Bryan Caplan's Blog, page 91
October 23, 2016
The Huemer Graph, by Bryan Caplan
Bryan Caplan posted this further comment on animal welfare arguments on his blog.
I didn't have time to address this earlier (partly because I was
traveling for the talk that, coincidentally, Bryan Caplan invited me to
give at GMU, on an unrelated topic). I have a few comments now.
My main reactions:
I. The argument from insects has too many controversial assumptions to
be useful. We should instead look more directly at Bryan's theoretical
account of how factory farming could be acceptable.
II. That theory is ad hoc and lacks intrinsic intuitive or theoretical plausibility.
III. There are much more natural theories, which don't support factory farming.
I.
To elaborate on (I), it looks like (after the explanations in his latest post), Bryan is assuming:
a. Insects feel pain that is qualitatively like the suffering that, e.g., cows on factory farms feel.
b. If (a) is true, it is still permissible to kill bugs
indiscriminately, e.g., we don't even have good reason to reduce our
driving by 10%.
(a) and (b) are too controversial to be good
starting points to try to figure out other controversial animal ethics
issues. I and (I think) most others reject (a); I also think (b) is very
non-obvious (especially to animal welfare advocates). Finally, note
that most animal welfare advocates claim that factory farming is wrong
because of the great suffering of animals on factory farms (not just
because of the killing of the animals), which is mostly due to the
conditions in which they are raised. Bugs aren't raised in such
conditions, and the amount of pain a bug would endure upon being hit by a
car (if it has any pain at all) might be less than the pain it would
normally endure from a natural death. So I think Bryan would also have
to use assumption (c):
c. If factory farming is wrong, it's wrong
because it's wrong to painfully kill sentient beings, not, e.g.,
because it's wrong to raise them in conditions of almost constant
suffering, nor because it's wrong to create beings with net negative
utility, etc.
So to figure out anything about factory farming
using Bryan's approach, we'd first have to settle disputes about (a),
(b), and (c), none of which are obvious, and none of which is really
likely to be settled. So this is not promising.
II.
What
would be more promising? Let's just look at Bryan's account of the
badness of pain and suffering. (Note: I include all forms of suffering
as bad, not merely sensory pain.) I think his view must be something
like what the graph below depicts.
As your intelligence increases, the moral badness of your pain increases. But it's a non-linear function. In particular:
i. The graph starts out almost horizontal. But somewhere between the
intelligence of a typical cow and that of a typical human, the graph
takes a sharp upturn, soaring up about a million times higher than where
it was for the cow IQ. This is required in order to say that the pain
of billions of farm animals is unimportant, and yet also claim that
similar pain for (a much smaller number of) humans is very important.
ii. But then the graph very quickly turns almost horizontal again. This
is required in order to make it so that the interests of a very smart
human, such as Albert Einstein, don't wind up being vastly more
important than those of the rest of us. Also, so that even smarter
aliens can't inflict great pain on us for the sake of minor amusements
for themselves.
Sure, this is a logically possible (not
contradictory) view. But it is very odd and (to me) hard to believe. It
isn't obvious to begin with why IQ makes a difference to the badness of
pain. But assuming it does, features (i) and (ii) above are very odd. Is
there any explanation of either of these things? Can someone even think
of a possible explanation? If you just think about this theory on its
own (without considering, for example, how it impacts your own interests
or what it implies about your own behavior), would anyone have thought
this was how it worked? Would anyone find this intuitively obvious? As a
famous ethical intuiter, I must say that this doesn't strike me as
intuitive at all.
Now, that graph might be a fair account of most people's implicit attitudes. But what is the best explanation for that:
1) That we have directly intuited the brute, unexplained moral facts that the above graph depicts, or
2) That we are biased?
I think we can know that explanation (1) is not the case. We can know
that because we can just think about the major claims in this theory,
and see if they're self-evident. They aren't.
To me, explanation
(2) thrusts itself forward. How convenient that this drastic upturn in
moral significance occurs after the IQ level of all the animals we like
the taste of, but before the IQ level of any of us. Good thing the
inexplicable upturn doesn't occur between bug-IQ and cow-IQ (or even
earlier). Good thing it goes up by a factor of a million before reaching
human IQ, and not just a factor of a hundred or a thousand, because
otherwise we'd have to modify our behavior anyway.
And how
convenient again that the moral significance suddenly levels off again.
Good thing it doesn't just keep going up, because then smart people or
even smarter aliens would be able to discount our suffering in the same
way that we discount the suffering of all the creatures whose suffering
we profit from.
I have no explanation for why features (i) and
(ii) would hold, but I can easily explain why a human would want to
claim that they do.
Imagine a person living in the slavery era,
who claims that the moral significance of a person's well-being is
inversely related to their skin pigmentation (this is a brute moral fact
that you just have to see intuitively), and that the graph of moral
significance as a function of skin pigmentation takes a sudden, drastic
drop just after the pigmentation level of a suntanned European but
before that of a typical mulatto. This is a logically consistent theory.
It also has the same theoretical oddness of Bryan's theory ("Why would
it work like that?") and a similar air of rationalizing bias or
self-interest ("How convenient that the inexplicable downturn occurs
after the level of the people you like and before the level of the
people you profit from enslaving.")
III.
A more natural
view would be, e.g., that the graph of "pain badness" versus IQ would
just be a line. Or maybe a simple concave or convex curve. But then we
wouldn't be able to just carry on doing what is most convenient and
enjoyable for us.
I mentioned, also, that the moral significance of
IQ was not obvious to me. But here is a much more plausible theory that
is in the same neighborhood. Degree of cognitive sophistication matters
to the badness of pain, because:
1. There are degrees of consciousness (or self-awareness).
2. The more conscious a pain is, the worse it is. E.g., if you can
divert your attention from a pain that you're having, it becomes less
bad. If there could be a completely unconscious pain, it wouldn't be bad
at all.
3. The creatures we think of as less intelligent are also,
in general, less conscious. That is, all their mental states have a low
level of consciousness. (Perhaps bugs are completely non-conscious.)
I think this theory is much more believable and less ad hoc than
Bryan's theory. Point 2 strikes me as independently intuitive (unlike
the brute declaration that IQ matters to badness of pain). Points 1 and 3
strike me as reasonable, and while I wouldn't say they are obviously
correct, I also don't think there is anything odd or puzzling about
them. This theory does not look like it was just designed to give us the
moral results that are convenient for us.
Of course, the "cost" is
that this theory does not in fact give us the moral results that are
most convenient for us. You can reasonably hold that the pain of a
typical cow is less bad than the pain of a typical person, because maybe
cow pains are less conscious than typical human pains. (Btw, the pain
of an infant would also be less intrinsically bad than that of an adult.
However, infants are also easier to hurt; also, excessive infant pain
might cause lasting psychological damage, etc. So take that into account
before slapping your baby.) But it just isn't plausible that the
difference in level of consciousness is so great that the human pain is a
million times worse than the (otherwise similar) cow pain.
October 20, 2016
I Want to Know How the Transporter Works, by Bryan Caplan
If you think it makes no difference, this video explains it better than I ever could.
(2 COMMENTS)
October 19, 2016
Huemer's "Answer to Searle on the Mind-Body Problem", by Bryan Caplan
P.S. If philosophy of mind strikes you as very far from economics, note that mental states - most notably "willingness to pay" and "willingness to accept" - are built into the very foundation of our discipline!
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Against Robotic Panic, by Bryan Caplan
"Robots will eventually dominate the world and eliminate human abilities to earn wages."Video will be available eventually, but you can enjoy my slides (in pdf format) now.
The main surprise for me: To my eyes, Robin initially (and uncharacteristically) ran away from his thesis by embracing a very weak sense of the word "dominate." Here are Merriam-Webster's definitions:
Robin appealed to something like definition #2. When challenged, he bit two bullets. First, he said that tractors already "dominate" in agriculture. Second, he denied that Mark Zuckerberg "dominates" Facebook. This is especially odd because, at least in his Age of Em , robots dominate by all three definitions. Indeed, as he eventually admitted in the debate, Robin thinks there's a 30% chance the ems exterminate mankind within a year of their creation, in line with my argument here. Now that's domination in its most horrifying form.to have control of or power over (someone or something)
to be the most important part of (something)
to be much more powerful or successful than others in a game, competition, etc.
Despite my stark disagreement with Robin, it was a delightful debate. One of my main debate maxims is, "Talk to your opponent like he's your best friend." This is especially easy when my opponent is my best friend! Right or wrong, Robin's a genius and a joy.
P.S. Don't miss the Chronicle of Higher Education's cover story on Robin!
(4 COMMENTS)
October 16, 2016
The Pride of Homeschooling, by Bryan Caplan
Sister: They're children! They need to go to school. They need to learn about the world.
Captain: [shouting] Justin. Jackson? Would you please come down here for a second?
Jackson: What?
Captain: How old are you now, Jackson?
Jackson: Thirteen.
Captain: Can you tell me what the Bill of Rights is?
Jackson: Um, what something costs, I guess.
Captain: That's a good guess. Justin, you're in high school?
Justin: Yeah.
Captain: Do you like your school?
Justin: It's whatever.
Captain: Do you know what the Bill of Rights is?
Justin: It's a government thing, right? Like, rights that people have in America and stuff.
Captain: Yep. [shouting] Hey, Zaja?
Zaja: [Captain's 2nd-youngest kid] Yes?
Captain: Would you please come down here a moment, sweetie? I wanted to ask you a quick question. Zaja's just turned eight, by the way. The Bill of Rights.
Zaja: Amendment one: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; Or abridging the freedom of...
Captain: Stop. Regurgitating memorized amendments isn't what I'm asking for. Just tell me something about it in your own words.
Zaja: Without the Bill of Rights we'd be more like China. Here, at least, we don't have warrantless searches. We have free speech. Citizens are protected from cruel and unusual punishments...
Sister: That's enough.
As I've said before, I don't hate education. Rather, I love it too much to accept the Orwellian substitutes we take for granted. And if you think Captain Fantastic's mocking a straw man, I say straw men rule the world.
HT: Zac Gochenour
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October 14, 2016
Hanson-Caplan Robot Debate this Monday in NYC, by Bryan Caplan
Details here.
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Huemer Seminar at GMU - MONDAY!, by Bryan Caplan
Details here.
P.S. If you'd like to meet Mike this weekend, please email me.
(0 COMMENTS)
Further Reply to Huemer on the Ethical Treatment of Animals, by Bryan Caplan
The conversation continues. Huemer's in blockquotes, I'm not.
My response to Bryan Caplan, on the ethical treatment of animals:
As far as I understand it, Bryan's argument is something like this:
1. Killing bugs isn't wrong. Sub-argument:
1a. Even animal rights advocates don't think killing bugs is wrong.
1b. If even the animal rights advocates don't think killing bugs is wrong, then it probably isn't wrong.
2. If factory farming is wrong, then killing bugs is wrong.
3. So factory farming isn't wrong.
He spent most of his time talking about (1).
True, because I'm trying to extract what I see as two major concessions:
First, causing immense pain for minor gain is sometimes morally acceptable.
Second, one key factor that makes such pain morally acceptable is low intelligence of the creature that suffers and high intelligence of the suffering's beneficiary.
But (2) is the controversial claim and indeed seems clearly false.
I agree that (2) does not logically follow from (1). However, once you make the two concessions I seek, the burden of proof shifts back to the critic of conventional human treatment of animals. Happily, you try to meet that burden below.
Why would one think (2)? I guess the assumption is that there are no
morally significant differences between factory farming and killing
bugs, or at least no factors that would render factory farming *worse*
than killing bugs.
Too strong. If you accept that killing multitudes of bugs for trivial gain is morally acceptable by a big margin, then factory farming could be vastly worse than killing multitudes of bugs, but remain morally acceptable. So all of the following premises need to be toned down. But for the sake of argument, I'll critique them as written:
But how could that be defended? It seems that one
would have to claim:2a. Factory farming doesn't cause more pain and suffering than killing bugs.
2b. Farm animals are not more intelligent than bugs.
2c. There are not stronger reasons for killing bugs than there are for
factory farming. (For instance, it would not be a greater sacrifice to
stop killing bugs than it would be to stop factory farming.)If
any of 2a-2c are false, then it would be plausible that factory farming
might be wrong even if killing bugs is not. Bryan might endorse 2a (he
appears to hold that bugs feel pain just like the pain of other
animals), though I myself find 2a highly dubious.
On 2a, the number of bug deaths is key. By one estimate, American cars alone kill over 30 trillion bugs a year. So it seems very likely that aggregate bug suffering vastly exceeds suffering of domesticated animals.
But I'm pretty
sure Bryan doesn't believe 2b or 2c (both of which are obviously false).
I grant that 2b is false.
Bryan was even explaining some reasons why 2c is false - we would have
to abandon civilization (and perhaps even commit suicide) in order to
stop killing bugs. So it seems that by Bryan's own lights, it is easy to
see why factory farming is much worse than killing bugs. And so I just
don't see how the main argument could be convincing.
Sorry, you're not thinking enough like an economist. Yes, we'd have to end civilization (and mankind) to utterly stop killing bugs. But we could clearly vastly reduce bug suffering with marginal lifestyle adjustments. And many of these marginal adjustments would be less burdensome than adjustments vegetarians and vegans already advocate! For example, I'd much rather drive 10% less than stop eating animal products.
Maybe I misunderstood the main argument. Maybe the argument was something like this: There are two theories:
T1 A being's suffering (of a given intensity & duration) is equally bad regardless of the being's intelligence.
T2 The badness of suffering is proportional to the intelligence of the
sufferer. (Or something like that. Maybe the theory is just that it is
an increasing function of the being's intelligence.)
I embrace the parenthetical. The badness is some monotonically increasing function of the intelligence of the sufferer, but it's not proportional to intelligence.
Perhaps the argument is roughly:
4. Either T1 or T2 is true.
5. T1 is false. (Why? Because if T1 were true, that would mean that killing bugs is wrong.)
6. If T2 is true, then factory farming is permissible.
7. So factory farming is permissible.
(I have labeled these #4-7, to avoid confusion with the previously
mentioned propositions #1-3.) Now it seems to me that 6 is certainly
false. If the badness of suffering is proportional to one's
intelligence, factory farming is still definitely wrong.
Right. But if the badness increases much faster than proportionally, then the conventional view still follows. And that's precisely my view.
Here's the problem. The total quantity of animal suffering caused byDespite your incredulity, I think 1/1000 is excessive. If cows provided no human enjoyment, I would in good conscience sacrifice a million cows to save one creature of normal human intelligence. If this seems crazy, I say you assign similarly microscopic value to the welfare of bugs. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
the meat industry is so unbelievably, insanely, astronomically huge that
even on the above assumptions, the meat industry is still the worst
thing in the world by far - it's still going to be orders of magnitude
worse than any other problem that people talk about.
[...]
What if farm animal
pain is only one thousandth as bad as human pain? Then the situation is
only as bad as having *50 million* people being tortured in
concentration camps. Again, this would still be far and away the worst
problem in the world. And that is assuming that you take what seems to
me an incredibly, implausibly extreme view about the relative importance
of humans compared to animals.
To close:
1. Your anti-factory farming conclusion follows readily from the premise that you shouldn't inflict immense pain on a creature for a minor benefit.
2. But this premise implies that everyone, even you, is treating bugs very wrongfully, which is absurd. (Unless bugs feel zero or vastly reduced pain, of course).
3. You can avoid this conclusion by switching to the view that bug suffering is only microscopically bad.
4. But then why are you so puzzled by the view that non-bug animal suffering is (a) more important than bug suffering, but (b) still only microscopically bad?
(8 COMMENTS)
October 12, 2016
Huemer Replies on the Ethical Treatment of Animals, by Bryan Caplan
Guest post by Mike Huemer begins... now.
My response to Bryan Caplan, on the ethical treatment of animals:
As far as I understand it, Bryan's argument is something like this:
1. Killing bugs isn't wrong. Sub-argument:
1a. Even animal rights advocates don't think killing bugs is wrong.
1b. If even the animal rights advocates don't think killing bugs is wrong, then it probably isn't wrong.
2. If factory farming is wrong, then killing bugs is wrong.
3. So factory farming isn't wrong.
He spent most of his time talking about (1). But (2) is the controversial claim and indeed seems clearly false.
Why would one think (2)? I guess the assumption is that there are no
morally significant differences between factory farming and killing
bugs, or at least no factors that would render factory farming *worse*
than killing bugs. But how could that be defended? It seems that one
would have to claim:
2a. Factory farming doesn't cause more pain and suffering than killing bugs.
2b. Farm animals are not more intelligent than bugs.
2c. There are not stronger reasons for killing bugs than there are for
factory farming. (For instance, it would not be a greater sacrifice to
stop killing bugs than it would be to stop factory farming.)
If
any of 2a-2c are false, then it would be plausible that factory farming
might be wrong even if killing bugs is not. Bryan might endorse 2a (he
appears to hold that bugs feel pain just like the pain of other
animals), though I myself find 2a highly dubious.
But I'm pretty
sure Bryan doesn't believe 2b or 2c (both of which are obviously false).
Bryan was even explaining some reasons why 2c is false - we would have
to abandon civilization (and perhaps even commit suicide) in order to
stop killing bugs. So it seems that by Bryan's own lights, it is easy to
see why factory farming is much worse than killing bugs. And so I just
don't see how the main argument could be convincing.
Maybe I misunderstood the main argument. Maybe the argument was something like this: There are two theories:
T1 A being's suffering (of a given intensity & duration) is equally bad regardless of the being's intelligence.
T2 The badness of suffering is proportional to the intelligence of the
sufferer. (Or something like that. Maybe the theory is just that it is
an increasing function of the being's intelligence.)
Perhaps the argument is roughly:
4. Either T1 or T2 is true.
5. T1 is false. (Why? Because if T1 were true, that would mean that killing bugs is wrong.)
6. If T2 is true, then factory farming is permissible.
7. So factory farming is permissible.
(I have labeled these #4-7, to avoid confusion with the previously
mentioned propositions #1-3.) Now it seems to me that 6 is certainly
false. If the badness of suffering is proportional to one's
intelligence, factory farming is still definitely wrong.
Here is a
story. There are two people, call them "Jeb" and "Don". Jeb is a person
of normal intelligence. Don is a severely retarded person. You are
thinking of torturing one of them for fun. Assume that there will be no
further consequences (e.g., torturing Jeb won't prevent him from doing
some great thing, torturing Don won't cause him to commit a great evil,
etc.) Now consider:
Question 1: Is it morally much worse to torture Jeb than Don?
I myself find this unclear. I don't think it's at all obvious that
it's worse to torture Jeb. Nevertheless, let's suppose that we agree
with Bryan: it's much better to torture Don, because Don is dumb. That
leads to . . .
Question 2: How much worse is it?
How much
worse could we seriously claim that it is to torture the average person,
compared to the retarded Donald? Twice as bad? Maybe, I guess. Ten
times as bad? That feels to me like a stretch. I don't even know why
it's worse to torture the smart person at all, and I definitely don't
see that it's ten times worse. But whatever, let's say we grant that
it's ten times worse, just because Jeb is so much smarter than Don.
Here's the problem. The total quantity of animal suffering caused by
the meat industry is so unbelievably, insanely, astronomically huge that
even on the above assumptions, the meat industry is still the worst
thing in the world by far - it's still going to be orders of magnitude
worse than any other problem that people talk about.
The number
of land animals slaughtered for food worldwide, per year, is estimated
between 40 and 60 billion. (If you include sea creatures, closer to 150
billion.) Almost all of them suffered enormously on factory farms, in
conditions that we would certainly call "torture" if they were imposed
on any person. For simplicity, let's take the number to be 50 billion.
That is seven times larger than the entire human population of the
world.
Obviously, if 50 billion people were subjected to torture
on an ongoing basis, that would be the worst problem in the world. But
now, we're assuming that suffering by farm animals is only one tenth as
bad as human suffering, because farm animals are so much less
intelligent than humans. So the problem is really "only" as bad as the
situation if 5 billion people were being tortured on a regular basis.
Still the worst problem in the world, by far.
Okay, what if you
hold a really extreme view: the suffering of a cow is only 1/100 as bad
as similar suffering for a human, because humans are so smart. In that
case, the factory farming situation is "only" as bad as having 500
million people subjected to constant torture.
What if farm animal
pain is only one thousandth as bad as human pain? Then the situation is
only as bad as having *50 million* people being tortured in
concentration camps. Again, this would still be far and away the worst
problem in the world. And that is assuming that you take what seems to
me an incredibly, implausibly extreme view about the relative importance
of humans compared to animals.
What is the worst thing that ever
happened in human history? Many people would say it is the Holocaust,
during which 11 million people were subjected to severe suffering before
being killed, in concentration camps. Animals, however, are regularly
subjected to similar (or even more severe) suffering before being killed
in factory farms. Suppose that the suffering and death of an average
human in an average concentration camp is one thousand times worse than
the suffering and death of an average animal in an average farm. In that
case, a single year of the meat industry is about five times as bad as
the Holocaust. It's as if we were repeating the Holocaust five times
every year. Again, that's on extremely optimistic assumptions. It might
actually be as bad as 500 Holocausts per year.
It's hard to see
how this amount of badness might be justified by the extra pleasure that
we get three times a day by tasting the flesh of the creatures who are
being tortured. I don't know exactly how much suffering it is
permissible to cause to other creatures in return for some pleasure for
myself, but it seems to me that there has to be *some limit* - and it
seems to me that this case must surely go over the limit if anything
does.
Now I haven't addressed whether it is permissible to buy
meat from humane (e.g., free range) farms. My view is that that is
mostly a red herring, because almost all meat comes from factory farms,
which are unbelievably awful. We should first try to get people to stop
doing the clearly, unbelievably horrible thing that almost everyone is
doing almost every day, before we start worrying about some much more
debatable and much rarer practice.
October 10, 2016
Reply to Huemer on Ethical Treatment of Animals (including Bugs), by Bryan Caplan
II never claimed it was the best way. But I do claim that the Argument from Hypocrisy and the Argument from Conscience provide us with additional moral insight, which occasionally suffices to break otherwise intractable moral impasses.
don't think the best way of determining whether x is true is by seeing
whether x-advocates are hypocritical or morally flawed.
(Btw, on this"Probably right"? No. But Jefferson's hypocrisy at least slightly undermined the credibility of the case against slavery. And the more morally thoughtful and morally scrupulous he seemed overall, the more his continued practice of slavery would undermine its credibility.
criterion, the slavery-defenders who knew Thomas Jefferson would presumably have declared that slavery is probably right, since even Jefferson held slaves.)
Rather,Normally, yes.
the best way to find out whether x is true is to just look at the
arguments for and against x, especially if those arguments are simple
and easy to find.
The arguments on ethicalI agree this claim has great superficial appeal. But I think that like utilitarianism, Kantianism, and other grand moral theories, it's subject to devastating counter-examples. Like: "What if you have to painfully kill one bug to build a house rather live in a tent?"
vegetarianism are simple and easily found. It seems wrong to cause
extreme amounts of pain and suffering for the sake of minor benefits to
oneself.
If you just look at some of the things that go on on factoryI agree I would be horrified. However, I would also be horrified to watch life-saving surgery on humans. On reflection, both seem morally fine to me despite my squeamishness.
farms, you're going to be horrified. If you look, I think you are going
to find it extremely difficult to say, "Oh yeah, that seems fine."
IfIt depends on the degree of stupidity. I'm not saying it's okay for Einstein to murder his secretary. But if a creature with human appearance literally had the mind of a bug, then it would be morally appropriate to treat him like a bug. Almost all humans classified as mentally retarded are far smarter than that, of course.
you think it is not wrong to inflict severe suffering as long as the
victim of the suffering is stupid, then you'd have to say that it is
permissible to torture retarded people for fun. Etc. (I don't have
anything to add to the standard arguments.)
A stronger objection is that human babies are much stupider than adult humans, but everyone knows it's wrong to inflict pain on babies. The obvious amendment here, though, is that creatures that will normally develop human-level intelligence are also of great moral importance, though probably not as much as creatures that already possess such intelligence.*
You also have to explain whyIf the victim is as stupid as a bug? At minimum, it seems obvious that the pain of such a creature is extremely morally unimportant.
pain isn't bad when the victim is stupid.
Now, whatIt's supposed to be evidence that people who deny the obviousness of my preceding claim - that the pain of extremely stupid creatures is morally unimportant - actually find it obvious, too.
is the proposed response to the argument? The fact that people kill
many insects is supposed to be evidence that . . . pain isn't really
bad?
That it's not really wrong to cause lots of bad things for the sakeSuppose a seemingly morally thoughtful and morally scrupulous person such as yourself painfully kills many bugs for minor benefits. But he stills says it's "obvious" that you shouldn't painfully kill any creature for minor benefits. My Argument from Conscience says, "Since you're morally thoughtful and morally scrupulous, you wouldn't do that if you really thought it was wrong." This seems like a good argument to me - good enough to break what otherwise looks like a moral impasse.
of minor benefits to oneself? But how could the number of insects that
people kill be evidence for any of these things?
TheNo. My argument is only meant to provide some additional insight, not prove that anything's "impossible."
blog post even seems to suggest that it's impossible that it's wrong
to cause pain to stupid creatures.
That is, that we know that pain isMore precisely, that the badness of the pain depends on the intelligence of the creature experiencing it (as well as the intelligence it will normally attain).
only bad if you're smart.
But really, could that plausibly be said to beIt seems obvious once you ponder basic counter-examples to your general principle. Do you really think painfully killing bugs to build a house is morally wrong?
something that we know? How would that be? Is there some proof of that
proposition?
Maybe the suggestion is that it'sTo repeat, I insist it ultimately is highly plausible to you, since you painfully kill a lot of bugs - at least indirectly by living in a house, driving a car, etc. And you're a wonderful person, so you wouldn't do such things if you really believed your general principle.
self-evident that pain is only bad if you're smart. But then, rather
than trying to draw inferences about this by looking at the behavior of
PETA-members, etc., it seems like we could just introspect and see
whether that's self-evident. When I do, I see that it's not self-evident
(indeed, it isn't even plausible). I don't have to make any inferences
or look at anyone else's behavior, since I can just look and see.
You could protest, of course, that bugs don't feel pain. That seems unlikely to me, for reasons well-explained by the pro-bug rights people I discussed. But suppose we grant that bugs don't feel pain. Your position still implies that if bugs did feel pain, it would be morally impermissible to build a house. After all, you could just live in a tent and leave the bugs in peace. Is that really plausible to you?
* While this doesn't imply that abortion is murder, it strongly
suggests that killing a fetus is far worse than killing a bug.
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