2 ms·

I've been in pain bad enough that, had someone asked me my name, I'd have needed a while to come up with an answer that would itself have taken real effort just

I've been in pain bad enough that, had someone asked me my name, I'd have needed a while to come up with an answer that would itself have taken real effort just to say. I don't know whether that experience was more or less "metaphysically meaningful", a term I note you seem in no hurry to define, for the fact that it drove my consciousness so far into abeyance that I could no longer perceive even the passage of time. I don't think it matters either way, because while it's happening that kind of pain becomes the only real thing in the world. Why should this be any less true for a chicken than for me?

uoaei 5y ago
The difference is the self-reflection on the other side of that pain. While you were in it, it was pure experience. It is only by reflecting on those moments that one transforms pain into suffering. If you are able to experience only pain, excluding selfhood, then perhaps ignorance really is bliss? Can you really say there is anything "bad" if there is no lasting trauma borne upon a sentient (self-knowing) being? "Metaphysically meaningful" is a bit of a copout, agreed. It can be tautologically defined as "that sentiment which describes the satisfaction derived from the quasi-optimality of outcomes with respect to the consensus moral framework". Concisely, "meaningful vs consensus morality". Of course there will be interplay between what morality the consensus achieves and what can be considered meaningful. But I think few would disagree that more closely analyzing the various kinds of negative experiences will inform our collective morals "for the better" (again tautological here, but to deny evolution of morality is simply reactionary philosophy and shall not be tolerated).
- throwanem 5y ago
  > It is only by reflecting on those moments that one transforms pain into suffering. Sorry to be so blunt, but this is just risible nonsense. I did not need to reflect after the fact on those hours of pain in order to have suffered through them; that happened entirely without my input. Indeed, it was not possible to suffer that pain once no longer experiencing it, because it's not possible to remember the experience per se - I mean, that it occurred, obviously, but what it was like? No. > Can you really say there is anything "bad" if there is no lasting trauma borne upon a sentient (self-knowing) being? Most certainly I can. As I alluded to earlier, I was barely sentient during those interminable hours, and this posed no obstacle in practice to suffering - indeed, I rather found it left me unable to do anything else. Likewise, the lack of lasting trauma from that experience does nothing to ameliorate the nature of the experience itself. Again, I find nothing here to suggest a meaningful axis of distinction between chicken or cow and dolphin or human. (Of interest, I think, is that your argument serves equally well to justify torture inflicted under an amnestic medication such as midazolam, so long as the chosen method of torture itself inflicts no lasting injury. I don't say that you do so use the argument, of course, but I think it's fair on this basis to suggest the argument may not be fully developed in the form presented here.) I also have to admit that the argument from "metaphysical meaning" fails to convince. The definition seems couched vaguely in utilitarianism, but turns on a concept of "collective consensus" that is itself ill defined - a collective of whom? Consensus around what? You can pretty much assert what you like here, so far as I can tell - which is of course both true and fair, but seems difficult to defend as anything beyond opinion. Simpler, I think, to consider that livestock animals do have the capacity to suffer, that their lives in factory farms indeed consist of no other sort of experience save suffering, and then to eat them anyway because as a member of this planet's apex predator species it neither appeals to nor behooves me to weep over cows.

uoaei 5y ago

The difference is the self-reflection on the other side of that pain. While you were in it, it was pure experience. It is only by reflecting on those moments that one transforms pain into suffering. If you are able to experience only pain, excluding selfhood, then perhaps ignorance really is bliss? Can you really say there is anything "bad" if there is no lasting trauma borne upon a sentient (self-knowing) being? "Metaphysically meaningful" is a bit of a copout, agreed. It can be tautologically defined as "that sentiment which describes the satisfaction derived from the quasi-optimality of outcomes with respect to the consensus moral framework". Concisely, "meaningful vs consensus morality". Of course there will be interplay between what morality the consensus achieves and what can be considered meaningful. But I think few would disagree that more closely analyzing the various kinds of negative experiences will inform our collective morals "for the better" (again tautological here, but to deny evolution of morality is simply reactionary philosophy and shall not be tolerated).

throwanem 5y ago
> It is only by reflecting on those moments that one transforms pain into suffering. Sorry to be so blunt, but this is just risible nonsense. I did not need to reflect after the fact on those hours of pain in order to have suffered through them; that happened entirely without my input. Indeed, it was not possible to suffer that pain once no longer experiencing it, because it's not possible to remember the experience per se - I mean, that it occurred, obviously, but what it was like? No. > Can you really say there is anything "bad" if there is no lasting trauma borne upon a sentient (self-knowing) being? Most certainly I can. As I alluded to earlier, I was barely sentient during those interminable hours, and this posed no obstacle in practice to suffering - indeed, I rather found it left me unable to do anything else. Likewise, the lack of lasting trauma from that experience does nothing to ameliorate the nature of the experience itself. Again, I find nothing here to suggest a meaningful axis of distinction between chicken or cow and dolphin or human. (Of interest, I think, is that your argument serves equally well to justify torture inflicted under an amnestic medication such as midazolam, so long as the chosen method of torture itself inflicts no lasting injury. I don't say that you do so use the argument, of course, but I think it's fair on this basis to suggest the argument may not be fully developed in the form presented here.) I also have to admit that the argument from "metaphysical meaning" fails to convince. The definition seems couched vaguely in utilitarianism, but turns on a concept of "collective consensus" that is itself ill defined - a collective of whom? Consensus around what? You can pretty much assert what you like here, so far as I can tell - which is of course both true and fair, but seems difficult to defend as anything beyond opinion. Simpler, I think, to consider that livestock animals do have the capacity to suffer, that their lives in factory farms indeed consist of no other sort of experience save suffering, and then to eat them anyway because as a member of this planet's apex predator species it neither appeals to nor behooves me to weep over cows.