Chickens like to roam, but most egg-laying hens are confined, frustrated, in small battery cages. Suppose we could alter the gene that makes chickens want to run free. The chickens, now content to be confined, would suffer less frustration, and egg production would improve. Or suppose we found a way to dumb down cows to eliminate the fear they experience on their way to the slaughter chute. Or to engineer pigs without hooves, snouts, and tails. Is there anything troubling about altering animals in these ways?
Interesting, but no.
My objection was based on imagining a chicken that is hurt physically, but doesn’t care, because the morphine supressed the pain. It was not in the comment, but I imagined that animals would be treated the same way as they are now (perhaps even worse, because if they don’t react painfully, there will be even less sympathy for them), they just wouldn’t subjectively suffer because of the morphine. That I find abhorent.
If the chicken or other animals are just modified to be content with being in prison, and they are not harmed in any other way, I would be okay with that. Actually, I would consider that ethically better than them living in nature.
The article seems to me about not playing god, but I don’t worship the blind idiot god. If it is okay for evolution to give tails to some animals and not give tails to other animals, it is not different if people add or remove the tails genetically (assuming that kind of change does not harm the animal; for example a pig without the tail could have problem to fight off flies).
I also wouldn’t have a problem with parents choosing a gender, height, or eye color for their children; I would be only concerned with crazy parents making choices that harm their child (for example the parents would choose some disability for their child, and the politically correct people would protect this choice to avoid offending the existing disabled people). Which would lead to gray area of traits where there is no general agreement whether they are harmful or not. But the true objection is against choosing harmful changes, not against changes per se.
It sounds like you understand ‘content’ to mean ‘pain-free and suffering-free’, whereas I imagine it as something more like ‘suffering-free’. I have masochist friends who are content (or far more than content) to experience pain, because of the positive valence they ascribe to (or associate with) that pain. How does your empathy for chickens that feel pain but don’t care respond to human masochism?
The article seems to me about not playing god, but I don’t worship the blind idiot god.
I think Sandel’s argument is that we might have a basic, not-culturally-constructed anti-tampering moral intuition that doesn’t depend on there being a God whose authority we are impinging on (any more than the thankfulness we feel when something spectacularly good happens in our life presupposes that there is a metaphysical being out there who is the Object Of Our Thanks). Which I don’t find psychologically implausible, though if it’s a harmful intuition and can’t be brought into reflective equilibrium with our other moral intuitions then it might deserve suppression.
I have masochist friends who are content (or far more than content) to experience pain, because of the positive valence they ascribe to (or associate with) that pain.
It’s my impression that the typical masochist associates positive valence with pain only in certain circumstances. The person who enjoys being flogged by a lover may still dislike stubbing a toe every bit as much as the non-masochist.
Yes. We can focus just on the instances of pain that are seen as desirable (or a matter of indifference). Or we can imagine a masochist who enjoys all pain. The analogy only depends on there being some possible instance of this; we then have to ask, if we permit this in the case of humans, why we would find it abhorrent in the case of chickens.
I have masochist friends who are content (or far more than content) to experience pain, because of the positive valence they ascribe to (or associate with) that pain. How does your empathy for chickens that feel pain but don’t care respond to human masochism?
I don’t have enough data about how masochism feels from inside, so I don’t feel qualified to answer this. (I know about cases where people cause themselves pain to forget some other pain, physical or mental. I don’t know if a typical masochist is like this, or completely different, and in the latter case, how specifically it feels from inside.)
I’m not exactly a masochist, but I suspect my perception of physical pain is a little wonky sometimes.
Example: I took a massage class in college once. The other student I usually worked with told me I tended to get really impressive knots in my shoulders, and I could tell it hurt a lot when they were worked on. I also remember not really minding most of the time, and getting bored when I didn’t have many knots because the pain kept things interesting. (But uh, I do respond normally to pain in most circumstances, so if anyone reading this meets me in real life, please don’t test it.)
The way this feels from the inside is pain is just another sensation, like heat, cold or pressure. I suspect it would be similar for a non-suffering chicken, if done right. (Though I have no idea about some of the other changes that would be required, like feeling content in a small cage.) Maybe imagine if you put clothes on the chickens, and the chickens got used to the feeling of having fabric on them (pressure sensation) and didn’t mind it. I don’t actually understand your rejection to morphine chickens, though, so I’m not sure whether you’d consider this an acceptable solution.
Interesting, but no.
My objection was based on imagining a chicken that is hurt physically, but doesn’t care, because the morphine supressed the pain. It was not in the comment, but I imagined that animals would be treated the same way as they are now (perhaps even worse, because if they don’t react painfully, there will be even less sympathy for them), they just wouldn’t subjectively suffer because of the morphine. That I find abhorent.
If the chicken or other animals are just modified to be content with being in prison, and they are not harmed in any other way, I would be okay with that. Actually, I would consider that ethically better than them living in nature.
The article seems to me about not playing god, but I don’t worship the blind idiot god. If it is okay for evolution to give tails to some animals and not give tails to other animals, it is not different if people add or remove the tails genetically (assuming that kind of change does not harm the animal; for example a pig without the tail could have problem to fight off flies).
I also wouldn’t have a problem with parents choosing a gender, height, or eye color for their children; I would be only concerned with crazy parents making choices that harm their child (for example the parents would choose some disability for their child, and the politically correct people would protect this choice to avoid offending the existing disabled people). Which would lead to gray area of traits where there is no general agreement whether they are harmful or not. But the true objection is against choosing harmful changes, not against changes per se.
It sounds like you understand ‘content’ to mean ‘pain-free and suffering-free’, whereas I imagine it as something more like ‘suffering-free’. I have masochist friends who are content (or far more than content) to experience pain, because of the positive valence they ascribe to (or associate with) that pain. How does your empathy for chickens that feel pain but don’t care respond to human masochism?
I think Sandel’s argument is that we might have a basic, not-culturally-constructed anti-tampering moral intuition that doesn’t depend on there being a God whose authority we are impinging on (any more than the thankfulness we feel when something spectacularly good happens in our life presupposes that there is a metaphysical being out there who is the Object Of Our Thanks). Which I don’t find psychologically implausible, though if it’s a harmful intuition and can’t be brought into reflective equilibrium with our other moral intuitions then it might deserve suppression.
It’s my impression that the typical masochist associates positive valence with pain only in certain circumstances. The person who enjoys being flogged by a lover may still dislike stubbing a toe every bit as much as the non-masochist.
Yes. We can focus just on the instances of pain that are seen as desirable (or a matter of indifference). Or we can imagine a masochist who enjoys all pain. The analogy only depends on there being some possible instance of this; we then have to ask, if we permit this in the case of humans, why we would find it abhorrent in the case of chickens.
I don’t have enough data about how masochism feels from inside, so I don’t feel qualified to answer this. (I know about cases where people cause themselves pain to forget some other pain, physical or mental. I don’t know if a typical masochist is like this, or completely different, and in the latter case, how specifically it feels from inside.)
I’m not exactly a masochist, but I suspect my perception of physical pain is a little wonky sometimes.
Example: I took a massage class in college once. The other student I usually worked with told me I tended to get really impressive knots in my shoulders, and I could tell it hurt a lot when they were worked on. I also remember not really minding most of the time, and getting bored when I didn’t have many knots because the pain kept things interesting. (But uh, I do respond normally to pain in most circumstances, so if anyone reading this meets me in real life, please don’t test it.)
The way this feels from the inside is pain is just another sensation, like heat, cold or pressure. I suspect it would be similar for a non-suffering chicken, if done right. (Though I have no idea about some of the other changes that would be required, like feeling content in a small cage.) Maybe imagine if you put clothes on the chickens, and the chickens got used to the feeling of having fabric on them (pressure sensation) and didn’t mind it. I don’t actually understand your rejection to morphine chickens, though, so I’m not sure whether you’d consider this an acceptable solution.