Human life vs Animal life

[auroraglacialis]

Baneful, I just want to say that we seem to generally agree on many things, so the debate is more a philosophical one, not so much one on how humans should behave

Originally Posted by Banefull

I disagree with Kurzweil Singularity. Having studied computers from the bottom up, in a nutshell they are just long chains of logic gates. If you put a specific voltage in, you can always expect the get a certain voltage out.[...]If dolphins and gorillas were ever scientifically proven to be sentient then I would agree that they should be treated as such.

Well - some scientists who are strictily following a mechanistic view would argue that a neuron also is just a form of biological logic gate...
I mean - I do not agree to that really, but some people do believe this and believe as a conclusion that AI self awareness is possible.
The point I wanted to make by bringing it up here was that there are problems with both views - the yes-or-no view of something being sentient or nonsentient (which would given that humans look at the world with human eyes make humans the only sentient species and thus different from others, supporting the claim that humans are not like other animals) and the gradual model of various degrees of sentience (which would mean that there exists some sort of hierarchy of sentience and humans do not have to take the place at the top necessarily). My point then is that this is looking at it with a narrow field of vision. It is extremely anthropocentric. We have a certain definition of sentience and assign a value to that property precisely because these things are part of what makes us human. Other animals may think that humans are very inferior because they need to make tools to do the things that they can do naturally (fly, swim, dive, hunt,.. ). Some humans take something that makes them different from other animals and assign a value to that property and then justify with that a sense of superiority. That is sort of a circular deduction, isn't it?

My point here is that utilitarianism is a consideration that should be included. If you had two planets exactly equal in every way except for population, then with population being the only variable, you would choose to save the planet with more individuals. Now in reality, things aren't as simple as one variable.

Exactly - there is not only one variable and thus there can not be a rule to decide such a thing. Like what if the planet with the 9 billion is otherwise greatly deprived of biodiversity compared to the one with 7 billion - would that shift the decision, even if the change is only in the number of nonsentient (accoring to your distinction) species and individuals? What about a totally barren planet that has 20 billion people living on it, surviving in artificially filtered air and living on artificially created food. Would that be the choice compared to a planet of 1 billion people with a healthy biosphere and abundant life? If one takes sentience as a thing that assigns a higher value, the tendencies could be shifted that way. And I think that is what is happening now - civilized humans assign a much higher value to themselves according to their own definition of sentience and supremacy and thereby justify planetary degradation.

So I think as you said, intuition is incredible important, becaue these simple rules do not work out. One simply cannot throw one being into one bucket and the other in a second one and then take them to the scales and determine who has to die according to what it shows.

I agree in the sense that nonliving things should be valued by their ability to provide for living things.
If a mountain provides a habitat for many creatures, then I would have some qualms about blasting it apart.
If a mountain is completely barren, then by all means blast it apart if the minerals inside of it could provide supplies for higher forms of life. It would be a tragedy not to do otherwise as to not do so would be denying everyone benefits.

Well ok, so the line you draw here is that something has to be "useful" for something that we regard as alive to have a value. That is probably in most cases quite a valid decision, but in reality - few things exist that are out of any context. Everything is connected. That mountain, even if it is barren and holds minerals is part of the living planet. Disrupting it means disrupting life on the planet in some way. Maybe it is a good idea, maybe not. Maybe the minerals in it are Uranium and will poison the world or the mountain provides a certain climate in its vicinity or serves as a water catchment area.

however, our debate isn't about rules.

Oh in a way it is , I think. It is partly about the idea that people want to make rules on how to behave in respect to nature and other humans and they want to make a rule to distinguish humans from animals or want to make rules that tell them who shall live and who shall die - all that mentioning of how many of one species are worth the death of how many of another species are all too often about rules. In the end it comes to something like "if we can save a single child from death by killing all the individuals of one species [we see as useless because we do not understand their role in the web of life], it is worth it!".

And this behaviour adds itself up to 200 species that go extinct every day - and they go extinct because humans profit from it. Humans live longer, are warm, have an education, eat well, feel good and have medical inventions that prevent them from dying. So this civilization makes this choice 200 times a day without most people being aware of it really.

The source of debate among us stems from the fact that our values are different. You believe that things are equal whereas I believe in a hierarchy in the natural order of things yet both of us would advocate the same policy. [...] You speak of everything as if it as the exact same qualities as a human. You speak of inherent respect for mountains as if they had an identity and that nature can be insulted. As if the simple act of mining a mountain is somehow disrespectful. Or you speak of a plant as if it can be hurt. This is what I am scratching my head at.

Hehe - oh a mountain has an identity - no mountain is like the other, no shell is identical to another. Life on this planet is abundantly complex. And yes, I do respect the mountains and plants as well, at least in my thoughts - my lifestyle sadly does not reflect that (yet) as I was born into western civilization. It is not a crazy idea though. The idea of an animate Earth is one you can find a lot in indigenous cultures. This is what people mention shortly if they say that some mountain is sacred for some tribe. The mountain is part of life, it gives and takes from the beings that go about it. You cannot take the mountain out of its environment. I doubt the indigenous people who say that the mountain is sacred would accept it if you say that you will not affect the ecosystem services it provides by drilling a mine into it.

I agree that the main difference between us here is, that you see a hierarchy in nature and I do not see that. I would not say everything has "the exact same qualities as a human" though. Not at all. To the contrary, all has very different qualities. Nothing is the same or identical. It is in a sense equal that I do not feel like it is my place to set up a hierarchy, to determine who is on top and who is not. Maybe I can give you a picture. You set up a pyramid or a tower and everything has a place in that building. Some things are more on top, others are more at the bottom and humans are in the penthouse. The contrasting picture would be one of many scattered buildings with only one ground floor. They all have different sizes and colors and shapes and the paths between them are forming a uncomprehensible complex network. Maybe there is a building with humans and it is bright red and shaped like a cube and humans like other red buildings like tigers and dogs or other square buildings like dolphins and chimpanzees, but they are more distant from the blue and round buildings of the birds or the bizarre shapes of buildings for grass. They have an affinity towards what is similar to them, but that does not mean that any of these buildings is on a hill overlooking the others or has the right to determine if some of the other buildings are to be demolished. (Sorry for that metaphor if it is not understandable - my mind thinks a lot in metaphors but I suspect they are not always so good to understand)