From: russ@wpg.com (Russell Lawrence)
Subject: Re: Should humans assign "status"?
Organization: WP Group
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 01:11:31 GMT


From article <1992Aug22.175923.25363@pixel.kodak.com>, by young@serum.kodak.com:
ry> Let me say it another way: a brain-dead human is a fatally flawed
ry> organism, the carrot is a functional organism removed to a hostile
ry> environment.  Not only is the comparison of the "apples and oranges"
ry> variety relative to situation, but the subjects used for the
ry> comparison are not equally viable before the comparison is made.

Russell Lawrence writes:
rl> A man with total kidney failure is also a "fatally flawed 
rl> organism".  If you think it's ok to allow a brain-dead human to 
rl> die by withdrawing medical treatment without his explicit 
rl> consent, would it also be ok to allow a kidney-dead human to die 
rl> by withdrawing medical treatment without consent?  
rl> 
rl> BTW, when I posed a similar question previously, you declined to 
rl> answer after saying that the question was "irrelevant".  In doing 
rl> so, you were once again guilty of "assigning status" as I'll 
rl> explain later on.  In any case, I'm challenging both the honesty 
rl> and consistency of your claim that "self-sustaining life" rather 
rl> than sentience and sapience is the property that truly matters in 
rl> making ethical decisions.  As such, it seems to me that your 
rl> presentation would be more convincing if you'd avoid evasive 
rl> answers.  

From article <1992Aug24.231123.4519@pixel.kodak.com>, by young@serum.kodak.com:
ry> Let me try to explain this once again.  To the cosmos, a brain-dead,
ry> or kidney deficient, or liver-failed, etc., human is effectively
ry> dead.  It is a non-functional organism.  It doesn't matter what
ry> that person might mean to you or me: in the "Big Picture" of things,
ry> the organism in question no longer exists.  It is, therefore,
ry> irrelevant to my point.  There is, however, a cosmic difference
ry> between "alive" and "not-alive", and sapience/sentience is merely
ry> an arbitrary sub-set of that distinction.

Just for the sake of argument, let's assume that the "Cosmos" has 
a mind and has authorized you to speak on his/her/its behalf.  In 
such a case, your willingness to defer to the authority of this 
"Cosmic Person" belies your claim that sapience and sentience are 
arbitrary values.  After all, the Cosmic Person would be a 
meaningless concept unless he/she/it possesses some sort of
feeling/thinking abilities.  

On the other hand, let's suppose that the "Cosmos" is a mindless 
entity with no thoughts and feelings whatsoever.  In such a case, 
neither "life" nor "sentience" nor any other attribute of 
existence would make a difference to the Mindless-Cosmos-Itself, 
and hence, your appeal to cosmic authority would make as much 
sense as appeals to the thoughts and sensibilities of bricks, 
stainless-steel ball bearings, glass bottles, and so on. 

Now it might be true that a mindless cosmos or a brick or a glass 
bottle couldn't care less whether murdering innocent beings is 
good or bad, but the lack of concern among such entities doesn't 
mean that ethical questions about murder are devoid of merit.  
Regardless of the non-views of the "Cosmos" that you've 
conveniently enlisted on your behalf, the fact remains that 
kidney-dead humans do, indeed, have meaningful lives.  And hence, 
it behooves us to act accordingly in our dealings with them.  

ry> ... Different species have different "talents", based on their
ry> evolutionary niches.

rl> Of course they have different talents, but to the extent that 
rl> those "talents" reflect different levels of sentience and 
rl> sapience, don't you think they need to be taken into account?

ry> By whom?  Humans?  Hey, look, if it tilts your kilt to feel that
ry> a giraff is worthy of some additional consideration beyond that
ry> you'd give a garden slug, so be it, but it is, and will remain,
ry> a purely arbitrary decision based on your personal sensibilities.
ry> Of course others may share those sensibilities, but that fact doesn't
ry> make the decision any less arbitrary.
ry>
ry> Understand, however, that we, as humans, have absolutely NO more
ry> "authority" to make that decision than a naked mole rat.  The fact
ry> that we have the CAPABILITY is not the same thing.

I'm not sure what you mean by "authority", Rich?  Does the policeman
who lives next door to me have the "authority" to shoot criminals
brandishing firearms?  Does my dad (as a licensed physician) have
the "authority" to disconnect the life-support apparatus of a brain-
dead human?   Does an animal researcher have the "authority" to
kill innocent beings? 

Clearly these are questions that can be meaningfully asked and 
answered without projecting personhood onto the "Cosmos".  As I 
see it, your continuing appeals to "higher" authority indicate 
that you're unwilling to participate in an honest discussion and 
are hoping to find some avenue of escape. 

rl> To illustrate, let's just suppose that chickens are particularly 
rl> sensitive to pain and that carrots are totally insensitive.  If 
rl> we were to evaluate the ethical consequences of sticking needles 
rl> into chickens and carrots, don't you think we should stop and 
rl> consider their respective sentient abilities?  In doing so, we're
rl> not assigning special status at all, but merely recognizing the
rl> basic facts.

ry> The natural world doesn't much care what you do to either the carrot
ry> OR the chicken, does it?  The only one who cares is you...  

I agree that the "natural world" probably wouldn't care, just as 
Santa Claus probably wouldn't care, and my car probably wouldn't 
care, and my house probably wouldn't care, etc, etc.  On the 
other hand, the chicken would surely care, and so would many
intelligent observers.

ry> Any moral
ry> or ethical implications are, therefore, a creation of your mind, NOT
ry> a universal absolute.  If you, as a human, wish to stop and "evaluate
ry> the ethical consequences" of an action, feel free, but whatever
ry> results from the thought process is irrelevant in the Universe.

Rich, you're the one who keeps appealing to "universal absolutes"
and the "cosmos" and so on.  Not me.   In view of the fact that
your knowledge of the universe is highly limited, don't you think
that it's pretentious for you to continue making these appeals to
"Cosmic" opinion?   

> ...
rl> What's the difference between "assigning status" and "deciding 
rl> relevance", Rich?  In declaring that one set of properties is 
rl> relevant or not-relevant, are you not "assigning status"?  After
rl> all, the term "relevance" is meaningless without a status point,
rl> is it not?  

ry> "Relevance" deals with applicability; "status" deals with relative
ry> rank in a hierarchy of prestige.

You've led us to believe that "life" has some sort of "cosmic" 
significance.  In making such a claim, were you not "assigning status"
to one set of entities while denying status to other entities?

> ...
rl> Again, sentience and sapience are _not_ arbitrary values, as most
rl> readers will understand when they contemplate the ethical difference
rl> between our withdrawal of medical treatment from a brain-dead man
rl> as opposed to a kidney-dead man.  Or for that matter, the ethical
rl> difference between sticking carrots with pins as opposed to sticking
rl> dogs with pins.

ry> Does a tiger "care" whether its next meal is sentient/sapient or
ry> not?  [no]
ry> 
ry> Except to humans, sentience and sapience are completely, totally,
ry> and unequivocally, irrelevant criteria.  Name one non-human animal
ry> to which it would matter whether I stick a pin in a carrot or your
ry> foot.

The dogs that live with me wouldn't mind a bit if you were to 
stick a pin in a carrot, Rich.  On the other hand, I'm sure 
they'd react negatively if they had reason to believe that you 
were causing me pain.  (Pain, of course, is just one aspect of 
sentience).  

Be that as it may, what makes you think that the validity of an
idea may be measured by its acceptance or rejection among tigers?
The "appeal to tigers" isn't quite as silly as your "appeal to
the Cosmos", but it comes close.  

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