Be mindful of your feelings
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Transcript of Be mindful of your feelings
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Be mindful of your feelings
Speciesism as a moral illusion
Stijn Bruers, IARC, Esch, sept-2012
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Overview
• What are moral illusions? Analogy with optical illusions
• How to detect moral illusion? • Do moral illusions exist? Yes: the trolley
problem• Can speciesism be a moral illusion?
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Moral illusions
• Moral illusions are obstinate but incorrect intuitive judgments, comparable to the famous optical illusions.
• Method to detect them: – Coherentism (reflective equilibrium): mutual support
of intuitions and principles • Universalism: translating strong moral intuitions into
universalized ethical principles• Consistency
– Knowledge about moral psychological mechanisms
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Coherentism
More than merely consistencyCrossword puzzle (white boxes = situations)
Universalism: words (=universal principles) instead of separate letters (=situational intuitions/rules)
Consistency: 1 letter per box
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Optical illusions
1. Translation-invariance: measure sticks never change length when shifted in any direction
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Optical illusions
1. Translation-invariance
2. Context-independence: influence of environment is arbitrary, artificial, fuzzy: never important
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Optical illusions
1. Translation-invariance
2. Context-independence
3. Optical mechanism– 3D->2D perspective
adaptation (heuristics, D.Kahneman)
– Lateral inhibition (contrasts)
Coherent
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Moral illusions: the trolley problem
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Moral illusions: the trolley problem
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A
Moral illusions: the trolley problem
Action allowed: 90% of people
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B
Moral illusions: the trolley problem
Action allowed: 50% of people
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C
Moral illusions: the trolley problem
Action allowed: 10% of people
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Moral illusions: the trolley problem
• A versus B and C: victim is not used as merely means
• A and B versus C: victim is not send to threat
What distinguishes B from C? The locus of intervention (at victim or at threat): “throwing bomb on a person or throwing person on a bomb?”
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Moral illusions: the trolley problem
Translation invariance• All individuals have– Right not to be killed– Right not to be used as merely means
• Moral status of individual is independent from locus of intervention
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B C
Moral illusions: the trolley problem
Context independence: erase irrelevant details
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Moral illusions: the trolley problem
Psychological mechanism• Intervention myopia: “people who are
evaluating the morality of options may give victims in the background less weight than victims in the attentional spotlight.” (Waldmann & Dieterich, 2007)
• Moral heuristic: attribute substitution (Kahneman, 1982; Sunstein, 2005)
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Can speciesism be a moral illusion?
• 5 arguments against speciesism (context independence)
• 5 arguments pro sentience (translation invariance)
• Essentialism and heuristics (psychological mechanism)
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Against speciesism1. Who am I? I am: – white (population), – a Homo sapiens sapiens (subspecies), – a Homo sapiens (species), – a Homo (genus), – a great ape (family), – a Hominoid (super family), – a simian (infraorder), – a dry nosed primate (suborder), – a primate (order), – a placental (infra class), – a mammal (class), – a vertebrate (phylum), – an animal (kingdom)
Too arbitrary
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Against speciesism
2. What is a human? What about – humanzee hybrids? – human-animal chimera? – ancestors (Homo habilis,
Australopithecus,…)? – genetically modified
humans,…?
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Against speciesism
3. How is a species defined? Interbreeding and fertile offspring? – All species are connected
into one “temporal ring species”.
– Is the accidental death of intermediates relevant?
Cfr. context independence: speciesism is arbitrary, artificial, intrinsically fuzzy
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Against speciesism
4. Genes and bodily properties are not relevant in situation A (e.g. racism), so should not be relevant in situation B (speciesism).
5. Speciesism is a violation of the merit principle
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Sentience
1. Well-being and impartiality. Cfr. consequentialist (Singer) and contractualist (Rowlands) ethics: veil of ignorance
2. Empathy is a virtue to be developed (virtue ethics and ethics of care)
Cfr translation invariance, using empathy or the veil of ignorance to put yourself into the position of the other
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Sentience
3. Rights ethics: the connection between feelings, interests and rights is not farfetched– Feelings detect interests (e.g.: pain -> bodily
integrity)– Rights protect interests
4. Consciousness is special (complex, vulnerable,…) and should be protected
5. Sentience is the only mental capacity that mentally disabled humans share with us
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Essentialism
• The psychological explanation• Children and adults (from different cultures and
backgrounds) intuitively describe biological entities in essentialist terms. They think that biological categories have invisible essences (Gelman, 2003; Bloom, 2010)
• Studies about racism also demonstrates that racists think of races or ethnic groups as being essentialized natural groups (Gil-White, 2001)
• But essentialism is in contradiction with Darwinism and current biology
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Speciesism as a moral illusionMoral status of animal
Moral status of human
(Morally) irrelevant properties
The ten arguments are coherent with each otherThere is no “essence” related to lines with inward pointing arrowheads
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Speciesism as a moral heuristic
• Daniel Kahneman, Cass Sunstein• Attribute substitution• Target attribute: rationality, self-consciousness,…• Heuristic attribute: human• Based on – Pattern recognition skills: a human is easier to detect than a
rational being– Most humans have the target attribute
• Heuristic ‘misfires’ at mentally disabled humans• Should people keep this heuristic?