oshitwaddup @ oshitwaddup @lemmy.antemeridiem.xyz

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2 yr. ago

https://lemmy.antemeridiem.xyz/comment/2243561 I haven't put my views in those terms before but even here I say my views are based on sentience. I give an example, and I should have been more clear that I'm not strictly looking at the issue from a utilitarian lense although I get why it would come across that way. At base I'm a sentientist, I think there are many reasonable ways to go from there

are your ethical views based on what most people have done historically? Or how most ethical systems view something? What is your ethical system?

what is/are the difference(s) between human and non-human animals that justifies treating humans better than non-humans?

Neither of those are axioms I hold. The axiom "all sentient beings are morally relevant" does not specify how to go from there, and I am not convinced that any one ethical framework is "the one". There are some things that all the ones I'm aware of converge on with a sentientist perspective, but there are weird cases as well like whether to euthanize stray animals where they don't converge

Why is sentience too broad? afaik all humans are sentient, otherwise we'd be philosophical zombies (or there would be p-zombies among us)

i think I do understand them, I've thought about that problem before. Can you go into more detail on what you mean by internally inconsistent? By my understanding, situations in the world can come about where values need to be weighed, or there are only bad choices available, but that doesn't mean those values should be discarded or replaced or that they shouldn't be shared/spread.

That seems to bother you. Let's taboo the word. When I say "someone", "anyone", "person", etc, I'm referring to a sentient being, a subject of experience, an experiencer, one who is experiencing. Now you can interpret what I'm saying better, do you disagree with the actual points I'm making?

Hell even to get past solipsism you have to subjectively assume to that your mind and senses accurately reflect the world at least a little bit, otherwise gathering any accurate data or reasoning about that data productively would not be possible

Once you go to a deep enough layer I think you're right. But, the one subjective thing my argument rests on is that you care about your own experience. Anyone who flinches away from touching a hot stove because it hurts cares about their experience at least a little. The next step is recognizing that from an objective view, there's no reason to think your subjective experience is any more important than anyone elses (subjectively there is).

I don't claim to 100% live in an ideal way. I try to keep improving but I don't think I'll ever be perfect

i think in cases where consent is difficult or impossible to achieve, we should act in the best interest of the experiencer in question. But I think that example is a tough one, at first glance I think we shouldn't sterilize them, but then when I consider what will almost certainly happen if they're not sterilized I think it's probably worth doing the one bad thing to prevent worse things from happening. It's an example where I think a utilitarian approach makes the most sense, since the variables are relatively clear

Then based on the way you are using arbitrary, I see why you think my position is arbitrary. Do you think all positions are arbitrary?

the experiencers should have a say in whether or not they experience it

ok, taboo the word arbitrary. What do you mean when you say arbitrary?

someone experiencing it should have a say in whether or not they experience it

I think that having sex with sentient beings without their consent is extremely immoral

I'm not saying it is objective, I'm saying it's not arbitrary.

If my dna was isolated in a test tube and it could experience things then I would also care about what it experiences. There isn't any evidence I'm aware of that that's the case. Dna is the instructions and tool to build the sentient being, not the sentient being itself. So no, the same couldn't be said of dna. Extrapolating from how much I care about what I experience, I think it's reasonable to care about what things that experience things experience

We disagree very strongly

Really? What about bestiality?

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)

Tell which thing? I wrote a lot

but, one thing we could do is divert the massive subsidies and bailouts the US gives to animal agriculture (and a lot of the subsidies to plant ag too! It leads to a tremendous waste, iirc the reason corn syrup is so common is we grow too much corn cause it's overly subsidized. People need good food, not corn syrup) and spend that on actually feeding those people

While we're redirecting funds, the military budget could use some massive cuts that could also be used to provide food, shelter, and healthcare to people