Thanks, that’s helpful. Given what you’ve said, I doubt you and EY would disagree on much. EY says in his metaethics sequence that moral facts and categories like ‘moral worth’ or ‘autonomy’ are derived properties. In other words, they don’t refer to anything fundamental about the world, but supervene on some complex set of fundamental facts. Given that that’s his view, I think he was just using ‘sentience’ as a shorthand for something like what you’ve written: note that many of the considerations you describe are importantly related to a capacity for complex experiences.
note that many of the considerations you describe are importantly related to a capacity for complex experiences.
Except I’ve interacted with bugs in ways that satisfied that criterion (and that did parse out as morally-good), so clearly the devil’s in the details. If Eliezer suspects young children may reliably not qualify, and I suspect that insects may at least occasionally qualify, we’re clearly drawing very different lines and have very different underlying assumptions about reality.
Thanks, that’s helpful. Given what you’ve said, I doubt you and EY would disagree on much. EY says in his metaethics sequence that moral facts and categories like ‘moral worth’ or ‘autonomy’ are derived properties. In other words, they don’t refer to anything fundamental about the world, but supervene on some complex set of fundamental facts. Given that that’s his view, I think he was just using ‘sentience’ as a shorthand for something like what you’ve written: note that many of the considerations you describe are importantly related to a capacity for complex experiences.
Except I’ve interacted with bugs in ways that satisfied that criterion (and that did parse out as morally-good), so clearly the devil’s in the details. If Eliezer suspects young children may reliably not qualify, and I suspect that insects may at least occasionally qualify, we’re clearly drawing very different lines and have very different underlying assumptions about reality.