Jeff Sebo is a philosopher working on one of the hardest questions in ethics: how much moral consideration do nonhuman beings deserve? As Director of the Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy (CMEP) and the Center for Environmental and Animal Protection (CEAP) at NYU, he researches how we can better understand the moral status of animals, AI systems, and the environment.
In this video, Jeff makes the case that we should expand our conception of who deserves moral consideration and compassion. From farmed animals to wild animals to potentially sentient AI, he argues that a vast range of nonhuman minds either do, or plausibly might, have the capacity to suffer. If we are increasingly impacting populations we barely understand, we have a responsibility to take that seriously. “If you might be able to suffer, and my actions are affecting you, then I should at least consider welfare risks when making decisions.”
Jeff also addresses two common misconceptions about this work. First, that caring about nonhumans means not caring about humans. Instead, Jeff argues that considering nonhuman welfare can help us build better food systems, infrastructure, and societies for everyone. The second misconception is that advocates for animal and AI welfare claim certainty about sentience. Jeff responds: "Our argument is not an expression of certainty, it is an expression of uncertainty and caution and humility."
Video Transcript
00:00 – Introduction: Expanding Moral Consideration
I think a lot of people worry that if we recognize the potential for consciousness, sentience, agency, moral significance in such a vast number and wide range of nonhumans, it will be impossible for us to live our lives. What will we eat? Where will we go? How can I do anything at any point without causing harm or death to lots of individuals who matter?
If you are conscious, sentient, agentic — in other words, if it feels like something to be you, if you have the capacity for pleasure and pain, if you have the capacity to set and pursue your own goals in a self-directed manner — then you deserve at least some moral consideration.
00:48 – Jeff Sebo: Philosophy and the Nonhuman World
My name is Jeff Sebo, and I'm a professor of environmental studies at New York University. My background is in philosophy, and I generally work on questions about how we can better understand the nonhuman world, like animals and AI systems and the environment.
01:06 – Why Nonhuman Sentience Is So Difficult
What is difficult about nonhuman sentience is that it exists at the intersection of some of the hardest questions in science and philosophy. We still have a lot of disagreement and uncertainty about what consciousness and sentience even are and what it takes to be conscious and sentient, and we are making decisions that affect these nonhumans without having a secure theory of consciousness and sentience, and that means we could get it wrong.
And so figuring out how to take nonhuman sentience seriously despite ongoing disagreement and uncertainty about the nature of sentience, that requires not only doing good science and philosophy, mitigating the risks involved with false positives and over-attribution, with mitigating the risks involved with false negatives and under-attribution.
01:55 – Effective Altruism and Neglected Populations
Part of what I appreciate about effective altruism is that it does invite us to draw our attention to these important, neglected, potentially vulnerable populations and include them in holistic thinking about how we can create better societies, even for humans.
So when we think about food system reform, if we at least consider farmed animal welfare, then we might be able to build food systems that are better for us, better for them, and better for the environment. When we think about infrastructure reform, if we at least consider wild animal welfare, then we might be able to build cities that can be better for us, and better for them, and better for the environment.
02:33 – Expanding the Moral Circle
We should expand our conception of who deserves moral consideration and respect and compassion, because we increasingly appreciate that you do not need to be a human being in order to deserve moral consideration, nor do you need to have our exact capacity for language and reason. But we still, for example, give much more consideration to those near us than those far away, those who exist now than those who will exist in the future, and especially humans and nonhuman animals who look and act an awful lot like us.
And we also now increasingly appreciate that a vast number and wide range of nonhumans either do, or at least very plausibly might, have those capacities. All vertebrates (mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fishes), many invertebrates (cephalopod molluscs, decapod crustaceans, insects), and maybe in the next five or ten years even some digital minds (AI systems, robots, chatbots)—at least plausibly might have those capacities. And if you might be able to suffer and my actions are affecting you, then I should at least consider welfare risks when making decisions that affect you, in the spirit of caution and humility.
03:45 – Misconception: We Don't Care About Humans
One misconception people have about our work is that we care about nonhumans but not humans. Of course we care about humans and nonhumans at the same time, and what we want to do, what we are trying to do, is bring nonhumans into the conversation that we are rightly still having about how to improve human lives and societies. Thinking about how can we consider nonhuman welfare, nonhuman rights, when making decisions about future food systems, future infrastructures, and the other systems that we need to be creating to build a more resilient, sustainable future for everybody.
04:21 – Misconception: We're Certain About Sentience
Another misconception people have about our work is they assume people who work on animal and AI welfare and moral status, they assume we are certain. Our argument is that we still have a lot of disagreement and uncertainty about the nature of sentience and the distribution of sentience in the world, and yet we are increasingly interacting with nonhumans of all kinds and affecting whether they can exist at all and what kinds of existences they can have if they do.
And so our argument is not an expression of certainty, it is an expression of uncertainty, and caution, and humility. If we are increasingly impacting these large populations that we barely understand, then we do have a responsibility to make an effort to try to better understand them. And if we are really not sure if they have the capacity to suffer, we should also take at least low-cost, low-hanging-fruit steps to mitigate welfare risks for them while we seek to improve our understanding of them.
