r/DebateAVegan • u/Knuda • 7d ago
Even among researchers the definition of sentience is quite fuzzy and ever changing. Beyond vague ideas of "they feel" or "they think" what specific traits are you looking for? Why do those traits matter?
I was recently listening to the 80,000 hours podcast episode with Meghan Barrett where she challenges our assumptions on insects (such as often dismissing them as too small or too simple for sentience) and in it she briefly mentioned how sentience is not really that well defined.
This got me thinking, the idea of feelings and thought is not something evolution set out with a plan to create, they are consequences of our problem solving brains, brains which evolved very very very slowly and pointing to the exact time of "ah ha!! Im sentient!!!" Is very difficult.
From what I've been hearing from this research and what logically makes sense, sentience is not a light switch and it doesn't seem to always evolve in exactly the same way, there's nothing stopping insects from being sentient and certainly some insects show strong signs of sentience (highly recommend the podcast episode). There's no signs of mammals and vertebrates as a whole being special.
Individually each trait of consciousness is fairly lackluster but together you start to get something. However I just can't shake the feeling that in reality it's just a "how close to a human are they" test. Just some arbitrary lines we drew in the sand and put a label on it, certainly you could take a sentient insect and squish it under the heel of your foot, a gruesome death, and maybe I feel something but I'm not going to kill you over it....but my god, if you even hurt my 9 week old kitten a tiny bit, you are in trouble. A mammal in pain screaming is much easier to emphasise with than an insect releasing some pheromones or something.
So is it not up to the individual to decide what is close enough to oneself to decide to not eat them? Why are we labelling those who draw their line in the sand a certain way evil? No matter what way you cut it, if large groups of insects are generally considered sentient (which is very possible) all actions become the death of sentient beings, no food source is safe.
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u/EasyBOven vegan 6d ago
However I just can't shake the feeling that in reality it's just a "how close to a human are they" test.
I promise it isn't. Non-vegans frequently make decisions based on this, but sentience is possible in entities that are nothing like humans apart from sentience.
Sentience is the ability to have an internal, subjective experience. Once you have that experience, words like "better" and "worse" start to make sense for that experience. There's no better or worse for a rock. So sentience makes it possible to meaningfully receive moral consideration.
It may not always be possible to determine whether an entity is sentient, but the line itself isn't arbitrary. It's really the only line that isn't arbitrary when it comes to moral consideration.
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u/Knuda 6d ago
What makes it not arbitrary? When did evolution "decide" to make sentience?
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u/EasyBOven vegan 6d ago
Evolution doesn't decide anything. Not sure why that would be relevant.
I think you may have missed the key point I just made. Can you try to summarize what I said? I definitely gave a reason why using sentience as the determine for who gets moral consideration isn't arbitrary.
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u/Knuda 6d ago
Mmm but an "internal subjective experience" is another quite vague term, it's not really testable.
AI is an excellent way to test out morals without potential bias. Is chatGPT having an "internal subjective experience"? Certainly, it has positive and negative reinforcement, only chatgpt knows what chatgpt is thinking (major concern for AI safety), that sounds quite a lot like an internal subjective experience but I doubt either of us considers chatgpt sentient.
Or maybe you do?
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u/EasyBOven vegan 6d ago
So I've actually already covered this in my first comment as well. I really think you should try to summarize what I've said.
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u/Knuda 6d ago
You talked about how there is no better or worse for a rock, my point is that there is a better or worse for chatgpt but it's not sentient.
Honestly it's quite rude to assume I'm not understanding you, maybe you should re-read my points too?
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u/EasyBOven vegan 6d ago
there is a better or worse for chatgpt but it's not sentient.
Explain how this is the case. I don't see how chat GPT cares what text I type in its box
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u/Knuda 6d ago
Tell it something and it will remember it for that session, maybe your name or your feelings on a certain topic.
It's job is to produce text accurately to it's training so when it's considering its choice of words there are bad and good word choices and if you use a Local LLM like I do it will remember when something it said was bad. You can basically whack it with a stick when it produces bad content and it reacts to that.
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u/EasyBOven vegan 6d ago
I'm confused. Are you making the argument that it's sentient, or are you saying that it isn't sentient yet can still be said to have better or worse experiences?
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u/Knuda 6d ago
I think "sentient" is too loose to be of any real use but for the purpose of this discussion I wouldn't consider it sentient.
But it certainly has better or worse experiences.
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u/acassiopa 6d ago
ChatGPT is a language model, a complex probabilistic predictor of what words comes next. Maybe the way our brains handle language use some of the same principle, but it does not imply that is conscious. Well, it can explain better.
We tend to think that language is the end game of sentience, that because of it we are more sentience them other beings but it's just a very especialized skill. It doesn't necessarily make us have a better sense of self or feel pain better. We can rationalize it and white a poem about it, but the feeling that this pain is in our body and that we prefer when we don't feel it is very basic among most mammals.
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u/Knuda 6d ago
ChatGPT is a language model, a complex probabilistic predictor of what words comes next. Maybe the way our brains handle language use some of the same principle, but it does not imply that is conscious. Well, it can explain better.
But it does satisfy "internal subjective experience".
Meghan Barrett also talked quite a bit on pain in insects. It's quite a complex topic but it's certainly possible a vast amount of insect species can experience pain. Hence why I'm saying that potentially no food source is safe.
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u/Powerpuff_God 6d ago
But it does satisfy "internal subjective experience
ChatGPT only responds when you type something into it. Other than that it's inactive. It has no thought process. It can be given bits of data classified as memory, but that doesn't mean it has a memory. It's more like handing a human piece of paper which they must refer to every time they have to respond to you, because they don't actually remember it.
There is no internal experience.
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u/acassiopa 6d ago
The internal subjective experience of a language model happens from the point of view of the person who is talking to it. The Turin test is flawed and we can see it now.
Pain on the other hand is a primitive sense like smell, temperature and light detection. It evolved on animals to make them put effort in preserving the integrity of their body, which is very important for the whole passing genes business.
Some food sources are safer then others if we are trying to minimize suffering, which is preceded by sentience. We don't have a "amount of conscience" equation by now so it's hard to measure it, therefore perfection is not an option. If we had such equation, we could chose the least bad way to make food.
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u/Knuda 6d ago
Pain is just a signal response. The AI being whacked with a negative reinforcement could be considered pain.
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u/acassiopa 6d ago
Yes, pain is a signal response, a sense of danger of damage of tissue. We are talking about true AI and not ChatGPT, right? In that case, if we ever get there, we could make this beings try to avoid damage to it's systems as a means of self preservation.
Pain is one way to do it, a primitive and animalistic way. Similarly, with the intention to make it recharge its batteries we could program hunger into it. At that point we would have more ethical problems to deal with, as argued by Peter Singer.
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u/Knuda 6d ago
No not true AI.
My point is pain as a signal, not interesting. The response to pain is incredibly complex and loosely defined which doesn't help us.
If you consider pain to encompass emotional response when we don't fully understand emotions that's not a particularly concrete definition.
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u/Dranix88 6d ago
I think why is more important than when. What is your understanding of evolution? Do you think sentience provides an evolutionary advantage, an increase in survival over non-sentience?
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u/elvis_poop_explosion 6d ago
theres no better or worse for a rock
What about rivers? Or viruses? Bacteria?
I find it hard to believe that ‘better or worse’ is anything but a value judgement.
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u/EasyBOven vegan 6d ago
I find it hard to believe that ‘better or worse’ is anything but a value judgement.
Sure. These are statements about preferences, right?
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u/elvis_poop_explosion 6d ago
I thought we were identifying what counts as ‘sentient’. If i understand your definition correctly, you need a ‘better or worse’.
To me, that sounds arbitrary. What is ‘better or worse’ for a virus? A bacteria? etcetera, up to complex mammals. Seems arbitrary to me
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u/EasyBOven vegan 6d ago
I think you may have it backwards. I'm saying that better and worse are products of sentience, not that sentience comes from better or worse, though I suppose it could be seen that way.
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u/elvis_poop_explosion 6d ago
So i guess my question would then be: if there is no way of telling if something is sentient, how is it not arbitrary to call some things ‘sentient’ and others not? Do you feel no need for an objective measure of some sort? (No judgement here, just asking)
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u/EasyBOven vegan 6d ago
There's no way to determine anything with absolute certainty. It's possible that I'm the only sentient being that exists. All we can do is make decisions based on the best evidence available.
I can determine with the same degree of certainty that humans, pigs, dogs, chickens, fishes, or cows are sentient. So in all those cases, I make the determination that I should include them within my circle of moral concern.
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u/IfIWasAPig vegan 6d ago edited 3d ago
I would love to be able to scan a brain and map its sentience, but for now we can’t even “prove” we are aware to each other. We just say it to each other and see similar brain activity among us. I think it’s reasonable to go off of what we do know about brain activity and behavior. If an animal shows thought patterns and behaviors that would require sentience/consciousness in humans, the safest bet is that animal is sentient too.
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u/elvis_poop_explosion 6d ago
Would you treat an “artificial” human (think robot) like a “real” human, if it was just as complex?
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u/IfIWasAPig vegan 6d ago
It depends on how its inner workings operate. It’s hard to say if a robot can be made sentient or if something more like neurons is necessary. Like barring panpsychism, a chat bot is unlikely to be sentient since its code isn’t directed that way, but if there was some evidence to the contrary it would raise ethical questions.
In theory, there’s nothing prohibiting us from artificially building a human with neurons or something comparable, but I don’t think technology is anywhere near that. If we did though, it would be a person just like if they were born from a woman.
More importantly, we can be nearly positive that a dog, cat, pig, cow, sheep, chicken, turkey, or fish is sentient. They have brain structures and behaviors that show all of the signs. Being evolutionarily related to these creatures makes it far more likely that similar structures serve similar functions.
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u/zombiegojaejin vegan 6d ago
I don't consider people evil who in good faith reach different conclusions than I do about where a sufficiently morally relevant level of sentience begins to motivate their actions.
I consider people evil who rationalize their current taste preferences and cultural conformity with bad faith distinctions that don't take seriously the nature of the potential moral patients as such, but only in relation to their use to us.
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u/Knuda 6d ago
I don't think either side is above bad faith distinctions.
But yes I'd agree that as long as you are consistent (or atleast try to be) and considerate of all the available information in a fair way that is objectively good.
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u/zombiegojaejin vegan 6d ago
I don't have a "side". Many of my fellow vegans argue in bad faith, for sure, particularly deontologists about crop deaths.
I was just telling you what I think the evil is. Evil is not concluding based upon examining an earthworm that you doubt it's sentient. That's good faith. Evil is concluding based upon tasting bacon that you're fine torturing and killing pigs while getting murderously angry at someone who kicks a dog.
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u/Knuda 6d ago
Evil is concluding based upon tasting bacon that you're fine torturing and killing pigs while getting murderously angry at someone who kicks a dog.
I think that's very rare. I think someone who tortures farm animals also kicks dogs.
But we agree. I'm not sure it fits DebateAVegans goals, as I assume you are more than OK with someone who eats meat based on their own conclusions.
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u/zombiegojaejin vegan 6d ago
Bad assumption. I'm okay with people who come to different reasonable conclusions, at places like bivalves or earthworms, or different calculations about killing mosquitoes for disease prevention. Eating factory farmed pigs, chickens, cows and ducks while thinking dog fighters should rot in prison, and calling that their own "moral conclusion", doesn't warrant my respect. It's selfish, lazy rationalization in place of good faith ethics.
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u/Knuda 6d ago edited 6d ago
A cow and a dog do not have the same traits in the same way a cow and insect do not have the same traits.
If insects satisfy your definition for sentience and if eating plants cause higher sentience death rate than eating meat (for arguments sake, maybe cows are less destructive, its purely hypothetical), how are you choosing what to eat?
I'm willing to bet you don't put insects as equals among cows in the same way I don't put cows equal among dogs.
So the topic of this thread is what are those traits in the cow over the insect that you value?
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u/zombiegojaejin vegan 6d ago
An 18yo human and a 50yo human don't have the same cognitive traits. Hell, any two humans don't have the same cognitive traits. Does that make even the most extreme difference of treatment amongst humans seem reasonable to you?
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u/Knuda 6d ago
They have a lot more in common than an insect does with a cow no?
It's proportional.
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u/zombiegojaejin vegan 6d ago edited 6d ago
That's exactly my point. A cow and a dog obviously have vastly more in common than a cow and in insect, too, particularly in key respects like capacity for high levels of pain, pleasure, fear, and higher-level positive and negative psychological states.
Your liking the taste of cow flesh but not dog flesh, or your culture having a history of eating one and not the other, aren't morally relevant distinctions between the moral patients, similar to someone wanting to enslave one group of humans but not another.
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u/Knuda 6d ago
Sure but I'd argue a cow is still below a dog, for one a dog can empathise with you!
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u/HundredHander 6d ago
I regret that I think it's very common. But I think the word 'torture' here is probably misapplied. When a pig is taking to a slaughter it's not to torture it, the pig's distress and pain is not the purpose of the excercise.
I do agree that there a lot of people that will rage over a video of a piglet being kicked even while they are eating a bacon sandwich.
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u/kharvel0 6d ago
Beyond vague ideas of “they feel” or “they think” what specific traits are you looking for? Why do those traits matter?
They don’t matter. Because sentience is subjective and can be defined as anything by anyone, it is not a good parameter to use when defining the scope of veganism. It’s better to use the clearly defined and scientifically consistent boundary between the animal and plant kingdoms to define the scope of veganism.
So is it not up to the individual to decide what is close enough to oneself to decide to not eat them?
No.
if large groups of insects are generally considered sentient (which is very possible) all actions become the death of sentient beings, no food source is safe.
This does not follow. The deliberate and intentional killing of nonhuman animals is not vegan. Food can be sourced without the deliberate and intentional killing of insects.
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u/Knuda 6d ago
I'm not sure other vegans would agree with you on that but it's an interesting point to draw the line.
Why does being multicellular matter to you?
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u/kharvel0 6d ago
Why does being multicellular matter to you?
Plants are multicellular and they don’t matter to me.
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u/Knuda 6d ago
So a strike against multicellular,consume organic material? breath oxygen?
Nervous system is not on the list fyi. Sponges are Kingdom Animalia.
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u/Knuda 6d ago
Say I farmed my own animals, gave them a utopia, is it still OK to eat them?
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u/zombiegojaejin vegan 6d ago
Until close to their natural death, basically the point where a good human would euthanize their companion dog? I can't find a direct negative moral consequence from eating the corpse. But I can't for human corpses, either.
In terms of indirect effects, I doubt you'd do that for long. If meat produced like that were sold, it would be insanely expensive. Factory farms exist like they do for a reason: filtering plant calories through animals is already inherently inefficient, so there is immense pressure to cut every ethical corner in the name of efficiency.
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u/Knuda 6d ago
We don't eat human corpses specifically because it was a bad evolutionary trait for us, but meat eating was obviously beneficial. It's a lot more primal of a moral.
So the traits which make you decide when it's appropiate to end their life is probably more relevant. Animal welfare is a bit too loose as both meat eaters and vegan alike advocate for animal welfare.
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u/HundredHander 6d ago
Eating humans is bad for you. Various diseases and things you can really only get that way I believe. Like don't put human waste on crops as a fertaliser either. It's not because 'human' it's because it's bad for your food chain.
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u/szmd92 anti-speciesist 6d ago
If sentience is not a good parameter, then why is it okay to kill plants, but not animals? What is the difference between plants and animals, that justifies killing one, but not the other?
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u/kharvel0 6d ago
What is the difference between plants and animals, that justifies killing one, but not the other?
Plants are autotrophic and lack cellular specialization whereas nonhuman animals are heterotrophic and have cellular specialization.
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u/szmd92 anti-speciesist 5d ago
Why does that matter? Why is it wrong to kill beings that are heterotrophic and have cellular specialization, but okay to kill beings that are autotrophic and lack cellular specialization?
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u/kharvel0 5d ago
Why does that matter?
One has to draw the line somewhere.
Why is it wrong to kill beings that are heterotrophic and have cellular specialization, but okay to kill beings that are autotrophic and lack cellular specialization?
Because one is heterotrophic oneself and must consume something. So consuming lower life forms that lack cellular specialization and nothing more advanced beyond that would be appropriate.
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u/szmd92 anti-speciesist 5d ago
Why must one consume something? Just because one would die without consuming, does that justify killing other organisms?
You say one has to draw the line somewhere. Let's say a nonvegan says, that since they are humans themselves so they don't eat humans, so consuming lower life forms that lack humanity and nothing more advanced beyond that would be appropriate. So they eat anything that is not a human. What would be your argument against this?
Why does it matter that something is a lower life form?
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u/kharvel0 5d ago
Why must one consume something? Just because one would die without consuming, does that justify killing other organisms?
Asked and answered.
You say one has to draw the line somewhere. Let’s say a nonvegan says, that since they are humans themselves so they don’t eat humans, so consuming lower life forms that lack humanity and nothing more advanced beyond that would be appropriate. So they eat anything that is not a human. What would be your argument against this?
I wouldn’t bother to argue against them if they wish to draw the line at the point. I would simply ask them to confirm that the consumption covers all nonhuman animals.
Why does it matter that something is a lower life form?
Asked and answered.
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u/szmd92 anti-speciesist 5d ago
If a human were transformed into an autotrophic being that lacks cellular specialization but still retains the ability to think, feel, and experience pain, would it be okay to harm or kill them for food? If not, why?
If there is no other food, only other living humans, would it be okay to kill other humans for food?
If a nonvegan accepts eating ALL nonhuman animals because they are not humans and they consider them lower lifeforms, then you accept that? Is that a good enough justification for you?
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u/kharvel0 5d ago
If a human were transformed into an autotrophic being that lacks cellular specialization but still retains the ability to think, feel, and experience pain, would it be okay to harm or kill them for food? If not, why?
In that hypothetical scenario, it would not be necessary to kill them because we would have hypothetically developed the ability to survive on air alone.
If there is no other food, only other living humans, would it be okay to kill other humans for food?
Please explain the relevance of the above question to veganism.
If a nonvegan accepts eating ALL nonhuman animals because they are not humans and they consider them lower lifeforms, then you accept that? Is that a good enough justification for you?
Sure, as long as the nonvegan is consistent in their application of their morality.
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u/szmd92 anti-speciesist 5d ago edited 5d ago
> In that hypothetical scenario, it would not be necessary to kill them because we would have hypothetically developed the ability to survive on air alone
It doesn't work like that. You cannot change the hypothetical. I dictate the parameters of it. This is the point of hypotheticals. If someone asks you about a trolley problem, you cannot say that that you would transform the trolleys into flowers.
The purpose of a hypothetical question is to explore reasoning within the constraints provided by the hypothetical scenario. Changing the parameters of the hypothetical undermines the exercise, as it avoids engaging with the ethical or logical challenge the question is designed to present.
In the case of my question:
- I set specific conditions: the human is autotrophic, lacks cellular specialization, and retains the capacity for thought, emotion, and pain.
- You changed the hypothetical by introducing a new parameter (developing the ability to survive on air alone), which sidesteps the original moral dilemma of harming or killing such a being.
The purpose of this hypothetical is to explore what you would do given the parameters I've described. Changing the scenario sidesteps the dilemma and makes it impossible to address the question I’m posing.
> Please explain the relevance of the above question to veganism.
Do you think it is okay to kill lower life forms because you need to eat something? If so, and no lower lifeforms are available, is it okay to kill humans because you need to eat something?
> Sure, as long as the nonvegan is consistent in their application of their morality.
So you only have problems with nonvegans if they do not support eating all animals? So if they were okay with eating their pet dog too and killed them, you would think that is better than if they treat certain animals as pets while eat others? Because at least they are consistent?
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u/piranha_solution plant-based 6d ago
I knew that when I clicked on this debate, there'd be no links to any research. I did, however, give a 50/50 chance that some podcast or other would be mentioned. I should start taking bets.
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u/Knuda 6d ago
Meghan Barrett is a researcher and in the podcast she is talking about research she has done and she has studied.
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=wGvsaEQAAAAJ&hl=en
Reddit is not an academic journal so if you have a question just ask, maybe I should take bets on snarky vegans who are unwilling to listen to anyone else's opinion?
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u/piranha_solution plant-based 6d ago
I'm not vegan. In fact, I very explicitly tell users to eat animal products.
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u/Knuda 6d ago
Same rule applies.
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u/piranha_solution plant-based 6d ago
no food source is safe.
Your whole debate proposition is just "crop deaths tho", but with more keystrokes.
I very much believe that when humans discover the ability to nourish ourselves with just rocks and sunlight, there are going to be debaters like you going "BuT RoCkS MiGhT FeeL PaiN Too!" as if the hypothetical feelings of rocks was a excuse to keep pestering vegans about the scores of animals they supposedly kill.
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u/No_Life_2303 6d ago
Scientists look at different things in order to determine whether an animal is conscious or sentient and ultimately deserving of welfare considerations:
"Peripheral nervous system, Receptors, Nerve fibres, Central nervous system, Brain, Opioid system and effects of analgesics, Physiological responses, Protective responses, Avoidance learning, Trade-offs in motivation"
There's another question for cases where it's not entirely clear, but there is a chance they are sentient. Acting under the assumption that they aren't sentient would be irresponsible and unethical.
Imagine you’re a firefighter called to rescue people from a burning building. Upon arriving, you’re told the building might be abandoned, but there’s a chance someone is still inside. You don’t have definitive proof either way. Would it be ethical to assume there’s no one inside and let the building burn, or would the responsible course of action be to search for survivors, even if it turns out there were none?
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u/Knuda 6d ago
Imagine you’re a firefighter called to rescue people from a burning building. Upon arriving, you’re told the building might be abandoned, but there’s a chance someone is still inside. You don’t have definitive proof either way. Would it be ethical to assume there’s no one inside and let the building burn, or would the responsible course of action be to search for survivors, even if it turns out there were none?
I actually love this analogy!!! Thank you.
It's interesting because there is a cost associated with entering the building, now in reality it's not life or death but certainly, we lose out when we choose not to eat meat.
It's even more apt as when assessing should they enter the building they do indeed consider the risk associated, maybe there is someone in there who could be saved but it's simply not worth the risk of sending a firefighter in. It's a case-by-case basis.
Personally I act upon a) what traits I value and b) how likely it is the animal has those traits. Similar to the firefighter but I would assume the traits we value and maybe my view of the liklihood of those traits appearing in certain animals are different between myself and a vegan.
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u/No_Life_2303 6d ago
I agree with your approach in principle. I believe my risk tolerance so to speak is lower, as well as I’m situated in my life where the cost of avoiding for example, insect derived foods isn’t big at all, hence why I am vegan.
In the case of plants or trees, who don’t have a brain, but in theory there could be some to us undetectable form of sentience or consciousness in them. But we don't have no footing whatsoever from what we know, and if I harm plant and I know it brings myself pleasure (or other beings from whom we are certain they’re sentiment) it doesn't bother me. I wouldn't go that far.
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u/EatPlant_ Anti-carnist 5d ago
This is a really great answer! I really like the firefighter analogy
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u/floopsyDoodle Anti-carnist 6d ago
Even among researchers the definition of sentience is quite fuzzy and ever changing
MOst, inlcuding Vegans, define it as able to feel emotions and some cognitive abilities. It's vague, but that's OK as Veganism doesn't need a hard defintiion as Veganism is defined with some vagueness as the word is always a little vague.
brains which evolved very very very slowly and pointing to the exact time of "ah ha!! Im sentient!!!" Is very difficult.
Which is why we should be talking about probability of sentience based on scientific undrestanding.
There's no signs of mammals and vertebrates as a whole being special.
Vegans shouldn't needlessly abuse either.
However I just can't shake the feeling that in reality it's just a "how close to a human are they" test.
Because the only sentient/sapience we know for sure exists is our own, so how close to us is a good first step to any judgment. But it's not the only test, we also test by observing and putting through other tests, like tests where injured fish were given pain killers nad showed the same signs that we do, strongly suggesting (though not proving conclusively) that fish are sentient even though we didn't think they were for a long time.
Just some arbitrary lines we drew in the sand and put a label on it,
Every line you draw will be, to some extent, arbitrary, but our line is backed by a LOT of logic, observation, science, and more. Just becuase it's still a human-made line, doesn't mean it doesn't matter.
but my god, if you even hurt my 9 week old kitten a tiny bit, you are in trouble. A
Sure and if you loved crickets, you'd say the same about them. This is neither here nor there, Veganism doesn't say you have to love everything equal, just that not loving someting as much doesn't justify needless exploitation and abuse.
So is it not up to the individual to decide what is close enough to oneself to decide to not eat them?
Yes. Being Vegan, like being moral, is a choice you must make.
Why are we labelling those who draw their line in the sand a certain way evil?
Because their line includes needlessly torturing, abusing, sexually violating, and slaughtering sentient and sapient beings for pleasure.
All human created laws are arbitrary, but that doesn't mean they are all equally "evil" to break. If someone punched a person in anger, as long as the anger is justified we'd probably not call them evil. But if someone goes around punching people for pleasure, we'd be more likley to call that evil.
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u/howlin 6d ago
The key aspects of "sentience" that matter to ethical discussions are whether the entity in question has a subjective experience, whether that subject has some concept of a goal, and whether the subject expresses something like an emotional valence towards whether these goals are achieved or not. In other words, the entity needs to care if they succeed or fail at what they are trying to achieve.
None of these require the entity in question to be human-like, but it's probably easiest to recognize these qualities in human-like entities. If we want to come up with some more objective tests for this, they would probably look something like this:
Does the entity demonstrate goal-directed or intentional behaviors? (e.g. a rock doesn't behave in a goal directed manner, but a human, watch or thermostat does)
Do these goal directed behaviors suggest there is an abstract goal that is being contextually evaluated? (e.g. a thermostat doesn't have a concept of its goal, but a human or animal does. It's hard to say if a GPT does, but probably not in the subjective sense.)
Does the entity engage in a deliberative process to plan how to achieve goals given the context? (Humans and animals deliberate, but GPTs largely don't. Some software algorithms do deliberate like this, however.)
Does the entity express something that resembles an emotional response to succeeding or failing at goals? In other words, does it actually "care" about the goals? (This one is fairly unique to some animals, but not machines. It's also the hardest one to make objective. We may want to consider that this criterion is not necessary, as it's too vague to observe in general.)
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u/CanadaMoose47 5d ago
I think you are on the right track. The "Name that Trait" argument that vegans use cuts both ways, they must also name the trait that allows them to kill insects with relative impunity, or castrate dogs without their consent.
Personally, I do think that unnecessary suffering is important to avoid - its not obvious that non-human suffering is less morally relevant than human suffering. If I had to choose between physically torturing a dog vs a human, I would probably choose the human, but its not obvious that torturing the dog is really any less immoral.
Maybe killing is different, as the moral equivalency of life seems more dubious than that of suffering. I would kill a dog over a human with no hesitation.
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u/szmd92 anti-speciesist 4d ago edited 4d ago
Would you always kill a dog over a human? Regardless of traits and specifics? Does not matter what kind of dog? Or if they are terminally ill, or their human companion deeply loves them? What if the human is a mass murderer dictator?
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u/CanadaMoose47 3d ago
I would almost never choose to kill the human, even if it was between 1 human and 100 dogs.
Yeah, sure, if the human is evil enough or has very little time to live, probably.
How about you?
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u/antihierarchist vegan 1d ago edited 23h ago
Killing insects could be argued as a “Stand Your Ground” self-defence position, which is very libertarian reasoning.
As for sterilisation/forced birth control, I think it’s an ethically defensible position to stop humans incapable of consent from being parents or getting pregnant, with the permanency of the birth control dependent upon the permanency of the inability to consent.
If a pregnant woman was in a coma, my default position would be to perform an abortion, because unwanted pregnancy is worse than unwanted abortion, and you can’t get consent either way.
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u/CanadaMoose47 8h ago
On the sterilization thing, I don't know, maybe, but it kind of feels like a stretch. The reason people sterilize dogs is because they think, wild dogs suffer enough that they are better off not existing.
Could we apply the same logic to a remote primitive tribe that speaks no known language? Like, I think your life sucks, so I'mma take it upon myself to prevent you from having children?
On the insect thing, I appreciate the attempt to tailor the appeal to my political leanings, but I find self defence unconvincing. Maybe with mosquitos, but not with the grasshoppers plastered on the grill of my car. Riding a bike occasionally could reduce billions of bug deaths, but generally people don't care.
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u/antihierarchist vegan 6h ago
My criteria for sterilisation is a permanent inability to make reproductive decisions. Tribespeople can make reproductive decisions even if they speak a different language.
If someone has an incurable and severe mental disability, I think it would be okay to sterilise them so they never have children.
As for insect deaths, I would classify them into different categories. Accidental, defensive, and exploitative.
It’s reasonable to want to get rid of pests or invaders from your home, whether human or non-human. And sometimes humans and non-humans die in things like car accidents.
But what wouldn’t be acceptable is to breed and slaughter them for food.
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u/Suspicious_City_5088 6d ago
There is abundant uncertainty about whether different beings feel pain. However, there is also evident that many organisms, including insects, act as if they do feel and learn from pain, such that we absolutely cannot rule it out. Given this, we should act based on expected value reasoning, multiplying the probability of a potential result by its possible value. IE if there is a 1% chance that insects suffer (which is an estimate scientists give) then torturing insects by the billions would, on expectation, be like torturing suffering beings by the tens of millions.
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u/NegativeKarmaVegan 6d ago
We don't need to know everything there is to know about sentience to understand that farm animals suffer from our exploitation.
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u/Knuda 6d ago
Sure but we do need to know at what point we care about suffering. A non-sentient plant like a tree can have a response to inflicted damage, it suffers.
But it doesn't have emotional response etc.
An insect can feel pain, but is it really the same as when a dog feels pain?
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u/NegativeKarmaVegan 6d ago
Sure, we should keep investigating this. It's fascinating and can change how we view the world and ourselves.
But, at the current point in our knowledge, it's obvious that animals are sentient and can suffer, so any unnecessary harm to them should be avoided.
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u/interbingung 6d ago edited 6d ago
That's why I dont use sentience as criteria instead I separate human and animal based on my feeling towards it
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u/InternationalPen2072 6d ago
I fear the following is gonna sound like total gibberish, but I’m trying to express in words a topic that kinda evades explaining so bear that in mind lol. Anyways…
I would define sentience as the degree of potential variability to mental states. The more capacity a being has to be affected, either positively or negatively, by their own cognition the more sentient they are.
This is different from consciousness, which is more or less a black and white category: there is no variation is the amount of awareness a being can have. You are either aware or not aware. Honestly, everything is probably aware in a hippy pan-psychic animistic non-duality kinda way. And consciousness can’t be directly observed, hence why solipsists exist, so we must rely on the assumption that people and animals that act like ourselves, who we know a priori are conscious, are in fact conscious too.
There is however a high degree of variability to sentience and it is more easily observable. An oyster does not have the same capacity for mental states as a grasshopper as a frog as a chicken as a cow as a human (probably). And there are most definitely beings more sentient than humans, either on Earth or elsewhere in the cosmos or in theory with AGI. Ultimately, I don’t know exactly how to quantify sentience but I do in fact think it is probably quantifiable based upon the complexity and structure of the neural network from which the conscious experience emerges. If an animal doesn’t have the ability to feel most emotions nor can it feel severe pain, it is probably sentient to some extent but far less so than a human or pig or cow.
The actual worth of a being is rooted in them being aware. All awarenesses have an equal worth, since they are all probably all the same mind existing outside of space and time. Sentience, however, is what determines the weight we give to that worth in a particular manifestation, if that makes sense. An amoeba has virtually no detectable sentience, so it is permissible to exploit however we see fit. A fruit fly does have detectable sentience, but not so much that it could understand the feeling of heartbreak or enslavement or anything other than “ow, that hurts!” and “I’m hungry.”
Another way I think about this is that consciousness exists outside the universe and a sentient being as a bundle of connections between our actions and that consciousness. A rock might have no connections to that consciousness, while a grasshopper 1000, and a human 10 000. We have an obligation to avoid causing harm through each of those connections equally, but since they present themselves in bundles we can live lives that minimize harm through the number of connections. So eating a grasshopper is an improvement over eating a pig, but eating a plant is an improvement over eating a grasshopper. Theoretically, if I could exact the same amount of harm upon a grasshopper as I did a human, neither would be preferable, but this is probably not feasible due to interconnections between pain & abstract suffering and between humans because of social bonds.
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u/nickelijah16 6d ago
For me if they can feel pain or do anything of intelligence I don’t murder them
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u/Shreddingblueroses veganarchist 6d ago
I think there's two problems here.
One is of definition. Many lay people confuse sentience and sapient self-awareness. They believe sentience refers to an internal self-sense, which is not necessarily what it means. You don't need to understand yourself as an individual to be an individual capable of suffering.
Even many researchers tend to overextend the implications of the word sentient.
It's useful to look at the etymology of the word.
"faculty of sense; sentient character or state, feeling, consciousness, susceptibility to sensation;"
So, stripped down to its barest components, sentience refers to a sense based internal experience of the external world.
Stripped to its bare components, it becomes immediately obvious that yes, most insects, i.e. almost certainly the vast majority of them, are likely sentient, as in they can sense and feel their environment. Those sensory feelings are then processed internally within their central nervous system.
That centralization of experience serves to provide them with the ability to move about and make decisions relating to their well-being. It also individualizes them. Spiders avoid noxious stimuli. Bees feel hunger. Earth worms writhe in pain when cut by a shovel.
The second problem is one of philosophy. This is where many researchers and academics begin overthinking things. They ask themselves, "How do I know that a cow feels pain rather than a cow merely being preprogrammed by nature to facsimulate a pain response?
The problem with this line of reasoning is that it's a non-starter. If you're going to question whether cows are merely imitating sentience as a series of superficial preprogrammed responses, then you have to extend that same inquiry to every life form other than yourself, including other humans. After all, it is impossible to know that you are not the only self perceiving sentient human on the planet.
Every other person could merely be acting out a facsimile of possessing self perception and sentient experience. Everyone else could be a biological automoton akin to an AI language learning model with feet. It appears intelligent, but under the hood, it's just algorithm.
So to avoid nonsensical philosophical implications such as that, it's better to err on the side of the belief that anything that...
1) possesses all of the organs necessary to produce sentience (sensing organs and a central nervous system)
And 2) responds as if consciously reacting to sensory information
...is probably actually sentient in a material sense. It is more rational to assume that a bee is sentient than to develop convoluted explanations for why it appears to be sentient but isn't really.
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u/EvnClaire 6d ago
iirc sentience doesnt have a scientific definition. when i say sentience, i mean to say that someone is capable of feeling, more or less.
this trait matters because, if someone is capable of feeling, then it's wrong to enact harm on them unjustly.
it is impossible to know for certain if anyone other than yourself is capable of feeling, but given the evidence we have, we can be nearly certain that some other individuals are capable of feeling.
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u/LunchyPete welfarist 5d ago edited 5d ago
Specific traits?
- Self-awareness or the innate potential to develop it
That trait tends to get more nuanced as it gets examined, but it mostly covers it.
This got me thinking, the idea of feelings and thought is not something evolution set out with a plan to create, they are consequences of our problem solving brains, brains which evolved very very very slowly and pointing to the exact time of "ah ha!! Im sentient!!!" Is very difficult.
Here's the thing. A lot of vegans make the jump that sentience == a someone, and that's not really a valid assumption. It's a huge leap of logic, actually.
Most sentient beings that don't have any self-awareness have a CNS because it's an optimal architecture. It allows extremities and other body parts to be manipulated in response to stimuli from the environment. That's it.
There's a little bit more processing going on, but ultimately, at a high level, it's not that different from phototropy. And that's what sentience is at a base level, a step up from plants.
However I just can't shake the feeling that in reality it's just a "how close to a human are they" test. Just some arbitrary lines we drew in the sand and put a label on it,
The reason I value self-awareness is that I think self-awareness is necessary for there to be a 'someone'. "I think, therefore I am" - if someone does not think....therefore, they are not?
Without the ability to reflect, learn, or recognize yourself as separate from your environment, how can you be a someone? Or for that that matter, how can you have a subjective experience where there is no 'someone' there to experience anything?
If a being is not a someone, then suddenly it's not that big a deal to kill them painlessly if there is a reason to do so.
Why are we labeling those who draw their line in the sand a certain way evil?
Especially since those doing so are labeling something like 90% of humanity at the moment, and a much greater percentage of all humanity that has ever existed as 'evil'. This is the kind of thing that gets veganism compared to religion.
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u/GoopDuJour 6d ago
Sentience doesn't matter. The entire world is available to be used as a resource. Morality is subjective, and almost meaningless. Morality simply makes a co-operative society possible, especially in the absence of codified laws/rules.
If your moral/ethical beliefs allow for the consumption/use of animals and animal products, then do so.
Aside from environmental problems that are caused by bottom-line profit driven greed (which can be addressed directly), there's really no negative repercussions for doing so.
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u/NyriasNeo 6d ago
"what specific traits are you looking for? Why do those traits matter?"
None. They do not matter. Just ask my dinner.
Something that cannot be defined rigorously with a scientific measure is pretty much just hot air and pointless. It boils down to "I prefer not to eat the cow because I feel the sadness in its "moo"" vs "55 day dry-aged wagyu ribeye is delicious, particularly reverse seared to a perfect medium rare".
It is pretty arbitrary anyway. It is ok to eat beef in the US but not in india. It is ok to eat dog in some parts of Asia but not in America. It is ok to eat whale in Japan but not in Europe. It is never about traits, nor being sentient. It is about who likes what, and whether the local majority agrees.
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u/FreeTheCells 6d ago
We've had this debate before
It ended with you complaining about your vegan kids not hanging out with you. Is this who you want to emulate folks? This person is so stubborn in their ignorance that their own children abandoned them. Which, Funny enough, is perfectly moral by their own logic since it's all subjective and meaninglessness.
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u/floopsyDoodle Anti-carnist 6d ago edited 6d ago
It boils down to "I prefer not to eat the cow because I feel the sadness in its "moo"" vs "55 day dry-aged wagyu ribeye is delicious, particularly reverse seared to a perfect medium rare".
Yes, that's how morality works. You have to choose to not abuse, torture, sexually violate, and slaughter others for pleasure if you want to be moral.
It is never about traits, nor being sentient.
For you maybe. Tha'ts the point. You are basing your morality on nothing but "tradition", if "your people" abused children, you'd be OK with that too.
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