If the following is very wrong or morally abhorrent, please correct me rather than downvote. I’m trying to work it out for myself and what I came up with seems intuitively incorrect. It is also based on the idea that the mentally handicapped have chimp-like intelligence, which I don’t know to be true but is implied by your comment.
So basically, what makes us homo sapiens is our ancestry, but what makes us people is our intelligence. An alien with a brain that somehow worked exactly equivalently to ours would be our equal in every important way, but an alien with a chimp-like intelligence (one that for our purposes would essentially BE a chimp) wouldn’t. It would deserve sympathy, and it would be wrong to hurt it for no reason, but I wouldn’t value an alien-chimp’s life as highly as a human’s or an alien-human. So it seems to me that it follows that the mentally handicapped (if they indeed have chimp-like intelligences) don’t in fact deserve more moral consideration than alien-chimps or earth-chimps (ignoring their families which presumably have normal intelligences and would very much not approve of their use in experiments). If there are no safer ways to get the same results as we do from chimp studies, which I believe to be the case, then it the best option we have for now is to continue studying them. Studying the mentally handicapped would be as bad-but-acceptable but I wouldn’t advocate for it since it would be so unlikely to ever occur. Testing on the mentally handicapped seems very wrong but only for “speciesist” reasons as far as I can tell.
It is also based on the idea that the mentally handicapped have chimp-like intelligence, which I don’t know to be true but is implied by your comment.
I specified “people mentally handicapped to the point that they are equivalent to chimps.” There’s a lot of ways one can be mentally handicapped.
For the record, I’m a vegetarian. I measure morality based off median suffering/life satisfaction. Intelligence is only valuable insofar as it can improve those metrics, and certain kinds of intelligence probably result in a wider and deeper source of life satisfaction.
I don’t think chimps contribute dramatically to universal flourishing, but I’m not sure that the average human does either. I think that it’s best to have a rule “don’t harm sentient creatures”, but to occasionally turn a blind eye to certain actions that benefit us in the long term.
i.e. the guy who invented the smallpox vaccine did something horribly unethical, which we should not allow on a regular basis, especially not today when we have more options for testing. Occasionally, doing something like that is necessary for the greater good, but most people who think their actions are sufficiently “greater good” to break the rules are wrong, so we need to discourage it in general.
This is a nice rule in principle, but in practice becomes tough. First, how do we define sentience? Second, what constitutes don’t harm? Is there an action/in-action distinction here? If is it morally unacceptable to let humans in the developing world starve do we have a similar moral obligation to chimps? If not, why not?
. the guy who invented the smallpox vaccine did something horribly unethical, which we should not allow on a regular basis, especially not today when we have more options for testing
I’m not sure what you are talking about here. Can you expand?
This is a nice rule in principle, but in practice becomes tough.
Oh in practice it’s definitely tough. Optimal morality is tough. I judge myself and other individuals on the efforts they’ve made to improve from the status quo, not on how far they fall short of what they might hypothetically be able to accomplish with infinite computing power.
In my ideal world, suffering doesn’t happen, period, except to the degree that some amount of suffering is necessary bring about certain kinds of happiness. (i.e. everyone, animals included, gets exactly as much as they need, nothing more.
I don’t know to what extent that’s actually possible without accidentally wreaking havoc on the ecosystem and causing all kinds of problems, and in the meantime it’s easier to get public support for helping other humans anyway.
Smallpox
I’m working from old memories from middle school, and referencing what is probably a bit of a “folk version” of the real thing, but my recollection was that Edward Jenner tested his smallpox vaccine on some kid, then gave the kid a full dose of smallpox without his consent.
SOMEBODY had to try that at some point, and I think Jenner had reasonable evidence, but I don’t think that sort of thing would fly today.
SOMEBODY had to try that at some point, and I think Jenner had reasonable evidence, but I don’t think that sort of thing would fly today.
I agree it wouldn’t pass muster today, but that may just be because we aren’t facing a disease as deadly as smallpox.
There’s a good moral case for experimenting on somebody without their consent IF:
1) Doing the experiment has a high probability of getting a cure into widespread use quickly
2) Getting consent for an equivalent experiment would be difficult or time-consuming
3) The disease is prevalent and serious enough that a delay to find a consenting subject is a bigger harm than the involuntary experiment.
If you think our moral concern should follow intelligence then it follows that chimps and the mentally handicapped are not morally equal to humans of normal intelligence. Depending how much differing intelligence results in differing moral consideration this could justify chimp and mentally handicapped testing.
But while some level of intelligence does seem to be necessary for an animal to suffer in a way we find morally compelling it does not follow that abusing the slightly less intelligent is at all justified. It is not at all obvious that the mentally handicapped or chimpanzees suffer less than humans of normal intelligence. Nor is it obvious mentally handicapped humans and chimpanzees don’t differ in this regard. But intelligence is almost certainly not the same thing as moral value. There are possibly entities that are very intelligent but for which we would have little moral regard.
Right, that makes sense. I guess if something can suffer and notice it’s suffering and wish it weren’t suffering then it should be as morally valuable as a person...maybe.
But while some level of intelligence does seem to be necessary for an animal to suffer in a way we find morally compelling it does not follow that abusing the slightly less intelligent is at all justified.
I think dogs are “capable of suffering in a way I find morally compelling” though, and I would sacrifice probably a lot of dogs to save myself or another human. Is that just me being heartless?
There are possibly entities that are very intelligent but for which we would have little moral regard.
I mentioned that the hypothetical aliens would have brains that work just like ours, not that they would be just as intelligent.
Your method should be to figure out what it is about humans that makes them morally valuable to you and then see if those traits are found in the same degree elsewhere.
If the following is very wrong or morally abhorrent, please correct me rather than downvote. I’m trying to work it out for myself and what I came up with seems intuitively incorrect. It is also based on the idea that the mentally handicapped have chimp-like intelligence, which I don’t know to be true but is implied by your comment.
So basically, what makes us homo sapiens is our ancestry, but what makes us people is our intelligence. An alien with a brain that somehow worked exactly equivalently to ours would be our equal in every important way, but an alien with a chimp-like intelligence (one that for our purposes would essentially BE a chimp) wouldn’t. It would deserve sympathy, and it would be wrong to hurt it for no reason, but I wouldn’t value an alien-chimp’s life as highly as a human’s or an alien-human. So it seems to me that it follows that the mentally handicapped (if they indeed have chimp-like intelligences) don’t in fact deserve more moral consideration than alien-chimps or earth-chimps (ignoring their families which presumably have normal intelligences and would very much not approve of their use in experiments). If there are no safer ways to get the same results as we do from chimp studies, which I believe to be the case, then it the best option we have for now is to continue studying them. Studying the mentally handicapped would be as bad-but-acceptable but I wouldn’t advocate for it since it would be so unlikely to ever occur. Testing on the mentally handicapped seems very wrong but only for “speciesist” reasons as far as I can tell.
I specified “people mentally handicapped to the point that they are equivalent to chimps.” There’s a lot of ways one can be mentally handicapped.
For the record, I’m a vegetarian. I measure morality based off median suffering/life satisfaction. Intelligence is only valuable insofar as it can improve those metrics, and certain kinds of intelligence probably result in a wider and deeper source of life satisfaction.
I don’t think chimps contribute dramatically to universal flourishing, but I’m not sure that the average human does either. I think that it’s best to have a rule “don’t harm sentient creatures”, but to occasionally turn a blind eye to certain actions that benefit us in the long term.
i.e. the guy who invented the smallpox vaccine did something horribly unethical, which we should not allow on a regular basis, especially not today when we have more options for testing. Occasionally, doing something like that is necessary for the greater good, but most people who think their actions are sufficiently “greater good” to break the rules are wrong, so we need to discourage it in general.
This is a nice rule in principle, but in practice becomes tough. First, how do we define sentience? Second, what constitutes don’t harm? Is there an action/in-action distinction here? If is it morally unacceptable to let humans in the developing world starve do we have a similar moral obligation to chimps? If not, why not?
I’m not sure what you are talking about here. Can you expand?
Oh in practice it’s definitely tough. Optimal morality is tough. I judge myself and other individuals on the efforts they’ve made to improve from the status quo, not on how far they fall short of what they might hypothetically be able to accomplish with infinite computing power.
In my ideal world, suffering doesn’t happen, period, except to the degree that some amount of suffering is necessary bring about certain kinds of happiness. (i.e. everyone, animals included, gets exactly as much as they need, nothing more.
I don’t know to what extent that’s actually possible without accidentally wreaking havoc on the ecosystem and causing all kinds of problems, and in the meantime it’s easier to get public support for helping other humans anyway.
I’m working from old memories from middle school, and referencing what is probably a bit of a “folk version” of the real thing, but my recollection was that Edward Jenner tested his smallpox vaccine on some kid, then gave the kid a full dose of smallpox without his consent.
SOMEBODY had to try that at some point, and I think Jenner had reasonable evidence, but I don’t think that sort of thing would fly today.
I agree it wouldn’t pass muster today, but that may just be because we aren’t facing a disease as deadly as smallpox.
There’s a good moral case for experimenting on somebody without their consent IF: 1) Doing the experiment has a high probability of getting a cure into widespread use quickly 2) Getting consent for an equivalent experiment would be difficult or time-consuming 3) The disease is prevalent and serious enough that a delay to find a consenting subject is a bigger harm than the involuntary experiment.
Agreed.
Unless they have it coming! I consider it unethical to not harm sentient creatures in certain circumstances.
If you think our moral concern should follow intelligence then it follows that chimps and the mentally handicapped are not morally equal to humans of normal intelligence. Depending how much differing intelligence results in differing moral consideration this could justify chimp and mentally handicapped testing.
But while some level of intelligence does seem to be necessary for an animal to suffer in a way we find morally compelling it does not follow that abusing the slightly less intelligent is at all justified. It is not at all obvious that the mentally handicapped or chimpanzees suffer less than humans of normal intelligence. Nor is it obvious mentally handicapped humans and chimpanzees don’t differ in this regard. But intelligence is almost certainly not the same thing as moral value. There are possibly entities that are very intelligent but for which we would have little moral regard.
Right, that makes sense. I guess if something can suffer and notice it’s suffering and wish it weren’t suffering then it should be as morally valuable as a person...maybe.
I think dogs are “capable of suffering in a way I find morally compelling” though, and I would sacrifice probably a lot of dogs to save myself or another human. Is that just me being heartless?
I mentioned that the hypothetical aliens would have brains that work just like ours, not that they would be just as intelligent.
Your method should be to figure out what it is about humans that makes them morally valuable to you and then see if those traits are found in the same degree elsewhere.
I agree.