Academic Activism: Sensitizing to Sentience and Suffering

Academic Activism: Sensitizing to Sentience and Suffering

Stevan HarnadPsychology, UQÀM

Cognitive Science, McGillWeb Science, Southampton

Berlin Sentience 2016

Godlovitch, S., Godlovitch, R., & Harris, J. (1971). Animals, men and morals: An enquiry into the maltreatment of non-humans.

“…should the reader himself find no fault in the positions he will find in these pages

he is, as a rational being, committed to act in accordance with them.”


The Holocaust was humanity’s greatest crimeagainst humanity.

But the horrors inflicted on nonhuman animalswere and are and would behumanity’s greatest crime --

-- if they were recognized to be a crimeas they should be.



http://www.adaptt.org/killcounter.html

http://www.adaptt.org/killcounter.html


Matthieu Riccard’s 1st and 2nd Query

1. Are you in favor of causing suffering unnecessarily?

2. Do you eat meat?


Two principles of natural morality

1. Thou shalt not hurt except out of vital necessity

2. Almost all the hurt that humans inflict on nonhuman animals is indescribably monstrous and completely unnecessary


Psychopathy


• It’s easy to cultivate psychopathy in our children:

• All we need to do is tell them the lie that eating meat is necessary for their survival and health,

• that since animals also do it without remorse, it is a Law of Nature

• and that in any case animals are raised and slaughtered in a "humane" way

• (you just have to avoid viewing Google images on slaughterhouses)

• In fact, by exactly the same cultural means

• we could (again) instill in our young

• the taste and the justification for rape, torture, slavery, and genocide.

rape


slavery


torture



genocide


Suffering


Necessity


Luxury


Denial


Darwinian Survival Machines


Evolution is a PsychopathSelfish Genes


But organisms are not just selfish:Oxytocin and Vasopressin


Kinship


Imprinting


adoption


Consciousness = Sentience


The “Hard Problem”

The Other-Minds Problem



Other-Minds :Mirror Neurons


Golden Rule

Rationalizations:

1. Necessary for our survival or health2. Animals eat animals too3. Better off than in the jungle4. They don’t suffer



Merchant of VeniceW. Shakespeare

"I am a “beast." Hath not a beast eyes? Hath not a beast hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means, warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer, as a “man" is?If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?.… If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that."


“Why I am not a Christian”Bertrand Russell 1927

“I say that that is fiendish cruelty, and nobody whose natural sympathies have not been warped by dogma, or whose moral nature was not absolutely dead to all sense of suffering,could maintain that it is right and proper that that state of things should continue.”


What to do?

Activism: (1) Local and (2) Global


Local Action: Starfish Poem (Philip J. Kocisko)

One day an old man was walking down the beach just before dawn. In the distance he saw a young man picking up stranded starfish and throwing them back into the sea.

As the old man approached the young man, he asked, "Why do you spend so much energy doing what seems to be a waste of time?"

The young man explained that the stranded starfish would die if left in the morning sun. The old man exclaimed,

"But there must be thousands of starfish. How can your efforts make any difference?" The young man looked down at the starfish in his hand and as he threw it to safety in the sea, he said,

"It makes a difference to this one!"


Projet de loi no 54LOI VISANT L’AMÉLIORATION DE LA SITUATION

JURIDIQUE DE L’ANIMALLE PARLEMENT DU QUÉBEC DÉCRÈTE CE QUI SUIT :

PARTIE I MODIFICATIONS AU CODE CIVIL DU QUÉBEC1. Le Code civil du Québec est modifié par l’ajout, après l’intitulé du livre quatrième, de ce qui suit :

« DISPOSITION GÉNÉRALE

898.1. Les animaux ne sont pas des biens. Ils sont des êtres doués desensibilité et ils ont des impératifs biologiques.

Global Action: Change the Law



Cognitive Sciences Institute 2018The Other Minds Problem: Animal Sentience and CognitionLe problème des autres esprits: sensibilité et cognition animale


Public Sensitization Strategy Part I:

24 hour/day, 7 day/week 360o CCTV recording wherever animals bred, kept, used, transported, slaughtered


Public Sensitization Strategy Part II:

Crowd-Source Inspection: Live-Stream CCTV on Web

Are we carnivores?



Necessity?

It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes. http://www.vrg.org/nutrition/2009_ADA_position_paper.pdf

Craig, W. J., & Mangels, A. R. (2009). Position of the American Dietetic Association: vegetarian diets. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 109(7), 1266-1282.

http://www.vrg.org/nutrition/2009_ADA_position_paper.pdf


Two principles of natural morality

1. Thou shalt not hurt except out of vital necessity

2. Almost all the hurt that humans inflict on nonhuman animals is indescribably monstrous and completely unnecessary


Thank You

Harnad, S. (2013) Taste and Torment: Why I Am Not a Carnivore http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/377684/ Luxe, nécessité, souffrance: Pourquoi je ne suis pas carnivore. Québec humaniste 8(1): 10-13 http://j.mp/15JnWHw

(2014) Animal pain and human pleasure: ethical dilemmas outside the classroom. LSE Impact Blog 6/13 June 13 2014http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/06/13/ethical-dilemmas-animal/

Bekoff, M. & Harnad, S. (2015) Doing the Right Thing: An Interview With Stevan Harnad. Psychology Today Blog. January 2015. http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/373876/

(2015) To Close Slaughterhouses We Must Open People's Hearts HuffPost Impact Canada http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/stevan-harnad/vegan-animal-welfare_b_7702020.html Pour fermer les abattoirs, il faut les ouvrir. Le Huffington Post Québec 25/6/2015 http://quebec.huffingtonpost.ca/stevan-harnad/droits-animaux-cruaute-animale-lois-abattage-abattoirs_b_7659206.html

(2016) Animal sentience: The other-minds problem Animal Sentience 2016.001 http://animalstudiesrepository.org/animsent/vol1/iss1/1

http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/377684/http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/377684/




http://j.mp/15JnWHw

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/06/13/ethical-dilemmas-animal/

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/201501/doing-the-right-thing-interview-stevan-harnad

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/201501/doing-the-right-thing-interview-stevan-harnad

http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/373876/

http://quebec.huffingtonpost.ca/stevan-harnad/droits-animaux-cruaute-animale-lois-abattage-abattoirs_b_7659206.html

http://quebec.huffingtonpost.ca/stevan-harnad/droits-animaux-cruaute-animale-lois-abattage-abattoirs_b_7659206.html

http://animalstudiesrepository.org/animsent/vol1/iss1/1