▲ 52 points
back
80 comments
The idea that beings which are grossly anatomically and physiologically similar to ourselves somehow don't experience similar emotions as ourselves is objectively the most backward, bizarre, and anthrocentric biological idea I can imagine.
The default rational -- and scientific -- position should be that animals' inner lives are roughly similar to our own, at least in proportion to the similarity of their observable experience, and until proven otherwise. To assume otherwise -- that animals are dead inside, because they look different, or -- forgive the cynicism -- because they challenge some misplaced idea of human exceptionalism -- that is "faith", and not science.
I've been struggling with this myself recently, about the ethics of eating meat and whether animals have a "soul".
My argument for a long time was that animals have no ego, therefore death is insignificant to them. Animals are incapable of forming abstract concepts, of thinking about the future or the past in concrete terms, of forming feelings and emotions.
However, there's plenty of evidence to suggest that at least the more intelligent mammals, such as whales and dolphins, as well as apes, do have an ego. Plenty of people argue that it's unethical to kill whales and dolphins because they do have an ego and can form abstract thoughts.
So apparently whales are off the table, but cows are fine? Where is that line drawn? I don't have that answer, so I've gone off eating meat in general. The concept of killing a living, possibly thinking being in order to eat it seems a bit fucked up to me these days. I can't say with certainty if/what animals do have an ego, or if they are capable of abstract thoughts, but it for me it seems safer to assume they do and avoid eating them.
Nature is rough my friend. Dogs and bears (which are closely related to dogs) have emotion and form bonds, but they ruthlessly prey one on the other. You and I might live a comfortable life now, but without society you would put any sentient being on the plate in order to feed your own sentient offspring.
Just as you believe that animals are no different from man, you should realize that man is no different from animals and that our physiology requires us to eat them just as they must eat each other. Of course with modern nutritional knowledge and preparation techniques you _could_ live off flora, but human physiology in the absence of technology requires meat no matter how cute or emotional the prey.
And if we went back to living in caves, I'd take up eating animals again. I used to hunt, and I have no particular qualms in taking it up again if it was necessary, which is more than I could say for a lot of people. I always found it incredibly hypocritical when non-vegetarians used to criticise me for hunting.
We are perfectly capable of eating a plant-based diet, we can derive any missing vitamins (e.g. B12) from supplements and fortified foods. Most of us have the choice to forgo eating animals.
I don't see the relevance. We do live in society and do have technology. Without those things, we wouldn't have hospitals, cardboard, or Hacker News either, but what does that mean?
There's a sort of meme which is like a lecture on how dangerous the world 'really' is, often to justify or advocate a lack of compassion. It's portrayed as 'realism' but I find it surreal: We don't live in a state of nature and we have no desire to. Why are we talking about it? Why don't we aim for more, as our ancestors who built this society did?
> our physiology requires us to eat them just as they must eat each other.
This not true as you pointed out yourself.
Not human physiology but a certain environment requires humans to eat meat because there is nothing better available.
In all societies except the most retarded, a vegan diet with supplements (notably vitamin B12) is the cheapest and healthiest diet.
https://www.eatright.org/food/nutrition/vegetarian-and-speci...
Problem is that by not eating meat you are still killing animals indirectly. You just can`t avoid it. How many pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and other *cides are thrown at your GMO soy crops? How many smaller animals are killed by cultivating that land for the crops? And who are we to say that little mouse is worth less than a cow?
People usually favor bigger animals in their animal empathy pyramid. On top are smart or endangered animals and pets that we do not usually eat. Then come bigger animals that we grow to like because we can see their nuanced expressions because of their size. And then on the bottom are insects, pests and "gross" animals.
But who am I to egotistically judge from a human point of view that a dog's life is more important than pig`s. Or that 1 cow deserves to live more than million of flies.
Life is rough. Animals and people die in many different ways, not just for food. My view now is that that fact is inevitable, but that does not mean that you can be a jerk and disrespect life and do as you please. Eat animals, but respect them. Eat them, but in as humane way as possible. Don`t support industrial farming and production of animals. Don`t throw food. Don`t be mindless about it. Care for the environment. Don`t kill without purpose, even the smallest animals.
For sure. I'm aware that we kill animals either way.
But we kill less animals if we don't eat them. Especially if you're in the USA and eat corn fed beef or chicken.
I like your attitude though, in regards to respecting life, and I wish more people had it.
I have settled on the definition of a soul being, "that which makes us unique."
Animals souls do not burn as bright, or as complex as ours do, and perhaps the higher order animals do, but they are there.
I had a special cat once. Deep bond with my wife and I. When my wife was sick, that cat attended to her. She reported the caring touch, done for the same reasons any of us would.
When she died, it was powerful.
She wanted to be with us, and she communicated basic affection, fear, the need to be close, pain, and more.
It was remarkably like the passing of a person. Simpler, but not less, just simpler.
It is hard to justify a lot of what we do, given these kinds if experiences.
One other thing: Animals do vary. Widely. But, when we invest in them, seek mutual understanding, they respond. The more capable ones can respond more than I belueve we realize.
I like to call my dog a person - a very little person, but a person nonetheless. I love your phrasing "simpler, but not less". That's exactly it.
I personify my animals too. Everything's more robust and fulfilling that way. And I think they appreciate it and respond back.
I've long resigned to the fact that eating meat is not justifiable, and that I continue to do it solely because of the taste. I haven't seen a single convincing argument to prove otherwise.
>My argument for a long time was that animals have no ego
I think the problem with a train of thought like this one is that it assume there are certain fixed properties that makes a human "special". That is perhaps not so considering how we build abstractions on base instincts[1]
> So apparently whales are off the table, but cows are fine?
I hate how people do this for dogs and not pigs either, literally makes no sense how morals are peddled sometimes
Do dogs, cows, whales, sheep, pigs, etc. etc. have emotions and internal lives that matter, at least to them?
This is another one of those things we don’t need yet another PhD, and yet another tomb of books, and yet more decades and centuries, to discuss and probe.
One has only to watch these animals for five minute to see the answer is clearly yes.
It would seem to me the only reason I don’t eat dogs and whales and dolphins is purely my cultural upbringing.
But, in my opinion, all of this is irrelevant. We don’t need to feel for these creatures.
Rather, what we need to do, en mass, is realise the jury is in: for our own health, and the overall sustainability of human life: we ought significantly reduce our meat consumption.
A friend in college had a pet chicken. I was surprised by how intelligent this seemingly stupid bird could be. It would follow commands, recognize me, and even play with me.
That's for a chicken. You only have to spend 5 minutes with a dog or a cow to see how smart they can be.
Dogs are amazing. I have two Border Collie x somethings. I believe they are siblings, same date of birth, same size, same colourings and markings. They have vastly different personalities. They're both very affectionate, one of them ridiculously so: he sleeps most nights curled up against my chest with the back of his head pressed firmly against my chin. If I move, he follows. The two dogs and I have worked together enough that they know all our little drills, and all the discipline-in-small-things we do that enables them to be relatively calm and well behaved for 16 month old dogs. They won't run through open doors or gates, and I walk them off lead and they won't touch the road nor cross the road uninvited, after first sitting and waiting for 10+ seconds.
There was once a Vietnamese couchsurfer who stayed a few nights. Another couchsurfer asked her: have you ever eaten dog. Her response: yes, we eat dog. Not "yeah I've tried it" just unemotionally "yes we eat it."
I've read that pigs outperform 3-year-old human children on cognition tests and are smarter than any domestic animal, and animal experts consider them more trainable than cats or dogs.
The absurdity of all this just astounds me. And yet I continue to eat meat, including pigs.
So it seems to me our problem, as a the Human Society, is that we just don't care. We don't care that we are reducing our own long term survivability, both personally with regard to our own health, and globally with regard to the resources we all share.
Because if we, as all-the-humans-on-the-planet did care, we certainly wouldn't be in this mess.
The problem, then, isn't money, nor politics, nor pollution, nor climate change, etc etc etc.
The problem is: we don't care.
People are thoroughly capable of believing this about other people, never mind non-human animals.
Ha! Reading that actually have me a little shock. So true!
Where I live, if you were to palliatively medicate a dog or cat, or cow or pig or sheep, for ten years, in an effort to keep it alive despite obvious suffering, you would likely be servely reprimanded, if caught.
Meanwhile, humans have turned this treatment toward each other in to an industry.
We shouldn’t be at all surprised that we factory farm animals for our culinary pleasures.
Exactly.
>To assume otherwise -- that animals are dead inside, because they look different, or -- forgive the cynicism -- because they challenge some misplaced idea of human exceptionalism -- that is "faith", and not science.
How about "has 302 neurons"? Where along this list ought we draw one or more partitions? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_n...
That you have to draw a line somewhere is obvious. Speciecism however draws the line at exactly our own species. We can do better than that. To use a physiological line seems indeed a better approach. It would also be good if we would know where there is a line of feeling pain. Good luck establishing a line. It's one of the things we can do, where we can collectively become more reasonable and emphatic than we were before.
That you have to draw a line somewhere is obvious.
Given that there is no such actual line, and that we would be thus trying to apply a binary idea to a universe that doesn't actually support that - reality disagrees with us, as it were - is it still obvious? It seems harsh that we must obviously do something that we know to be incorrect.
Like I said, our idea – that is, our presumption, short of scientific evidence – of what inner experiences an animal might share with us should be informed by our knowledge of what physiology and behavior that animal shares with us. Orcas are mammals with complex social structures who form extremely close bonds with their mothers [1]. Hence my suggestion that the burden of proof rests with those who claim that an orca would not feel grief should her child die.
Roundworms? Not so much.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_whale#Social_structure
I'm curious how much of our 'soul' is a product of the relationship between the bacterial biomes in our bodies, rather than just our neurons by themselves.
Even more, how do we know all neurons are equal?
edit: not arguing against your point, just woolgathering.
I find your comment ironic. Consider that you are stating that everything must, at some level, be like humans. This is the most clear cut example of anthrocentric thinking I can imagine! This view is also contradicted by experiment which shows that creatures that are extremely genetically similar to us, still respond very differently to various stimuli thus making the logical view that they indeed do experience the same stimuli in different ways.
Beyond experiment I think it also fails through basic logic as well. Evolution dictates what we become, and we can see the vast variety of changes that evolution has forked among us. Go back far enough and even humans and plants share a common ancestor. To this day a banana shares about 60% of its DNA with a human! But of course it's not just what's on the outside the evolution changes. The way things act, behave, perceive, think, and so on is also controlled by evolution. To assume that somehow everything must, at some level, have internal mechanisms similar to a human is also just not very logical. It'd be like suggesting that everything must have opposable thumbs, because we do. Of course we know that to be very false, but the only reason your statement is not immediately similarly absurd is because you're referencing things that cannot be directly observed.
To assume that animals that behave as if they had emotions actually have emotions is not anthrocentric but intelligent thinking. This not like the question whether Earth orbits the sun or the sun orbits Earth in case you do not know the mass of the objects.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/fish-feel-pain...
It is absurd and unscientific to think that animals have no emotional awareness despite the emotional reptilian complex and the limbic system and a different neocortex for unemotional intelligence.
Besides the problem of consciousness is far from being solved.
https://www.cell.com/trends/neurosciences/fulltext/S0166-223...
The post I was responding to stated 'animals similar to us must experience similar emotions.' You ignore this and then straw man me into suggesting that animals have no response system whatsoever, which is obviously absurd. And in the process there you've also shifted the goal posts from similar emotional response to any response whatsoever. Classy.
For fish there is 0 doubt that whatever they experience, it is radically different than what humans do. On top of this I would generally not waste time on media articles for scientific issues. An interesting overview of the state of 'fish pain' studies is available here. [1] PSU also offers CiteSeerX as a means of finding papers on a given topic. This [1] is a search for fish pain providing further reading. As usual, and especially if you choose to use services more susceptible to spam/blogging including Google Scholar, you should try to isolate the papers down to those that have been published and peer reviewed.
[1] - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/faf.12010
[2] - http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/search?q=title%3Afish+pain
I often compare animals and humans to old and new video games, same principles, just a shift in resolution.
On the other hand, many of our emotions and emotional displays appear to be social in nature, and we are much more social than the average mammal.
Orcas aren't the "average" mammal. They have one of the most complex known social structures. [1]
Should we assume that solitary mammals – say, tigers – feel grief? Maybe not – they do not share the social structure humans have in which grief plays a part. Though we might assume they experience emotions related to maintaining a territory, such as pride and anger.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_whale#Social_structure
I could totally expect a tiger to experience the pain of loss if their young were killed. After all, giving birth to and raising their young is a huge investment for them too.
Also, I have seen grown tigers play with humans and shown immense affection, so it seems to me they are capable of more social bonding than they generally express in the wild.
Given that lions and tigers are closely related, and that lions are super social, I could imagine tigers have some latent social "DNA" which is just not currently expressed very much in the wild.
Humans are clearly exceptional in numerous positive ways. There is no real debate to be had there.
Let me know when the whales, monkeys and dolphins put a telescope into orbit. And let me know what the grieving orca thinks about generational knowledge transference or the afterlife.
Human exceptionalism isn't simultaneously a degradation of the amazing traits of other species. Just because humans are exceptional intellectually compared to gorillas, that doesn't actually take anything away from gorillas.
Neither of those things indicate that humans have wildly different inner lives, though. A lot of these may perhaps be attributed to a combination of language development and tools usage, neither of which is really relevant to the parent's point in any way, so I don't really understand your digression.
Humans DO have a history of degrading the inner lives of animals and it's a problem. We don't even know for sure that humans are exceptional intellectually compared to gorillas in an objective sense, we're just deriving that from the aforementioned telescope example which is not scientific in the slightest.
Humans have plenty to be proud of but with things like "we're more intelligent" or "we're more emotionally developed" as opposed to "we got a lucky combination of things" I'd rather be really careful.
> Humans DO have a history of degrading the inner lives of animals and it's a problem
Humans have enough a history of degrading the inner lives of fellow humans, let alone other animals.
There's no need to resort to fancy engineering projects -- where's the animal that knows how to craft novel utterances to express new ideas, or the animal that has a sense of self? The animal that has an awareness of its own mortality? The animal that can appreciate ideas like morality? It doesn't exist.
Things human value (exploration, science) aren’t necessarily things other species would value. We tend to destroy the planet in our pursuits, so I’m not as confident as you are in our own species’ intellectual superiority.
Many species have better memories than humans, including most monkey/ape species. We have exceptional dexterity while dolphins don’t, so is it a fair fight to judge intelligence by putting a telescope into orbit? Do dolphins have as high a rate of depression in their species as humans? Do they have as many wars as us? Again, are we really that much more intelligent than these other species? Measuring intelligence is hard because we don’t have a rigorous definition.
The only species which even begins to have a plausible comparison is the octopus. Yes, I feel completely confident saying we're more intelligent than orcas or monkeys.
So did humans 20,000 years ago lack emotional depth since they had yet to invent complex technology?
Interestingly, some people have argued that they did lack our depth. [1]
Personally I don't think it's relevant to this discussion. Saying that consciousness is more complex than "you either have it or you don't" seems like a trivial observation.
Peter Singer argues [2] that "the fundamental interest that entitles a being to equal consideration is the capacity for suffering and/or enjoyment or happiness" (and that this applies to any being, human or not). I think that this is a much more interesting approach. Yes, this makes things more complex ("where do you draw the line") but it also seems more honest.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer#Applied_ethics
They likely had the same cognitive capacity as us, and if dropped into a modern environment could invent complex technology.
No other animal can do this as far as we know.
Humans had bow and arrow, sling, spear thrower. Which is might as well be satellite in orbit when compared to tech of any animal we know off.
Anthropomorphization is tempting but wrong https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/health/02iht-02angi.15827...
> Everywhere in nature, biologists say, are examples of animals behaving as though they were at least vaguely aware of death's brutal supremacy and yet unpersuaded that it had anything to do with them. Michael Wilson, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota who has studied chimpanzees at Jane Goodall's research site in Gombe, said chimps were "very different from us in terms of what they understand about death and the difference between the living and the dead." The Hallmark hanky moment alternates with the Roald Dahl macabre. A mother will try to nurse her dead baby back to life, Wilson said, "but when the infant becomes quite decayed, she'll carry it by just one leg or sling it over her back in a casual way."
Whether they actually have similar internal experience or not I think still does not justify the way humans treat animals. If a developmentally disabled human was not able comprehend life, death or suffering, that would not excuse mistreatment of that person.
Whether animals understand life or not isn’t really the point, and I think these arguments are misused to justify explotation and mistreatment.
This whole discussion is about whether they understand it. But I think it's revealing that multiple people have shifted the discussion to the treatment of animals -- it seems to me like some of us, rather than thinking animals deserve better treatment because of their sentience, think animals must be sentient because they deserve better treatment. Personally, I do not find the evidence that humans have anything approaching a human internal life persuasive.
Or, could the behavior just show that that whales don't understand death at all and the whale was just instinctively trying to aid her "sick" calf until he recovered?
in a similar way, there's a story about octopussies: they will heat their offsprings nest to near death and then leave as far as possible so predators aren't attracted by her corpse.. If true that's a deep conceptual step
That's just evolution. The offspring of octopus mothers that died next to the nest also got eaten so didn't survive to reproduce and pass on that trait.
evolution also made a path for mothers to heat the nest
still it's a interesting common point
The entire article is stupid
> This is perhaps because most humans failed to even entertain the possibility that animals might care about the death of those they love.
Ever person with two pets who hung out and had one die has looked to see if the other showed grief. A really stupid strawperson premise. And you'll see it, but the question as a layperson is, is it real or imagined.
Also dogs mourning their dead owners have multiple fucking movies made about them. It's pop culture for dams sake. Hachikō was re-made into an American movie from a Japanese movie made off multiple news articles.
But at the end of the day if animals show grief why are they using this current cliche of J35. Why not the billions of animals that interact with us every day. Why are they using famous cases of grief that we've all heard before?