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> I don't disregard animal life, I just place human life at the top of my ethical pyramid. If you value human and rodent life equally, and therefore human and r

• keenmaster 7y ago
  I skimmed the video, thanks for sharing. I think the argument you shared contains a logical fallacy. In its central example, a human being, with their degree of thoughts, feelings, intelligence and all, is transferred to an animal, and the animal is still subsequently labeled as an animal. An accurate representation of my view would, at the very least, label the new animal as one with human-level sentience. I said humans are at the top of my ethical pyramid because humans are a proxy for “intelligent beings” on a planet with no other creatures that are even close in intelligence (with intelligence being defined as it is common understood, and calling that definition arbitrary or saying that it’s not commonly understood would further illustrate the point in my OP). In reality, intelligent beings are at the top of my ethical pyramid. If we could CRISPR a new species of cow that completely lacks sentience and is simply a substrate for nutrients, and its meat was identical to that of more sentient cows, I would prefer its meat. Alternatively, if we can create cell-cultured beef or artificial beef that tastes as good or better than typical beef, I would totally eat it, and much prefer it to the brain-dead cow, since the brain-dead cow is still a mirror of a being with non-zero sentience.
  • vlan0 7y ago
    > I think the argument you shared contains a logical fallacy. You'll have the formalize that argument, because I'm not seeing the fallacy. > In its central example, a human being, with their degree of thoughts, feelings, intelligence and all, is transferred to an animal, and the animal is still subsequently labeled as an animal. An accurate representation of my view would, at the very least, label the new animal as one with human-level sentience. Let's walk this through using your example of intelligence as the trait. I'll also quote the definition of intelligence from Wikipedia as the frame of reference. >Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem solving. More generally, it can be described as the ability to perceive or infer information, and to retain it as knowledge to be applied towards adaptive behaviors within an environment or context. Let's use the reducteo. If we replace animal with a severely mentally handicapped human, the human would fail the meet the above criteria for intelligence. We also have studies that show examples of animals demonstrating problem solving, emotional knowledge, etc. Which would likely place the intelligence of the animal above that of a mentally handicapped person. That being said, do you also support medical experimentation on the mentally handicapped?
    • keenmaster 7y ago
      A mentally handicapped person belongs to the species of sentient beings which I have placed at the top of the hierarchy for its typical/average characteristic of high intelligence. The mentally handicapped should be treated very well under my framework, because a cruel lottery has robbed them of some of the intelligence that they otherwise would have had. Even then, the vast majority of them are capable of more abstraction than any animal that we know of. Additionally, they trigger my mirror neurons, which I assume had some degree of influence on my arbitrary ethical framework. Those same mirror neurons would be triggered by a teddy bear with human intelligence by the way, even if it’s a mentally challenged member of a species of sentient teddy bears with human-level intelligence. I am not bothered by the arbitrariness of my framework, so long as it is internally consistent. I do not believe you have revealed an inconsistency. Find me a dolphin that has 200 unique calls, and I’ll show you how its language doesn’t meet the esoteric definition of abstraction which I am using, one which is not any less esoteric than yours, just as my ethics are no less arbitrary than yours. I am entirely, exhaustively aware of the subjectivity of intelligence. What are words such as “intelligence” other than imperfect summaries with some degree of private meaning to the speaker that is never 100% conveyed into the listener’s brain? I can further break intelligence into a series of abstraction hurdles that humans meet but not animals, but that increases entropy beyond what I believe is necessary here.
      • vlan0 7y ago
        >I am entirely, exhaustively aware of the subjectivity of intelligence. What are words such as “intelligence” other than imperfect summaries with some degree of private meaning to the speaker that is never 100% conveyed into the listener’s brain? I can further break intelligence into a series of abstraction hurdles that humans meet but not animals, but that increases entropy beyond what I believe is necessary here. You're creating a straw man. You said previously you wanted "...intelligence being defined as it is common understood, and calling that definition arbitrary or saying that it’s not commonly understood would further illustrate the point in my OP)." And I gave you the commonly accepted definition of intelligence, just as you requested. Do you refute the definition I give. And then you go and claim its subjective and you can give it whatever definition you want.... I'm done here.