HARGREAVES: Mister Dunbar of the World Ecology Bureau, sir.
(Hargreaves leaves.)
CHASE: I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure. And what is your Bureau doing about bonsai?
DUNBAR: Bonsai, Mister Chase?
CHASE: Mutilation and torture, Mister Dunbar. The hideous, grotesque Japanese practice of miniaturising shrubs and trees. What is your Bureau doing about that?
DUNBAR: Well, I
CHASE: No answer. You are concerned about the fate of the blue whale, and the natterjack toad, but the loveliest, most defenceless part of creation, the great kingdom of plant life receives no protection at all.
Should we, too, regard bonsai as hideous, grotesque mutilation and torture?
If we use a trivial definition of “preference,” as I do in this post, then I believe that yes, we would have to say that bonsai is something akin to torture.
But I also think this unqualified designation of preference as the criterium for moral obligation is very much incomplete. Having some moral obligation toward plants seems intuitive to me (even if the obligation is low?), but having moral obligation toward e.g. a steam engine seems very weird! I have not fully formulated a better qualification yet, but I suspect it will be something like requiring that an entity has a world model, allowing for internalized, negentropic goals/preferences (i.e, expressed preference is insufficient for moral obligation). At some point this just becomes a round-about way of saying “agency” is required for moral obligation, but perhaps there’s a pared down version of agency which is easier to verify.
Would the alien be of like mind with Harrison Chase in “The Seeds of Doom”?
Should we, too, regard bonsai as hideous, grotesque mutilation and torture?
If we use a trivial definition of “preference,” as I do in this post, then I believe that yes, we would have to say that bonsai is something akin to torture.
But I also think this unqualified designation of preference as the criterium for moral obligation is very much incomplete. Having some moral obligation toward plants seems intuitive to me (even if the obligation is low?), but having moral obligation toward e.g. a steam engine seems very weird! I have not fully formulated a better qualification yet, but I suspect it will be something like requiring that an entity has a world model, allowing for internalized, negentropic goals/preferences (i.e, expressed preference is insufficient for moral obligation). At some point this just becomes a round-about way of saying “agency” is required for moral obligation, but perhaps there’s a pared down version of agency which is easier to verify.