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You can't enslave an animal that lacks free will and intellect by nature. Whether such farming practices are cruel is dependent on the particular practices. Ob

You can't enslave an animal that lacks free will and intellect by nature. Whether such farming practices are cruel is dependent on the particular practices. Obviously, one ought not be cruel to animals whether they lack free will and intellect or not. However, much of the woolly and sentimental "animal rights" polemic is grounded in gross misapprehension and anthropomorphization of animals other than us. It is terribly unsophisticated.

ben_w 6y ago
> You can't enslave an animal that lacks free will and intellect by nature. I challenge you to define “free will” in a way which is simultaneously testable, and also something humans have and other animals lack. I have yet to hear a single definition which is all three at the same time, despite my A-level in philosophy — every testable definition I’ve encountered has either been something animals and humans both have, or both lack; and more commonly the attempted definition turns out to be internally incoherent. (Intellect is also notoriously difficult to define, but at least in this case humans and cows are obviously dissimilar).
- africanboy 6y ago
  > I challenge you to define “free will” in a way which is simultaneously testable, and also something humans have and other animals lack every animal, except humans, lack the neurological structures to process the concept of "free will" which is entirely a human construct. If they had free will, they would fight for it or at least some of them would. One could argue that we still don't know the human brain, so how can we exclude that animals haven't what it takes to understand free will? But it's the same thing of saying that God exists because we can't disprove it. And if we assume that cows understand it, why exclude other animals, like fish, or some plant or fungi? We assume they don't have it because they never showed to care about it. Cattle can be incredibly aggressive too. it is proven that regardless of age and environmental conditions, some individuals remain more aggressive than others. Aggression in cattle can arise from both genetic and environmental factors. Aggression between cows is worse than that between bulls. Bulls with horns will bunt (push or strike with the horns) in which can cause more damage overall interesting read from Dennet https://lafavephilosophy.x10host.com/dennett_anim_csness.html https://lafavephilosophy.x10host.com/dennett_anim_csness.htm...
  - lucianbr 6y ago
    How is it possible to know that animals have or do not have "the required neurological structures to process the concept of free will", without a definition of free will?
    - africanboy 6y ago
      because if you scan the brain of a cow with an MRI and start talking about free will to it, nothing lights up. they respond to food, loud noises, other physical stimuli, but not to philosophy. Also, if you open the gates of a farm, cows don't run. Quoting Dennet Let us return to our vultures. Consider the hypothesis that for all I could ever know, rotting chicken carcass smells to a turkey vulture exactly the way roast turkey smells to me. Can science shed any light, pro or con, on this hypothesis? Yes, it can almost effortlessly refute it: since how roast turkey tastes to me is composed (and exhausted) by the huge set of reactive dispositions, memory effects, and so on, and so forth, that are detectable in principle in my brain and behavior, and since many of these are utterly beyond the machinery of any vulture's brain, it is flat impossible that anything could smell to a vulture the way roast turkey smells to me. but let's suppose cows have some sort of free will concept. if they can't explain it to us, how will we ever understand it? (because it's impossible they have the same free will concept we have) and if we project our roast turkey smell (free will) concept to cows, how can we be sure that it's what they need or want, if they can't even communicate a yes/no to us? All our philosophical concepts are based on millennia of history that's been transmitted to future generations that built new concepts on the old ones They are not "natural" if you take a child to a remote location and abandon him/her there they wouldn't even know about death or illness, let alone laws or rules or free will. Because nobody thaught them. We are basically still stuck in a Solaris situation. but the question still stands, so I propose another one: how do we know that dogs want to live in our homes? modern neuroscience can explain a lot of things that philosophy still consider questions.
  - ben_w 6y ago
    > If they had free will, they would fight for it or at least some of them would. What would that look like? Running away? Because that behaviour pops up in news often enough. Conversely, there’s learned helplessness — discovered by animal research and yet also demonstrated in humans. Do humans demonstrating this lack free will? > One could argue that we still don't know the human brain, so how can we exclude that animals haven't what it takes to understand free will? I’m not asking if animals understand free will, but if they have it — humans don’t seem to understand it even though we can talk about it (judging by the difficulty of nailing down a definition) so I would actually be very surprised if it turned out any non-human animal understood it. I don’t understand the point you’re trying to make about bovine aggression?
imtringued 6y ago
I don't believe that the idea of "free will" can exist in a form that excludes non human mammals but still includes humans. As soon as you have a classical mammal brain there cannot be a magic difference like that. If we were to entertain such an idea that you can still lack "free will" despite possessing a mammalian brain then we don't even know whether all humans have free will. There would be two factors, either genetics or education. There are obvious historic reasons for why basing the existence of free will on genetics is bad. Basing the existence of free will on education is even worse because education is completely arbitrary and you could teach animals free will to some extent. Going by the education criteria: If you could get human slaves and let them give birth then the child would lack the necessary education and we can enslave the child as well.

ben_w 6y ago

> You can't enslave an animal that lacks free will and intellect by nature. I challenge you to define “free will” in a way which is simultaneously testable, and also something humans have and other animals lack. I have yet to hear a single definition which is all three at the same time, despite my A-level in philosophy — every testable definition I’ve encountered has either been something animals and humans both have, or both lack; and more commonly the attempted definition turns out to be internally incoherent. (Intellect is also notoriously difficult to define, but at least in this case humans and cows are obviously dissimilar).

africanboy 6y ago
> I challenge you to define “free will” in a way which is simultaneously testable, and also something humans have and other animals lack every animal, except humans, lack the neurological structures to process the concept of "free will" which is entirely a human construct. If they had free will, they would fight for it or at least some of them would. One could argue that we still don't know the human brain, so how can we exclude that animals haven't what it takes to understand free will? But it's the same thing of saying that God exists because we can't disprove it. And if we assume that cows understand it, why exclude other animals, like fish, or some plant or fungi? We assume they don't have it because they never showed to care about it. Cattle can be incredibly aggressive too. it is proven that regardless of age and environmental conditions, some individuals remain more aggressive than others. Aggression in cattle can arise from both genetic and environmental factors. Aggression between cows is worse than that between bulls. Bulls with horns will bunt (push or strike with the horns) in which can cause more damage overall interesting read from Dennet https://lafavephilosophy.x10host.com/dennett_anim_csness.html https://lafavephilosophy.x10host.com/dennett_anim_csness.htm...
- lucianbr 6y ago
  How is it possible to know that animals have or do not have "the required neurological structures to process the concept of free will", without a definition of free will?
  - africanboy 6y ago
    because if you scan the brain of a cow with an MRI and start talking about free will to it, nothing lights up. they respond to food, loud noises, other physical stimuli, but not to philosophy. Also, if you open the gates of a farm, cows don't run. Quoting Dennet Let us return to our vultures. Consider the hypothesis that for all I could ever know, rotting chicken carcass smells to a turkey vulture exactly the way roast turkey smells to me. Can science shed any light, pro or con, on this hypothesis? Yes, it can almost effortlessly refute it: since how roast turkey tastes to me is composed (and exhausted) by the huge set of reactive dispositions, memory effects, and so on, and so forth, that are detectable in principle in my brain and behavior, and since many of these are utterly beyond the machinery of any vulture's brain, it is flat impossible that anything could smell to a vulture the way roast turkey smells to me. but let's suppose cows have some sort of free will concept. if they can't explain it to us, how will we ever understand it? (because it's impossible they have the same free will concept we have) and if we project our roast turkey smell (free will) concept to cows, how can we be sure that it's what they need or want, if they can't even communicate a yes/no to us? All our philosophical concepts are based on millennia of history that's been transmitted to future generations that built new concepts on the old ones They are not "natural" if you take a child to a remote location and abandon him/her there they wouldn't even know about death or illness, let alone laws or rules or free will. Because nobody thaught them. We are basically still stuck in a Solaris situation. but the question still stands, so I propose another one: how do we know that dogs want to live in our homes? modern neuroscience can explain a lot of things that philosophy still consider questions.
- ben_w 6y ago
  > If they had free will, they would fight for it or at least some of them would. What would that look like? Running away? Because that behaviour pops up in news often enough. Conversely, there’s learned helplessness — discovered by animal research and yet also demonstrated in humans. Do humans demonstrating this lack free will? > One could argue that we still don't know the human brain, so how can we exclude that animals haven't what it takes to understand free will? I’m not asking if animals understand free will, but if they have it — humans don’t seem to understand it even though we can talk about it (judging by the difficulty of nailing down a definition) so I would actually be very surprised if it turned out any non-human animal understood it. I don’t understand the point you’re trying to make about bovine aggression?

imtringued 6y ago

I don't believe that the idea of "free will" can exist in a form that excludes non human mammals but still includes humans. As soon as you have a classical mammal brain there cannot be a magic difference like that. If we were to entertain such an idea that you can still lack "free will" despite possessing a mammalian brain then we don't even know whether all humans have free will. There would be two factors, either genetics or education. There are obvious historic reasons for why basing the existence of free will on genetics is bad. Basing the existence of free will on education is even worse because education is completely arbitrary and you could teach animals free will to some extent. Going by the education criteria: If you could get human slaves and let them give birth then the child would lack the necessary education and we can enslave the child as well.