Would it be OK to raise humans, treat them humanely, and then kill them painlessly at full growth for eating?
No, of course not.
There is a difference between a human and an animal, as jaydfox has pointed out, but where do you draw the line. Should we eat dolphins? chimpanzees? What is your criteria for edible/not edible?
My criteria is personhood, or more specifically *self awareness*. The best (and possibly the only) way to discern this type of inherently subjective quality is by taking Dennett’s intentional stance.
The famous “mirror test” is a perfect example of what I mean when I am referring to the intentional stance and an observer’s ability to make an objective assessment of an entity's intentional state based on its behavior in the physical world.
Mirror TestIn the overwhelming majority of organisms (99.9999%) self awareness does not exist. The consciousness, if you can call it that at all, consists of varying lesser degrees of intentional response to external stimuli. Simply put, there is nobody home.
In rabbits there is no interocular transfer of learning! That is, if you train a rabbit that a particular shape is a source of danger by demonstrations carefully restricted to its left eye, the rabbit will exhibit no "knowledge" about that shape, no fear or flight behavior, when the menacing shape is presented to its right eye.
Daniel C Dennett
So what is the significance of this? Well, without self awareness there is no agent present. And without an agent present there are no *interests* either. And without interests there are no rights.
The existence of the “phenomenal self”, or the idea that the self is a conceptual subunit embedded within a larger aggregate model of reality, has been proposed by Thomas Metzinger (whom I have only discovered recently, but am presently researching diligently).
If one wishes to understand what phenomenal consciousness actually is, one of the most important explananda will be what Thomas Nagel has called the perspectivalness of consiousness: the fact that experiences always appear to be experiences for an experiencing ego, being bound to a subjective first-person perspective. I will try to sketch a strategy of accomodating the perspectivalness of consciousness within an empirically plausible theory of mental representation. The model of the self differs from every other mental model in an essential point. It possesses a part which is exclusively based on internal input: the part of the body image activated by proprioceptive input. Recent research concerning the pain experienced in phantom limbs seems to point to the existence of a genetically determined neuromatrix whose activation patterns could be the basis of the body image and body feeling. The part of this neural activation pattern which is independent of external input produces a continuous representational basis for the body model of the self and in this way anchors it in the brain. In almost all situations when there is phenomenal consciousness at all, there also exists this unspecific, internal source of input. It is the most `certain' and stable region within the model of the self. In this way our consciousness becomes a centred consciousness. However, in order for the functional/representational property of centredness to become the phenomenal property of perspectivalness, the model of the system must become a phenomenal self. The pivotal question is: How does that which we commonly call the phenomenal first-person perspective emerge in a centred representational space? A first person perspective -- I would suggest -- emerges if the system no longer recognizes the model of the self which it itself activated as a model. If it did, representational and functional centredness would remain, but the global phenomenal property of perspectivalness would disappear. In short: the system would have a self model, but no phenomenal self. The representational correlate -- the self model -- is a functional module, episodically activated by the system in order to regulate its interaction with the environment. As we know from cybernetics, every good regulator of a complex system automatically has to be a model of the system. If one assumes a PDP-inspired teleofunctionalism, then this model of the system appears as a kind of organ which emerges through the binding of a certain set of microfunctional properties and enables the system to represent itself in its environment to itself. So the self model is a transient computational module, possessing a long biological history: It is a weapon, which was developed in the course of a `cognitive arms race' (Clark). A real phenomenal self however, only emerges if the system confuses itself with the internal model of itself which it itself has generated. Since the processuality of the objective process of self-modelling is not represented on the level of content the representational model of the system also possesses an aspect of presence in every individual psychological moment. The activation of an opaque self model is the most important necessary (but not sufficient) condition for the instantiation of what philosophers like to call the `first person perspective': while activating a special type of representational object, the system gets caught in a naive realistic self misunderstanding and in this way generates a phenomenal subject.
Of course, the argument I am making pertains specifically to abstract conceptualizations such as the value of one’s life… or the fact that one has a life to begin with.
The actual experience of pain is a different story all together. Through the intentional stance we can see that virtually all organisms (by their actions) show an *interest* in avoiding what humans percieve as painful stimuli (my odd choice of word will make sense later in the post). If an organism has an interest in avoiding what humans perceive as painful stimuli, then one could say that they also have a right to avoid such stimuli. Hence, generally speaking, organisms have a right to exist in an environment free of what humans would consider to be painful stimuli.
Thus, if cattle are allowed to graze on open pastures for most of their lives, and finally meet their end at a slaughter house by being swiftly decapitated…well, it is hard to see how this is really infringing on their rights, considering that their death is considerably less painful than that of most animals which die naturally in the wild.
But I would like to go even further now and dispute the widely accepted and deceptively “self evident” notion that animals truly *experience* pain and suffering in the way that humans and other self aware organisms experience it.
Coincidentally, the idea that animals *experience* reality in a manner similar to humans is directly attributable to Dennett’s methodological evaluation via the intentional stance.
So on what grounds could one dispute this line of reasoning on? Interestingly, I just found an article which I believe is particularly relevant to this discussion.
So that's what I'm working on now. And what I'm now thinking — though it certainly needs further work — is basically that the point of there being a phenomenally rich subjective present is that it provides a new domain for selfhood. Gottlob Frege, the great logician of the early 20th century, made the obvious but crucial observation that a first-person subject has to be the subject of something. In which case we can ask, what kind of something is up to doing the job? What kind of thing is of sufficient metaphysical weight to supply the experiential substrate of a self — or, at any rate, a self worth having? And the answer I'd now suggest is: nothing less than phenomenal experience — phenomenal experience with its intrinsic depth and richness, with its qualities of seeming to be more than any physical thing could be.
Phenomenal experience, surely, can and does provide the basis for creating a self worth having. And just see what becomes possible — even natural — once this new self is in place! As subjects of something so mysterious and strange, we humans gain new confidence and interest in our own survival, a new interest in other people too. We begin to be interested in the future, in immortality, and in all sorts of issues to do with co-consciousness and how far consciousness extends around us.
This feeds right back to our biological fitness in both obvious and subtle ways. It makes us more lively, more fascinating and more fascinated, more determined to pursue lives wherever they will take us. In short, more like the amazing piece of work that humans are. Lord Byron said that "the great object of life is sensation — to feel that we exist, even though in pain." That's the raw end of it. But, at a more reflective level, what keeps us going, gives us courage, makes us aim high for ourselves and our children is the feeling that as human selves we have something very special to preserve.
None of this would have happened if it weren't for those sensory circuits in the brain developing their special self-resonance — a development that was pushed along by natural selection for metaphysics. As I once put it (imitating a famous passage of Rousseau): "The first animal who, having enclosed a bit of the world's substance within his skin, said 'This is me' was perhaps the true founder of individualized life. But it was the first animal who, having enclosed a bit of time within his brain, said 'This is my present' who was the true founder of subjective being."
Nicholas Humphrey
LINKIf what Humphrey is saying is correct and subjective experience succeeded (or coevolved with) the evolution of selfhood then the implication would be that all organisms that do not demonstrate self awareness also do not possess subjective experience. Indeed, such organisms may
appear to be experiencing pain, but this would be attributing subjective experiences which do not in fact exist.
I am using the ideas put forward by Humphrey to show that some of the base line assumptions in this conversation are not necessarily correct. Naturally his hypothesis is entirely speculative which is why I believe the default position when it comes to the ethical treatment of animals is a mimization of painful stimuli.
As a side note, most animals that demonstrate self awareness are not ones that I would ever consume. The exception to this would be octopus, an extremely intelligent invertebrate which also happens to be an Italian delicacy. After thoroughly analyzing this issue I will make sure that I never again consume this creature.
Edited by DonSpanton, 01 July 2005 - 08:17 AM.
