Owning cats is not vegan

[teo123]

OK, fine, the prosthetic vision isn't the right analogy here.

which is actually much simpler for pain (easily emulated by Synthetic intelligence)

I must admit I don't understand the argument you are making. If the behavior of fish can be fully simulated by a robot, that would strongly suggest fish aren't conscious (and therefore capable of actually feeling pain), rather than that they are, right? Attempting to fit consciousness into something that can be simulated by a robot is, well, not the simplest explanation, right?

Any animal with a working brain (as we regard it) is constantly processing positive (pleasure) and negative stimuli, and learning how to optimize the former and avoid the latter.

Again, I don't understand what you are saying. Are you saying pain is needed for learning? Well, people with congenital insensitivity to pain are just as capable of both conscious and subconscious learning as we are, right? Sure, it takes longer for them to learn not to bite their tongues, but that's not to say pain is somehow needed for learning.

No, and I don't think that's true anyway (though they may have larger regions with fewer nerves).

Then you are just trying to manufacture the truth by discarding the evidence. Rose's opposition responds to that argument by saying that perhaps pain can still be evolutionary advantageous even if fish can't know which part of their bodies hurt. That may or may not be true, but it's not as ridiculous as you denying the well-known facts without giving any reason for thinking they are not true.

Rose is wrong, but he'll never admit it.

And yet his paper has passed the peer review, which leaves us with three options:
1) This is not a serious field of study.
2) The article you are citing was written by an ignorant journalist, probably with a political agenda (We need the government to protect the fish!).
3) It's a combination of those things (which seems most likely).
And the same goes, perhaps even more so, for the stories of science proving that cats love their owners.

And, please, when arguing for veganism, don't insist that fish feel pain, you will not convince educated people with that. The arguments we should use are the ones based on facts, preferably the well-known (taught at school) and uncontroversial facts.

[brimstoneSalad]

I must admit I don't understand the argument you are making. If the behavior of fish can be fully simulated by a robot,

Didn't say it can be fully simulated, but pain can be. Robots are more at insect level.

that would strongly suggest fish aren't conscious (and therefore capable of actually feeling pain), rather than that they are, right? Attempting to fit consciousness into something that can be simulated by a robot is, well, not the simplest explanation, right?

No, it means the robots with synthetic intelligence are displaying rudimentary consciousness.
It means that consciousness isn't that complicated after all (despite what more theistically or spiritually inclined accounts might have you believe).

Again, I don't understand what you are saying. Are you saying pain is needed for learning? Well, people with congenital insensitivity to pain are just as capable of both conscious and subconscious learning as we are, right? Sure, it takes longer for them to learn not to bite their tongues, but that's not to say pain is somehow needed for learning.

There are different kinds of negative experiences. You need a distinction between negative and positive experience to learn.
Even babies without the ability to feel pain in their skin can be upset by yelling at them, for instance (e.g. pain threshold for hearing, or even just the upset of being startled).

Then you are just trying to manufacture the truth by discarding the evidence.

It may be the case for some fish, but you have provided no evidence. In the very least you could link a study.
Fish respond to touch/taste/etc. on different sides of their bodies and particularly whiskers (they use this to navigate and keep from bumping things, and find food), so it's very likely that they can differentiate touch that exceeds the pain threshold on different sides of their bodies too. Pain on the right means turn left.

The ability to localize pain isn't even that precise in humans (if you've ever been stung by an insect, you know that you can only feel generally where it is, but you still have to visually or manually search for the sting site), and it's hard to test for.

Rose's opposition responds to that argument by saying that perhaps pain can still be evolutionary advantageous even if fish can't know which part of their bodies hurt.

That is true, since you can still associate being near something like an anemone or sharp coral with pain without needing to know the direction it came from. The claim itself is unusual though, and it's also a negative claim which complicates things.

Ever heard this?
"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

There are methodological reasons for that. When you find fish CAN do something in an experiment, that's all you need to say fish can do it. But if it comes up negative all you can say is that in that particular experiment that fish *didn't* do something, not that they are incapable. It's hard to design a good experiment to prove a negative. Look at how many bad mirror tests there have been, for instance.

This goes back to what I said about false positives vs. false negatives.

And yet his paper has passed the peer review, which leaves us with three options:

Not every peer reviewed paper is correct. In this case, we're talking about one or two voices of dissent which go against the growing consensus that fish do feel pain. AND they're voices asserting a negative which is much less likely to be true. Read the summary of traits that make us think that fish feel some kind of pain in the wiki article.

2) The article you are citing was written by an ignorant journalist, probably with a political agenda (We need the government to protect the fish!).

Those are science publications, and you can also see on the cats love their owners one that it was edited by a working professional.

And, please, when arguing for veganism, don't insist that fish feel pain, you will not convince educated people with that. The arguments we should use are the ones based on facts, preferably the well-known (taught at school) and uncontroversial facts.

This coming from somebody who just doubted bombs exist.
It's not really scientifically controversial that fish feel some form of pain and are conscious. The degree they are, and what their pain is "like" is another interesting question. You might as well say don't argue that chickens feel pain because stupid people do not necessarily believe it. Consensus thus far seems quite clear and is only growing as old voices like Rose die out and fail to keep up with the evidence.

[Roman0vmarisa]

I don't really understand how owning cats can be considered vegan. Veganism is based on the idea that owning animals, even if we think consequences will be good, is wrong, right?
Besides, like, if you actually care about reducing animal suffering, how can you take care of and feed that vicious and blood-thirsty animal that can only survive by violently killing smaller animals? And that will hunt and kill smaller animals for fun even when it's not hungry?

I don’t quite know why it’s hard to understand but - rescuing an animal is REALLY vegan “Buying” an Animal and irresponsible and selfish. Sure, vegans don’t really say ‘owning’ an animal, but coming from someone who hasn’t eaten meat in 19 years (since I was 9 years old), I don’t really think it’s a big deal to say you own an animal. There are more important things for me to worry about than that. I’m pretty sure that only a very small number of animals are actually slaughtered for cat food versus human consumption? We can live easier without eating meat than cats, so it’s probably a good idea to keep the focus on getting ‘human animals’ to reduce and stop their consumption of meat and then worry about cats. When more people are ethically vegan, there will be more of a need for more balanced, vegan cat food - and I’m looking forward to lab grown meat for this purpose, too.

Nature can be ugly - cats play with mice, kill them and then sometimes walk away. And? Does that mean we shouldn’t care about them? Chickens kill mice too... Mousers are actually a really big plus to a lot of people. I’m sure you wouldn’t want mice running around everywhere in your house.

[Jebus]

There are more important things for me to worry about than that. I’m pretty sure that only a very small number of animals are actually slaughtered for cat food versus human consumption?

Fallacy of relative privation.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Not_as_bad_as

[teo123]

Robots are more at insect level.

Now you are going to tell me insects also feel pain? Well, I know the brains of insects are quite diverse, but I think I have a very good reason to think they don't. I once had a Vietnamese stick insect as a pet. I grabbed it clumsily and one of its legs broke off and fell. It twitched for a few seconds, and them continued standing calmly. After less than a minute, I grabbed it again, and it was standing calmly in my hand, that same hand that broke off its leg less than a minute ago. If it felt pain, it wouldn't have behaved that way.
What's next, that "plants feel pain" nonsense?

No, it means the robots with synthetic intelligence are displaying rudimentary consciousness.

So, do you think it's somehow important to treat robots ethically?

You need a distinction between negative and positive experience to learn.

I don't quite understand what you are trying to say. For instance, we learn to recognize faces, right? So, what would be the positive and the negative experience there?

In the very least you could link a study.

And the Rose's paper you are probably familiar with isn't enough?

AND they're voices asserting a negative which is much less likely to be true.

I am not so sure that's the case. In fact, it seems to me that the opposite is the case.
It seems to me languages are probably less related than mainstream linguistics supposes. Yes, the evidence for the Indo-European languages being related is overwhelming. The evidence for Uralic languages being related? Well, certainly less so (that the Ugro-Finnic languages and the Samoyedic languages are related), but, overall, there is enough evidence. The evidence for the Afro-Asiatic languages being related? Well, much less so. There are only a handful of proposed Afro-Asiatic roots, and the proposed sound correspondences seem rather, well, vague. If you look in the Indo-European languages, the sound correspondences are usually in the form of chain shifts, and are quite often complicated (Proto-Indo-European *dw corresponding to Armenian *rk). There appears to be nothing like that in the Afro-Asiatic languages (the same is true for the putative Nostratic languages). As for the Nilo-Saharian languages or the Niger-Congo languages, it's quite clear there is no actual evidence (proposed roots and sound laws) of those things. Similarly, the putative relationship between the Tai-Kadai languages and the Sino-Tibetan languages was a part of mainstream linguistics for decades, yet it is false.
The same is probably true for the soft parts of neuroscience.

Read the summary of traits that make us think that fish feel some kind of pain in the wiki article.

Well, they are essentially mostly citing a philosopher (Gary Verner), rather than some neuroscientist, right?

You might as well say don't argue that chickens feel pain because stupid people do not necessarily believe it.

Not remotely. It's not well-known that most neuroscientists think chickens don't feel pain, yet it's quite well-known that most neuroscientists think fish don't feel pain.

[Roman0vmarisa]

There are more important things for me to worry about than that. I’m pretty sure that only a very small number of animals are actually slaughtered for cat food versus human consumption?

Fallacy of relative privation.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Not_as_bad_as

I’m not really dismissing it as I wrote an entire reply. Also, I AM pretty sure a small number of animals are actually slaughtered for cat food versus human consumption?

[Jebus]

Also, I AM pretty sure a small number of animals are actually slaughtered for cat food versus human consumption?

I don't see how human consumption is relevant to the matter.

[brimstoneSalad]

Now you are going to tell me insects also feel pain?

Some probably do, some may not. In so far as they have brains, we can't rule it out.
The bare minimum of information processing capability seems to be there for most insects we think of (aside perhaps from very small ones like aphids).

Stop using your ignorant anecdotes to make assumptions about things you don't understand. Maybe do some basic reading instead of guessing.

Here's one of the first Google results, an entomologist blog:
https://askentomologists.com/2016/08/29 ... feel-pain/

The author's opinion actually changed while doing more research. The jury may still be out on insects, but it's very likely that many of them feel pain or something we'd reasonably call pain. Many insects can learn from it (avoidance) and they don't like it. Tissue damage is clearly a negative experience for many kinds of insects which they understand and augment their behavior because of. It's somewhere between "pain" in the broadly philosophically relevant sense and "pain" in terms of the more strict definition.

What's next, that "plants feel pain" nonsense?

Teo, I've made this clear multiple times. Plants don't have the prerequisite information processing ability to even maybe feel pain.
Stop straw-manning my positions. You're not engaging honestly with the subject. If you keep doing this you're going to get yourself banned again.

So, do you think it's somehow important to treat robots ethically?

Not all robots. Actually read what I said:

No, it means the robots with synthetic intelligence are displaying rudimentary consciousness.

I don't think there's any reason to disregard the moral value of a sentient being just because we made it from silicon instead of it being evolved from carbon.

You need a distinction between negative and positive experience to learn.

I don't quite understand what you are trying to say. For instance, we learn to recognize faces, right? So, what would be the positive and the negative experience there?

Babies find faces highly amusing. Learning is innately tied to positive experiences like satisfying curiosity.
You've already learned this, and you did it at such a young age you no longer remember it.

And the Rose's paper you are probably familiar with isn't enough?

Link the actual study that has as its findings the claim you're making. Not a reference to a largely discredited researcher making the claim second-hand as part of his apologia for fishing.

I am not so sure that's the case. In fact, it seems to me that the opposite is the case.
It seems to me languages are probably less related than mainstream linguistics supposes.

The null hypothesis in linguistics may very well be that languages are unrelated until it's proven that they are related, and since we know coincidences can occur you'd need to show the statistical improbability of them being unrelated is low. AGAIN, though, you confuse this with a hard science which relies on actual experimental evidence (and not just analysis of known data sets).
The proving a positive vs. negative is relevant when we're dealing with *experimental* evidence and its methodological limitations. In the case of mere analysis of data sets there's no asymmetry there (proving a positive and negative are the same in data analysis as in linguistics).

Because you don't understand hard sciences, or how they're different from linguistics, you make wildly inappropriate analogies like this.

This is the answer to your question here. However, remember that you're not permitted to discuss these issues (the hard/soft science thing) for one year because of your behavior in the other thread ( viewtopic.php?f=17&t=4518 ). As such, don't reply to this part of the post until said year has elapsed (you may of course reply to the other points in the post).

Well, they are essentially mostly citing a philosopher (Gary Verner), rather than some neuroscientist, right?

Philosophy (e.g. of mind) establishes the questions to ask (the different "check boxes" there), while empirical study demonstrates them and lets us fill those boxes with checks.

yet it's quite well-known that most neuroscientists think fish don't feel pain.

And yet it's a myth: consensus is in the other direction (and moving further every day).
There's value in debunking myths, however if you are talking to somebody who believes that myth a bit of street epistemology might be in order: there's probably another reason for not being vegan there rather than the erroneous belief that fish don't feel pain.

If it really is just that, it's easy enough to address. Or if you think the path of least resistance is an environmental argument, that's fine too. Tailor your message to your audience by all means.

[teo123]

Stop using your ignorant anecdotes to make assumptions about things you don't understand.

I'd imagine the same argument was used during the Holodomor and the Great Chinese Famine to dismiss the anecdotes of people dying of malnutrition due to Lysenkoism, like, "Here are the statistics that prove that Lysenkoism works, your anecdotes don't count!".

Plants don't have the prerequisite information processing ability to even maybe feel pain.

Well, plants have quite complicated systems of hormones to carry information through the plant, and even between different plants. A few of those hormones happen to be the same chemicals as the neurotransmitters are in humans.
The truth is, it's not much different to claim plants feel pain and to claim that fish or insects feel pain. It's just making an ad-hoc model. If somebody says to you "Well, plants don't behave as if they felt pain.", as I say to you for fish and insects, you can say "Well, maybe it's a different kind of pain, so they respond differently to pain than people do.". If somebody says to you "Plants don't have what we know is needed to feel pain.", you can respond with "Well, maybe plants have something analogous to that.". That's basically where we are now. Sure, asserting that plants have something analogous to the nerve structures needed for pain in humans is less plausible than asserting that fish and insects have that, but the logic is the same.
I mean, entertaining the possibility that fish and insects feel pain has about as much to do with neuroscience as saying that we could be living in a computer simulation has to do with physics, I guess. There are a few physicists who say it's most likely true, there are a few physicists who claim it contradicts physics, and most physicists would say that claim is not even wrong.

I don't think there's any reason to disregard the moral value of a sentient being just because we made it from silicon instead of it being evolved from carbon.

Well, now, obviously, a robot with a synthetic intelligence can just turn itself off if it wants to, right? People and sentient animals can't quite do that.
The claim that some computer science experiment may be unethical because of the way computers supposedly feel seems quite ridiculous, doesn't it?

Learning is innately tied to positive experiences like satisfying curiosity.

OK, maybe, I haven't really studied the psychology of recognizing faces. But computers can learn to recognize faces (and cats...) by unsupervised machine learning. There is nothing comparable to pleasure and pain there, right?

Link the actual study that has as its findings the claim you're making.

I think it's not based on any study, that it's a deduction from the known differences between human brain and fish brain. You know, like my biology textbook tells me that crabs see everything as a mosaic, it's an inference made not on an actual study, but from the way the eyes of crabs are built (having a lot of lenses).

Philosophy (e.g. of mind) establishes the questions to ask (the different "check boxes" there), while empirical study demonstrates them and lets us fill those boxes with checks.

And the philosopher who establishes those questions gets his or her information from... neuroscience... which he or she, being a philosopher, is not at all qualified to understand.

There's value in debunking myths

Correct, but if the only way we can argue against eating fish is insisting that all the well-known things about eating fish are false... well, we are going so sound quite like the Flat-Earthers.
OK, the Inuits not getting heart diseases because of eating mainly fish is relatively easy to prove to be a myth, since there is probably no qualified nutritionist who claims that. But it's very hard to prove that fish not feeling pain is somehow a myth. The omega-3 reducing the chance of getting a heart-disease is likely a myth, but it can't be known for certain, and it's even less possible to make somebody believe that it's a myth.
We need to admit that the case against eating fish is a lot weaker than the case against eating meat of birds and mammals. Also, do you think it would be a good thing to ban fishing? Don't you think many poor people would starve to death if somebody does that?

Oh, by the way, for those who think holding dogs and cats as pets is a good thing:

THAT is also a cat.

THAT is also a dog, biologically the same specie as dogs.
So, would you argue it is a good thing to keep those things as pets? If not, why would then it make sense to keep any cat or any dog as a pet?

[brimstoneSalad]

Stop using your ignorant anecdotes to make assumptions about things you don't understand.

I'd imagine the same argument was used during the Holodomor and the Great Chinese Famine to dismiss the anecdotes of people dying of malnutrition due to Lysenkoism, like, "Here are the statistics that prove that Lysenkoism works, your anecdotes don't count!".

1. The precautionary principle means erring on the side of caution: that is, insects DO feel pain and people ARE starving. So you're going against that with your anecdotes.

2. Your ignorance on the topic (your anecdote) is not conspiratorial, it's just ignorant. Massive reports of people starving would have been a conspiracy if there were nothing of the such going on.

3. People have much more relevant expertise in starvation than with insect cognition, because we ARE people who experience those qualia. Humans speaking on the human condition is usually pretty reliable, not so when speaking for other distantly related species.

You're wrong in every way, and again you make terrible analogies based on ignorance.

Well, plants have quite complicated systems of hormones to carry information through the plant, and even between different plants.

That's like saying an abacus has a system of beads to carry information and thus might be sentient in the same way as a supercomputer running a synthetic intelligence.

The complexity of plant signaling isn't adequate; it's more along the lines of the brainless human body's "intelligence" in terms of systemic hormonal signals that modulate gene expression.

Read this: http://www.linv.org/images/about_pdf/Tr ... 20Alpi.pdf

A few of those hormones happen to be the same chemicals as the neurotransmitters are in humans.

Which is completely meaningless if you knew anything about biochemistry (which you don't, so you make up nonsense).

The truth is, it's not much different to claim plants feel pain and to claim that fish or insects feel pain. It's just making an ad-hoc model.

It's not an ad hoc model teo. We have particular things we're looking for that, if they lack them, they have not demonstrated pain.

"Well, maybe it's a different kind of pain, so they respond differently to pain than people do.".

No, there are some unavoidable philosophical implications of pain which have low level behavioral implications (such as learning avoidance). Plants fail at the most rudimentary level. Nothing about that is ad hoc.

"Well, maybe plants have something analogous to that."

They do not. Hormone signaling is too broad. You need to study informatics, it will answer your questions.

Sure, asserting that plants have something analogous to the nerve structures needed for pain in humans is less plausible than asserting that fish and insects have that, but the logic is the same.

It would be if there were not a complete lack of behavioral evidence for *any* kind of pain, and if the informatics were not implausible.

You would need to speculate that plants transfer signals between different information processing nodes with something we can't detect like psychic energies (which is as much as saying ghosts are real and we just can't detect them). If you're willing to jump off the deep end you could speculate that plants, or rocks, are possessed by souls that feel pain, but that has no place in a sensible conversation.

I mean, entertaining the possibility that fish and insects feel pain has about as much to do with neuroscience as saying that we could be living in a computer simulation has to do with physics, I guess.

The simulation claim is often taken to be unfalsifiable. Pain is not, as I've explained -- at least proving a positive.

Well, now, obviously, a robot with a synthetic intelligence can just turn itself off if it wants to, right? People and sentient animals can't quite do that.

There are medications you can take to shut down for a while until it wears off, but you can also commit suicide.
How is that relevant?

The claim that some computer science experiment may be unethical because of the way computers supposedly feel seems quite ridiculous, doesn't it?

No. Search "robot rights", it's a matter taken very seriously in mainstream philosophy. There was actually a lot of talk on this when Westworld came out.

OK, maybe, I haven't really studied the psychology of recognizing faces. But computers can learn to recognize faces (and cats...) by unsupervised machine learning. There is nothing comparable to pleasure and pain there, right?

It depends on how the algorithms are set up, but it could be.

I think it's not based on any study, that it's a deduction from the known differences between human brain and fish brain.

So, you're saying it's circular reasoning?

You know, like my biology textbook tells me that crabs see everything as a mosaic, it's an inference made not on an actual study, but from the way the eyes of crabs are built (having a lot of lenses).

That can be based on physics (optics) from studying the eye.
You should be able to find some kind of study about fish not being able to tell where pain came from.

However, inferences like this can be mistaken, particularly when they're dealing with a structurally "complex" (that is small details) mechanism like nerves, and when they're not backed up by good behavioral evidence.

And the philosopher who establishes those questions gets his or her information from... neuroscience... which he or she, being a philosopher, is not at all qualified to understand.

No, not exactly, but many of these philosophers do have formal education in neuroscience.

Correct, but if the only way we can argue against eating fish is insisting that all the well-known things about eating fish are false... well, we are going so sound quite like the Flat-Earthers.

I don't think so, no. Flat Earth is pretty extreme and most people aren't that committed to the misconception that fish don't feel pain. An article like the one I linked you should be adequate to change their minds.

We need to admit that the case against eating fish is a lot weaker than the case against eating meat of birds and mammals.

I've never said it wasn't. Particularly the health case since fish is the least bad meat, but we also know that fish are *less* intelligent, so even though they are sentient beings that feel pain it's not a stretch to say it's less wrong to kill them than a much more aware chicken.

I can understand people being pescatarian. I don't agree with it unless they have economic need, but I can understand it.

Also, do you think it would be a good thing to ban fishing? Don't you think many poor people would starve to death if somebody does that?

No, nor hunting. I think we should focus on farming which is probably 99% of the harm (environmentally, and in terms of animal suffering).