From: vanetten@unix.cie.rpi.edu (John S. Van Etten)
Subject: Re: Should humans assign "status"?
Organization: CIE, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 03:21:18 GMT

Russell Lawrence writes:

>Russell Lawrence writes:
>rl>If you still believe that sentience and sapience are irrelevant
>rl>concepts, [...]
>
>From article <1992Oct7.212525.23214@pixel.kodak.com>, by young@serum.kodak.com:
>ry> As you've been told before, this is NOT my argument.  My argument
>ry> is that sentience/sapience are ARBITRARY CRITERIA for assigning
>ry> "status" to non-human species.
>
>As I've said many times before, I'm not "assigning status" when I
>recognize that an animal has thoughts and feelings.  Such qualities
>are intrinsic to its being, and don't simply spring into existence as
>a result of my recognition.  A cow, for instance, will continue to
>experience feelings and emotions, regardless of what goes on in the
>mind of Russell Lawrence or Rich Young.

I swore I was going to sit this out for a while, since Rich is doing
such a fine job with the debate (and I'll only slow things down), but
I'd like to offer a few words.  Nobody is saying that you're assigning
status by merely recognizing sentience and sapience, Russell.  If that
was all you were doing, we'd all be happy and could move on.  But you
*are* assigning status when you use that (or any other) criterion as
the basis for life and death decisions for any being (i.e., what you
are going to kill for lunch tomorrow, be it lettuce and tomatoes or
whatever).  Since my definition of being is loosely "something which
is alive," there is no real "status" being defined while basing a
decision to kill something for food on whether or not it is indeed
alive.  All beings are equal.  I will kill any of them for food.  If
you want to say that I too am defining a status by saying that things
which are alive are superior to things which are not alive, that is
acceptable to me.  But I am not making any *arbitrary* ranking among
those which are alive, as you are.


>Please explain why sentience and sapience would be "arbitrary" 
>considerations when we're discussing our treatment of non-human 
>entities, but "not-arbitrary" when we're discussing our treatment 
>of human entities.  

In my opinion, sentience and sapience are valid (and there are many
others, of course) criterion on which to base our "treatment" of any
being.  They are, however, as Rich has expained to you ad nauseum,
arbitrary for considerations of life and death -- they do indeed
assign some bizzare "Peter Singer and Russell Lawrence sez you're
better" status to a being.  Please note that I consider "treatment" to
be orthogonal to life and death decisions, so what I'm saying in
essence is "Yes, if a being is sentient and sapient we should kill it
in a humane manner and avoid needless suffering."  But it's life or
death as such is no different than the life or death of a carrot or
cabbage.

And yes, Russell, I do still think your Space Invader Friends would
consider it ethical for them to hunt humans and that my opinion on the
issue is not relevant.  But we needn't go off on that tangent here.
Just a test to see if the pre-emptive answers do indeed work. :-)


John

--
******************************************************************************
               John S. Van Etten     vanetten@unix.cie.rpi.edu
       Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute  1000 MIPS GaAs F-RISC Project
       --"If sand didn't irritate oysters, there would be no pearls"--
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