Be mindful of your feelings

1. Be mindful of your feelings Speciesism as a moral illusion Stijn Bruers, IARC, Esch, sept-2012

2. Overview • What are moralillusions? Analogywithopticalillusions • How to detectmoralillusion? • Do moralillusionsexist? Yes: the trolley problem • Canspeciesismbe a moralillusion?

3. Moralillusions • 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

4. Coherentism More than merely consistency Crossword puzzle (white boxes = situations) Universalism: words (=universal principles) instead of separate letters (=situational intuitions/rules) Consistency: 1 letter per box

5. Optical illusions • Translation-invariance: measure sticks never change length when shifted in any direction

6. Optical illusions • Translation-invariance • Context-independence: influence of environment is arbitrary, artificial, fuzzy: never important

7. Optical illusions • Translation-invariance • Context-independence • Optical mechanism • 3D->2D perspective adaptation (heuristics, D.Kahneman) • Lateral inhibition (contrasts) Coherent

8. Moralillusions: the trolley problem

9. Moralillusions: the trolley problem

10. Moralillusions: the trolley problem Actionallowed: 90% of people A

11. Moralillusions: the trolley problem Actionallowed: 50% of people B

12. Moralillusions: the trolley problem Actionallowed: 10% of people C

13. 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?”

14. 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

15. Moralillusions: the trolley problem Context independence: erase irrelevant details B C

16. Moralillusions: 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)

17. Can speciesism be a moral illusion? • 5 arguments against speciesism (context independence) • 5 arguments pro sentience (translation invariance) • Essentialism and heuristics (psychological mechanism)

18. Against speciesism • 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) Tooarbitrary

19. Againstspeciesism • What is a human? What about • humanzee hybrids? • human-animal chimera? • ancestors (Homo habilis, Australopithecus,…)? • genetically modified humans,…?

20. Againstspeciesism • 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

21. Againstspeciesism • Genes and bodily properties are not relevant in situation A (e.g. racism), so should not be relevant in situation B (speciesism). • Speciesism is a violation of the merit principle

22. Sentience • Well-being and impartiality. Cfr. consequentialist (Singer) and contractualist (Rowlands) ethics: veil of ignorance • 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

23. Sentience • Rights ethics: the connection between feelings, interests and rights is not farfetched • Feelings detect interests (e.g.: pain -> bodily integrity) • Rights protect interests • Consciousness is special (complex, vulnerable,…) and should be protected • Sentience is the only mental capacity that mentally disabled humans share with us

24. 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

25. Speciesism as a moral illusion Moral status of animal Moral status of human (Morally) irrelevant properties The ten arguments are coherent with each other There is no “essence” related to lines with inward pointing arrowheads

26. Speciesism as a moralheuristic • 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?