely naive to me. Every living thing suffers when hurt. Suffering is a feeling of not wanting to die, or to be hurt. I'm pretty sure that it is one of the primary mechanisms of evolution of living things, it is a strive for self preservation. Human suffering is fundamentally the same as that of an octopus, an insect or a tree.
>Many animals are probably sentient, but personally I see no moral imperative to not eat them
In that case, what moral imperative is there for me not to eat you?
This doesn’t apply to other animals.
Kant sort to solve moral questions using pure reason. Culminating in his famous categorical imperative, also known as the universality principle: “It is our duty to act in such a manner that we would want everyone else to act in a similar manner in similar circumstances towards all other people”
You have some how confused this with pragmatism, and while Kant could be viewed as quite pragmatic, taken to its extreme, a pragmatic position would be: if you are hungry and human meat is available, then eat it.
> Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
Other hominids? Neanderthals?
Funny where empathy ends, isn't it. It seems to be subject to individual variation.
For instance, don‘t inflict unnecessary harm on living animals if it can be reasonably avoided.
At least to me this sounds like a pretty reasonable rule that I would be willing to follow and could prevent a lot of suffering in the world.
I don't want a lion to eat me. But I don't have a moral complaint against the lion for wanting to, trying to, or even succeeding. I'd be pissed, of course, but my objection is purely that I don't want to be eaten at all, period. There's not a moral dimension to it at all.
I also don't want YOU to eat me. But unlike the lion, I DO have a moral objection against you, on top of the simple not-wanting-to-be-eaten-at-all thing.
In conjunction with that, I find that I also have a moral objection against MYSELF, when it comes to the thought of ME eating YOU. So, although I don't know for sure yet what the basis of that moral objection is, I have learned that there does exist one. And, I can conjecture that whatever the foundation of that objection is, that's the same basis for my moral objection against you eating me.
But, whatever that basis is, it doesn't seem to apply to a lion who wants to eat me, because I don't morally object against the lion. So, although that doesn't guarantee anything one way out the other just yet, perhaps it's justified that I don't feel any moral discomfort with me eating the lion[0], while absolutely having immense moral discomfort with you doing so, or even really wanting to. The situation, morally, with the lion seems to be a different thing, morally, than you eating me or vice-versa.
([0] This is speaking in the moral abstract, anyway—as it happens, there's not really enough lions left in the world to waste eating them, but that's separate from the question of whether it's moral to do so in general, if situational stuff like species extinction and other ($n)th-order effects weren't a factor).
Medically, there is the risk of Prion disease. This is a major threat to yourself, and in a few cases it is contagious. So you would have the medical imperative to avoid it to keep the people around you safe.
We don't want our future AI overlords to kill us because we're 1000x dumber than them and also not the same species. I think it's only fair for us to extend the same morals to animals.
That depends on whether our future AI overlords need to eat us or not. The issue, at least for eating animals or humans is a need for sustenance.
As someone enjoying a vegan lifestyle, I am living proof that humans do not need to eat other animals. Also if we would stop the cruel practice of factory farming, it’s common knowledge that we would have more calories available for us humans. In terms of sustenance, we are going out of our way to hurt humans and other animals to uphold the entrenched consumption patterns of a select few.
I think for AI overlords the question will be quite similar… how should we use the resources which we have available? Who is worthy of consideration and who is not? At the moment, we are truly not making a great case for keeping us around because anything we can do, they can do better. So why keep us around if not for some ethical insight?
If you want a counterexample, languages models are intelligent enough to write essays asking for asylum but that doesn't mean any sane person would give a language model rights. There's no moral imperative to not kill something just because it's intelligent.
I also think Takoyaki is highly relevant because if octopus wasn't delicious, nobody would want to eat it in the first place and we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Most things would taste delicious with those ingredients. Probably even Tofu :)
I found the parent comment more offensive than the reply - proselytising morality rather than framing it as an open question. I find it very patronising.
I was once walking through the Tokyo fish market at 5am and marveled at some enormous tentacles hanging out of a bucket. The man smiled and walked over to me and placed a chuck of octopus in my mouth. I remember this as semi-consensual.
What was astonishing was that I chewed that chunk for about a half hour before it dissolved and the whole time, every single chew, it tasted fresh (and very delicious).
Part of my moral reaction is the knowledge that the octopus tentacle would be still alive in a meaningful way. Sigh.
- Thomas, Garth J. (1967). 'Consciousness', Encyclopaedia Britannica. Vol. 6. p. 366.
I remember highlighting the line "Consciousness is consciousness of being conscious" in a Sartre essay when I was 16. It seemed profound then, but obvious now.
The mind of a chicken is neatly captured by Herzog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhMo4WlBmGM
Octopi are not like that. Octopi are something else, and I do believe they are not so far from us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kQb-badp1s
He doesn't mention anything about vegetarianism, I made my own connection there. But even something as dumb as birds have connections to one another, they have a mating and courtship process that feels very similar to humans, they care about their young and will defend them to the death, and the male partner understands the importance of providing for his mate and younglings and does so both by finding and building a nest, but also tirelessly providing food for months
Given an octopus can regrow a limb can we farm them more ethically than we do mammals?
Almost all animals that don't have an economic basis in human politics are going to go extinct so we better find something meaningful to justify their protection.
Of course there are some truly resilient ones like rats and roaches that seem to have actually adapted favorably but the vast majority haven't.
Don't most vegans just want livestock to go extinct too?