Metaethics

Right Thing, Wrong Reasons

Richard Brown 3 Comments

Suppose that there is some theory of ethics that, though not the correct theory, nonetheless results in the people who follow it sincerely performing actions that, as it happens, are the ones that the correct moral theory prescribe.

To give an example. Suoppose that Kant is right that an action performed for any reason beside the conscious recognition of ones’ duty is not a morally praiseworthy action. Now suppose that there is this other theory (Mill thought it was utilitarianism, but it may be any other theory that you like besides Kant’s…say a virtue theory, or a Divine Command theory, or a Rawlsian theory….doesn’t matter…) that in each case makes the same prediction as the Categorical Imperative.  Suppose further that someone who follows this theory, though acting for some reason other than duty, nonetheless in each case does the action that is perfectly consistent with duty (in Kant’s terms).

Is it the case that this person performs no morally praiseworthy actions? I am inclined to say that these actions are morally good and so, in some cases, Kant can’t be right that the only critereon for an actions rightness is whether it is motivated by duty.

Now, an interesting question (to me) is whether or not I can consitently will this kind of world; that is whether or not the maxim that explicitly mention that the actor is not acting from duty pass the test of teh Categorical Imperative. It seems to me, prima facie, that I can consistently will the kind of world I described above…but I can see where there might be objections.

First, one might object that given Kan’ts view about rationality and acting freely that the people in the world I described would not be acting freely and so can’t be acting morally. But in the most general sense these people do seem to be acting in a Kantian kind of way. Their will’s are determined by a law of their own choosing. But even if one can’y stand this way of putting it, their are other notions of freedom of the will underwhich these people are acting free, and, lest we forget, there are those inspired by Frankfurnt (I am not one of them) who think that being free doesn’t have very much to do with being morally blameworthy/praiseworthy.

Second, one might object that these poeple don’t know the correct moral theory and so don’t know that they are acting morally. Since they don’t know that they are acting morally it isn’t possible that they are. If this is right then perhaps the world I described is a kind of moral Gettier case…that might be interesting….but what is it that is supposed to be controdictory about doing the right thing without knowing that you are?

Emotive Realism

Richard Brown 1 Comment

In some earlier posts I have been clearing the way for presenting the metaethical view that I defend (The Meaning and Use of ‘is True’, Truth, Justification, and the Quasi-Realist Way, Meaning and Justification, Reason and the Nature of Obligation, and A Simple Argument for Moral Realism). What I want to do now is to introduce Emotive Realism which is supposed to be a way of combining classical emotivism with moral realism.

The basic idea is simple enough. When I say that something is right/wrong/good/bad I express my moral sentiment in just the way that the classical emotivists thought and at the same time I assert (that is express my belief) that my moral sentiment is the correct way to feel about the person/act in question. As an example, when I say something like ‘suicide bombing is wicked’ I express my moral condemnation of suicide bombing; that is I express my moral feeling about suicide bombing. This is the illocutionary act. It is successful just in case you recognize that I intend to be expressing my moral condemnation. I also at the same time express the belief that moral condemnation is the correct attitude to have towards suicide bombing. I (usually, but by no means always) do this with the perlocutionary goal of trying to get you have the same attitude. Whether we are successful in this perlocutionary goal has no bearing on whether or not we are successful in our illocutionary act. In other words, you may ‘grasp’ the attitude that I express (namely that I morally disapprove and think this is the correct way to feel) without your thereby coming to share my attitude.

There are of course bells and whistles that have to be added to the theory (like an account of the semantics of moral sentences) which I intend to talk about later. But here what I want to point out is that this kind of theory is in principle compatible with any theory of justification. The issues of justification, on this view boils down to answering the question ‘is the belief that I express ever true?’ The answer to this question could be ‘no’ in which case you would have something like Ayer’s version of emotivism. It could also be ‘yes’ at which point we have further questions, like is the truth of the belief robust or not? If we say no to this question then we would have a version of expressivism like Blackburn’s. But it should also be clear that we can say ‘yes’ to this last question, in which case we would have an emotive realism and the belief will be true in virtue of the correct theory of moral justification.

A Simple Argument for Moral Realism

Richard Brown 35 Comments

 OK so I am back! Vegas was a blast (though I am broke-as-a-joke now, I didn’t win anything!!!) and I learned a lot…I will definately be posting on some stuff inspired by the conference later…though for now if I hear the word ‘consciousness’ one more time I may loose my mind 🙂

There seem to be obvious cases of moral statements that are straight-forwardly true. So for instance, ‘Hitler was evil’ certainly seems to be a true statement about Hitler, for that matter ‘smashing the heads of babies for fun is wrong’ and ‘barring special circumstances, promises should be kept’ also look like they are obviously true. From these considerations a simple argument for moral realism can be formulated.

Granted that there are things that are totally and obviously right (i.e. all moral theories will agree that these things are morally good), and that there are things that are totally and obviously wrong (i.e. all moral theories will agree that these things are morally bad), it looks like what we have is a continuum. Since each end point of the continuum is well defined, it would seem that there must be an answer to the in-between cases like eating meet and abortion, though of course we may not know the answer as of yet.

Reason and the Nature of Obligation

Richard Brown 13 Comments

There has been some interesting discussion over at Think Tonk (The Supernaturalistic Fallacy) and Common Sense Philosophy (The Supernaturalististic Fallacy…?) about naturalism and the foundation of obligations. In particular the issue is whether or not naturalism has the resources to accomodate moral realism. I think that its does, and am sympathetic to the supernaturalistic fallacy.

The view that if God did not exist then all things would be permissible is familiar and quite common, and just about as wrongheaded as a view can be. The senisble view is not that God’s commands make something moral, but that he commands us to do what is moral (uh, the Euthyphro question…hello?)…that this is actually what most theists have in mind already can be seen by answering the following question: Could God command us to rape? For, if He did, then raping would be morally acceptable, right? The answer is a resounding ‘no! He would not command us to do that!’ But why not? The reason is that God would not command us to do something immoral. So, what role does God play? Well, He sets up the system of rewards and punishments that are supposed to get us to actually do what is right. But that is very different from His making the things to be right or wrong in the first place! Now how do we know what we ought to do? The answer is simple; via the use of reason.

This kind of position has had a long and venerable history in Western philosophy. Locke very clearly has this kind of view in mind in the Essay. Consider this passage from Book IV

Where there is no property, there is no injustice, is a Proposition as certain as any Demonstration in Euclid: For the Idea of Property, being a right to any thing; and the idea to which the Name Injustice is given, being the Invasion or Violation of that right; it is evident, that because these Ideas being thus established, and these Names annexed to them, I can as certainly know this Proposition to be true, as that a Triangle has three Angles equal to two right ones. Again, No Government allows absolute Liberty: The Idea of Government being the establishment of Society upon certain Rules or Laws, which require Conformity to them; and the Idea of Absolute Liberty being for any one to do whatever he pleases; I am capable of being certain of the Truth of this Proposition, as of any in Mathematicks.

We start with the definitions of the concepts and deduce the moral propositions in just the same way that mathematicians start with definitions and deduce theorems. So for instance from the fact that I say ‘I promise to pay you back’ combined with the definition that promising just means that you have placed yourself under an obligation it follows that you ought to keep the promise. This just is Searle’s famous derivation of an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’ (Searle 1964) which Locke anticipates before anyone even thought there was such a problem!

So for Locke, we have the obligation to keep our promises (even in the state of nature) but that does not give us a reason to keep them. Thus it is important for Locke that God exist and that there be a system of reward and punishment in the afterlife in order to give us the motivation to do what we determine to be right with our reason. This is evident from what Locke says in Book II of the Essay

Of these Moral Rules, or Laws, to which Men generally refer, and by which they judge of the Rectitude or Pravity of their Actions, there seem to me to three sorts, with three different Enforcements, or Rewards and Punishments. For since it would be utterly in vain, to suppose a Rule set to the free actions of Man, without annexing to it some Enforcement of Good and Evil [read: Pleasure and Pain], to determine his Will, we must, where-ever we suppose a law, suppose also some Reward or Punishment annexed to that Law. It would be in vain for one intelligent Being, to set a Rule to the Actions of another, if he had it not in his Power to reward the compliance with, and punish deviation from his Rule, by some Good and Evil, that is not the natural product and consequence of the action it self. For that being a natural Convenience, or Inconvenience would operate of itself without a Law. This, if I mistake not, is the true nature of all Law, properly so called.  (Ch. XXVIII, 6)

These three sorts of moral rules are first divine law, second civil law and third the law of opinion (ibid. section 7). Each of these kinds of laws comes with it its own kind of punishment and rewards and so we have motivation to obey each kind. So we use reason to determine what the moral laws are and what counts as moral and immoral but we still need something that ‘determines the will’ else the law will be ‘utterly in vain’.

Of these three it is the divine law that is the most important as it via the divine law that “Men judge whether their actions are Sins, or Duties”.

The Divine Law, Whereby I mean, that Law which God has set to the actions of Men, whether promulgated to them by the light of Nature, or the voice of Revelation. That God has given a Rule whereby Men should govern themselves, I think there is no body so brutish as to deny. He has a Right to do it, we are his Creatures: He has Goodness and Wisdom to direct our Actions to that which is best: and he has Power to enforce it by Rewards and Punishments, of infinite weight and duration, in another Life: for no body can take us out of his hands. This is the only true touchstone of moral Rectitude; and by comparing them to this Law, it is, that Men judge of the most considerable Moral Good and Evil of their Actions; that is, whether as Duties, or Sins, they are like to procure them happiness, or misery, from the hands of the ALMIGHTY. (ibid section 8) 

In the state of nature we are able to rationally deduce the moral law, but we as yet have no reason to abide by it. God, knowing how we are built and so knowing that we need some motivation to follow the law, was kind enough to set up a system of rewards and punishments to provide the necessary motivation.

This way of reading Locke has him in close agreement with Hobbes. For Hobbes a law is a command from someone who has the right to command us (Ch. 15 paragraph 40) and so what he (Hobbes) has been calling laws of nature are more properly called “theorems concerning what conduceth to the conservation and defense” of ourselves yet, “if we consider the same theorems, as delivered in the word of God, that by right commandeth all things; then they are properly called laws,” and this is exactly the way that Locke unpacks the moral law. God has the right to command us, as we are his creatures and he has the goodness and wisdom of what is best for us and so we can know that the law is for our own good. The law being for our own good gives us some reason to follow it, but, just to make sure, God has set up the powerful motivation system of eternal punishments and rewards. So whereas Hobbes argues that we need a strong Earthly authority to punish those who transgress the law, Locke has a strong authority in the form of God. 

It is in Chapter 14 of Leviathan that Hobbes defines the concepts of obligation, duty, justice and injustice let us look closely at what he says.

Right is said to be laid aside, either by simply renouncing it: or by transferring it to another. By simply RENOUNCING; when he cares not to who the benefit thereof redoundeth. By TRANSFERRING; when he intendedth the benefit thereof to some certain person, or persons. And when a man hath in either manner abandoned, or granted away his right; then he is said to be OBLIGED, or BOUND, not to hinder those, to whom such right is granted, or abandoned, from the benefit of it: and that he ought, and it is his DUTY, not to make void that voluntary act of his own: and that such hindrance is INJUSTICE, and INJURY, as being sine jure; the right being before renounced, or transferred. So that injury, or injustice, in the controversies of the world, is somewhat like to that, which in the disputations of the scholars is called absurdity. For as it is there called an absurdity, to contradict what one maintained in the beginning: so in the world, it is called injustice, and injury, voluntarily to undo that, which from the beginning had been voluntarily done. The way by which a man simply renounceth, or tranferreth his right, is a declaration, or signification, by some voluntary and sufficient sign, or signs, that he doth so renounce, or transfer…and the same are the BONDS, by which men are bound, and obliged: bonds, that have their strength, not from their own nature, (for nothing is more easily broken than a man’s word,) but from fear of some evil consequence upon the rupture. (p227; emphasis added))

This passage is strikingly similar to Locke’s view. First notice that he here agrees with Locke’s definition of injustice as the violation of a right. Once you transfer or renounce a right you no longer have that right and so hindering the person who now has the right is an action without right  (sine jure: without right) and by hindering them you are now violating that person’s right and so acting unjustly.

This suggests a way of reading this passage which puts Hobbes in line with Locke’s account in the Essay. When I make a covenant I thereby acquire an obligation to perform it in virtue of my voluntarily transferring a right. I can see this by the use of my reason, and in fact deduce that not to do it results in a contradiction. But this does not give me any reason to fulfill that obligation. In order to fulfill that obligation I need some other kind of motivation, and Hobbes says that there are “but two imaginable helps to strengthen it. And those are either fear of the consequences of breaking their word; or glory and pride in appearing not to need to break it.” (p229) This second ‘help’ Hobbes doubts can be relied on. It is fear of the consequences of breaking their word that we should count on. As he says,

The passion to be reckoned upon, is fear; whereof there be two very general objects: one, the power of spirits invisible; the other, the power of those men they shall therein offend. Of these two, though the former be of the greater power, yet the fear of the later is commonly the greater fear” (ibid)

So this is our motivation for performing what we have contracted to do in much the same way as in Locke’s account of why we do what we ought, but it is not the source of our obligation. The source of our obligation is the fact that we have made it known by signs that we intend to enter into a covenant; the obligation stems from the “force of our words”but again, this does not give us a reason to fulfill it even though not doing so results in a kind of absurdity. This suggests that we can make binding promises in the state of nature but that we will have no reason to perform them unless we have a very strong fear of what will happen should we not do so which is exactly what Locke argues.

So God is not the source of morality, He is the enforcer of morality…so if he does not exist the worse case scenerio is that people may not have very strong motivating reasons to do what they ought to do…but so what? As Kant rightly pointed out, someone who acts morally solely to get rewarded (or to avoid punishment) is not really acting morally in the first place….so the existence of God may actually be a hinderance to morality….

Meaning and Justification

Richard Brown 1 Comment

So, I am finally done working on my paper ‘Consciousness, Higher-Order Thoughts, and What It’s Like‘. It has been converted into both PowerPoint and Poster format and I am looking forward to presenting it in the upcoming Weeks…but before I do I want to start what will be a series of posts on Emotive Realism, the metaethical view that I defend.

In some earlier posts (The Meaning and Use of ‘is True’, and ‘Truth, Justification and the Quasi-Realist Way‘) I argued against Simon Blackburn’s Quasi-Realism by showing that the deflationary account of truth that he relies on is unmotivated and cannot be support a satisfying account of justification. Ultimately what I want to do is to argue for a view that is emotive but that is also a kind of realism and which does nto hide behind the smoke and mirrors of deflationsim.

In this post I want show that Emotivism, and views like it, are actually two claims that can come apart; one about the meaning of ethical terms, the other about the justification of moral judgments. Emotivism is so often thought of as an anti-realist view mostly as a matter of the historical accident that its earliest defenders happened to be irrealists. If this is true then they is no principled reason why an emotive theory could’t also be a kind of realism. Along the way I wantto say something about what moral realism is.

The claim that these two issues (i.e. of th meaning of moral words and the justification of moral judgements) are seperate is not a popular view. In fact it is often thought that your views on one force your views on the other. In particular it is often argued that a philosopher’s theory of justification determines her theory of semantics and that this semantic theory is the only way to tell the difference between someone who is a ‘real-realist’ and quasi-realists like Simon Blackburn.  

David Copp (Copp 2001) is a nice example of this. He says that the distinctive doctrine of moral realism is that the moral realist thinks that the moral predicates refer to robust moral properties. So to say that suicide bombing is morally wrong is to assert that suicide bombing has the robust moral property of being wrong. To say that moral properties are ‘robust’ is to say that “[they] have the same basic metaphysical status as ordinary non-moral properties,” (p 4). It is of course a matter of some controversy just what the status of ordinary non-moral properties is. But in moral contexts there are, broadly speaking, two candidates and an ethical realist like Copp is committed to one of them. On the one hand we might think that there are non-natural properties and that ‘good’ and other moral words pick some of those properties out, or we might think that non-natural properties don’t exist and insist that moral properties must be natural properties and ‘good’ and other moral words pick some of those out.

The irrealist, on this view, is one who denies that the moral predicates refer to robust moral properties of either variety. It is, in fact, a huge mistake according to the irrealists to think that moral predicates act like non-moral predicates and refer to, or denote, or whatever, some kind of property. Moral predicates are in a different kind of business all-together and only look as though they stand for properties. What they really do is serve to express our moral sentiments, in much the same way that ‘ouch!’ express pain.

Notice though that even though we are told that we can differentiate these views by their semantics this is really supposed to be diagnostic of their views about the justification of moral judgments. The robust moral properties that moral predicates refer to are supposed to be the truthmakers for moral judgments in exactly the same way that non-moral properties are supposed to be the truthmakers for non-moral judgments. The irrealist denies that there are such properties and instead claims that moral judgments are justified by the emotional, conative, or motivational states of people. This leads us to the real distinction between realism and irrealism: If two people disagree over some fundamental moral claim, like whether unjustified killing is morally permissible, can, in some sense, both be right? A realist will claim that only one of them can be right, whereas an irrealist will claim that they can both be right. One way to secure this is by appealing to the kind of semantics already talked about, that is, by appealing to moral properties and claiming that the task of the moral predicates is to refer or denote those properties.

But there are really two questions that have been so far unaddressed in the meaning side of the question. Since we want to seperate meaning from use it then becomes important to assess whether the meaning claim that the emotivists made was really a claim about the meaning of the words or whether it was a claim about how the word was used independently of its meaning. It seems to me to be hostorically correct to say the latter, but even if it weren’t it is clearly possible to modernize the theory by saying that moral utterances are used to express our moral sentiments independently of their meaning, in much the same way that ‘I feel like a burrito’ (said in response to ‘what do you want for lunch? or something) expresses my desire to have a burrito for lunch independently of its meaning.

This could be the case even if the sentence that we said was literally false (as is the case when I say, of a talkitive friend, “he never shuts up”) This means that the issue of the meaning of the sentence that I say and the issue of the justification of the moral judgment I thereby express are completely seperate. There is no reason to think that in order to be a moral realist you must be committed to moral properties and to a semantics of moral words that has them referring to thos moral properties.

Truth, Justification, and the Quasi-realist Way

Richard Brown 3 Comments

In an earlier post (The Meaning and Use of ‘is True’) I argued that when discussing minimalism about truth we need to distinguish between redundancy theories (claims about the meaning is ‘is true’) and deflationism (claims about the nature of the property that the predicate is supposed to pick out). Once we see that redundancy theories conflate meaning and use we need an independant reason to accept deflationsim about truth. In this post I will argue against deflationism by arguing that it cannot account for our common sense feelings about justification in moral judgements by looking at the way that Simon Blackburn has appealed to minimalism in formulating his quasi-realist form of expressivism.

The basic problem for the deflationsist is that whatever account of moral contradiction they give will also be the correct account of contradiction in matters of taste. So ‘broccoli is disgusting’ will be true if and only if broccoli is disgusting and someone who said that it was not would really be contradicting me. From within the ‘taste framework’ broccoli is disgusting and I can just see that the Broccoli-ban and their feelings about the taste of broccoli are just objectively wrong. Of course all that any of this means is that I accept or agree with the sentiment that I expressed when I said that broccoli was disgusting. The story we tell here exactly parallels the story that is told in the case of moral judgments about cruelty, the Taliban, or whatever.

But clearly there could not be more of a difference between these two kinds of judgments. In particular, it seems obvious that this story about broccoli is just wrong. Common sense tells us that our feelings about broccoli may depend on two things. One, we may think that broccoli has a certain specific kind of taste and some people like that taste and others dislike it, which one it is may depend on what the person can taste, or it may depend on how they were raised, or just simply that they are disposed to like it or not and all of these vary from person to person. So there is nothing wrong with a person who thinks that broccoli tastes good, they simply have different tastes than ours and which you have doesn’t really matter. On the other hand we might say that broccoli has no determinate taste, it all depends on the person who does the tasting and the way that their taste buds are constituted.  Taste is a secondary property whose reality is totally mind dependant. So whether it is disgusting or not is relative to a person’s make up. Either of these common sense explanations of what is going on in the broccoli case differs dramatically from the common sense view of moral discourse. Only a madman would claim that our feelings about Saddam Hussein, the slaughter of children, truth telling, or promise keeping depended on us in either of the two ways mentioned above. Even Blackburn is not that reckless! He explicitly denies that anything like this is the right way to characterize moral disagreement. But the problem is that there is no way to distinguish these kinds of claims from the theoretical stand point of quasi-realism.

Since the theory is unable to distinguish these obviously distinguishable kinds of judgments, there must be something seriously wrong with deflationism about truth as it relates to a theory of justification. In fact, it seems obvious what is wrong with it. It very obviously and flagrantly turns moral matters into matters of personal taste. It does this by invoking redundancy and claiming that all there is to truth is its function in natural language of voicing agreement. To say that something is true is simply to repeat what we have said. If we happen to have said something about rape or the taste of broccoli makes no difference. Once we take the deflationary account of truth seriously we are no longer able to take moral discourse seriously.

Blackburn cannot respond that we can distinguish talk about broccoli and talk about genocide by the level of emotional commitment that we have to claims in one area as opposed to claims in the other because it is not inconsistent, on his view, that there be people who take broccoli as seriously as we take suffering. Thus the Broccoli-ban are every bit as serious about people who disagree with their feelings about the taste of broccoli, even to the point of putting dissenters to death. It may be the case that Simon Blackburn does not take talk about broccoli that seriously, but so what? If this is to be anything more than a mere autobiographical report what we need is a way to say that someone who did take talk about broccoli as serious as the Broccoli-ban is mistaken and further that their being mistaken is not simply an opinion of mine. Something, in short, that allows us to distinguish our talk about what depends solely on us and what does not. The deflationary theory of truth fares very badly here. It will only seem plausible if one thinks that that is all there is to truth, but this belief is not forced on us.

Not only does quasi-realism have no way to distinguish between the Taliban and the Broccoli-ban that is not mere autobiography we can see that the very same problem arises for other moral claims. Suppose someone from the Taliban were to respond to Blackburn that their views on women were the correct ones to have and that
Blackburn was wrong when he says that they (the Taliban) are objectively wrong. Let us suppose that they laugh at the idea that women are equal to men in any serious way. Then, according to the analysis that is on offer we are to conclude that what they have said is true just in case they really hold the attitudes that they say they do.
Blackburn then points out that they are ‘blind to the nature of women and the possibilities open to them’ and so on, but the important question of WHY it is that the Taliban have to agree with him on this point is left begging to be addressed. Of course by this I do not merely mean that the Taliban may irrationally refuse to admit that the evidence against them is compelling but rather the stronger claim that in some deep sense there is no way to really say which is right here. Each is saying something true when they express their moral sentiments about women. This is, of course, nothing more than relativism.

Swimming Vegetables? Fish, Pain, and Consciousness

Richard Brown Leave a comment

There has been for some time now a debate between fishing enthusiasts and animal rights activists over whether or not fish feel pain. A recent study by scientists in Scotland has reopened this debate by claiming to have demonstrated that fish in fact do feel pain.

They claim that fish have nociceptors and a part of the brain that responds to them, which is to say that they have a pain pathway. Also, when trout had their lips stung by bees they exhibited a rocking motion that is similar to pain behavior seen in other animal species (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2983045.stm for a report on the study.) It has already been known for some time that fish have endogenous opiodes and so it really looks like the preponderance of evidence suggests that fish do feel pain. (see http://www-phil.tamu.edu/~gary/awvar/lecture/pain.html for a table comparing various vertebrates and invertebrates on what we take to be requirements for feeling pain). When you think about it this is what we should expect, seeing as how fish are vertebrates and all. Of course not all fishes are vertebrates and the study I was just talking about used trout so when I talk about fishes I will be talking about fish like trout.

These findings are disputed by some. The standard claim that is made by people who want to deny that fish feel pain is that fish lack the cerebral cortex that allows them to experience the psychological state of being in pain. Pain behavior is not enough, nor is nociception. Pain is a psychological state distinct from the awareness of tissue damage. The problem with this response is that it is not the case that trout do not have any cerebral cortex at all but rather that they have very primitive ones. Their cortex is so simple, in fact, that it does not require a thalamus to relay information to it but rather is directly hooked up to the sensory neurons. Thus we cannot conclude that they do not have pains at all, but only that they have some primitive form of pain.

Also, +notice that the question ‘do fish feel pain’ is an empirical question, not a philosophical question and both parties recognize it depends on the particular brain structures that fish have. This supposes that we can tell, by looking at the brain of the fish, whether or not it experiences pain. Notice also, though that this objection assumes that something is not a pain unless it is felt as painful by the organism that has it, that is unless it is a conscious pain. So, for example, consider a fish like a trout except that its nociceptors are not connected to the brain. This fish will be in the very same states as the one who does have this connection. They will even behave in all the same ways because the brain stem and spinal cord is where most of the action in fish occurs any way. If the higher-order theory turns out to be right, then the way to characterize this situation is one where the latter fish has an (in principle) unconscious pain.

This brings out three important points. 1. It is likely that some fish do have conscious pains and therefore there is reason for thinking that sport fishing is immoral, and that eating fish is as immoral, or moral, as eating other kinds of animals. 2. Fish look like good candidates for helping us to empirically test the higher-order theory of consciousness. And 3. It raises an interesting question for Utilitarians; Do unconscious pains matter? Is it wrong to torture a zombie?