Should ethics apply to other conscious animals?

For this reason, even seduced as I am by moral relativism, I still think experience (at least, mine) is of central, universal importance. This is why, I'm sure, that neither you nor I are confident my position is a moral one.

It becomes a moral system one when I say I should take others experiences into account, but here it becomes vulnerable to the attack of moral relavativists... I wish I could convincingly argue that, for some reason, everyone must believe as I do, but I cannot. I'll keep trying though... If you have some good arguments against moral relativism, perhaps you could help me with this?

The other reason I depart from moral relativism is, as I said, to do with the self-consistency of a moral position. If a morality is based on assumptions of fact that are false, or contains contradictions, I would say that it is a less strong morality that one that doesn't. I guess I'm saying that I can't say whether a knife is better than a fork, but I can say both are better than a broken spoon!

joefromchicago wrote:

Would you say, then, that we owe no duties to something that is incapable of having experience?

Yes, I would say this.

So we would owe no more duties to a comatose person than we would to an amoeba or a cactus?

I'm not sure why you can't seem to grasp the idea that everybody doesn't have the same moral standard that you think you have.

I'm sure you've heard about those suicide bombers in the Middle East. They think and truly believe by their own experience and religion that to kill themselves for Allah will make them into martyrs, and the reward is heaven. They really think they are moral people to die and kill their opposition. In this scenario, it would seem to most of us observing these "killers of the innocent" that the opposite is true; they will end up in hell. Who's right? The individual or the larger world community?

Here my medical ignorance may show up. I was under the impression that a comatose person did experience, although of course that experience would not involve some of the elements that you and I enjoy - sight, hearing, logic etc. I expect (any experts out there?) that there are a number of ways of being comatose, each having different types of experience.

David, But to expect everybody else to conform to your moral imperative is UNREALISTIC no matter how much you believe in yourself.

I would have thought that to 'have no experience of any kind' a person would have to be dead. Any amount of brain activity, even 'vegetive' activity, implies the possibility of experience, and certainly the benefit of the doubt should go this way.

However, I'll go along, and imagine a hypothetical alive-but-non-experiencing person. In this case, we do not owe any moral duty to this person. In my system, no action has a priori moral status, only the affect on a being's experience is morally relevant. An action's moral status depends entirely on the context the act takes place in. With a non-experiencing being, no action could possibly have any affect on them, therefore no action can have any relevance to them whatsoever (although something done to the non-experiencing person might have a affect on an experiencing person, and that should be taken into account).

Why should that be taken into account? If experience is the only moral criterion, then it is indifferent to me (and to everyone else) whether I stab a cactus or stab a brain-dead person.

I ask that anyone who ponders a question like this get involved with hunting and fishing, or even farming (just not factory farming). It will help reconnect you to the real world and the cycle of life.

Is this your position, or are you suggesting that it stems from the position I outlined?

I'll assume the latter, in which case you are incorrect, this conclusion does not stem from the position I outlined. I'll take it step by step, for clarity's sake:

My position only takes what I've called 'experience' (for want of a better word) into account, here we agree (on what my position is, not whether it's right...). The hypothetical brain-dead person has no experience, therefore does not need to be taken into account.

However, stabbing this non-experiencing person may affect the experience of other people. They may feel it to be disrespectful, a symbolic action on themselves, whatever. This may even be the affect the action as intended to have.

My position says that there is nothing a priori 'wrong' with the action of stabbing a non-experiencing person. What may be 'wrong' is the affect it has on those that do experience. My position states that people should agree with the position that only affect on experience is morally relevant. My position does not state that everyone does agree that only affect on experience is morally relevant. It does not say that if a person shouldn't be affected by an action on a non-experiencing person (as they wouldn't be if they whole-heartedly agreed with the position), that means they aren't affected, or that this affect isn't morally relevant.

Any affect on experience is morally relevant. The fact this this affect wouldn't be present if the person agreed with the position I outlined is irrelevant, if there is an affect, and it is still relevant. We would wish to persuade the affected person that there is no need to be upset by the stabbing of a non-experiencing person, but my position would not assume that they are not upset, or that their being upset is unimportant. It is their upsetness, not the act itself, that is wrong.

This seems to me to be simple enough. Where it gets complicated, of course, is where an action that has 'good' affects on experience will upset (have a bad affect on) a person who disagrees with the position. Here the balancing act begins. Would you like to discussion this aspect of my position, or are your problems with it elsewhere?

Do I sense the spector of the naturalistic fallacy here...?

You run the risk of confusing two very different types of "experience" here. On the one hand, you've taken the position that the ability to experience is a prerequisite to being a moral entity (i.e. things that are capable of experiencing are the subjects of morality). On the other hand, here you're saying that act of experiencing has moral consequences. I don't necessarily disagree, but we need to be careful not to confuse the two types of "experience."

Certainly, my stabbing of a non-experiencing person may have unwelcome repercussions. But then my stabbing of a cactus may likewise have unwelcome repercussions. The question, however, is not whether my action in stabbing has any repercussions -- I assume that it will, regardless of who or what I stab. The question is: what moral difference does it make whether I stab a non-experiencing person or a non-experiencing cactus?

One thing that hasn't been mentioned here is the concept of duty. It is possible that I have a duty to a non-experiencing person that I do not have toward a non-experiencing cactus, such that my stabbing of the former is, in moral terms, qualitatively different from my stabbing of the latter. Without adding the concept of duty, however, I find it difficult to understand why the two stabbings are of different moral qualities.

Now if you, djbt, think that the concept of duty is relevant here, you need to connect it to the concept of (the ability to) experience in order to show that stabbing a brain-dead person is morally objectionable whereas the stabbing of a cactus is morally neutral. If, however, you do not think injecting the notion of duty into this debate is relevant, then you'll need to do a better job of explaining why the brain-dead person and the cactus enjoy different moral statuses.

To bring this discussion back to the original premise of this thread, we also need to ask if we have duties toward non-human animals. Is a cat more like a brain-dead person or a cactus?

Do I owe a duty to a dog because it can experience or because my acts in relation to the dog may have unwelcome repercussions on others who can experience?

If I shine a light in your eyes, that affects your experience. Does that make it a morally relevant act?

And why is "upsetness" wrong? Is it wrong as to the person causing the upsetness or to the person experiencing it?

I seem to be having problems with all aspects of your position, so it doesn't much matter where we start.