You don't need to know if it has a "subjectivity" to know if you can torture and kill it, you can rely on the writhing and squealing. Making up artificial distinctions and questions with no answers is just a conceit we get into, ultimately to justify whatever we want. There are too many people on the planet and we need to "process" a lot of life for our benefit.

Anyway, if there is no mind in the sense of a personal identity or a reflective thought process, then really you're just torturing and killing a set of sense perceptions, so what would be the basis of a morality that forbids that?

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glenstein 6 days ago | parent [-]

>Anyway, if there is no mind in the sense of a personal identity or a reflective thought process

I don't think "mind" is limited to those two things, and I think it may be on a continuum rather than binary, and they may also be integrally related to the having of other senses.

I also think they probably do have some non trivial degree of mind even in the strong sense, and that mental states that aren't immediately tied to self reflection are independently valuable because even mere "sense perceptions" include valenced states (pain, comfort) that traditionally tend to fall within the scope of moral consideration. I also think their stake in future modes of being over their long term evolutionary trajectory is a morally significant interest they have.

	▲	socrateswasone 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		Saying it might be on a continuum just obfuscates things. What do you mean exactly? If there is no sense of self or personal identity, how is that different than a block of wood or a computer? That there might be "mental" functions performed doesn't give it subjectivity if there is no subject performing them. And if there is no persistent reflective self there is no subject. You could call instincts or trained behaviors mental, activities of a kind of mind if you wanted to. But if it's not self aware it's not a moral subject.