Academic Activism: Sensitizing to Sentience and Suffering

Academic Activism:
Sensitizing to Sentience and Suffering
Stevan Harnad
Psychology, UQÀM
Cognitive Science, McGill
Web Science, Southampton

Godlovitch, S., Godlovitch, R., & Harris, J. (1971). Animals, men and morals: An enquiry
into the maltreatment of non-humans.
Berlin Sentience 2016
“…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 crime
against humanity.
But the horrors inflicted on nonhuman animals
were and are and would be
humanity’s greatest crime --
-- if they were recognized to be a crime
as they should be.

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

Matthieu Riccard’s 1st and 2nd Query
1. Are you in favor of causing suffering
unnecessarily?
1. 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.

genocide

Suffering

Necessity

Darwinian Survival Machines

Evolution is a Psychopath
Selfish Genes

But organisms are not just selfish:
Oxytocin and Vasopressin

Imprinting

adoption

Consciousness = Sentience

The “Hard Problem”

The Other-Minds Problem

Other-Minds :
Mirror Neurons

Golden Rule

Rationalizations:
1. Necessary for our survival or health
2. Animals eat animals too
3. Better off than in the jungle
4. They don’t suffer

Merchant of Venice
W. 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 54
LOI VISANT L’AMÉLIORATION DE LA SITUATION
JURIDIQUE DE L’ANIMAL
LE PARLEMENT DU QUÉBEC DÉCRÈTE CE QUI SUIT :
PARTIE I MODIFICATIONS AU CODE CIVIL DU QUÉBEC
1. 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 de
sensibilité et ils ont des impératifs biologiques.
Global Action: Change the Law

Cognitive Sciences Institute 2018
The Other Minds Problem: Animal Sentience and Cognition
Le 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.

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 2014
http://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

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