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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32256 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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It's articles like this that really make me embrace Idealism and express outright pro-anthroprocentrism. That humanity is distinct and apart from nature, and that humans are more than mere animals, but are capable of Reason which is what separates and makes us superior to animals. Animals are stupid and much less important than humans. I don't care how much people make appeals to animals' supposed sentience. They are not sapient and not capable of Reason. It's not clear if they have any consciousness (and they probably don't, save for maybe our closest primate cousins). Animals do not deserve the same rights as humans, they are stupid beasts. I don't think anyone has ever said that to the author. We humans have decided that we want to preverse nature because we believe it has value - economic, aesthetic, moral etc value. But that value is ultimately derived from our human Reason something those animals are completely incapable of doing.

I think that's the wrong way to go about it. If you marry your ideology to claims that animals aren't sapient, are stupid, are incapable of reason, aren't conscious, you're... well I think you're just already wrong based on things I've seen animals do in life and studies. The untruths will eventually prove to have been an unstable intellectual foundation.

And unnecessary for the goal.

You can go much simpler. We are humans, we're the most dominant species on earth, so ultimately we are capable of acting in accordance with our values without animals stopping us. Ok. Now that we're established that, what do we want to do with the animals?

Even the author could do this. And then they could finish with "I aesthetically/morally dislike the constant war the animals live in, and if the average reader attempts to point human empathy at the average animal documentary, they probably will too. Let's improve the living conditions of wild animals (according to our aesthetics) as we're able."

If you marry your ideology to claims that animals aren't sapient, are stupid, are incapable of reason, aren't conscious, you're... well I think you're just already wrong based on things I've seen animals do in life and studies.

Those things are true. Animals aren't capable of reason, they aren't sapient (which is distinct from sentience). Animals are incapable of making moral judgements, asking and dealing with abstract concepts.

Like sure, a crow can pick up a stick and use it get some food from a puzzle box. That doesn't make the crow capable of reason.

There has been I think general push to present animals as capable of human like reason, to the point of fraudulent science. Infamously Koko the sign language-using gorilla's abilities were highly misrepresented to the point of fraud. Even our nearest, smartest primate cousins are incapable of human reason. They can't learn grammar, they can't understand abstract concepts, no matter how much researchs tried to make it appear so.

In some sense I would say your argument has an even less stable intellectual foundation. It's basically 'humans have power over animals, so whatever we say goes'. This argument is just weak as as if you were apply it to humans - "justice is the advantage of the stronger" or "might makes right".

Animals have been observed engaging in creative innovative behaviors. I'm not sure 'Sapience' is well defined. I agree that no animals appear to possess Redwall levels of human-like intelligence.

I am on the same page regarding grammar.

I'm not sure of what you mean by abstraction. I haven't deep dived or replicated the studies but to my knowledge: Various animals can be taught to use currency. Crows can use vending machines and will even modify vending machine tokens to fit the machine of their own initiative. Many animals can solve puzzles that require them to innovate solutions.

As for 'humans have power over animals, so whatever we say goes' I think that's just a fact. Humans do have power over animals. What we say does go.

It is unpalpable that it also applies to humans. But it does in fact also apply to humans.

Your position is 'Humans have Reason (and some other useful/aesthetic properties), and all value that animals have is derived from our Reason.'

I'm curious. Why do you think Reason justifies doing what we want?

I can clearly see that it enables us to do what we want. But if reason is good because I can feel it / I say so, then that's just our aesthetics asserting themselves again. If reason is good because its powerful, that's just 'the strong do what they will' again.

I'm curious. Why do you think Reason justifies doing what we want?

Because it is only Reason that allows us to even ask the question "what do we even want?" or "what is the moral outcome?" in the first place. Reason actually gives humans the capacity to be moral agents and make decisions. As much as I hate to lean on continental philosophy, Reason is what gives us humans (Kantian/Hegelian) autonomy.

I've observed ChatGPT engaging in "creative innovative behaviors". Except they weren't; they were just the outcome of processes that use so much computation that they are hard to understand on a gut level as mechanistic, so we interpret them as creative and innovative.

Everything that occurs in the brain is also mechanistic. AI is creative. Novel remixes of old data to fit new situations is a form of creation.

There are limits and caveats to that creativity. Including how much of it is data or architecture offloaded from humans, as well as the limits to what it can create in general. ChatGPT continuing to have issues with memory for instance, and lacking the insight or telos to remedy that issue in itself.

You might be skeptical of the generality of a crow's intelligence, or how much of it was informed by humans.

But I don't think it makes sense to be skeptical that it isn't 'merely' mechanistic.

We are too.

There are limits and caveats to that creativity.

There are limits and caveats both for ChatGPT and cows.

But I don't think it makes sense to be skeptical that it isn't 'merely' mechanistic.

The point is that you're happy to treat ChatGPT as not having any rights at all, but it seems to meet your standards as well as animals do, although in a different domain. Why should ChatGPT have no rights, but animals should? Especially if you exclude the answer "because ChatGPT is a machine"?

I don't think I've said animals should have rights in this thread.

I've said that animals are intelligent and I think it's unprincipled to base a human supremacy stance on them not being conscious or creative because they are, but that I think there are more principled human supremacist stances.

If you want to delve into what I actually think about animal rights personally-

I don't like seeing things I parse as capable of suffering doing so.

So insofar as I can recognize suffering and stop it I want to.

I don't think their rights actually matter that much. I was pro-superhappy when reading Three Worlds Collide.

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