This is an answer to Name That Trait which asks what trait differentiates humans from animals. The named trait should justify vegan-objectionable activities such as slaughtering animals for food.

Short answer: the trait is being a universal knowledge creator. This answer relies on lots of non-standard background knowledge such as The Beginning of Infinity.

This post gives a different argument which I think is easier to understand with less background knowledge. It will still require going over some background.

The Problem of Design

An important problem in the history of philosophy is the problem of design, famously argued by William Paley. It says some objects (such as an animal or pocket watch) have the appearance of design which requires explanation. Paley’s explanation was that a pocket watch has an intelligent, human designer, and animals were designed by God.

Plants, animals and pocket watches have the appearance of design. They’re complex. Stones, crystals, dirt and stars don’t. This is a big difference. Stones and stars are worth explaining in terms of fundamental physics like the big bang, but plants merit additional explanation. Plants e.g. have chloroplasts which do photosynthesis, which are nothing like rocks and wouldn’t be created randomly or purposelessly.

The above is widely accepted. What’s not widely known is that “appearance of design” is knowledge. Knowledge is information adapted to a purpose.

The underlying problem is how knowledge can be created starting with non-knowledge. Where can new knowledge come from? How can it originate?

This is a hard problem and not many answers have been proposed. The bad answers include magic, knowledge is just created sometimes out of thin air, and designers. Saying that a designer created the knowledge doesn’t explain how the designer created the knowledge (using intelligence – but how does intelligence work?), nor where that designer’s intelligence came from. If you say knowledge comes from God who already has tons of knowledge, then where did God come from?

A single good answer has been developed. It’s the only known answer that makes much sense. It’s the theory of evolution. Replication with variation and selection is able to adapt information to a purpose and thereby create new knowledge. The appearance of design, in plants and animals, was created by evolution.

Where did eyes come from? Evolution. Why does a rabbit run away from danger? It evolved to do that. Why are trees structured in an organized way with the leaves on top where they can better receive light? Because that structure has better survival and replication value for trees (survival and replication value is the short answer for what biological evolution selects for). Etc. This is widely accepted.

With this background in mind:

Intelligence

How does intelligence work and create new knowledge? I believe intelligence works by evolution, literally, not as an analogy. (Seriously I find that 90% of people assume I mean an analogy even though I just told them I didn’t.) This is not a mainstream view. It’s been developed by Critical Rationalist philosophers, especially David Deutsch.

Biological evolution does replication with variation and selection of genes. Intellectual evolution does replication with variation and selection of ideas. Genes and ideas are both things which it’s possible to make copies of – replicators – so evolution applies to them.

FYI, the view that evolution applies to replicators is a fairly standard view in the field even though most of the public is ignorant of it. It’s held by e.g. Richard Dawkins and is why he developed the idea of a “meme” (which means an idea that replicates). A meme plays the role in the evolution of ideas that a gene plays in the evolution of plants and animals.

Name That Trait

Lots of animal behavior has the appearance of design (or the appearance of intelligence or purposefulness). This indicates knowledge is involved. I think that knowledge comes from the animal’s genes and was created by biological evolution. I think it’s this appearance of intelligent behavior that is the primary reason people (correctly) differentiate animals from rocks.

Human behavior also has the appearance of design, so what’s the difference? Humans create new knowledge that isn’t in their genes. Instead of relying only on biological evolution for knowledge, humans do intelligent evolution of ideas within their minds. This is a capacity that no animal has and explains why only humans were able to invent philosophy and science.

When an animal does intelligent-appearing behavior, the designer was biological evolution. When a human does intelligent-appearing behavior, the designer is usually a human being who created ideas using mental evolution of ideas.

Animals have one source of knowlege: genetic evolution. Humans have two sources of knowledge: genetic and memetic evolution.

People commonly assume that the appearance of design in animal behavior is an indicator of intelligence, while the appearance of design in an animal’s eyes and claws is not. The primary mechanism by which genes control animal behavior is through creating the animal’s brain according to a design detailed in the animal’s genes. The animal brain is a computer which the genes build and configure with behavioral algorithms. Humans work differently because they’re capable of doing evolution within their minds to create new algorithms, new behaviors, new ideas. etc.

Getting from these claims to a full case against animal welfare or rights requires additional arguments. I won’t detail them here but see this post for some explanation. The basic issue is that animals aren’t differentiated from rocks in a relevant way because genes (which are where the knowledge is) are not conscious and can’t suffer (like rocks), and animals behave according to algorithms in conceptually the same way as a robot like a self-driving car.

For more info, see e.g. Evolution and Knowledge, Evolution, and the books of David Deutsch and Richard Dawkins.

curi: The trait that differentiates humans from non-human animals, in a veganism-relevant way, is (general, universal) intelligence, which is the ability to learn (aka create knowledge), which is the ability to do evolution of ideas within one's mind.

This is a binary trait, not a matter of degree.

This is not a complete explanation, e.g. it doesn't say how that trait relates to other issues vegans may bring up like consciousness or suffering.

Vegans: What about mentally handicapped people. If they have less intellectual capacity than a cow, is it OK to kill them?

curi: Yes, in principle. They're (by premise) on the wrong side of the intelligence/non-intelligence asymmetry.

However, we should begin our discussion with cases which are easier to understand and potentially agree about, not hard cases or edge cases. If you understand and agree with my way of differentiating most humans from cows, then it'd make sense to discuss edge cases in detail.

Vegans: How do you tell if a normal person or cow is intelligent?

curi: Primarily behavior: people have intelligent conversations, write blog posts demonstrating that they understand TV show plots, act according to learned jobs skills, develop new science, etc. That is best explained by knowledge the person created in his mind rather than by genetic knowledge. Animals behave in simplistic, algorithmic ways which are best explained by the knowledge in their genes.

I think careful analysis of animal behavior, and trying to differentiate it from the capabilities of stuff like video game enemies and self-driving cars, is one of the more productive ways to continue this discussion. People have strong intuitions that animals are somewhat intelligent and are clearly different, in terms of intelligence, than current robots and "AI" software algorithms. Relatedly, people believe intelligence is a matter of degree. Looking at rigorous information of animal behavior, from scientists, and carefully considering the simplest ways it could be achieved, can be informative.

This post assumes familiarity with David Deutsch's (DD) original idea of static and rational memes in The Beginning of Infinity (BoI). (Summary.)

DD's theory says there are two types of memes with two different replication strategies. Static memes replicate by suppressing criticism of themselves (and sometimes also of other ideas). Rational memes replicate by being useful.

I propose instead that there are three types of memes.

• Rational, useful memes.
• Static memes that suppress criticism and creativity.
• Static companion memes that do not suppress creativity or criticism themselves but are adapted to replicate in an environment where they are suppressed.

The additional category is a companion meme which requires criticism suppression but relies on other (static) memes doing it.

I think static companion memes have a variety of replication strategies rather than being defined by one. One possibility is being highly adapted to appear useful to people who aren't critically thinking.

In a fully static society, not all memes have to follow the replication strategy of suppressing criticism of themselves. The reason is the reach of knowledge (another concept explained in BoI). Some static memes do (partially or fully) general purpose criticism suppression rather than only suppressing criticism of themselves.

I think there is basically a core of some powerful static memes which are very effective at suppressing criticism in general. Once those exist, other memes don't need to suppress criticism of themselves because criticism isn't happening anyway. So they can evolve to compete for replication bandwidth in other ways.

A further complication, which blurs the categorization of memes into two or three types, is that ideas can be like code libraries from programming which provide callable APIs. In order to suppress criticism of itself, idea B can call a library function provided by idea A. However, if the host has idea B without having idea A, then that function call doesn't work and B fails to suppress criticism of itself. In this case, much of the knowledge of criticism suppression is outsourced, however idea B is able to actively suppress criticism of itself in the right environment.

Another complication is that there need not be a black and white dividing line between static memes and static companion memes. A meme can do some of each: it can be adapted partly to suppress criticism and partly adapted to do something else (such as appearing useful or good to non-critical thinkers). I'd guess that many memes are mixed because the core of criticism suppressing memes remove some but not all of the selection pressure on other memes to optimize for criticism suppression. That allows them to adapt for other purposes too, and some may entirely lose their criticism suppression. This other adaptation would be to better compete with other memes for replication bandwidth in a static society environment. Once criticism is largely suppressed, the amount the typical meme replicates won't have much to do with how well that memes suppresses criticism.

Update:

Memes replicate in two different ways. Within a mind and between minds.

Memes must replicate between minds to last over time.

Critical Rationalism says we learn by doing evolution of ideas within our mind.

Do static memes replicate within a mind? That sounds potentially bad because they'd make progress and change, not stay static. But it depends on what selection pressure they're being exposed to. If a static meme could control the selection then it could use within-mind replication to get more optimized. This would be different than suppressing criticism (DD's idea of static memes). It'd be changing the nature of the criticism instead.

If static memes simply suppress criticism, they can't get more adapted by within-mind evolution. But if they could instead control the types of criticism, then they can benefit from within-mind evolution.

So I'm thinking static memes do within-mind evolution in some cases while keeping control over the selection (criticism). I think that's a significant way static meme theory is incorrect.

This is a discussion topic for Freeze. Other people are welcome to make comments. Freeze has agreed not to post under other names in this topic.

This is a critical response to Alexander Tabarrok regarding his debate with George Reisman regarding the merits of Reisman’s book Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics. As context: it’s an internal debate between Austrian economists from 1997-8, and Reisman is an Objectivist as well.

The debate began with Review of Capitalism: A Complete and Integrated Understanding of the Nature and Value of Human Economic Life. It’s a critical, negative review by Tabarrok (who denies it’s negative because he praised some ideas, but he also claimed e.g. that one of Reisman’s main themes throughout the book is “fundamentally misguided”).

Reisman replied in Reisman on Capitalism. I regard this article as refuting Tabarrok's review. Reisman's concluding paragraph summarizes:

In this response, I have dealt with five instances of misrepresentation in the review: its claim that I ignore the essential theme of support for businessmen and capitalists, its misrepresentation of my use of classical economics' concept of demand and supply, its distortion of my definition of economics, its misrepresentation of my views on time preference as a determinant of the rate of profit and interest, and finally, its denial of my contributions to aggregate economic accounting and "macroeconomics." These five instances are merely a good sample. [...]

Tabarrok replied briefly in Response to Reisman on Capitalism. That concludes the original debate.

I’ll now respond by pointing out major errors in Tabarrok’s response, thereby vindicating Reisman’s response and his Capitalism. Here’s Tabarrok’s first paragraph:

Reisman's Capitalism is longer than either Mises's Human Action or Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State. It thus seems unreasonable to object to my review because it ignores major portions of his work. Reisman's other objections are similarly weak.

Reisman didn’t make that objection. Rather than criticizing Tabarrok for ignoring (omitting) some topics in the original review, Reisman criticized Tabarrok for misrepresentation. Tabarrok didn’t just fail to discuss some parts of the book; he made incorrect claims about the contents of the book.

Tabarrok repeats one of his misrepresentations in his next sentence:

Capitalism has surprisingly little to say on entrepreneurship or other typically Austrian and Objectivist themes.

Tabarrok made that claim in his first review, too. The problems are that it’s incorrect and that Reisman already refuted it in his response. Nevertheless, Tabarrok repeats the point without engaging with Reisman’s arguments.

Tabarrok’s original argument was that “there is no index entry for entrepreneurship”, plus he didn’t find those themes when reading Capitalism. It’s true that Reisman didn’t say much about the word “entrepreneurship”, but that’s because he used synonyms. He used the words “businessmen” and “businessman” a combined 678 times, and he talked extensively about capitalists. Reisman had already informed Tabarrok of this, but somehow Tabarrok didn’t reconsider.

To show Reisman really did cover this theme, I’ll list some of the section titles found in the table of contents of Capitalism. I think they're adequate to make the point, but if you have doubts about which side of this debate is correct, read some of these sections and see for yourself.

• The Benefit from Geniuses

• The General Benefit from Reducing Taxes on the “Rich”

• The Pyramid-of-Ability Principle

• Productive Activity and Moneymaking

• The Productive Role Of Businessmen And Capitalists

  • 1. The Productive Functions of Businessmen and Capitalists
    • Creation of Division of Labor
    • Coordination of the Division of Labor
    • Improvements in the Efficiency of the Division of Labor
  • 2. The Productive Role of Financial Markets and Financial Institutions
    • The Specific Productive Role of the Stock Market
  • 3. The Productive Role of Retailing and Wholesaling
  • 4. The Productive Role of Advertising

• Smith’s Failure to See the Productive Role of Businessmen and Capitalists and of the Private Ownership of Land

• A Rebuttal to Smith and Marx Based on Classical Economics: Profits, Not Wages, as the Original and Primary Form of Income

• Further Rebuttal: Profits Attributable to the Labor of Businessmen and Capitalists Despite Their Variation With the Size of the Capital Invested

• The “Macroeconomic” Dependence of the Consumers on Business

My conclusions are that Tabarrok is mistaken, that Reisman’s Capitalism is a great book, and that no major criticisms of Capitalism exist.

Reisman may be mistaken, as every author may be, but no one has discovered Reisman’s errors and written down explanations of them. Along with the writings of his teacher, Ludwig von Mises, Reisman’s Capitalism constitutes some of the best existing economics knowledge.

See also my Review of Kirzner Reviewing Reisman and Criticism of Bagus Criticizing Reisman on Deflation.

for most psychology issues, research is the wrong approach

ppl need to think, debate, explain, criticize. not measure empirical data

observe carefully, document some human behavior. get some examples. but don't just get a low-resolution, imprecise look at mass data and then do statistics

they are trying to copy the methods of the empirical sciences, which were quite successful, but it's inappropriate for their subject matter

so the field basically stopped making progress

there's certainly some overlap in methods btwn physics and pscyh but they are copying physics or even medical studies in bad ways. they copy too much of the format and details despite substantive differences. there's some cargo culting going on

psychology research uses too many analogies, poor proxies, and bad measures to try to get data to do statistics with. whereas physics data isn't based on analogies. you can't replace rulers and telescopes with questionnaires and think ur doing the same sort of science.

Some people imagine a peaceful society, with no government, as an alternative to capitalism.

The idea of non-violent, voluntary anarchism presupposes capitalist premises. Voluntary communal sharing implies I may keep the products of my labor for myself. What I produce is, therefore, my property which no one may take. It’s mine. I can share it, keep it, or trade it. Those are the fundamental rules of laissez-faire capitalist society (aka classical liberal or minarchist society).

If what I produce goes straight to the community when I’d prefer not to share, then that isn’t voluntary.

But, you protest, you imagine a society full of sharing. If may have the same political rules as capitalism, but people will have different ideas and behave differently. The basic rules of capitalism are OK, but people need to be educated about the virtues of sharing, charity and community. Then they’ll make better choices and stop having jobs, bosses, wages, etc. All work will be volunteer work, everything important to someone’s life will be charitably given to them by someone, and we’ll all be happier and quite possibly richer too.

These proposals run into the standard problems of socialism and more.

What is the incentive to work hard, well, or at all? I can choose not to work and I’ll still be provided with plenty by the community. What is the incentive to do dirty jobs? Who will take out the garbage?

When you get rid of the profit motive, won’t people be wasteful, or economize less? How many logs should I use in my fire today? How much should I turn up the heat? How much do I have to want a book or anything else before I should have it? If I can just have as much as I want of whatever I want, I’ll get lots of things I only want a little bit instead of only getting the things which are most important to me. And I’ll ask for cleaning and cooking services to be shared with me instead of doing those things myself, or I’ll let my home become dirty and ask for a new home. I’m not responsible for shared property and the community will give me plenty more, right? Your answer is to rely on the new socialist man who makes altruistic sacrifices to benefit his comrades, right? That approach has never worked in the real world because it has theoretical flaws. Who should sacrifice how much for whom? How are any decisions made? How are disagreements resolved?

How will economic calculation be done? What quantities of what goods should be produced by what methods? How do people know if they’re producing efficiently without profit and loss to guide them? How do they know if a particular use of a good is economically efficient without a price of the good to tell them its value? And how should capital be allocated? What industries should expand? What new inventions should have how much effort put into inventing them?

How is anything organized? There are no more stores? If I want something, I just go around to my neighbors and ask for it until someone has one that they aren’t using? What happens when a factory produces 100,000 shoes? How do they get distributed around the country to the right 100,000 people? And how does the factory know what how many of what size to make, or what colors to make, or what materials to use?

What’s the point anyway? The point of trade is to exchange some goods I value less for some goods I value more. What’s the point of shuffling all the wealth around via charity? Is it so some central planner can decide who gets what? If not, won’t it be chaotic?

And this utopia fails to consider scarce resources. There won’t be plenty of everything to go around. People want more wealth than exists and they always will. There’s always scope to have more and better goods and services.

What happens to the method of voluntary sharing when people have disagreements about the allocation of resources?

When people disagree, given the voluntary nature of society, won’t people keep what they have for themselves instead of sharing it? Won’t disagreements cause reversion to capitalist trade where I share for mutual benefit but don’t give my stuff away? If I think I’m giving away more than I get, I’ll prefer trade. And if anyone is receiving more than they share, then others must be sharing more than they receive. Why is it moral that they have less than they produced for themselves? What’s rational about that? And this way I’m self-reliant and can plan for my future instead of relying on the less predictable production and gifting of others.

So suppose I keep everything I produce. That’s the first thing I’d consider doing. I don’t see how charity is economically efficient to make society richer in general, nor do I see how essentially giving away a bunch of gifts, and receiving a bunch of gifts will do a better job of getting me the right goods and services than if I simply traded for what I want. So anyway, I keep all my property. I receive gifts from generous people and trade with the less generous people. Will the community do anything to stop this? Let’s consider both alternatives.

If the community does nothing to stop me, I simply have more at the expense of others. I have what I produce and what others give me. I expect this to quickly lead to a system of trade with little charity outside the family, similar to what we have today. And I don’t see anything wrong with that. What problem will less voluntary trade, and more voluntary gifts, solve? What will that make better for society in general? If the goal is just to help crippled people who can’t work, or something like that, you can ask for generosity for that specific purpose instead of trying to change the basic economic system for everyone.

If the community stops me, they’ll either use violence (violating the concept of voluntarist anarchism) or they’ll use non-violent methods. The non-violent methods would be e.g. people stop sharing food with me and refuse to trade with me. So essentially society is my boss and I have to please others by working hard enough, and sharing enough, or else they’ll starve me. This is much worse than a boss today because I can’t just switch jobs and get a new boss. And it’s like having many bosses at once – all of society – so there isn’t much consistency about what will please my boss. To prosper I’ll have to make friends in high places. I’ll have to please the leaders and influential people. In short, it’s a status society where I must do politics and social climbing instead of production and trade.

Objectivist philosopher Harry Binswanger hates Popper. He replied to a question about Popper on his HBL forum, 2011-03-22:

HB: Popper has fooled you. He's one of the most notorious skeptics and positivists in 20th Century philosophy. He is the author of the “falsifiability” doctrine, which is an updated version of the positivist Verification Principle. It holds that (vs. the older positivists) nothing can be verified, we can hold onto to the distinction between what's scientific and what's meaningless by reference to what can be falsified. Here are a couple of juicy quotes from Popper's main work, Objective Knowledge (the term “Objective” here means what Kant meant by it—collective subjectivism—not what we mean by it).

This [realist] doctrine founders in my opinion on the problems of induction and of universals. For we can utter no scientific statement that does not go far beyond what can be known with certainty 'on the basis of immediate experience'. (This fact may be referred to as the 'transcendence inherent in any description'.) Every description uses universal names (or symbols, or ideas); every statement has the character of a theory, of a hypothesis. The statement, 'Here is a glass of water' cannot be verified by any observational experience. The reason is that the universals which appear in it cannot be correlated with any specific sense-experience. (An 'immediate experience' is only once 'immediately given': it is unique.) . . . Universals cannot be reduced to classes of experiences . . . (pp. 94-95)

HB: So, all statements are subjective, because statements use concepts and concepts are not logically derivable from perception.

Popper wasn't a positivist. Popper refuted postivism. But anyway, let's focus on the quote.

That quote is not from Objective Knowledge. It's from a different book, The Logic of Scientific Discovery. It's also on different page numbers. Has Binswanger read any Popper or does he just copy/paste quotes from the internet that someone else missourced?

Not reading Popper would explain why Binswanger doesn't know the context of the quote. He used square brackets to insert the word "realist" as a paraphrase. He presents Popper as attacking a realist doctrine. That's false.

The doctrine which Popper believes founders is not realism. Here is some preceding text describing the doctrine Popper opposes:

Science is merely an attempt to classify and describe this perceptual knowledge, these immediate experience whose truth we cannot doubt;

Popper is criticizing a doctrine which treats percepts as infallible and never bothers with concepts because it believes that thinking cannot add anything useful to sense perception.

Popper's main point here is that strong forms of empiricism (like positivism) are mistaken. Our knowledge is not merely a collection of observations and their deductive consequences. Rather, men do more than perceive: they think. By using our minds we go beyond 'immediate experience'.

Popper's position here is actually in agreement Objectivism. Objectivism, too, says we need to conceptual thinking about our observations.

Binswanger didn't care about his quoting error – both getting the book and content wrong – and didn't allow further discussion on his forum. His last word was:

Objectivism holds that perception is infallible and that all science is, ultimately, the unpacking of what's implicit in perception. There's no question that Popper is completely wrong and is the philosophical father of people like Feyerabend. On the latter, see the article, "The Anti-Philosophy of Science," by James G. Lennox (U. Pittsburgh), in The Objectivist Forum.

Popper criticized people who don't unpack perception. The lack of unpacking was part of what he was criticized. The view he was criticizing believes, in Popper's words and italics, "[science] is the systematic presentation of our immediate convictions". What Binswanger says here is actually still compatible with Popper.

Binswanger's comment on infallible perception is misleading. Objectivism holds that error is an attribute of conceptual thought. People make errors. Rocks don't make errors, they just follow their nature or identity (or in other words, follow the laws of physics). Similarly, eyes are outside the human mind. Seen as tools, eyes are like microscopes or cameras. They just obey the laws of physics. If a person has blurry vision because he isn't wearing glasses, that isn't an error, that is what eyes with that physical form see in those circumstances. The error would be if the person thought reality was blurry when it's not. I don't recall Rand saying that herself, but I've talked with a bunch of Objectivists about it and that's my understanding of the matter. That view is reasonable, true IMO, compatible with CR, and not infallibilist.

Smearing Popper with Feyerabend's ideas is also unfair. The issue should be whether CR is true. Here's what Popper had to say:

As far as my former pupil Feyerabend is concerned, I cannot recall any writing of mine in which I took notice of any writing of his.

That's from p 1069 of The Philosophy of Karl Popper, Volume 2, edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp.