I talk about how things actually are. You talk about what you wish them to be. — apokrisis

Probably because we are able to conceive of realities that are not.

This is getting very silly. — apokrisis

Please respond with an argument and not just a handwave. I have clearly shown to you how your emphasis on "natural-ness" is derived from a prior appropriation of value to a certain standard.

My argument is that morality is simply an encoding of the organisation by which a social system can persist. And to pretend it is anything more high-falutin' than that is a damaging romantic delusion. — apokrisis

You are merely asserting that the anthropological history of morality defines what morality currently is or could be in the future, thus limiting its prospects.

Hence why I am repeatedly said before that your position is inherently affirmative - affirmative of society, affirmative of progress, affirmative of life. While I am coming from a non-affirmative, perhaps negative, perspective, in which morality is not a tool to be used to enhance our ability to survive but rather a truly reflective enterprise meant to overthrow past assumptions based upon a critical analysis of the world we live in.

Why do they deserve it? I give the natural reasons. You talk about your emotions. — apokrisis

No, you also give emotional arguments because you have placed value upon the "natural" state, thus making it susceptible to moral discussion. Nothing discovered under the microscope is inherently moral or valuable - in the absence of any transcendental Good, value comes from the person.

These natural reasons are valuable because you think they are valuable because you have placed value on whatever it is that these reasons uphold.

Systems have a logic based on constraints and the freedoms they shape (which are the freedoms needed to energetically reconstruct that prevailing state of constraint).

So the reasons why society has to be that way - global cooperation and local competition - is that it is what works. Marxism, anarchy, flower power, dictatorships, communes - there are plenty of examples of alternatives that didn't work because they did not strike the right balance. — apokrisis

Right...so because it works, therefore it's moral?

You have jumped the is-ought gap here by implicitly assuming a standard that these reasons uphold. A standard that does not ring true to me at all as being obviously moral.

Today of course we can develop morality based on a proper understanding of natural systems. Which is where we can start to criticise much of how modern society might be organised from a credible basis.

That means I have no patience for your fact-lite PC guilt-tripping. If you want to make credible arguments, establish a proper basis for them. — apokrisis

Yes, but you still have to argue for what the standard should be that we should attempt to strive for.

The argument is that morality reflects the communal best interest. — apokrisis

Yes, but why should we consider communal best interest to be more important than a global community's best interest?

So the bleeding point of it is to transcend your personal feelings about what ought to the case because the very idea of suffering causes you unendurable suffering. — apokrisis

No, it's because no triumph or something silly like that can phenomenally compare to suffering as it is experienced in sentient organisms.

Personally I find cats delightful and dogs repulsive. Emotionally, the idea of vivisectionists experimenting on kittens is appalling, but beagles don't move me the same way. — apokrisis

This is not my argument. My argument is not that we must personally love animals. My argument is that we must treat animals with respect because they deserve it. I've said this many times before, we don't actually have to be animal lovers to recognize this.

Ethics is not about being comfortable or justifying our inherent animalistic dispositions.

I'll say it again. The systems view is explicit that society is a balance between competitive and co-operative imperatives. We need both to make society work. So there is self-interest in getting my own selfish way, alongside the self-interest in my community flourishing. — apokrisis

Oh, certainly we have to have these in place for a certain kind of society to work. But why should this constrain the possibilities?

We obviously have different views as to what constitutes the "good". I am willing to accept this, so long as you are willing to accept that the flourishing of society is not on my list of priorities for reasons I have already stated.

No I'm not. I'm taking the view that talk about categorical imperatives is transcendent bunk. As a Pragmatist, I can only support reasoned approaches to morality - ones that are natural. And I've said that all along, so I hardly have to come out of the closet about it. — apokrisis

I said in practice we do care about animals to the degree they "give back to us". And this is natural as morality is all about the practical business of organising social relations. We are social creatures and ethical frameworks exist to optimise that. As social creatures, we now have extended that to the realm of domesticated animals. We treat domestic animals differently from wild animals or good reason. We do things like pay their vet bills because we accept their welfare as our responsibility. — apokrisis

Right, so you are under the framework that what has been done, and what we currently do, is what we ought to continue to do because it's natural and rational, or in our own self-interest.

In other words, comfort is evidence of moral value. If we aren't comfortable with the prospect of giving up our dominion over animals, then by golly it's not important.

Not only can we do these things, but we do do these things. However the best argument is going to be that it is rational self-interest to do so. — apokrisis

Yet this is false because we hold many moral beliefs that are not in our best-interest. Perhaps we hold that lying is wrong, even if we could get away with it. It may be in our best-interests to lie, but perhaps we just don't think it's right to lie. Or perhaps we realize how our money would be better spent on aiding those in need, instead of buying that new video game that we want.

Or rather you are trying to win an argument by using emotionally loaded terms. I prefer reason and evidence myself. — apokrisis

As if ethics is entirely disconnected from emotion. Because self-interest isn't emotional at its core...?

This gets very weird. You want to cause us the suffering that is to feel guilt even if there is then nothing we could do to assuage that guilt you have created?

Is that ethical in your book? — apokrisis

Well, yes, it is appropriate, since your guilt is insignificant compared to the suffering of wild animals, which we do indeed have an ability to minimize. It's not that I want you to feel guilt, I want to you act more ethically. It does no good by proclaiming something moral or immoral if everyone is coming from different metaethical perspectives. So I resort to appealing to universal ethical concepts and asking people to consider why they constrain these concepts to a select few.

I really don't have much use for moral condemnation. I'm interested in presenting an ethical position that I feel should be pursued, by presenting facts and allowing others to come to the same conclusion that I have. This takes the form of an if-then counterfactual. If you abide by equality, then you ought to treat animals with respect (unless you have a good reason, i.e. a constraint, not to).

In your case, this reason seems to be rational self-interest. Yet this does not satisfy the open ended question very well, and especially conflicts with our intuitions that maybe we should focus on the welfare of people instead of merely seeing them as a means to an end for our own purposes. Because that is what rational self-interest egoism entails: that we care for others so long as we ourselves benefit from this. And I cannot be the only one who finds this to be troubling.

So I will say something along the lines of: if you care about suffering, then you will do something about it. This, I take it, is a fact - if you care about something, then you will do something relevant to it. If you don't want to do something about suffering, then you must not care about suffering. And I'll let you figure the rest out for yourself, and come to terms with this. If you don't care about suffering, then so be it. Likewise, if you don't care about equality, then so be it. Just don't pretend you do.

I'd like to see you attempt.

A scientific belief is a type of philosophical belief. To attempt to separate the two is to drive a nail in a complex and symbiotic relationship between the two.

So it is about the group dynamic - the give and take of mutual interests. But to simply give rights without reasons is arbitrary and irrational, unless you can argue for some further transcendent principle at work. — apokrisis

You're conflating hypothetical imperatives with categorical imperatives. You use "rational" (i.e. self-interest) as the motivating reason to adopt a moral scheme. This is all fair and good, if you're a moral egoist or an anti-realist non-cognitivist who rejects categorical imperatives. But then just come out and say so, and admit that the categorical imperative is really just self-interest.

Yet I think it is clear that morality, as it is being discussed here, is about the categorical imperatives. We are talking about morality as if there is some non-selfish reason to follow these rules. We are talking about a morality that clearly goes beyond self-centered behavior. Which is why I have relied upon appeals to the more "transcendent" moral principles, like equality, to defend my claim.

The fact that animals cannot really "give back" to you is seen as evidence by yourself that they are not worthy of ethical consideration, as helping them would be irrational (against our own interests). Yet I hope that you agree that this strikes a chord in some sense - that despite being "irrational" (altruistic), we still feel compelled to act this way.

Indeed, it is inherent to hypothetical imperatives that they seem to not settle the open-ended question.

So what I am advocating here then is an abandonment of conventional, historical morality. So humans tended to other humans who were part of their small clan in the past...so what? So humans have historically abused and instrumentalized animals in the past...so what? So humans have systematically discriminated against each other based on race, sex, or any other means...so what? Should we continue to espouse tribalistic behavior? Should we continue to abuse animals? Should we continue to discriminate against members of our own species simply because they have different shades of skin or different genitals? Are we not better than that? Can we not move on from these beastly behaviors? Can we not recognize that there is a difference between rationality and ethicality? Can we not recognize that, if we existed in a different world, we might not have to espouse these ancient, oppressive traditions?

By calling these traditions "oppressive", "tribalistic", "totalitarian", "unequal", etc., I am identifying an actual quality of these traditions. They really are oppressive, tribalistic, totalitarian, and unequal, whether you like to admit it or not. And my hope is that, once you admit this fact, your sense of morality will fire up and you will reject these prior traditions in virtue of the fact that they are oppressive, tribalistic, totalitarian, and unequal.

You could accuse me of putting everyone on a guilt-trip; yet this guilt is precisely why I think we ought to abandon these traditions. After all, I am only pointing out facts. Whether or not we are able to act ethically is entirely irrelevant to the discussion.

Umm...ok?

If part of the reason that we treat people better than we treat animals is that people are human then it's not inconsistent or irrational to treat people better than we treat animals. — Michael

But there needs to be a justification for why humans are special.

Perhaps we're special because we can vote or do philosophy. In which case, yes, we shouldn't give voting rights to animals because they can't vote! Yet they can suffer (as can we). They fulfill some standard necessary for a right to be applied.

What reasons do you have for believing that all things (and only those things?) which can suffer deserve equal ethical consideration? You keep asserting it and demanding that others prove you wrong, but that's shifting the burden of proof. — Michael

Well, because I think all value comes down to a balance of pain and pleasure.

But anyway this misses the point. I'm not arguing that only things that can suffer are worthy of consideration (although I do agree with this), I'm arguing that things that can suffer are worthy of consideration (among other possible things), and that animals can suffer. No matter what else you believe, I take it as a common value that if you can suffer, you are ethically relevant.

It's not my job to argue against your claim. It's your job to defend your claim. — Michael

I have, by appealing to our sense of equality. I have offered a reductionist approach to this issue: there is no good reason to not apply equality to animals.

Or to put it another way, you can't go from "all humans ought be treated equally" to "all things which can suffer ought be treated equally". And there's nothing arbitrary, irrational, or inconsistent about the former. — Michael

But I can, because I have argued that humans ought to be treated equally not because they are humans, but because they can suffer. I have pointed out how any other justification is inherently tribalism.

It is an inescapable truth that human rights (if such a concept has any meaning anyway) are the distillation of ethical arguments by humans, about humans, and for humans. There is no rational or logical argument by which the qualifier 'human' may be erased. They do not, by definition, apply to any species other than humans. For any other species to have these rights they must not simply resemble humans they must be humans or identical to humans. — Barry Etheridge

So you're appealing to the historic application of rights to argue that we ought not to apply these rights to other creatures.

"Human", in the case, can be replaced with "sentient". Indeed that's what our arrogance had us believe was the case: that humans were the only sentients on earth. But we know better now. Not giving animals rights is akin to not giving blacks rights because they're "sub-human".

This is high order sophistry! One is never required to prove a negative. It is the plaintiff that must prove his case, something which you have singularly failed to do in my opinion. The defendant is not required to prove anything. — Barry Etheridge

Quite the contrary. If there is any doubt in our mind that an organism is capable of suffering, then it is the skeptic that must provide evidence that they cannot feel suffering.

Thank God Chalmers cut his hair.

While I doubt I'm anywhere near as enthusiastic as you are, I very much enjoyed what I have read from him. I don't know what personal failings people mock him with - perhaps his ugliness or his lack of success in love - but I would regard bringing them into a discussion of his philosophy, unless there was a very clear link between them and the philosophy itself - as delete-worthy behavior. I am relatively new on here so I don't know all the available buttons yet, but I imagine there is a Report button you could use to report such posts to moderators. — andrewk

Certainly it would be an ad hominem to attack Schopenhauer's philosophy simply because he was a dick - but it really was the case that good ol' Arthur could be a real ass, even going as far as to rip ad hominems on Hegel and co. For example, Schopenhauer has this to say about Hegel:

"An unbiased reader, on opening one of their [Fichte’s, Schelling’s or Hegel’s] books and then asking himself whether this is the tone of a thinker wanting to instruct or that of a charlatan wanting to impress, cannot be five minutes in any doubt. … The tone of calm investigation, which had characterized all previous philosophy, is exchanged for that of unshakeable certainty, such as is peculiar to charlatanry of every kind and at all times. … From every page and every line, there speaks an endeavor to beguile and deceive the reader, first by producing an effect to dumbfound him, then by incomprehensible phrases and even sheer nonsense to stun and stupefy him, and again by audacity of assertion to puzzle him, in short, to throw dust in his eyes and mystify him as much as possible."

In other words, Schopenhauer was pissy cause everyone went to Hegel's seminars and nobody went to his own, even though he scheduled them at around the same time. Interestingly enough I think this criticism of Hegel's works can be applied to Schopenhauer's works at times, what with his worship of Kant and his assertions about human development (accurate or not). If tone was all that mattered to truth, then Schopenhauer would be right with his despised nemesis.

He was an elitest, a misogynist, a hypocrite, and he hated his mother (oh my!). None of this touches the validity of his philosophy - but it certainly doesn't paint him in a good light either. No wonder nobody wanted to be associated with him.

If animals, for instance, can't imagine their own extinction by death and so experience existential dread, then do we get to take that distinction into account, or not? — apokrisis

Well, sure, but we'll have to have solid evidence to show that they can't feel dread. In any case the murder of a non-human sentient would be similar to the murder of a human - you are taking away the chance to experience potential good in the future, or the freedom to do so. Ignoring this just makes them out to be machines with no purpose or goal, which just isn't true (or, at the least, should not be assumed)

You are taking an all or nothing approach to sentience. And where are the facts that would justify such an arbitrary stance on your part? — apokrisis

No, I am taking an all-or-nothing approach to ethics about sentience. I understand how minds exist in a gradience. This does little to the ethics of sentience, however.

What do you mean by it not making sense? — Michael

I mean that it is not consistent or rational.

Why limit rights to only those things which can suffer? And why do we need justification to not give them rights? — Michael

Well, because having a feeling mind carries with it certain liabilities, like the capacity to suffer. And I see no good reason to posit alternative capacities that makes something worthy of ethical consideration. They don't fulfill the open-ended question.

Why must our application of moral rights not be arbitrary? If I choose to give some people cake but not others then I'm being arbitrary. Am I obligated to give everyone else cake? Of course not. So that we choose to give some things rights but not others is arbitrary. Are we obligated to give everything else rights? Prima facie, no. A case needs to be made for other things deserving rights. And maybe non-human animals don't deserve the same rights as us, either because they can't suffer or because a capacity to suffer is not sufficient. — Michael

Again, if we apply the concept of equality universally, then we'll see how giving some people cake but not others is not advisable - is this not the basis of socialism?

I am coming from a perspective that affirms the concept of equality and the ethical importance of suffering. In order to argue against my claim, then, you will need to argue that equality shouldn't be applied universally (and thus not be equality in any meaningful sense), and that suffering is not the only ethically important notion - and from my view, the former would depend on arbitrary moral constraints, and the latter fails to fulfill the open-ended question.

Hot damn, that was a fantastic rant.

So? Clearly our moral considerations do not just take into account harm done, which is exactly why it is not sufficient to argue that animals ought be treated with equality simply because they can be harmed. — Michael

Yet we can refine our moral considerations and reject the notions of common sense morality that make no sense.

Administering rights at all requires justification (if it requires justification at all). And it might be that part of the justification for administering rights to humans is that they are human – i.e. humans have rights not because they can suffer but because they are human – and given that non-human animals are not human it is not arbitrary, contradictory, or irrational to administer rights to humans but not to non-human animals. — Michael

But why should we limit these rights to only humans? As I've shown there's really no justification to not give these rights to non-human animals.

I'm guessing the implicit premise is "we ought not kill things which can suffer". Clearly this isn't a premise that many agree with. — Michael

I disagree. A lot of people see animals as "lesser" creatures, of a "lesser" intellect and thus "logically" (?) "lesser" emotional capacity. They don't disagree with the notion that we ought not kill or harm things which can suffer. They just think that non-human animals are more akin to machines than feeling creatures.

It says something about the arbitrariness of common-sense morality when we look at how a hunter might own a pet dog to help sniff out the game, and has an emotional connection to this animal and cares about its welfare, while simultaneously failing to attribute these same rights to the elk it murders. It's cherry-picking bullshit, through and through.

I think I see your problem.... — apokrisis

Or rather, you should see this as your problem and look into why the constraints of common sense morality are largely arbitrary and defenseless.

It's only arbitrary if sentience is the only relevant factor. Given that we also give rights to the dead would suggest that this isn't the case. Rather it seems that humanity is a relevant factor. And given that non-human animals aren't human, it's not inconsistent to not give them the same rights as us. — Michael

In which case, I would urge us to reconsider our prior beliefs. Ancestor worship is irrational, the deceased are no more and cannot be harmed. Only the memory of them can be tarnished. So we aren't giving rights to the dead as much as we are preserving a legacy of this person.

I don't quite understand the implication of this. What exact rights are you proposing we give to non-human animals? The right to marriage and to run for President? What does treating animals with equality actually entail? — Michael

Right, so animals can't vote. They can't write dissertations defending their right to not be abused. They can't collectively come together and petition for change.

Equality in this sense does not register as equal "everything", just as equality between the sexes does not mean men can get abortions (it doesn't make sense). Rather, equality means equal treatment - if we treat humans with respect, then we ought to treat animals with respect. If we wouldn't murder a human, then we ought not murder an animal. If we wouldn't enslave a human (anymore at least...), then we ought not enslave an animal.

Administering rights to humans but not to non-human animals requires a justification, which will take the form of an ethical constraint. Yet, as I have argued, there are no constraints that aren't arbitrary, contradictory, or irrational.

For example, if as you say empathy is the starting point, and if it's immoral to experiment on things with which you empathise, then if you empathise with humans but not with non-human animals then it's immoral to experiment on humans but not immoral to experiment on non-human animals." — Michael

When I say empathy is a starting point, I mean that empathy gives us an initial motivation to help another person. We need no extra justification to help someone if we feel empathetic to them.

Yet this is surely not the only motivation for ethics. We can see how rights are applied to humans that are explicitly non-rational, like toddlers, or the mentally disabled. We can see how non-human animals are sentient. We can notice how our empathy is inherently tribe-like. And we can piece these together to come to the conclusion that our application of rights is completely arbitrary - thus motivating us to create a new schema, one that includes non-human animals in its domain.

So it would go like this:

1.) The ability to suffer is a prime candidate for ethical priority (plausible)
2.) Non-human animals can suffer (highly likely)
3.) Non-human animals therefore have ethical priority (from 1 and 2)

Like I said before, we need not care for non-human animals to realize that they deserve to be treated equally.

And I appealed to the other forms of -isms like sexism and racism to show how any arbitrary exclusion of non-human animals from the domain of ethics can equally be applied to the exclusion of females or blacks from the domain of politics or society in general. Thus this is an ad absurdum argument which is meant to show the inconsistency and arbitrary-ness of speciesism.

You've avoided any real response so I'll only repeat that pessimism is a cliche - the latest reincarnation of romanticism - and not an interesting philosophical analysis. It finds only what it already presumes. — apokrisis

:-}

In any rate, pessimism is an argument for pessimism, so it's not too surprising to myself that there exist people who are discontent with the system. The whole picture takes this phenomenon into account and doesn't pretend like it's some alien from a different universe.

Yes, of course.

Has anyone actually disagreed with this position in this thread? There's big piles of seemingly dissenting words but they all seem to be about metaethics. — zookeeper

For some reason these debates tend to devolve into metaethics. I'm still waiting for a decent argument against the OP that doesn't reek of subjugation and question-begging naturalistic fallacy bullshit.

I enjoyed True Detective (the first one at least) at the level of well-acted murder porn. But let's not pretend it had any philosophical merit. Or even artistic merit. It was a soap with glossy pretensions. — apokrisis

Oh sure, I agree, it was cliche. But it talked about relevant pessimistic themes that people ordinarily would not look into.

Humans are warming a whole planet. That's quite impressive historically speaking. — apokrisis

Ooooo, a whole planet.....in a universe of countless planets...such majesty...

Being proud of our entropic production is akin to a toddler being proud of a little LEGO tower he made in ten minutes.

It takes a gallon of petrol to produce a modern cheeseburger. A gallon of petrol represents the geologically-reduced remnants of 98 tons of ancient planktonic biomass dug out of a deep hole. — apokrisis

That is just an example of how utterly wasteful action tends to be. How the output never matches the input.

So to the degree that irony exists, it is evidence of the value we all place on a capacity to exert social control. Laughter is the clever way we now draw sharp boundaries so as to define a group identity - even when that laughter is aimed at the very fact that this is the kind of social trick we are always pulling, as in a very fine comedy like the Life of Brian. — apokrisis

It's also a way of relieving tension when things get a bit too difficult to handle. Just look at the Greek tragedies followed by comedies.

For something so accidental, life managed to happen rather easily. It appeared pretty much immediately once the biophysics allowed the semiotic phase transition involved. So from a biological perspective, it is about as "accidental" as steam condensing to water once the temperature has sufficiently cooled. — apokrisis

And from a metaphysical perspective, life and the universe in general is absurd and accidental. Given the timeline of the universe, life is but an irrelevant blip.

If we are going to talk about purpose, then it doesn't seem a problem to me that that is only meaningful in an ultimately thermodynamic sense. I'm all about the naturalism. — apokrisis

Unfortunately this equivocates natural telos with psychological affirmation of importance.

As for comfort, who ordered that? Thermodynamics justifies talk about balance or equilibrium. And you need two to tango. So if there is satisfaction, there must be unease. If there is comfort, there must be striving. It's yin and yang. Your monotonic notions have no value in nature. — apokrisis

Yup, basically scientific taoism. You would have liked Nietzsche, he put emphasis on the "healthy" life as a way of "calming us down" after the storm of disillusionment and nihilism. I don't think he succeeded but whatever.

So should I be a vegan because I believe animals have souls and in the truth of reincarnation? — apokrisis

Uhh, no.

Cannibalism was practiced until a few hundred years ago. And with a similar theistic logic. You ate the dead so as to make something of them also something of yourself. — apokrisis

Okay.

So let's stop pretending that there is a fixed morality at work here. Rationality is not enough as a guide to what is right. You also need an accurate empirical picture from which to draw those rational conclusions. — apokrisis

Right, but again I'm not a moral realist, so I'm not under any illusions that there is a "fixed" morality here. Only realizations about our state and the relations we have with others.

And this is what I've been saying you lack. You just make up the facts to fit the particular cultural prejudices which are symptomatic of your cultural miillieu. You have picked up various ideas that are fashionable for the moment and sticking to them like glue. — apokrisis

What facts do I make up? Animal suffering? That is fact!

You claim that pessimism is a reaction to modernism, yet pessimism was around long before modern society emerged. The Wisdom of Silenus would have been the True Detective of ancient Greece. Modern society is just the crumbling structure of civilization, foreseen by Nietzsche and co. Man's history is an ironic fight against nihilism.

That is what life produces in copious amounts: irony, the comedic aspect of tragedy. You can talk of entropy production but life adds such insignificant amount of entropy to the overall state of the universe that this makes it rather unimportant. Irony can only exist when there are conscious beings, and in fact it is produced quite liberally. Where there is sentient life, there is irony.

Life is an accident, it's a thing that just "happened". We shouldn't expect it to be purpose-filled and comfortable.

To talk about the virtues of veganism or antinatalism is just pointless displacement activity. It is to accept the disconnect between the social and individual sphere which modern civilisation is using to do its thing. It is to exist in a world that is actually eating ever greater quantities of meat and breeding with exponential zest, and simply want to do "the opposite" without actually dealing with the core mythology that makes that society what it is. — apokrisis

No. It is an understanding of what constitutes organic life, and a rejection of this as much as we can while continuing to live. It is the realization that life is a family of suffering, and the subsequent denial of cannibalism. Veganism was practiced thousands of years ago - every problem that modern society has in which pessimism and veganism responds to, was in existence millennia ago. Modern society just tends to have a way of amplifying them.

The fact is that entropification is natural. — apokrisis

But not moral.

I think you misread what I was trying to say. I'm saying that you tend to use the appeal to majority as a way to substantiate your point- because it must be "true" in its historical development of the group to be considered appealing. However, even if this is the case, I doubt many want to hear that they are solely existing to keep institutions alive simply because that is what the institution wants. Whether its true or not, the lack of autonomy that implies is as unappealing to most individuals as the fact that by preventing the creation of another person, they are preventing the harm that would be experienced by that person. Both may be true (and so I am even granting you the point for argument's sake), but both are unpopular. Thus, as I said, your point could make sense but it does so in a way that does not pass your own test which again, is an appeal to the majority. — schopenhauer1

In any case, apo's appeal to the majority doesn't even make sense because it fails to account for other majority views that contradict his own.

A cursory glance at culture reveals a deep sense of cynicism about life. You have Shakespeare alluding to this in many of his plays. You have Monty Python's Life of Brian mocking organized religion and pointing out the flaws of life while the actors are being crucified, as well as shows like Rick and Morty or True Detective that are heavily based off existentialist literature. You have everyday comedians making money off of social criticism. You have organized religion all over the place - various ways of venerating the "perfect hero". Everyone of us has gone through, or is currently going through, the developmental years between childhood and full-fledged adulthood - and everyone of us can attest to the teenage disillusionment with the world and the subsequent need to repress this and "move on" to "more important things", and the aforementioned cultural items are popular and memorable ways of releasing this tension. None of these things would have existed had they not acted as some kind of relatable catharsis for the audience. The reason they are popular is because they speak a bit of refreshing truth in a sea of madness.

Another cursory glance at history reveals a deep fear of death, from the massive Pyramids at Giza to the ancient Chinese Terracotta Army, to the rise of fascism in 20th century Europe and the decay of the western world into decadence and materialism. It also shows how many great civilizations rose and fell because of a single relationship or a megalomaniac leader. The historical artifacts can be beautiful - but the motivation behind these artifacts is usually anything but impressive.

So when we look at the Big Picture™, civilization looks almost like a 90s-00s strategy game - build your empire, gather resources, advance to the next age, build unique structures, harness the power of nature, and lead your little society to greatness! The civilization functions like a well-oiled machine. Everyone is doing their part, everyone follows "natural law", everyone gets married at age 25, has three children, a dog, and a white picket fence. The future is bright - soon we'll be level 50 platinum! - and nothing can stand in our way, and certainly not those pesky pessimists and antinatalists...

But this is just not reality, or at least not the Full Picture. Individual lives tend to look almost like an MMO - you start out interested with the surroundings, gameplay, and story. But pretty soon you start to get bored. It's just the same thing over and over again, grinding mobs, grinding crafting, grinding character traits...and you've devoted so much time to this character that you don't want to leave and lose it all. Sometimes there's updates that keep you entertained for a few hours; then it's back to the grind. The infinite grind, with no real end goal, just some arbitrary achievement and a stupid little costume or stronghold decoration. Wooooo! Sometimes you distinguish yourself from the rest of the grinding herd by owning a guild, or selling enhancements, or pwning everyone else in multiplayer. Yet this status is only a status when compared to other players. What use is a platinum membership if there's no-one there to worship you? Then there's server crashes and accidental character deletions - oops! All that work, down the drain...

At the metaphysical level, uniqueness is rare - thanks to universals, we have the same goddamn shit everywhere we go. There's only so much you can build with a limited set of LEGOs.

Civilization may prosper but only at the expense of those supporting it.

Animals have been taking care of themselves for billions of years before humans came around and not one ever charged sexism, racism, or specieism against another. — Harry Hindu

Because they weren't capable of doing so. But now humans have entered the stage, and I'm arguing that it's time we put down the mirror of narcissism and start acting more productive and responsible.

In any case it is clear that non-human animals have not been taking care of one another. Look at predation, social rejection from disease/disability, and r-selection.

I agree completely.

Jeez, if the Enlightenment and its Romantic reaction are that unfamiliar to you, where could I even start.... — apokrisis

Oh, they're "familiar", just not in the way you're using them.

It's like a jigsaw that you have to put together through the various criticisms. — schopenhauer1

Yes, which is why I asked him to make a thread on this that would resolve any uncertainty once and for all. It may not be his intention but it certainly feels like he dodges all our attacks by presenting new clouded information that we had no access to before. He's speaking Chinese and getting mad that everyone else doesn't speak Chinese, nor accepts that Chinese is the one true language of the world.

Semiotics is somehow trumpeted as a continuation of the Enlightenment (with the assumption that the Enlightenment is a purposeful movement rather than a collection of varying ideas). Anyways, its at least trumpeted as part of the empirical, and thus Scientific Image (though semiotics itself does not seem empirical as much as a speculative interpretation of the scientific findings.. but I that is another issue). — schopenhauer1

It's also trumpeted that ancient philosophers, with no scientific background nor methodology, somehow are part of this historic pragmatic movement and are vindicated by modern science. If science is the best guide to truth here, then you can't be appealing to philosophers who weren't scientific!

So he claims entropy, being the basis of universal teleology (and in the background of the semiotic process I guess) is a big deal, and that at the self-conscious social level that we humans experience, we can actually slow down or speed up entropy, at least as it pertains to our little organizational part of the universe. — schopenhauer1

Indeed, we have practically no influence on the overall entropic heat death.

nyways, Romanticism puts the individual experience on a pedestal (which is a base characterization and not a comprehensive understanding of most of what these Romantic proponents are saying).. and thus are limited in their narrow, merely phenomenological interpretations of personalized experience.. He also claims that the Romantics do not take into account group dynamics and how the group shapes the human. — schopenhauer1

Additionally some of these so-called "romantic" philosophers weren't even interested in pursuing what apo's metaphysics supposedly does. It's a category error to expect them to align with physics when this just wasn't their intention - see Heidegger and his "tool analysis" - consistent with physics, but not attempting to answer what physics tries to.

It is just assumed that because it is the group, it somehow is self-evident that it should continue and the individual should know his place in continuing it. — schopenhauer1

Indeed.

Point being I think you should make a thread (I meant thread not post) on this because talk of enlightenment vs romanticism, absolutism vs relativity, etc is not exactly obvious or well-accepted in the general community.

Part of the reason everyone has so much difficulty discussing stuff with you is because you present a historical narrative of philosophy as fact, and then go on to rip on one half of this binary debate while promoting the other half, when nobody really understands the justification you have for seeing history in this way, nor why the romantic notions are just automatic dead-ends. In fact, as far as I can tell, there's no good reason to see history in this binary fashion anyway! You just assert that this is the way it is and glaze over the important details that would otherwise potentially help us understand what the hell you are even talking about. It may make sense to you, but for everyone else who doesn't understand it looks like a biased fiction.

Explain to us all what Romanticism entails, what Enlightened thinking entails, so that we can stop beating around the bush every time you use these terms. I don't understand what the essential characteristics of Romantic or Enlightened thinking even is to grasp when something is Romantic or Enlightened according to your binary view. And every time I think I get something you're saying you end up denying it. Just put it all out in the open once and for all.

In any case, I disagree with a lot of what you said in the last reply, so if you make a specific thread on this I'll post there so we don't keep derailing all these threads unnecessarily. Keep the threads on topic, not hijacked by some meta-level question. I would enjoy actually reading a thread started by you instead of just posts where you try debunking everyone else.

You mean exasperation. — apokrisis

Then it's mutual.

No, I'm describing the cop out. But you are never going to address this confused dualism of yours no matter how often I point back to its familiar cultural basis.

It's been amusing as always. — apokrisis

Because I see no problem with it. Maybe you should actually make a post on this instead of having a assert it every single time.

In regards to you on Freud, more ad hominems. His work is still being studied, with plenty of professional work being generated based on his theories. — Cavacava

Freud's theories are more often rejected than accepted, but he legacy spawned a quite respectable psychodynamic field that is systematically misinterpreted and compared to Freudian psychoanalysis.

He did lie many times, but so do a lot of people. I'm not a big fan of Freud in general because of this. Everything he says I take with a grain of salt.

The theories of Jung, Rank, and Becker, on the other hand... 8-)

I think it is a form of brain washing. The symptoms are treated but not their causes. — Cavacava

And this is where psychodynamic theory excels more than most other psychological perspectives.

There's no point replying to nonsense like this. It is just a sign of desperation on your part. — apokrisis

How psychoanalytic of you... :-}

Calling people desperate, it seems to me, is a sign of desperation.

And the choice becomes rational to the degree it is both possible and has some agreed goal. — apokrisis

Right. The goal is what we're arguing out.

Is the goal to make DC blissfully happy? Is the goal to remove the very possibility of psychic suffering? You might very well say so. I don't feel particularly moved to agree. — apokrisis

And I wonder why this is so.

You keep talking about this "we". I realise you mean the many like yourself brought up on a steady cultural diet of vague romantic notions. — apokrisis

You keep using this word "romantic" as a cop-out.

It is rational to give the benefit of the doubt when faced with uncertainty. But there is far less uncertainty about things like grades of sentience than you pretend. — apokrisis

With stakes as high as they are, uncertainty is practically unacceptable.

So what we have here is only your weakly informed "intuitions" (ie: prejudices) against readily available scientific knowledge. — apokrisis

As if your scientism isn't a prejudice itself.

You said we have freedom. So why are you opposed to going against the entropic goal of the universe? Essentially you're advocating a scientific taoism - just be one with nature and it'll all be cool.

Why doesn't it surprise me that you not only abstract the object but even its properties? Your approach is Platonic and dualistic in classic romantic unbounded fashion. — apokrisis

How can you abstract an object without abstracting its properties?

No, I am not abstracting anything apart from recognizing suffering as a distinct mental phenomenon of negative value.

Empirical studies can only give you non-valued information. You can then use that to figure out how to be more likely to achieve your subjective aims. But the empirical stuff isn't going to tell you what you should do without you already having subjective goals. — Terrapin Station

Bingo.

But I would then step back from the phenomenological justification to inquire about the natural basis. Why would humans have evolved (both biologically and culturally) to feel this way? And that is where we can see that it makes sense thermodynamically. Life exists as negentropy, or little pockets of organisation, so as to assist the Cosmos in its general entropic flow. — apokrisis

ou just want to start with "how it feels to me". I am interested in the hypothesis that "how it feels" is always going to be naturally rational. And the hypothesis is holding up pretty good. — apokrisis

Yet a scientific ethics does not necessarily satisfy what we perceive to be moral.

Tell a person whom you're helping that you're helping them because they can go on and make more entropy, and not because they're a person who is valuable because they can suffer, and they might just shake you off and tell you to buzz off.

We don't "assist" the universe in its entropic flow. WE ARE the universe, at least part of it. A better term to be used is "forced" by the universe. i.e. instrumentalized as me and schop1 and others have repetitively said. The universe has an agenda - thermodyanamic equilibrium - and it uses us as means to this end.

From the universe's dormant perspective, the ends justify the means. Yet surely these ends do not match with what we want - and surely what we want is more important than what any anthropomorphized universe "wants".

There is no ethics in the void.

As I say, many might be puzzled by climate denial, rampant consumerism, neo-liberalism, gated communities, McDonalds. These seem unnatural and unethical behaviours - according to PC romantic notions that are widespread.

Yet a shift in the entropic basis of the species now can make those behaviours "ethical" and natural. If we endorse the desires of fossil fuels, the things we might object to are in fact morally right.

And if we still feel they are wrong (which I tend to) then we have to dig into just why. And that is where the alternative of a slow burn sustainable entropification can be considered. We can now argue objectively why this is a better moral paradigm. — apokrisis

No, no, no. This is where you intuitively find this behavior wrong, and then justify them as wrong by appealing to science in an ad hoc manner.

These behaviors are not wrong because of some entropic principle. They're wrong because we find them wrong, and then apparently some of us try to ignore this and shoehorn science in.

So my approach to ethical systems presumes nothing except that the Cosmos is rational. Nature has an over-arching self-organising logic. And that then presents us with the choice of either living within that logic or acting counter to it. And in fact, we can't act counter to it in any fundamental sense. But that still gives us a range of choices about the level of "harmony" we opt for. — apokrisis

Query: what if the universe was malignant to us? What if, no matter what we did, we could never manage to escape its malevolent grasp? Would it still be "good"?

Hardly.

Science has the advantage it is an open-ended process of learning. So we can get as close to the truth of things as we feel it matters. The answers one might have given 300 years ago would be much less informed than the ones we can give today. — apokrisis

You claim that goodness is not some abstract principle yet are claiming there is also a truth to ethical claims that resides in the external world. Pick one.

As I have argued, I would always seek to begin with the fewest presumptions about what might be the case. — apokrisis

And yet it is intuitive that we should give non-human animals the benefit of the doubt despite this being a presumption. It's not necessarily rational, it is ethical.

Nature lies there waiting to be discovered. Morality grows out of nature and so it would be questionable to hold to any ethical systems that go against nature. That would be - by definition - irrational and unsustainable (from a personal phenomenological point of view). — apokrisis

Because of the inherent harm to welfare it is to go against the cosmos' agenda...?

Once again, welfare is the identifier of the moral. If the universe went against our wishes, we would not find it moral. A tornado is not moral. It is destructive, albeit amoral. So why call entropy moral?

But that cuts both ways. We can't just cherry-pick the findings that support our preconceptions while not listening to the others that question them. — apokrisis

And we can't just ignore the possibility that we might be wrong in our prescription, or that we'll never know something. Don't play dice when we're ignorant.

Your "out there" is my immanent nature. And your phenomenological "in here" is my hearing you assert transcendent dualism. You treat the mind as if it could exist without a body, without a world. — apokrisis

No. Yet a body without a mind (specifically a rational and capable self) has no sense of morality.

However the evidence that only humans have articulate speech, and thus only humans can evolve culturally encoded habits of "self-conscious introspective awareness", is just as scientific. — apokrisis

Yet is the theory that articulate speech corresponds to ethical importance scientific? Nope.

You are trying to talk about "sentience" as some generic property - a mind stuff abstracted from the world. This, as I say, is a Romantic hang-over - a dualistic belief in the mental as causally something apart from the world. — apokrisis

No, I'm talking about the ability to suffer, however that manifests. Sentience is just a placeholder.

What the ^&$# is humanitarian about letting animals starve to death? You're making no sense at all! — Barry Etheridge

Way to misrepresent my position. Animal starvation is a prime example of what we ought to NOT allow. The only way to cut down on this, and other sorts of suffering, is by making compromises. Animals don't need to starve to lower the population anyway.

Now I'm laughing even harder now. Your solution to all the other species committing "specieism" is to commit genocide against them. Do you even think about what you type before you type it? — Harry Hindu

No, it's not genocide. It's humanitarianism. Animals cannot take care or advocate for themselves in the way humans can. They live more on instinct than rationality - yet they can suffer all the same. All non-agents are free of responsibility - ethically innocent.

Good job I don't say that then. — apokrisis

You literally just said that our morality should be based on scientific discoveries. Doesn't get any more naturalistic than this.

But why? Why should we entropify? Why should we breed and sustain a manageable population and energy output?

The answer to this is that we should do so, not because that is what the universe does, but because doing so presumably will make us happy, comfortable, etc.

Thus the actual point of ethical importance is agential well-being. If you want to argue that the best way of doing this is by following the march of entropy, then fine. But that's just scientifically-informed utilitarianism.

But again, how we focus on welfare is more of a practical and applied ethical issue than a purely normative ethical issue. For you need to have normative ethics before you can even start applying them. Without defining your normative ethical priorities, you end up prescribing action without reason.

Getting back to what I did say, why should I treat any notion of the good as something transcendentally abstracted from existence? — apokrisis

Well, in my opinion (which I've said before), you shouldn't. Goodness is such a queer property that it would be quite difficult to actually find goodness "out there". Hence why I'm an anti-realist: our mental states define and encompass all that is moral. None of this changes anything substantial.

After looking in the mirror? References please. — apokrisis

https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/mirror_test.htm

http://www.animalcognition.org/2015/04/15/list-of-animals-that-have-passed-the-mirror-test/

Ants, admittedly, are probably more of a fluke than anything. But the fact that they scratched off the paint means that, potentially, they are able to recognize what is "normal" in their colonies, and recognize that there are "others" - the recognition of the "other" requires a separation between the other and the self.

Denying this possibility is speciesism, or the disregard of others' rights just because you doubt they have sentience (since it's neither proven nor disproven that they have sentience). It is an unethical leap of faith.

So it IS justified that they suffer for our benefit? We should shut them in horrible little cages, give them a disease and also drugs, just to see what happens? Or even just give them enough of the drug to discover for a start what is the lethal dose?

This seems confusingly at odds with what you have been saying. — apokrisis

Benefit, in this case, is defined as the minimization of harm - harm that is more significant than the harm being applied to the lab rats. The doing/allowing harm distinction does not apply very well in consequentialist ethics.

It is hardly inconsistent that I would weigh up the trade-offs of curing cancer in the same way as anything else. But it is inconsistent that you seem to think inflicting suffering in the name of cancer research is OK for some reason that does not apply to the other cases you cite. — apokrisis

Because we don't need a burger to survive. We don't need to go to the circus to have fun. All of these are examples of exploitation without reason.

If you had the choice between synthetic meat and natural meat - why would you choose the natural meat? The difference between them is that an animal suffered/was killed for your enjoyment.

My position is that nature constitutes existence. Science is our best inquiry into the character of that existence. Morality should be based on a proper understand of nature as morality is about our actions in the world. — apokrisis

You got the last part right, but you got the first part wrong partly. Science can help inform our decisions. But to say that what science discovers is what is moral is the naturalistic fallacy.

For every naturalistic claim you present, we can always ask "but is it really moral?" because it does not satisfy the open-ended question.

OMG. Here we go again! You must be punking me. Congrats. — apokrisis

??? It's known that ants have sometimes reacted in such a way as to warrant the consideration of them having at least a rudimentary sense of self, when they scrape off the paint on their heads. The same applies to birds, dolphins, etc.

Given that neuroscience is in such a baby state right now, we really ought to not be surprised if it actually turns out that different animals can have different ways of experiencing the world, or can attain self-hood in different manners.

At this point you're just ignoring evidence. There is a much higher need for rigorous evidence to show that we ought to not treat something ethically, while if there's any doubt in our mind that they might be sentient, we have an ethical imperative to treat them equally, or at least with basic respect.

But my point is that doing so is a complicated ethical business. And right at the beginning I highlighted at least two key issues - human cognition and social proximity - that you left out in your simplistic OP. — apokrisis

Because these don't matter to morality. They may matter to the pragmatic application of morality but this changes nothing about the theoretical aspects of morality.

In fact I care a lot about animal suffering and ecology generally. The difference is that I don't have to invent the facts that would support a simple-minded absolutism. I've studied the science and that informs my ethical position. — apokrisis

It's not absolutism. If lab rats are being used to cure cancer, and this is only way to do it, then I'll support the effort. After all, I am a consequentialist. Conseqentialists tend to be rule-breakers and non-conformists, although the ends justify the means.

It's when we start talking about hunting animals for fun, eating the flesh of a dead animal for enjoyment, and ignoring the plight of predation and the infirm of the animal world, that I start to have problems with your and others' worldview. It's inconsistent.

Lab rats can suffer, but they aren't to be seen as ethically important, despite you yourself saying you don't have the stomach to deal with them in the lab?

It's not clear how science should be the ultimate guide to morality. Given that we can see that lab rats behave as though they suffer, that pigeons behave as though they can learn, and that ants behave as though they can recognize themselves in the mirror, shouldn't we give them the benefit of the doubt? Shouldn't we believe them to be sentient and thus ethically important before dismissing their lives? Don't you think an sentient shouldn't have to pass some test in order to qualify for ethical treatment?

Not having the stomach to dissect animals isn't the issue here: the issue is dissecting the animals in the first place when there's no good reason to.

You however argue in terms of absolutes. And when the evidence is not there, you invent it - like these forlorn suicidal penguins deciding to die by trekking inlands rather than just stepping off the beach into the waiting jaws of the local orca pack. — apokrisis

That's like saying a suicidal person should've just shot themselves instead of CO2 poisoning themselves. Animals can feel fear too.

Anthropomorphic nonsense. And dangerous for the reasons I've outlined. — apokrisis

No, it's not anthropomorphic nonsense. These penguins are acting in what we perceive to be distinctly human. We should view them as capable of sentience (until proven wrong), just as we don't throw out SETI transmissions as just pulsating stars, despite the likelihood of them being just pulsating stars. In the case of animals, there is no defined and systematic definition of sentience, and the scale is tipped towards sentience anyway.

Furthermore I fail to see how this is dangerous. Identifying and empathizing with another animal? How horrible! I should obviously be focused on my species...cause my species is da best. :-}

Science certainly promotes popular notions about reality being a mechanism. But scientists - especially if they biologists - know that the reality is in fact organic. So bodies are not simply machines, but complexly/semiotically machines, and thus not really machines at all. — apokrisis

To quote Voltaire, then, if animals cannot feel or have no sentience - then why are their bodies structured and their behaviors so as if they do feel and have sentience?

I'm seeking to limit theorising to what is rational. Your OP claimed to want rational thinking. I have shown how your views are actually informed by the irrationalism, the dualism, the transcendence, the absolutism, that are all the hallmarks of Romanticism. — apokrisis

No, you claim that my views are irrational. They are not. They are informed by science, informed by ethical theory.

Put yourself in the shoes of a lab mouse. Do you really think it would be alright for the scientists to experiment on you just because they think you're not actually "there"?

What could possibly be so important as to warrant the ignoring of the suffering of other beings?

If you spend all your time worrying about the pain lions inflict on zebra, you are never going to contribute in useful fashion to the real moral consequences of collective human behaviour for both lions and zebra. — apokrisis

I'm not spending all my time worrying about it - I'm doing something about it by contributing to Effective Altruism programs (the most significant and effective means to help others currently under the Sun). What you see as complaining is me attempting to convince others.

Do you think there is a problem or not in regards to animal suffering? How am I wasting time by pointing out what I see to be problems? Essentially your position comes down to "I don't quite agree with what OP is saying, therefore he is wasting is time." Nonsense.

You lost me there. How can the justification not be basic? — apokrisis

Because I'm not a deontologist. Intentions don't matter to me. As long as the best possible state of affairs acquires, justification doesn't matter. The best possible state of affairs is going to be the best because of right reasons. though. It's the same reasoning behind a political party - lots of different viewpoints, but somehow they all come together to support a single candidate. Each person believes the candidate to be the best, despite having differing reasons, and these differing reasons don't concern them so long as the candidate is elected.

Species are made of individual organisms that have a family resemblance to each other. They are fluid and ever-changing, yes, but we can organize them so for pragmatic reasons.

The question then becomes; Is it necessary for individuals to be capable of conceiving of themselves as 'person' for them to qualify as a person? — John

Personhood brings so much to the table. To be a person would seem to mean you should have bodily autonomy, the ability to participate in politics, pursue your dreams, etc.

But personhood is not necessary for an organism to suffer. So the ability to conceive of oneself as a person is not identical to ethical importance.