Meat Morality and Human/Animal/Alien Rights

Psychokinetic levitation is not sentience, either. We are able to determine that animals communicate, and the depth to which that communication occurs. It doesn't even need to be sound based speech. We understand how ants and bees communicate through chemistry, as one example. Perhaps I am being too optimistic, but like I said I am pretty confident that we can sense sentience even if we are not able to direclty communicate.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

Thanks Taq. No offense, but you're missing the point, here. You're assuming that said aliens are using the same yardstick as we humans in determining what we perceive as 'sentience'. Who's to say psychokinetic levitational ability or anything else beyond any human's ability (save David Blaine ) would not be the determinant for whether or not the human race would be led to slaughter? Do you think we'd be able to figure out what their criteria were in this respect before they'd make cutlets out of us? Just thinking out loud, here...FYI, I love a good ribeye. Edited by Apothecus, : syntax

That is not my assumption. It is the assumption in the OP."Put it this way - If a highly intelligent, highly advanced far intellectually superior alien race came to Earth and started treating humans in much the same way that we treat animals (intense meat farming, milk extraction, slave labour, conducting experiments, testing cosmetics etc. etc.) on what rational and consistent basis could we tell them that what they are doing is morally wrong whilst simultaneously justifying our own treatment of intellectually inferior creatures?"Our rational is that we use sentience as a metric. Us, and presumably the aliens, are sentient. The animals which we domesticate and eat are not sentient. That is the difference. That is our justifiable rationale. Their criteria may very well be different as would their views on morality. Aliens may very well view those who are unable to defend themselves, sentient or not, as morally justifiable sources of food. In this case, wouldn't we be the enlightened ones?

Hi, Taq. Apothecus is saying that aliens may use different criteria to determine what is "sentient" than we do.And I think he's got a good point: after all, what are our criteria for determining sentience? We know that cows and ants can communicate with one another, and that they can respond to this communication in meaningful ways. The only difference between them and us in this regard is a quantitative measurement that falls out on a pretty continuous spread when all species are plotted on the chart.So, our determination of what counts as "sentience" is just an essentially arbitrary threshold value marked on a curve. It's technically possible that hyper-advanced aliens might just set the mark higher on the curve, such that we are below the threshold.That being said, I also think it is a tad less likely for advanced aliens to harvest us for meat, simply because I suspect they would be capable of recognizing something more sophisticated in us than in other organisms. I would think a logical measure of sentience would be the capability of cross-species communication: I suspect we could at least be successful at communicating ideas to the aliens (which cows are not really capable of doing to us), which might count for more in the alien's eyes than the mooing of a cow does in our eyes.Edited by Bluejay, : Alteration of last paragraph.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

I mentioned this in the Neanderthal Cloning thread.Where do we draw the line for sentience? We know chimps show vague signs of it...What of a creature somewhere in the middle?What would a more sophisticated mind then ours be like?

Whether aliens find our argument persuasive or not has nothing to do with the fact that we can justify the difference between us and animals in a way that puts humans and the aliens in the same group. Identifying ourselves as an individual is one. My dog has serious issues with this. She barks at her own reflection. She has no idea that the dog she is looking at is herself. Interestingly enough, dolphins do appear to see themselves as individuals. Perhaps this is why we never see cans of tuna-safe dolphin in the grocery store. The very fact that we are making a reasoned argument to aliens would seem to put us well above any marker for sentience.

If they don't then we are just "cattle" as far as they are concerned. And I see little rational justification for telling them otherwise.

Exactly. So why even pretend that things ike sentience are our criteria when newborn babies and brain dead humans lacking sentience are more protected than sentient beings such as chimps?Why not just admit we are being irrationaly humo-centric and get on with things?

Wrong. It has everything to do with it. If they are superior cognitively in the sense we are to chimps then why is there a moral difference between the way we treat chimps and they way an alien civilisation should morally treat us? That is the question here. So brain dead humans incapable of such cognitive abilities are fair game for experimentation and meat farming then? A newborn human baby is wholly incapable of such arguments. As is a brain dead human. Are these cases less deserving of more cognitively aware animals in terms of rights?Are you really arguing the case for the most cognitively aware? Or are you special pleading humans when it really comes down to it?

I take it from this sentence that you have never seen the documentary, The Cove.

quote:

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The Cove exposes the slaughter of more than 20,000 dolphins and porpoises in Taiji, Japan every year, and how their meat, containing toxic levels of mercury, is being sold as food in Japan and other parts of Asia, often labeled as whale meat.

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Italics mine.

Hi, Straggler. Would you find it inconsistent if the concept was to save all members of any species of which any individuals are sentient?

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

I think the reason we don't care as much about cattle, yet do care about fellow humans is purely genetic. Like Dawkins's famous selfish gene.Other humans are far more closely related to us then are cattle, hence, we care more about the waste of genes when other humans get killed/eaten then that we do about cattle.I suspect aliens will care far more about their own species, and, well, in keeping with this train of thought. not at all about ours, being in no way whatsoever related to us.This should be an interesting psychology study, when we finally conquer the galaxy

Hey Taq. You're correct, of course. I should have said, "You're assuming the assumption of the OP." I'm suggesting something different.Let me put it another way, hypothetically speaking: advanced aliens visit earth. In observing the behaviors of humans, Alien A says to Alien B, "Well, now for the true test: can they comprehend xdrouepjenfer? Because, it is, of course, how our civilization determines sentience." At first contact, they attempt to ask us this very thing.Even assuming we can communicate with them, our most intelligent scholars have absolutely no clue what the hell "xdrouepjenfer" represents. Is it an object? A concept? As we're running in circles trying to figure it out, Alien A says, "Well, this shouldn't take this long. Failing the basic, simple "xdrouepjenfer" test means they're just meat." Or if they're pure energy eaters, then we're just merely amusing.In the same way, we can sit in front of a cow and talk and talk about something as mundane as subjectivity. Mabel the cow will stand there, shit, chew her cud, and roll her big eyes at us. She's not gonna get it.And what I'm saying is their metric may very well be different from ours.Ever read Sagan's Contact? Or see the movie? This is the sort of situation with which I'm trying to draw a parallel. The civilization sending the message used an extremely complicated puzzle inside an extremely complicated message to determine whether a race was "advanced enough" to deserve contact. IIRC, humans almost didn't cut it. Is it too much of a stretch to imagine a scenario in which humans didn't cut it?

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"My own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. J.B.S Haldane 1892-1964

No that would be a wholly consistent attribute based method of applying morality (although we would have to define what we mean by sentience). I just don't think that is how we operate in practise. I know that I personally find the idea of experimenting on humans, even those lacking full sentience (for reasons or age, injury, ilness or whatever) as immoral.I think we all special plead humanity and that we are fooling ourselves if we say that we are applying morality on a purely rational basis that we could convey to some non-human moral entity (i.e. my hypopthetical aliens).Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

I wholly agree. It is an instinctive disposition. Not a rationally thought out moral stance that we could covincingly argue that a moral alien being should take on board. That is my point. Then they may well treat us as we treat animals and (morally) we would have little basis for complaint. I am working on it.Edited by Straggler, : Spelling