Comment on Fish have heart too.

• commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  if someone is sentient, they are morally relevant because they can experience positive and negative valence

  this is a moral virtue only to utilitarians.

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  • oshitwaddup@lemmy.antemeridiem.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    there are other approaches to sentientism that aren’t based on valence. I don’t feel like writing a book on the different ones, but to give an example of a rights based one that I think is strong is that every sentient being has, at the very least, a right to their body, since that’s the one thing they’re born with and that is (almost certainly) what gives rise to their sentience in the first place. And to violate another sentient beings bodily autonomy is to forfeit your own (a sort of low level social contract), which allows for self defense and defending others

    but to go back to utilitarianism, I think there’s a strong argument that most ethical frameworks can be defined in terms of a sufficiently creative definition of utility. I don’t really feel like getting into the weeds of that discussion though, and I don’t think it’s particularly relevant to the conversation anyways

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    • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      to give an example of a rights based one

      I have to admit, I skipped the rest of this sentence on I don’t foresee myself attempting to read it: I don’t believe in rights as an objective phenomenon, either.

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    • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I don’t really feel like getting into the weeds of that discussion though, and I don’t think it’s particularly relevant to the conversation anyways

      it is. your ethical position is highly relevant to any ethical argument you present.

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      • oshitwaddup@lemmy.antemeridiem.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Then present yours lol

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    • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      but to go back to utilitarianism, I think there’s a strong argument that most ethical frameworks can be defined in terms of a sufficiently creative definition of utility.

      this is a good reason to doubt the validity of the theory: it is constructed in a way that it is not disprovable.

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• commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  if you’re looking for arbitrary, the anthropocentrists are that way

  this is just a tu quoque

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  • oshitwaddup@lemmy.antemeridiem.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I explained why it’s not arbitrary, then pointed to a group that does draw arbitrary distinctions. That’s not tu quoque because I’m not saying “you also”

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    • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      you’re saying it’s not arbitrary. “no, you” is still a form of tu quoque. you haven’t actually made a case that sentience isnt an arbitrary standard, and there isn’t a case to be made: sentience isn’t a natural phenomenon outside of human subjectivity classification. without people, there would be no concept of green or warm or sentient, and any of those attributes is an arbitrary standard to use to judge the ethics of a diet.

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      • oshitwaddup@lemmy.antemeridiem.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Are you saying everything we can talk about is arbitrary because everything we can talk about is with words and concepts?

        Are you talking about meriological nihilism? (thanks alex oconnor for teaching me that term lol)

        I know sentience is real based on the fact that I’m experiencing things right this moment. Based on my understanding of the brain and nervous system, and the strong evidence that those things give rise to my sentience, I think that it’s reasonable to extrapolate that other, similar nervous systems/brains are also sentient and their experience is worth consideration in a similar way to how I consider my own experience (among the many other reasons to have a basic level of empathy)

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