11c. Bekoff, M., & Harnad, S. (2015). Doing the Right Thing
Reading: Bekoff, M., & Harnad, S. (2015). Doing the Right Thing: An Interview With Stevan Harnad. Psychology Today
Instructions for commenting: Quote the passage on which you are commenting (use italics, indent). Comments can also be on the comments of others. Make sure you first edit your comment in another text processor, because if you do it directly in the blogger window you may lose it and have to write it all over again.
***EVERYBODY PLEASE NOTE: I REDUCED THE MINIMUM NUMBER OF SKYWRITINGS. BUT THE READINGS ARE **ALL** RELEVANT TO AN OVERALL UNDERSTANDING OF THE COURSE. SO, EVEN IF YOU DO NOT DO A SKYWRITING ON ALL OF THEM, AT LEAST FEED EACH READING YOU DO NOT READ TO CHATGPT AND ASK IT FOR A SUMMARY, SO YOU KNOW WHAT THE READING SAID — OTHERWISE YOU WILL NOT HAVE A COMPLETE GRASP OF THE COURSE TO INTEGRATE AND INTERCONNECT FOR THE FINAL EXAM.***
ReplyDeleteNote: this skywriting is for reading 11d but I don't think it has its own page, so I am commenting it here :)
ReplyDeleteThe authors of “What the COVID-19 crisis is telling humanity” explain the human influences behind the growing reports of zoonotic diseases, like COVID-19. The two most impactful of these being the hunting and sale of wild animals, and the overcrowding of farm animals. In order to hinder the spread and mutation of deadly diseases, the authors suggest outlawing wild animal related business, and switching to plant based food to decrease the strain on the farming system.
“What matters morally is not intelligence, language, or culture—it’s whether an organism can feel.”
ReplyDeleteThis passage raises a tricky question: how can Harnad and Bekoff claim to know "what matters morally" compared to anyone else? If moral consideration is based on minimizing suffering, each person could interpret the evidence differently. For example, scientific studies on fish nociceptors or behavioural responses provide part of the picture, but they cannot capture all populations of fish in all countries or account for every situation. Two people could look at the same study and disagree on whether an action causes too much or too little suffering. However, recognizing sentience—and the fact that organisms 'feel'—is extremely important because it identifies which beings can experience reflexes, suffering, trauma, love, and care, and therefore deserve moral consideration. Yet this is the limit of science: it can point us toward moral concern, but it cannot establish absolute morality. It still leaves questions about how we should act toward them in practice. Without some universal standard of morality or absolute truth, ethical judgments risk being subjective and inconsistent, leaving morality vulnerable to anarchy.
You raise an interesting point, but I feel it is kind of dangerous to play around with sentient lives for the sake of philosophical debates. The two people looking at the study may disagree on what is too much suffering, but the final decision should come to the sufferer (except when it may be necessary). Right now, we know that they at least have the possibility to "feel." Either way, shouldn't the possibility of causing unnecessary suffering be enough to make us give pause to it until we figure it out? Honestly, I am not even sure if I am right at all. However, I certainly believe that even if it was just a possibility, I do not want to take that chance.
DeleteHarnad (2015) explains that humans may continue to consume meat in practice as they may “either believe that (1) the hurting and killing is vitally necessary, or that (2) the beings don’t really feel the hurting, nor lose anything in the killing.” When I reflect on these claims, I think the second rationalization is especially relevant, even if subconscious. Still, this issue is clearly multifaceted. I am not convinced that most people explicitly believe cows, pigs, and chickens don’t suffer or lose anything when they are killed. Instead, two factors seem more compelling: (1) we are disconnected from the gruesome processes of the killing and suffering of livestock animals that occurs behind closed doors, and 2) meat consumption is so deeply normalized in our culture that buying it feels automatic, like grabbing milk. These two factors, when combined, make it easy to tell ourselves it’s fine to continue consuming meat, even when we know animals are suffering. Do you guys agree? Or am I missing something?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteHey Gabriel, thank you for your comment! I felt the same way while reading the interview. For many people, meat consumption feels almost "unconscious". Sadly, in the world we leave in, many have never question themselves on their meat consumption, or challenged normalized beliefs long enough to break apart from it.
DeleteWhen activists point out the gruesome processes behind meat production, it makes people uncomfortable. Instead of sitting with that discomfort and acknowledging the harm involved, many choose to push it aside and go back to their usual habits until the feeling fades. If people had to themselves slaughter the animals they eat, many wouldn't be able to do it. But modern society has placed the harm so far out of our day-to-day and has made meat consumption so available without questioning, allowing us to "naively" consume meat often without moral dilemmas.
I agree with both of you that habit and distance play a bigger role in meat consumption than any explicit belief that animals do not feel. What your discussion made me think about is how this distance functions almost like a psychological buffer. In the interview, Harnad says people convince themselves either that hurting animals is “vitally necessary” or that the animals “don’t really feel the hurting” (page 8). But those beliefs can survive only because the suffering is hidden from everyday life. When the harm is kept out of sight, it becomes easier for our feelings not to react.
DeleteSo I think the issue is not just normalization but also the way modern systems are designed to protect us from ever confronting the moral cost. If people had to witness the full process, even once, the cognitive comfort that keeps the habit going would break immediately
I agree with all of you and it reminded me of the quote by Paul Mccartney that was on the slides "If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian" and I completely agree. This quote is like your comment Emmanuelle - if people had to slaughter the meat themselves and had to see the cruel way we torture these animals there would be a significant difference in the number of meat consumers in the world. I think it's a combination of the fact that we are so used to it, we are so disconnected from the process of it, and we are so used to immediately squashing thoughts that make us uncomfortable. The whole system depends on the fact that most people will never have to confront the reality of what they’re participating in. It’s not just ignorance but it’s structural convenience. Exactly Harnad’s point: we ignore the possibility of animal feelings because it is convenient, not because we’ve solved the “other minds” problem. The invisibility of suffering makes it psychologically easier for us to assume there is none. Ultimately the discomfort shows us exactly where to start because once we recognize it, it becomes a lot harder to justify looking away
Delete: I find that all the points raised in this reply thread are highly pertinent. I think it can be summarized by the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance. It is uncomfortable for the mind to behave in a manner that goes against one’s beliefs. When confronted with the discrepancy between one’s actions and one’s beliefs, the individual has no choice but to resolve their cognitive dissonance in one of two ways: change behaviour or change beliefs. For example (I didn’t think of this example myself, I’m borrowing it from someone else, but I believe it helps drive home the point), say a daily smoker finally finds out that smoking is an unhealthy habit. They become uncomfortable with the idea that they are causing harm (to themself in this case). They can either quit smoking or convince themself that smoking isn’t actually harmful. In the case of meat consumption, when confronted with the reality of animals at the slaughterhouse, one can either quit eating meat or convince themself that animals are not actually suffering (either because they can’t feel pain or because the slaughter is painless). I agree that the distance between us and the animals makes it much easier to change beliefs. However, just as Professor Harnad mentioned in class, the only thing that matters is feeling. If there’s the capacity for feeling, then there’s the capacity for suffering. Thus, we have a responsibility to behave ethically toward animals if there is the slightest possibility that they may feel (which there is).
Delete“The principle is there: It is wrong to hurt or kill a feeling being if it is not vitally necessary. I even think that most people would agree with it, in principle.”
ReplyDeleteThis quote made me reflect on the behaviors of people around me as well as my own. As the quote said, most people would agree that it is wrong to hurt or kill a feeling being if it is not vitally necessary. In practice, our society desensitizes us to those practices, by protecting us from the processes to produce the food we buy in supermarkets. We are distanced from the reality of livestock farming and adjacent industries by mentally deflecting the blame of animal deaths on the people slaughtering them first hand, choosing to ignore how that food is in our plate to begin with. I was able to observe this phenomenon myself, as my grandfather was a farmer in his youth. He regrettably (his own words) killed chickens, calves and pigs with his own hands as a teenager, which made him avoid those meats as an adult. His job forced him to mentally correlate the food in his plate to the unfortunate animals he was killing to make a living, which he believed made him realize how much people enable animal suffering by simply buying supermarket ground beef for example. In the end, I do believe that eating animal products is entrenched in our societal practices, and the distance we have from the processes used to obtain those products makes us psychologically void of guilt.
“Feeling is the only thing that matters” even when we live in luxury.
ReplyDeleteThere was a time, when humans were hunting for vital necessity or because they thought it was vital necessity. Since then, meat has become a real industry, but today we know that killing animals is not a vital necessity (at least for all of us living in luxury). Why not change? Eating meat is entrenched in our society itself working on feelings. I think that society does not wants us to see suffering at all: genocides, slaughter houses and all the stuff that happens behind the curtains. If we all saw the suffering, we would feel guilt, pain, empathy (we have mirror neurons after all!). It would “hurt” “society’s feelings” if no one was to buy meat anymore because it would lose money if the industry closes (slippery slope I know). We are blinded from pain so we live in pleasure unconsciously (or consciously) driven by our own feelings. I believe that change feels like something too. It might be discomfort, confusion or shame and it is why we resist it in some way. Feelings are also the ones that will or will not convince us to become vegan after this class. We are just trying to do what “seems” to be the right thing with our "right kinda feelings”. Everything really is all about feelings just not the same “kind”.
Harnad connects the other minds problem to moral responsibility by arguing that uncertainty about sentience increases our obligation rather than weakens it. We never have direct access to another creature’s feelings, but if a being might be sentient, the risk of harming a feeling organism becomes too serious to ignore. In the interview he calls the needless hurting and killing of sentient beings the greatest moral shame of our species, especially since humans have the choice to avoid it. This means uncertainty is not a defence. It is the reason to give animals the benefit of the doubt.
ReplyDeleteThis interview with Stevan Harnad provides a valuable bridge between our course material and questions of moral and ethical responsibility. Harnad’s discussion of the other-minds problem, the fact that we can never have absolute certainty about what another being feels, serves not as an excuse for inaction, but as a compelling reason to take the side that minimizes harm. If we cannot be certain whether another creature is conscious or capable of suffering, the morally responsible response is to avoid risking unnecessary harm.
ReplyDeleteOne moment in the interview that particularly resonated with me was when Harnad is asked: “So if humanitarian regulations were strengthened and enforced, everything would be alright?” This echoed a question a student raised in class last week: if someone is unwilling or unable to become fully vegan, is it still ethically meaningful to “do their best” by choosing more regulated or “humane” animal products? Harnad acknowledges that “any improvement would lessen the suffering of the victims,” which is undeniably true. However, he also makes it clear that the deeper ethical issue remains. Causing avoidable suffering is still wrong. If harming humans for non-survival reasons would be considered unacceptable, then consistency demands that we extend the same moral consideration to all beings who may be sentient.
Hi Emily!
DeleteI really agree with you, and I think you capture Prof Harnad’s point really well. What stands out is that the other-minds problem isn’t a loophole that lets us off the hook, it actually raises the stakes. If we can never be fully certain about another being’s capacity to feel, then the most responsible response is to avoid actions that risk unnecessary suffering in the first place. Uncertainty should push us toward caution, not complacency.
Your connection to the “humane” or regulated alternatives is also important. Prof Harnad is fair in acknowledging that any reduction in suffering matters, and ethically, incremental improvement is better than none. But he’s also clear that this doesn’t resolve the deeper issue. If the harm is avoidable and not required for survival, then regulating it doesn’t make it morally acceptable, it just makes it easier to live with. As you point out, we would never apply this reasoning to humans. Consistency demands that if we take potential sentience seriously, we extend moral consideration beyond our own species, even when doing so is uncomfortable.
“I think the needless hurting and killing of sentient beings is the greatest moral shame of our species—the only species that has any choice in the matter, and the species that is doing all the needless hurting and killing, on a monstrous and still mounting scale.”
ReplyDeleteIn his interview with Psychology Today, Harnad (2015) critiques practices of animal use and treatment that cause unnecessary suffering, advocating for animals as sentient beings who are consistently exploited for potential human benefit. In doing so, he reframes the ethical question of animal treatment as a matter of “doing the right thing to the right kind of thing”. Despite not knowing what or even if animals feel (and whether that is similar to how we ourselves feel), we may still assume that nonhuman animals can feel. This ultimately ties into the other-minds problem, which suggests that we can only infer whether others have minds. If we understand mental states as felt states, then having a mind implies the capacity to feel—thereby supporting the assumption that nonhuman animals are sentient and capable of experiencing suffering.
“A lot of the hurting and killing we do of lab animal victims is not even justifiable as potentially life-saving or pain-reducing for humans”
ReplyDeleteThis section on the value of certain experiments is deeply interesting to me. I think part of the reason why is actually because of all the recent news of the U.S government shutdown and reduced funding for many scientific research institutes. In those instances, officials pointed to how the research was “pointless” - why should we care to study things as far off and inconsequential as black holes or “radical DEI and climate change alarmism” in the form of ““affinity groups,” for bird watchers” [1].
Of course, questioning the need for research from the basis of profit and funding isn’t the same argument that Hanard (2015) is making. But, this all came to my mind as we confront this question of how many experiments truly serve vital human needs, and how many are simply curiosity-driven or career-driven under the guise of science? Moreover, I’m curious what counts as “life-saving”. At what threshold of probability or benefit does the harm become acceptable? I’m thinking of potential cases where research involving animal harm serves as a mediating variable; perhaps it does not provide a life-saving conclusion, but it can indirectly eventually lead to it.
This is the kind of question that can just continue to devolve. Yet, while I may not have as firm of a stance as Harnad, I can certainly understand the moral dilemma that’s haunting us. After all, if we accept that animals are sentient, much of what we call “research,” “food,” or “fashion” becomes ethically dubious.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Cuts-to-Woke-Programs-Fact-Sheet.pdf
In the interview transcript, Harnad’s admission that “there was a lot of self-deception and hypocrisy in my reasoning” stood out to me. This honesty highlights how easy it is to ignore evidence of animal feeling when it conflicts with our habits or comfort. What resonated most was his insistence that animals are undeniably “feeling beings.” If we accept that, then a moral responsibility follows: doing what is right even when it is inconvenient. For me, this shifts the conversation from scientific debate to ethical accountability. Recognizing animal sentience isn’t just about understanding their minds, it is also about holding ourselves to a higher standard of compassion and action.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDelete"The principle is there: It is wrong to hurt or kill a feeling being if it is not vitally necessary. I even think that most people would agree with it, in principle.”
I fully agree with Professor Harnad’s moral stance. Recognizing that animals are sentient beings is pivotal, and the principle he lays out resonates deeply. What strikes me is how difficult it is for society to make this ethical shift in practice, especially when modern life makes it easy to ignore the suffering involved in industries like meat production. Given our increasing awareness of animal sentience, how can we push beyond individual recognition and create larger societal shifts that make non-harmful choices the norm?
Hi Randala, great points! I agree, most people accept the principle in theory, but the hard part is connecting it to what actually happens to animals. The suffering is mostly hidden, so the category “sentient being we’re harming” never fully grounds for people... I think broader change comes from making that connection harder to ignore: more transparency, more exposure to the realities of animal use, and more visible, easy alternatives. Once people see the referent of the principle, not just hear the words, maybe then norms can shift quickly.
Delete11.c. Harnad makes a strong moral case, but he kind of skips over the hardest part: figuring out what to do when we aren’t 100% sure which animals are sentient or how much they feel. He jumps straight from “animals probably feel” to “most human uses of animals are unjustifiable,” which feels too quick for such a huge claim. I agree with his intentions, but the interview could’ve been more convincing if he actually engaged with the gray areas instead of treating the whole issue as all-or-nothing.
ReplyDeleteI think you’re right to point out that Harnad moves quickly from ‘animals likely feel’ to the conclusion that most human uses of animals are unjustifiable. It's a big leap, and the interview format doesn’t leave much room for the nuanced middle ground. But I actually think maybe he treats uncertainty not as a gray zone to debate endlessly, but as the real reason to adopt a precautionary stance.
DeleteWhere I differ slightly from your critique is that I don’t think Harnad ignores the gray areas so much as he maybe reframes them. For him, the hardest part, figuring out which animals feel and how much, is the problem we can’t solve with certainty. Feeling is private; behaviour and biology are the only clues we have so because of that, he argues that waiting for 100% certainty before acting isn’t neutral, but actually it risks causing enormous suffering simply because the evidence isn’t perfect.
In other words, he’s not saying the issue is all-or-nothing; he’s saying uncertainty itself has ethical weight. So I feel like the gray areas don’t weaken his conclusion, but they’re the reason he thinks the conclusion follows.
What struck me most is how you connect categorization to the ethics of how we treat animals. You describe realizing that most animal research (and almost all animal use in daily life) fails your core criterion: don’t hurt or kill a feeling being unless it’s vitally necessary, which I remember we spoke about in class. Once that category boundary is applied consistently, the moral picture becomes unavoidable. I also found your use of the Turing Test helpful for thinking about sentience. If we rely on behavior to attribute minds to other humans, the same evidence should force us to acknowledge animal feeling too. It feels like a cognitive correction as much as an ethical one. Do you think recognizing animal sentience can ever be grounded purely verbally, or, like symbol grounding, does it require direct sensorimotor experience (T3) to really “get it”?
ReplyDeleteOne thing that Harnad stated is for certain— we have regulations in place to ensure humans are not harmed, but due to this thought that animals are “lesser” beings, we do not uphold ourselves to the same standard for animals. Indeed, the overconsumption widespread in our society has caused the unnecessary killings of most animals. When it comes to using animals in scientific research however, some of our most influential findings (in both human and animal studies) came from experiments we now recognize as profoundly unethical and should never be repeated. This forces a difficult question: how do we advance scientific understanding while acknowledging that we cannot directly know what animals feel? Harnad proposes a sound solution: if sentience in non-human species remains uncertain, then any research involving them should follow a precautionary principle: minimizing harm not because we have proof of suffering but because we lack proof of its absence.
ReplyDeleteI think it's fascinating how Harnad's ethical stance on veganism is so tightly woven into his cognitive science themes, especially the other-minds ‘problem’. He explicitly states his central moral principle: "It is wrong to hurt or kill a feeling being if it is not vitally necessary". This moral principle hinges entirely on sentience, which is definecd as the capacity to feel. He views the far too relevant assumption that nonhuman animals don't feel pain as dangerous skepticism, leading to suffering. He suggests that understanding and protecting animal feelings relies on enhancing human mind-reading abilities across species, which links back to the Turing Test methodology in cognitive science. We hope that research focusing on animal sentience will help solve this problem and encourage people to "do the right thing to the right kind of thing". His ethical commitment to veganism highlights the real-world, moral stakes of distinguishing feeling from mere function, the feeling/doing problem.
ReplyDeleteThis interview, along with the paper in 11b, really reinforces the idea that uncertainty shouldn’t weaken our ethical responsibilities toward animals. In fact, it should make them stronger. Harnad argues that when we cannot know for sure what another being feels, the morally responsible reaction is caution. Because the cost of being wrong falls entirely on the animal, uncertainty becomes a reason to protect, not a justification to dismiss. In the interview, one statement struck me deeply: Dr. Harnad calls unnecessary harm to animals “the greatest moral shame of our species.” It’s a bold claim, but it feels true when we look at how normalized animal suffering has become in our daily lives. For instance, food production, fashion, and entertainment are just a few examples among others of how so many industries rely on harm that is rarely questioned, partly because we grow up inside systems that make that harm seem ordinary. Dr. Harnad's wording exposes how easily we overlook suffering simply because we have learned not to see it. Both the interview and the paper challenge the way we use uncertainty to excuse our actions. We often tell ourselves that animals might not feel like we do, that their behaviour is “just reflex,” or that their suffering is less significant. But Dr. Harnad’s work flips that logic: if we don’t know, then we have an even greater obligation to act as if they do feel, because the risk of denying their sentience is far greater than the risk of acknowledging it. This connection between uncertainty and moral responsibility is the most powerful takeaway. It challenges the comfortable narratives we use to excuse harm and asks us to rethink what “ethical caution” should actually mean in practice.
ReplyDelete"It is wrong to hurt or kill a feeling being if it is not vitally necessary."
ReplyDeleteThis passage raises a significant challenge: who defines the threshold of "vital necessity"? While Harnad distinguishes between a lion's biological need for meat and a human's choice, the grey area of what constitutes a "vital" human interest remains open to interpretation. Science, through the TT and behavioral study, can establish that a being is "the right kind of thing" (a sentient being), but it cannot provide a definitive moral calculus for when one life's interests truly outweigh another's. If "vital necessity" is subjective, varying across cultures, economic statuses, or individual beliefs, the moral framework risks becoming a sliding scale. We are left with a powerful directive that identifies the victims of our actions, yet we still lack a universal mechanism to resolve the conflicts between our own perceived needs and the feelings of those we acknowledge can suffer. Like the HP of consciousness itself, the HP of morality seems to be that science can point to the presence of feeling, but it cannot force a consensus on how much that feeling should "count" when it clashes with human desire.
In this interview, Harnad describes categorization as “doing the right thing with the right kind of thing”. This simple idea covers almost everything our brains do, including Communication, which is essentially verbal categorization. In terms of Computation, he attempts to model these brain mechanisms yet admits to facing difficulties in reasoning computation logic. However, the "other-minds problem" means we can never truly know if another creature feels. This makes categorization a high-stakes moral decision, as we often use it to decide which beings are "sentient" enough to avoid being harmed. I think that we use categorization to reason to our own convenience as our personal minds can process experiencing.
ReplyDelete