From: russ@wpg.com (Russell Lawrence)
Subject: Re: Should humans assign "status"?
Organization: WP Group
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1992 19:33:22 GMT


Rich Young writes:
ry>  1. What is this "meaning" that you seem to think conveys some 
ry>  magical "status" to living creatures and which makes it 
ry>  acceptable to kill and eat one but not another?  

Russell Lawrence writes:
rl> I didn't say that meaning conveys magical status.  What I said 
rl> was that meaningful existence is impossible without sentience and 
rl> sapience and that we ought to take sentience and sapience into 
rl> account when we're evaluating the consequences of our actions on
rl> other individuals.  

From article <1992Sep4.151731.19369@pixel.kodak.com>, by young@serum.kodak.com:
ry> The question asked you to define "meaning" as you've used it in
ry> this context.  You have not yet complied.  You have, instead,
ry> continued to resort to using the term without defining it.  You've
ry> said that a "meaningful existence" isn't possible without sentience/
ry> sapience but you have yet to tell us exactly what constitutes a
ry> "meaningful existence."

These terms are defined in the dictionary, Rich.  "Sentience" 
designates sensory abilities, namely the ability of an entity to 
gather information about its own being as well as its 
environment.  "Sapience" designates the cognitive abilities that 
permit an entity to process and analyze information.  The word,
"meaningful", is a catch-all term that designates significance 
or purpose.

Let's review the ethical importance of "meaningful" existence. 
Without the qualities of sentience and sapience, existence would 
be perceptually and cognitively meaningless to a ball-bearing, 
and hence it would be impossible to deprive it in any way.  We 
could do it no harm if we whack it with hammers, or melt it down, 
or deal with it as we choose.  On the otherhand, existence is 
meaningful to a healthy chimpanzee, who possesses the ability to 
perceive his own being as well as the world around him.  Hence, 
we ought to think about the impact that our actions may have on 
him or her.  

ry>  2.By what authority do you presume to assign "status" to non-human
ry>    species based on sentience/sapience?

rl> You're the one who's been assigning "status", Rich.  Not me.

ry> The question, Russell, did not ask what you think is moral or
ry> immoral, ethical or unethical; rather, it asks by what presumption
ry> of authority you make these decisions for other species, based on
ry> certain criteria.

And my answer is that you're the one who's been making hierarchical
claims about the role of status and authority, not me.   As an
example, I consider pain to be unpleasant in itself, and hence, I
think we have an obligation to the thinking/feeling individuals
in our environment to think twice before we engage in actions that
may cause them to experience unnecessary pain.  You, on the other
hand, apparently believe that pain is diminished or perhaps not 
important when it's experienced by a "lowly" being like a rat
or dog, in spite of the neurological and behavioral evidence which
shows that pain hurts rats and dogs just as much as it hurts humans.

Now, you may argue that I don't have the "authority" to say that 
pain is bad for rats and dogs, and I suppose you're right.  By 
the same token, however, you don't have the "authority" to 
declare that pain is good for them.  With that in mind, perhaps 
we should dispense with appeals to authority and use the facts 
and analytical skills at our disposal to decide whether humans
and rats and dogs enjoy pain or not, and then modify our behavior 
accordingly.   To limit our judgments on the basis of status would,
as you've observed, be irrational.

ry>  3.Why is your criterion of "sentience" any more valid than a criterion
ry>    of "life," or "ability to jump sideways," or "ability to 
ry>    synthesize glucose?"

rl> Without the qualities of sentience and sapience, an action would
rl> have no meaning whatsoever.  And without meaning, an action could
rl> hardly be "good" or "bad".  As an example, the notion of "torture"
rl> would be meaningless if the object of our actions were incapable
rl> of feeling pain.  If you choose, you're free to point out that the
rl> object in question may be a living bacterium or a self-propelled pogo 
rl> stick capable of jumping sideways, or a lab machine capable of 
rl> synthesizing glucose, but the fact will remain that the "torture"
rl> of such an entity would be a meaningless concept.

ry> And once again, we have a retreat into the undefined "meaning".
ry> Might I humbly suggest that you re-read the section of your book
ry> on logic that describes circular reasoning?  You've just said that
ry> without sapience, there is no "meaning" (whatever THAT is), but
ry> without "meaning" (whatever THAT is) there is no sapience (as in
ry> understanding the concepts of "good" and "bad").

No, that's not what I said.  What I said was that existence would
be meaningless without sentience and sapience, not that "meaning" is
a precondition of sentience and sapience.

It's important to remember that sentient abilities are "primitives".
If you were to ask, "why is pain bad?", most people would respond 
that pain is bad because it hurts.  This isn't a circular 
argument by any means.  To the contrary, such people are citing 
an experiential fact that non-contrary, non-argumentative people 
would readily accept as truthful.  If you were to deny that pain 
is bad, we could set your mind at rest by kicking you in the 
shins or extinguishing a cigarette on the skin of your 
outstretched palm.  

ry> And yet again, you've tried to neatly sidestep the question; allow
ry> me to illustrate.  You've said that sentience is necessary to feel
ry> pain, and therefore sentience is a valid criterion.  Of course, this
ry> was never really under discussion, since the question was whether
ry> "life," etc. could be equally useful criteria.  I suggest that,
ry> since sentience cannot exist without "life," that "life" is at
ry> least as valid a criterion as "sentience."
ry> 
ry> Please answer the question above, Russell, instead of tiptoeing
ry> around it.

You've looked around and you've rightly observed that the 
sentient beings in your midst are life-forms, specifically 
animals, but you don't know for sure that the peculiar qualities 
that distinguish "living" entities from "non-living" entities are 
a necessary pre-condition for sentience and sapience.  Perhaps
it's possible for there to exist an entity that's sentient and
sapient, yet not be alive in the conventional sense.

On the other hand, there are living creatures in our midst that
are not sentient and sapient.  One good example is the brain-dead
man on life-support that we discussed previously.  Such a man
is technically alive just as much as a kidney-dead man is alive,
and yet, we would treat these two men differently because we realize
that it's possible to mistreat and deprive one of them, but not
the other.

-- 
Russell Lawrence, WP Group, New Orleans (504) 443-5000
russ@wpg.com   uunet!wpg!russ
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals