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A seafood firm wants to farm octopus. Activists say they're too smart for that

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Re: A seafood firm wants to farm octopus. Activists say they're too smart for that

#111

Post by DiggyJohnson »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #33
irrational wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You bring up a good point about penguins. They and chickens are both birds, so why are we finally eating chickens but not penguins? Cuteness definitely plays a role.

Chickens have been domesticated a long time ago because they were around, flightless, and easy to breed. You won't even see a penguin until you reach high latitudes and they eat fish... Even if they both tasted good (which I have no idea) very obvious practical reasons would explain the difference.

For some reason I think penguins would taste very rich and gamey. I think I'm imagining this due to their cold resistance implying large amounts of fat. Anyone know?

Re: A seafood firm wants to farm octopus. Activists say they're too smart for that

#112

Post by jhanschoo »

joak wrote: post #71
jpmattia wrote: post #16

The older I get, the less I want anything sentient on my plate.

"Sentient" is ill-defined, you can apply it to almost anything you want. From its Latin ethnology it means: able to feel or perceive.

The Wikipedia article on it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentience) summarizes the situation well; philosophers use it consistently, but it seems that science-fiction writers got confused and hence the confusion in layperson usage.

> In modern Western philosophy, sentience is the ability to experience sensations. In different Asian religions, the word "sentience" has been used to translate a variety of concepts. In science fiction, the word "sentience" is sometimes used interchangeably with "sapience", "self-awareness", or "consciousness".

Re: A seafood firm wants to farm octopus. Activists say they're too smart for that

#113

Post by jurynulifcation »

Ekaros wrote: post #57
dbspin wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm genuinely curious, is this just edgy humour, or is there any culture that regularly eats cat?

Is it really any different from any other animal? So why would it not have possibility to be on plate? After all one of my life bucket lists is to taste as many species as possible...

That's pretty sickening, I hope you keep away from polite society for the rest of our sakes, and hopefully you won't have too much longer to pursue your bucket list.

Re: A seafood firm wants to farm octopus. Activists say they're too smart for that

#114

Post by efitz »

PrimeMcFly wrote: post #101
efitz wrote: post #51

We know that octopuses and many other animals are intelligent. We don't know for certain if anything nonhuman is sentient. Scientists and activist groups have been designing frameworks for sentience and tests to measure it. This paper [1] (about crabs, but discusses octopuses) has a very interesting section talking about defining and measuring sentience. It was used to support a recent bill in the UK [2] attempting t…

> We know that octopuses and many other animals are intelligent. We don't know for certain if anything nonhuman is sentient. You are mixing up terms. All animals are sentient. Not all animals are intelligent. Only very few animals appear to be sapient . Octopuses are certainly one of the few animals that appear to be beyond a reasonable doubt.

The lay definition of sentience involves the ability to respond to stimuli, as you point out, but people involved with animal rights activism use the term sentience to refer to the capacity to suffer, which implies a sense of self.

Intelligence is the ability to acquire and apply knowledge- reasoning, problem solving, etc. This is readily observed in many experiments with octopuses.

Re: A seafood firm wants to farm octopus. Activists say they're too smart for that

#115

Post by tiberious726 »

efitz wrote: post #51

We know that octopuses and many other animals are intelligent. We don't know for certain if anything nonhuman is sentient. Scientists and activist groups have been designing frameworks for sentience and tests to measure it. This paper [1] (about crabs, but discusses octopuses) has a very interesting section talking about defining and measuring sentience. It was used to support a recent bill in the UK [2] attempting t…

Technically, all animals are sentient, and many plants are too. Sentient means capable of responding to sensation. Sapient means what Issac Asimov incorrectly called sentient. I can't even tell what that first footnote is trying to prove: sentience is provable with much less than their criteria, and actual sapience requires much more (turing test if you're easy about it, turing test referring to a shared manipulatable world if you buy Davidson's arguments)

Re: A seafood firm wants to farm octopus. Activists say they're too smart for that

#116

Post by PrimeMcFly »

efitz wrote: post #114
PrimeMcFly wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We know that octopuses and many other animals are intelligent. We don't know for certain if anything nonhuman is sentient. You are mixing up terms. All animals are sentient. Not all animals are intelligent. Only very few animals appear to be sapient . Octopuses are certainly one of the few animals that appear to be beyond a reasonable doubt.

The lay definition of sentience involves the ability to respond to stimuli, as you point out, but people involved with animal rights activism use the term sentience to refer to the capacity to suffer, which implies a sense of self. Intelligence is the ability to acquire and apply knowledge- reasoning, problem solving, etc. This is readily observed in many experiments with octopuses.

> but people involved with animal rights activism use the term sentience to refer to the capacity to suffer, which implies a sense of self.

Yes, I always have had a problem with that. They use it incorrectly, and most don't even consider the idea of a sense of self as relevant, only the ability to suffer, although the latter is only relevant in the context of the former IMO.

> Intelligence is the ability to acquire and apply knowledge- reasoning, problem solving, etc. This is readily observed in many experiments with octopuses.

Intelligence can be a property of 'dumb' systems though, e.g. slime mold and plants.

Octopuses don't just exhibit intelligence, but rather metacognition. They can think about themselves in relation to their environment and manipulate their environment to suit their needs, willfully and deliberately, and not in any replanned way.

They also are capable of mental time travel, the ability to beware of and plan for the future, not in an instinctual way such gathering nuts but on a short term basis in reaction to their environment and stimuli.

There are very few animals who exhibit these traits, and these traits are generally a strong indicator of self-awareness and intelligence to the level of at least a toddler.

Re: A seafood firm wants to farm octopus. Activists say they're too smart for that

#117

Post by euroderf »

jamwil wrote: post #97
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The older I get, the more I have the sense (both intuitively and through evidence) that I'm far more like the animals I've eaten than I am unlike them. That sense has become more and more attuned, and it has gotten to the point that I don't see animals as food anymore. They're just a different kind of people trying to survive. Since I don't actually need to eat them to survive, it seems akin to murder to consume them…

I also have grown more attuned to the fact that humans are just another animal, but in practice this has put me more at ease with eating meat as we are omnivorous predators in the food chain. I am much more aligned, however, with sustainable harvesting (hunting) than industrial farming these days. There is nothing natural about the modern slaughterhouse.

I'm not ready for the leap to meatlessness, but my halfway house is to use meat as a flavoring, a sort of spice, rather than as a centerpiece.

Re: A seafood firm wants to farm octopus. Activists say they're too smart for that

#119

Post by tiberious726 »

pvaldes wrote: post #108
joak wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sentient" is ill-defined, you can apply it to almost anything you want. From its Latin ethnology it means: able to feel or perceive.

The term was weaponized to confuse deliberately.

It's Isaac Asimov's fault. I think he was just confused. Never assume malice when ignorance/incompetence will suffice and all

Re: A seafood firm wants to farm octopus. Activists say they're too smart for that

#120

Post by tiberious726 »

euroderf wrote: post #118

Anyone wrestling with these issues could usefully read Animal Liberation by Pete Singer. He delves into many varieties of abstinence from speciesism (as he calls it).

"Philosophy and Animal Life" is a collection of essays from the recent hard-hitters in English speaking philosophy
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