I mean, we might still assign species attributes like ‘suffering’ that have some computational meaning. See weird questions like this old post.
Our preferences about the inner lives of unseen bristlemouths is, to my eyes, also an aesthetic-type preference about how we want the world to be. The interesting question is if this preference is ‘continuous’ (in some vaguely defined sense) with a) our preferences about the suffering of acquaintances and b) our preferences about the “pain” of an ecosystem.
I mean, we might still assign species attributes like ‘suffering’ that have some computational meaning. See weird questions like this old post.
Our preferences about the inner lives of unseen bristlemouths is, to my eyes, also an aesthetic-type preference about how we want the world to be. The interesting question is if this preference is ‘continuous’ (in some vaguely defined sense) with a) our preferences about the suffering of acquaintances and b) our preferences about the “pain” of an ecosystem.