4 ms·

I am wary too, but of something a little different. I worry about people passionately drawing very sharp, red, punitive moral lines on things that are pretty su

I am wary too, but of something a little different. I worry about people passionately drawing very sharp, red, punitive moral lines on things that are pretty subjective and that different people will have different opinions on. We're going to be in a bad place if we all draw slightly different lines on various issues, then condemn and work to punish each other for crossing our lines. I think this ideology of moral maximalism - "everything I object to morally should be punished harshly" - has been pretty disastrous for the human race, if you look at history. However passionate people are about primates and their resemblance to humans, I don't see how you can draw an objective line that condemns this research but sanctions all the horrible things we do to, say, rats, for the greater good of medical science. Who can claim to have the objective view of how moral obligations to non-human animals increase with their resemblance to humans? We don't agree on this stuff, and it isn't objective. Can we all find something better to do with our lives than try to punish each other for not toeing the exact line of our individual moral opinions? Let's calm down, stop taking our moral emotions as legitimate universal prescriptions, and put moral maximalism behind us.

ziddoap 4y ago
This reads like "since the line might be fuzzy, we should never have lines, move on". Surely there is a middle-ground to be found between your extreme and the other?
- civilized 4y ago
  I'm not saying we should never have lines, I'm saying we should not automatically turn all of our moral intuitions into bright red lines which we enforce punitively.
ss108 4y ago
We shouldn't do it to rats either. The thing is, your view of this is too anthropocentric. Saying this: "I worry about people passionately drawing very sharp, red, punitive moral lines on things that are pretty subjective and that different people will have different opinions on. We're going to be in a bad place if we all draw slightly different lines on various issues, then condemn and work to punish each other for crossing our lines." ...doesn't take into consideration the experiences of monkeys and other animals. So you're going to have to morally justify why we shouldn't care about them. The argument you are making sounds reasonable if applied to, e.g., cancel culture or something, but it's rather willfully oblivious and glib in this context, IMO. "Can we all find something better to do with our lives than try to punish each other for not toeing the exact line of our individual moral opinions?" Wouldn't by definition many moral opinions necessitate that one try to get them enforced in some way? You're kind of just downplaying morality overall, arguably. Again, I'd be sympathetic to what you're saying in a lot of contexts, either where humans are the only creatures involved or the human actions simply don't directly infringe on anyone else. So, abortion, cancel-culture, gay marriage, etc. This way of thinking could be usefully applied to a lot of hot-button issues where the conduct really doesn't actually harm anyone else, human or otherwise. But if it comes to animal experimentation, genocide (see China), various forms of oppression and discrimination within societies (whether racial or like caste-based, whatever), etc., people are going to become indignant, and if they didn't, we'd all just be amoral and compassion-less in a very dystopian way.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  >Wouldn't by definition many moral opinions necessitate that one try to get them enforced in some way? You're kind of just downplaying morality overall, arguably. No? There are a vast array of moral opinions that can govern your actions but not others. That is to say, you don't have always have moral responsibility for the actions of others. Similarly, there's a wide array of opinions on what actions are appropriate to curtail a moral behavior of others. I would agree with the parent post that hard lines governing others can be quite dangerous.
  - ss108 4y ago
    "I would agree with the parent post that hard lines governing others can be quite dangerous." This could be logically extended to support the notion we shouldn't have laws or something.
    - s1artibartfast 4y ago
      Probably some laws, but not most. A lot of laws and the most important ones are about preventing people from hurting others or damaging their property. Those aren't about moralizing private actions that don't impact anyone else.
- civilized 4y ago
  So, my argument sounds good re: cancel culture but not re: animal experimentation? Does that mean people who say horrible racist things are not moral monsters deserving of punishment, but a guy who does medical experiments on rats is? I respect your opinion (which may not be exactly what I suggested above), but can't you see how easily someone else could think very differently? How far should we go to enforce our exact individual moral opinions that so many other humans don't share? It's a hard question that deserves input from thought and not just moral emotions. That's all I want to point out.
  - ss108 4y ago
    Saying things doesn't inflict a harm of the same nature as the experiments. The line-drawing is not so impossible or purely subjective that it cannot or should not be undertaken.
bambax 4y ago
I appreciate the fact that you're trying to be the voice of reason, but I disagree completely with what you're saying. For starters, it's very common for criminals to have a different "opinion" about their crimes than the victims. Society doesn't just stop fighting crime because a consensus is hard to find with the perpetrators. Secondly, in the case of that specific "research", the reason why they're using monkeys and not, say, fruit flies, is because they are studying "empathy" and they feel, rightly, that there is a lot of similarity between empathy and feelings in monkeys as in humans. It's that sameness that they're after, but because those beings are called "monkeys" then it's suddenly ok to torture them. The sole purpose of the idea that we're of a different essence from the non-humans, is to relieve us of any moral burden and responsibility. In concentration camps and in many psychiatric hospitals, inmates weren't considered humans, and therefore one could do anything to them. (This is still the case in many prisons today.) How we treat non-humans, we eventually, always, treat humans.
- civilized 4y ago
  > For starters, it's very common for criminals to have a different "opinion" about their crimes than the victims. Society doesn't just stop fighting crime because a consensus is hard to find with the perpetrators. There's a bit of begging the question going on here. My whole point is that we shouldn't take all of our moral intuitions and call those who violate them criminals. And the question of which "crimes" have "victims" is sometimes ambiguous, e.g. with abortion and medical experimentation. Some of our moral intuitions should be enforced. Others shouldn't. We have a responsibility to think about which is which. It doesn't mean there has to be universal agreement. But there does have to be some pragmatism, otherwise we just fight forever because we can't agree on everything and no progress gets made - or worse, the world is consumed with violence, one of the main outcomes we were trying to avoid. > How we treat non-humans, we eventually, always, treat humans. This is simply not true. People who work in animal medical testing don't turn into worse people than the rest of us.

ziddoap 4y ago

This reads like "since the line might be fuzzy, we should never have lines, move on". Surely there is a middle-ground to be found between your extreme and the other?

civilized 4y ago
I'm not saying we should never have lines, I'm saying we should not automatically turn all of our moral intuitions into bright red lines which we enforce punitively.

ss108 4y ago

We shouldn't do it to rats either. The thing is, your view of this is too anthropocentric. Saying this: "I worry about people passionately drawing very sharp, red, punitive moral lines on things that are pretty subjective and that different people will have different opinions on. We're going to be in a bad place if we all draw slightly different lines on various issues, then condemn and work to punish each other for crossing our lines." ...doesn't take into consideration the experiences of monkeys and other animals. So you're going to have to morally justify why we shouldn't care about them. The argument you are making sounds reasonable if applied to, e.g., cancel culture or something, but it's rather willfully oblivious and glib in this context, IMO. "Can we all find something better to do with our lives than try to punish each other for not toeing the exact line of our individual moral opinions?" Wouldn't by definition many moral opinions necessitate that one try to get them enforced in some way? You're kind of just downplaying morality overall, arguably. Again, I'd be sympathetic to what you're saying in a lot of contexts, either where humans are the only creatures involved or the human actions simply don't directly infringe on anyone else. So, abortion, cancel-culture, gay marriage, etc. This way of thinking could be usefully applied to a lot of hot-button issues where the conduct really doesn't actually harm anyone else, human or otherwise. But if it comes to animal experimentation, genocide (see China), various forms of oppression and discrimination within societies (whether racial or like caste-based, whatever), etc., people are going to become indignant, and if they didn't, we'd all just be amoral and compassion-less in a very dystopian way.

s1artibartfast 4y ago
>Wouldn't by definition many moral opinions necessitate that one try to get them enforced in some way? You're kind of just downplaying morality overall, arguably. No? There are a vast array of moral opinions that can govern your actions but not others. That is to say, you don't have always have moral responsibility for the actions of others. Similarly, there's a wide array of opinions on what actions are appropriate to curtail a moral behavior of others. I would agree with the parent post that hard lines governing others can be quite dangerous.
- ss108 4y ago
  "I would agree with the parent post that hard lines governing others can be quite dangerous." This could be logically extended to support the notion we shouldn't have laws or something.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    Probably some laws, but not most. A lot of laws and the most important ones are about preventing people from hurting others or damaging their property. Those aren't about moralizing private actions that don't impact anyone else.
civilized 4y ago
So, my argument sounds good re: cancel culture but not re: animal experimentation? Does that mean people who say horrible racist things are not moral monsters deserving of punishment, but a guy who does medical experiments on rats is? I respect your opinion (which may not be exactly what I suggested above), but can't you see how easily someone else could think very differently? How far should we go to enforce our exact individual moral opinions that so many other humans don't share? It's a hard question that deserves input from thought and not just moral emotions. That's all I want to point out.
- ss108 4y ago
  Saying things doesn't inflict a harm of the same nature as the experiments. The line-drawing is not so impossible or purely subjective that it cannot or should not be undertaken.

bambax 4y ago

I appreciate the fact that you're trying to be the voice of reason, but I disagree completely with what you're saying. For starters, it's very common for criminals to have a different "opinion" about their crimes than the victims. Society doesn't just stop fighting crime because a consensus is hard to find with the perpetrators. Secondly, in the case of that specific "research", the reason why they're using monkeys and not, say, fruit flies, is because they are studying "empathy" and they feel, rightly, that there is a lot of similarity between empathy and feelings in monkeys as in humans. It's that sameness that they're after, but because those beings are called "monkeys" then it's suddenly ok to torture them. The sole purpose of the idea that we're of a different essence from the non-humans, is to relieve us of any moral burden and responsibility. In concentration camps and in many psychiatric hospitals, inmates weren't considered humans, and therefore one could do anything to them. (This is still the case in many prisons today.) How we treat non-humans, we eventually, always, treat humans.

civilized 4y ago
> For starters, it's very common for criminals to have a different "opinion" about their crimes than the victims. Society doesn't just stop fighting crime because a consensus is hard to find with the perpetrators. There's a bit of begging the question going on here. My whole point is that we shouldn't take all of our moral intuitions and call those who violate them criminals. And the question of which "crimes" have "victims" is sometimes ambiguous, e.g. with abortion and medical experimentation. Some of our moral intuitions should be enforced. Others shouldn't. We have a responsibility to think about which is which. It doesn't mean there has to be universal agreement. But there does have to be some pragmatism, otherwise we just fight forever because we can't agree on everything and no progress gets made - or worse, the world is consumed with violence, one of the main outcomes we were trying to avoid. > How we treat non-humans, we eventually, always, treat humans. This is simply not true. People who work in animal medical testing don't turn into worse people than the rest of us.