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Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law

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Re: Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law

#301

Post by 1_player »

plorkyeran wrote: post #279
sillysaurusx wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like Star Trek handled the question much better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol2WP0hc0NY Intelligence, self-awareness, and consciousness seem like three reasonable requirements. I don't really buy the "consciousness" requirement, but it's a stab at what most people associate with sentience. Calling trees sentient is just nonsense. And I mean that literally. I try not to dismiss people's work out of hand, b…

It is very common for Science Fiction to use "sentient" where "sapient" is the correct word. Star Trek is no exception. Calling trees sentient isn't nonsense; your understanding of what the word means is simply incorrect.

In fact in Italian, which is close to Latin, "sentire", the root of sentient, means to feel. "Sapere", the root of sapient, means to know.

There's a higher level of intelligence required to "know", rather than to just "feel".

Re: Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law

#302

Post by wander_homer »

AlexanderTheGr8 wrote: post #244
adriand wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not because we are humans and therefore more valuable to each other I value my children more than I value your children, but you will likely disagree with my assessment, even though it isn’t unexpected. And I would have to admit my assessment is not objective. > Never mind the fact that we have consciousness and ego and complex nervous systems, whereas lobsters do not. That’s how speciesism works: we try to find so…

In your definition of speciesism, you are doing exactly what you accuse your-defined "speciesists" of. You are manufacturing ("try to find some") a definition of speciesism to paint other-people as the bad guy. Your comparison of their actions with slavery is just to demotivate any response. In animal kingdom, animals kill each other ruthlessly. African dogs and other animals eat their prey from back-to-front while t…

>Humanity survived on hunting for tens of thousands of years. So the only reason we survived is because we were "speciesists"? If that's the case, then I am okay with being a speciesist.

Humanity also probably only survived difficult conditions because many of our ancestors raped and killed each other over rare resources and lack of willing sexual partners. Hence by your logic we also should be okay with being killers and rapists, because they're the only reasons we're alive.

Or you know, we could use our brains and recognize that our ancestors lived in completely different environments than we do and we also have a much better understanding of the world than they did. Hence it would be incredibly stupid to use their actions, world view and ethics as a foundation for our belief system.

Re: Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law

#303

Post by michaelmrose »

colordrops wrote: post #298
michaelmrose wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that pain is different from suffering. To suffer is to hold an abstract mental model of a world that could be and a world that is and experience discomfort at what is rather than merely processing a pain signal and responding with a reflex action. To suffer requires a modestly complex brain while having a reflexive response to a signal doesn't require any sort of central nervous system at all. For context som…

I was speaking against reductionism but while we are there, as your examples alude to, counting neurons to determine sentience is like counting GHz to determine computational power.

It's really not. Frequency is nearly meaningless as you can have as many computational elements as you like operating at a given frequency meaning it tells you nearly nothing. It's like counting transistors which actually DOES work even if imperfectly.

Re: Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law

#304

Post by tsimionescu »

shakna wrote: post #30
monkeybutton wrote: post #6

Octopi I understand, but lobsters? They have less than half the nervous system of an ant [1]. Are individual ants sentient and worthy of legislating over? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of...

The line for sentience is a very low bar to hurdle. Trees may demonstrate sentience [0]. The larger problem is that people are generally thinking of sapience, but sapience tends to be defined in axiomatic terms, so we don't have a clear understanding of what it requires or means. [0] https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1469-...

Well, the bar for sentience is actually so low I am quite sure bacteria and even individual cells in multi-cellular organisms pass it - almost every living cell detects aspects of and reacts to its environment.

Re: Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law

#306

Post by ornornor »

colechristensen wrote: post #129
forgotmyoldname wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Within the realm of what many people consider “bugs”, intelligence also exists. For example, jumping spiders have intelligence similar to mammals or birds. Research is ongoing with bees and they’re seeming similarly advanced, with some having the capacity to suffer depression. In all likelihood, there exist insects with reasonably high levels intelligence that we’ve simply overlooked for centuries. Basically everyone…

I really doubt a spider is as smart as me. Perhaps a contrived problem solving test proves a certain kind of spider is good at solving a certain kind of problem, but I really doubt I’d be the same with a brain as complex as a spider.

We tend to measure intelligence by human metrics so of course humans will be the most intelligent at being humans.

Taking spiders for example: humans cant spin spiderwebs for shit while this is a core skill to being a spider. From a spider centric worldview, humans must just be dumb meat factories then.

Re: Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law

#307

Post by emptysongglass »

tagrun wrote: post #288

Not trying to argue it's OK to subject animals to unnecessary pain (it shouldn't be!), but from a pure logical consistency standpoint, are there many non-sentient animals? Why is it OK to not recognize mosquitos, rats, termites, deers, ants, etc etc which meet painful demise by humans as sentient animals while making exceptions for a few?

According to the Buddha, one should not kill any sentient being, sentient being defined as made up of the five skandhas: matter, sensation, perception, mental formations and consciousness.

I had a very easy time following this rule until my houseplants were attacked by spider mites and almost simultaneously my rats attacked by a different species of mites. How does one watch the beings (I don't apply "being" to the plants but do to my rats) they love be drained of their vitality by other beings and refuse to intervene? Is it right?

My wife, who is not a Buddhist, intervened, and both rats and plants survived but this experience deeply shook me. One might say I am experiencing a crisis of faith.

Re: Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law

#308

Post by AussieWog93 »

jallen_dot_dev wrote: post #184
AussieWog93 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Does being a “bug” justify being boiled alive? I'm picking on your language choices rather than the overall point of your argument, but have you ever boiled a live crustacean before (and by this, I specifically mean fully submerging the animal under water that is under a rolling boil on a high-temperature flame)? They don't writhe in agony and try to escape; they die pretty much instantaneously (I'm talking no movem…

A quick search shows a lot of sites saying it takes about 3 minutes for death, though I don't know what the original source is. But that makes sense to me. I mean, how would boiling water cause instant death? Do you think if you were dunked in boiling water you would instantly die? Granted we don't have the same physiology as lobsters, but, what exactly is the physical mechanism that would cause instant death from 10…

>what exactly is the physical mechanism that would cause instant death from 100°C water

I honestly don't know. I just know I chucked a yabby (small crayfish) in a pot and it died instantly.

Larger ones might take a tiny bit longer, but I'd be really surprised if it were more than three minutes. They're basically ready to eat by then.

Re: Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law

#309

Post by BrandoElFollito »

User23 wrote: post #245
lanevorockz wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boiling is supposed to be painless and it’s meaning behind “boiling a frog alive”.

A steam bath was considered to be one of the most painless forms of suicide for Roman patricians.

I have just heard about Seneca dying in a stem bath, but that was more by accident (he committed suicide by cutting his wrists but that was taking too long so he wanted the heat to speed up blood extraction. He however died of suffocation)

How was that suicide supposed to work? (suffocation like Seneca did?)

Re: Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law

#310

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

shkkmo wrote: post #114
Natsu wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are fetuses not sentient for most of their growth, then?

Human fetuses become sentient sometime between 8-30 weeks (depending on who you ask and how they define sentience).

> 30 weeks

30 weeks?? Obviously these people never experienced pregnancy. It's ridiculous that we argue about lobster intelligence when most people don't even know the basic facts about their own human biology.

(Another common and ridiculous meme is the "pregnancy after having sex once" idea.)

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