Philosophical Vegan Forum

Volenta wrote:What do we make out of Daniel Dennett's views on consciousness. I find it very strange to argue that human culture and/or language are the reason we have (a higher) consciousness. If you define consciousness as ability to obtain an accurate picture of reality, it surely helps. But an more intense subjective experience, I don't think so...

Consciousness is poorly defined, and Dennett is talking about consciousness (in the vaguest sense), not sentience.
Dennett knows all of these animals are sentient- and he should know that sentience is the most morally relevant quality.

The problem is that he's dealing with such a poorly defined term; and it's a word he should know better than to use. So, I'd say shame on him for even using the word, but his views on semantics are a bit different and he likes to rebel and use these kinds of words, struggling to put new meaning to them.

As far as his claims regarding language and culture, though, he is largely correct. Those humans with language are more than those without- and we have examples of this. Likewise, those chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos, etc. with advanced language learning are more than those without.

They go from being more impulsive and emotional beings to more rational ones, because language (or something related) becomes part of thought itself. By using language, we give names and abstraction to categories of things, and this process helps us understand and reason about the world around us.

Language produces a higher level of thought, in humans and other species alike. Language is special, in that sense.

Don't particularly like how he thinks of humans being this special, no other animal even coming close in matching us.

In that particular regard, we are probably the most advanced. There are other animals with rudimentary language, and cetaceans may come close. Elephants may too, and some other social animals.

He may have phrased himself poorly, or he may be wrong.

Other great apes aren't actually that close, with regards to language proficiency, UNLESS we raise them and teach them language. It actually gives them the ability to think more abstractly - like humans.

His point on human culture, in that regard, is correct. It sustains itself.

Language is a large part of what makes us what we are. We aren't special because we're humans, we're special because of language - and he seems to have admitted this - being human just makes us a little better at learning language (though not much better at it than other apes, it's enough to make a pretty big difference across generations, where human language ability is high enough to build upon itself, where in other apes it is more likely to degrade over generations and fall out of use).

Animals do not have all the same cognitive capabilities we have—like language—but a lot of them we actually share. Some capabilities are even better developed in other animals (like short term memory of chimpanzees).

Language is big. Very big. It may not be very morally relevant (there are humans without language ability), but cognitively, it's huge.
You can actually map differences in human behavior and effective cognitive ability to language proficiency and even types of languages.

It's an area of study, but compare, for example, Chinese to European language.
This kind of thing may go the way of phrenology eventually, or it might be on the right track.

It's like the difference in trying to program a computer by assembling logic gates, and using a higher level programming language.
I don't care how intelligent you are, or how big your brain is, the latter gives you a huge edge. It's the advantage of abstraction and generalization of functions- without named variables, that becomes pointless.
And within that edge, differences in the kind of language you use are going to give you different advantages and disadvantages depending on what kind of project you're doing.

Daniel Dennett wrote:A better understanding of consciousness in humans is needed before the discussion can be extended validly to animal consciousness.

What he should have said, is consciousness is a wishy-washy undefined term with mystical undertones at best.
The bottom line is that nobody knows what anybody else is even talking about when we talk about human consciousness, or higher and lower states. Most of it is woo woo.

This isn't about non-human consciousness, it's about the word 'consciousness' itself, and its failure to be clearly defined.

To his credit, Dennett has made some progress with that, but I think he still gives the word far too much credit.
He should be more clear about how unclear the term is.

People need to stop using that word unless they're talking about consciousness in the medical sense- awake or not.

Daniel Dennett wrote:Consciousness requires a certain kind of informational organization that does not seem to be 'hard-wired' in humans, but is instilled by human culture.

Nonsense. Consciousness in that sense isn't even defined. YES, there IS a level of information processing that isn't 'hard-wired' and is instilled by human culture and language- and if Dennett is trying to define consciousness as THIS thing, then he should do that, and stop trying to make this look like a meaningful claim about consciousness instead of an attempted definition of consciousness.

Daniel Dennett wrote:Moreover, consciousness is not a black-or-white, all-or-nothing type of phenomenon, as is often assumed.

Based on the above as a definition, yes, that is true. Without that, though, he's just spinning his wheels.

Daniel Dennett wrote:The differences between humans and other species are so great that speculations about animal consciousness seem ungrounded.

He didn't say animals are not conscious. He's saying speculation about their level of consciousness (as he sees it and implicitly defined it) isn't very grounded in evidence.

Remember, he's not talking about sentience here. He's talking about that meaningless vague wishy-washy word "consciousness", which is itself undefined.

As he should have defined it above (but failed to do), his statement is basically correct. If you take consciousness to be the stuff that is not hard-wired, but the contribution to perception and world views that society provides, then we don't know exactly how a bat, or any other animal (or even other humans from other cultures- which Dennett refused to mention), views the world within his or her own framework (through upbringing and learned experiences in the world).

Daniel Dennett wrote:Many authors simply assume that an animal like a bat has a point of view, but there seems to be little interest in exploring the details involved.

It sounds like he wants to explore what thought and perception of the world are like without formal language, or within a more rudimentary framework.
Though it also seems like he may be giving his view of consciousness far too much credit with regards to its contributions to "point of view".

You know that little voice in your head that talks when you're thinking?
Turn it off. No voice. No language. Try to keep it off, and do something new. No words, no voice in your head.
Try to keep it off and reason, or work out something. Not even the idea of words. Drop the concepts entirely. If you're going to sit, drop the concept of sitting. Don't summon up the categorical associations of chair.

It's hard to do.

The thing with humans, is we're so reliant on using language, and its conceptual structures, that we can't think without it because it keeps turning itself back on, and those concepts keep coming back into your head- so it's hard to understand the experience of another being who may have more rudimentary language ability, and what its experience of thinking is like without that (even another human being, raised without language, or in a very different language).

It's not inconceivable, though, and I think this is where Dennett could stand to use his imagination a little bit. The differences are not so vast and unfathomable that they can not be approximated.

A highly abstract computer simulation would get the same job done (one with things and actions for which we don't have names), to give us direct experience of thought without advanced language and cultural context. In this respect, Dennett is surprisingly unimaginative.

Wesley J Smith argues in favor of anthropocentrism, speciesism and eating meat. He's one of the loonies from the discovery institute though and his entire philosophy pretty much relies on "Look how awesome and exceptional humans are"

The objectivist philosopher Leonard Peikoff argues that giving animal rights is "altruism gone mad" and supports eating animal as a natural order of life.

The only people i actually see arguing in favor of eating meat are animal welfarists who support "humane" meat such as Temple Grandin, but aside from that i almost never see any philosopher even remotely arguing in favor of it.

Kanade wrote: The objectivist philosopher

I have to nitpick.

This is an oxymoron. Please don't legitimize him by calling him a philosopher
That's like calling a faith healer a doctor.

Objectivism isn't taken seriously by any philosophers, nor are any real philosophers objectivists (or any real objectivists philosophers). Objectivism is a cult, not a philosophy.
You might take that to be a "no true Scotsman" argument, but I believe it can be easily substantiated.

Deontology is scarcely even taken very seriously today outside theology because it's functionally useless in resolving conflict of interest, and unsubstantial at its foundation without a god. Although some philosophers attempt to resolve these two issues (and that is legitimate philosophical work) Deontology remains mostly just interesting as case study of a philosophical dead-end: Objectivism isn't even that, it was a non-starter.

Although politically, rights are all the rage, serious secular philosophy in ethics and morality generally deals with consequentialism of various kinds (from Utilitarianism to Virtue Ethics).

It seems Sam Harris is considering becoming vegetarian again. I came across this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZ1twiEe17k
He's somewhat confused about the subject (like what speciesism means), but it's great to see that he's recognizing his actions are not morally defensible and is considering to do something about it.

Where did you find that quote of Van der Berg, Volenta? I'd like to check it out.

I personally think it's all about culture. When I told my mother I was going vegan, the first thing she told me is how her parents taught her that meat and dairy were essential to the human diet. The things you learn as a kid are the hardest to question, I think the same happens with religion. It takes the ability to question the foundation of how you understand the world; your parents' wisdom and knowledge, to make a change like veganism.

Also, people seem to have great difficulty accepting that they're wrong. We just don't want to admit it. I think the failure punishing education system might have something to do with this.

Thanks for posting that Volenta; it's good to know. I'm watching the video now. It's hard to understand how he can be confused on the subject of speciesism, since it's not that complicated.

miniboes wrote: Also, people seem to have great difficulty accepting that they're wrong. We just don't want to admit it. I think the failure punishing education system might have something to do with this.

Interesting idea; that might be part of it. A very large part of it, however, seems to be conflation of belief and personal identity -- that a person is defined by what they believe. A large part of that, I suspect, is derived from religion.

miniboes wrote:Where did you find that quote of Van der Berg, Volenta? I'd like to check it out.

The guy wrote a book called De Vrolijke Veganist (The Happy Vegan translated, although the book is not translated in English as far as I know) where he's stating this (already in the book description). You can also see him stating this in his lecture about veganism:
http://vimeo.com/79183878 (Dutch!)

Edit:

brimstoneSalad wrote:It's hard to understand how he can be confused on the subject of speciesism, since it's not that complicated.

Well, I think some animal rights people are denying the continuum of moral relevance/value of animals, stating it would be speciesist to think otherwise in the same breath. Those people create some confusion about the term, although Harris should know these people are misusing the term if he would have taken some time to read Singer's position in more detail.

Volenta wrote: Well, I think some animal rights people are denying the continuum of moral relevance/value of animals, stating it would be speciesist to think otherwise in the same breath. Those people create some confusion about the term, although Harris should know these people are misusing the term if he would have taken some time to read Singer's position in more detail.

Yeah, once I got to that part of the video, it seemed that might be the case. A great example of dumb people confusing somebody smart and making an otherwise logical philosophy seem irrational.

As you say, though, he should have known better than to assume that other people know what they're talking about rather than taking it from one of the foremost professionals in the field by just reading Singer more carefully.

I was really glad that the host corrected him on that at the end -- I don't know who that host was, but well done. I'd love to know how Harris took the correction, and if he has rightly revised his understanding... but the interview segment cuts out.

I don't like how he appealed to the "nobody knows" regarding cricket sentience (or "consciousness" I think he might have used; which he shouldn't). It's a pretty trivial matter to test, and I'm pretty sure people already have since crickets are pretty well studied insects.

This is the first link I found: http://jeb.biologists.org/content/205/10/1429.full.pdf

It's pretty obvious that crickets are sentient, and for what it's worth, "conscious".

The issue of course remains one of degree, which he could have correctly noted uncertainty with regards to.

brimstoneSalad wrote:Interesting idea; that might be part of it. A very large part of it, however, seems to be conflation of belief and personal identity -- that a person is defined by what they believe. A large part of that, I suspect, is derived from religion.

In the end, not wanting to abandon your belief is also a fear of being wrong as I see it. If you abandon your whole view of the world, your religion, that's as wrong as you're going to get. That's admitting you've been wrong about pretty much everything for your entire life. The same is true for meat-eaters, I believe; it's apparently easier to keep defending your morally and rationally inferior position than to admit how wrong you really are. What i don't fully understand is how Dawkins can fully admit he's doing something immoral but doesn't make the change, especially for someone as sensible as him.