I think the best argument for the ape would have been to say that someday a larger and stronger predator than a tiger might show up in the jungle, and so it would be in the tiger's own interest to uphold a norm of not killing sapient animals. (The tiger scoffs at the possibility, and eats the ape anyway; soon after, a human hunter shoots the tiger for its pelt)
Morality truly is a blind spot for so many people for some reason. I personally don’t believe you exist. Therefore, you actually do not exist! Whether morality exists *to you* or not, does not affect whether it *exists* or not. A tiger is not a moral agent and neither is an ape. In the story, the tiger appears to be acting immoral because it seems as though the tiger is intelligent enough to know that it’s causing pain for its own amusement and has the willpower to avoid doing so. The parable is apt for a serial rapist/killer—that can’t experience morality—arguing about why preferences are all that matter, to their next victim, while still not being able to make the morality of their wrongdoings disappear.
Objectivity can be difficult to understand, I get it. Hopefully, you can get over whatever bias you have against morality and realize it is just as objective as nearly any other category of things that nearly all of us believe exist objectively as well.
Well, some apes are moral agents because we are both apes, albeit hairless talking ones.
You say 'the serial killer can't experience morality'. Why not? If the serial killer doesn't feel bad about torturing, and you want to say torturing is wrong, that's fine. But why should the serial killer obey this rule, 'don't torture'? Why are we saying this is an 'objective rule'? What makes it objective? For a rule to be objective, everyone is obligated to obey it. What makes the serial killer obligated to obey the rule? If the serial killer is not obligated to obey the rule, then its not really objective morality, it is just _your_ morality. If the serial killer is obligated to obey the rule, you should be able to explain why. If you can't, what does the obligation consist in?
Hm, I don’t see us as apes in the same way I don’t see alligators as archosaurs. You can call alligators archosaurs, but people would likely look at you weirdly because people generally use ‘alligators’ to identify those types of creatures. I imagined a hairy primal chimpanzee in the story when you mentioned ‘ape’. I guess you intended us to imagine a human conversing with tiger?
Idk why the tiger in the story and serial killers in real life cannot experience morality, I just assume that most of them can’t. Like blind people that cannot experience sight. There being objective moral facts means that they exist *regardless* of people’s attitudes, feelings, or beliefs, towards them.
Objective moral facts exist in the same way that objective physical facts exist. Or objective mathematical truths. Or objective logical facts. To doubt one category without any reason would be irrational.
Objective moral facts existing is the same thing as oughts that affect how we should behave existing. Accepting them in one instance and questioning them in the next makes no sense. Do you accept the existence of objective moral facts? If no, why not?
> To doubt one category without any reason would be irrational.
Yup, that's why you should doubt the existence of objectivity in all the other categories as well. Well, insofar as you aim to be rational (which it is not clear that one should
do this, as a given, either).
> Or objective mathematical truths
Famously, Gödel proved that all true mathematical derivations rely on truths that cannot be proved from within the mathematical system itself.
I won't even get started on addressing the notion of objective physical facts, given how bad the human sensory apparatus is at interpreting its environment with high-fidelity or consistency (not to mention that, as we know from physics, at a small enough scale, the act of observation changes the nature of the observed).
So, at most, you could say math is objectively consistent, but not that it is objectively true.
And, indeed...
> I just assume that most of them can’t [experience morality]
There you go revealing that you are relying on an axiom based on intuition, not objectivity.
Certainly, you can make the claim that your intuition is equivalent to what is objective. That squares the circle for moral realism.
But, ultimately, as you so eloquently point out, you cannot provide a justification for such a claim.
It seems to me that at least some objective facts exist. How can that be false? Whatever reasoning you would give would all have to be based on your subjective beliefs. Which although they can apparently alter gravity, make completely red things also be completely blue, and make 1+1=3, these imagined abilities are still are not convincing enough to me to doubt the much more obvious appearance that at least some objective facts exist. Such as the fact that you are real and you are having a conversation.
What convinced you to believe that your own existence is dependent on people’s feelings, beliefs, or attitudes, towards you?
Hey there, sorry, I don't have too much time to pull this thread further for now. Will just say a couple things.
> It seems to me that at least some objective facts exist
Yes, specific emphasis on *it seems* and *to me*. I suggest you look into the doctrine of 'dependent origination' from Buddhism for why I am emphasizing those particular worlds (seeming, i.e., perception, and me, i.e., self).
Here is a quick LLM summary I've made, in case you need it to get started.
Just to be clear, I am not a Buddhist, nor am I claiming Buddhism is ultimately true.
However, it does provide a pretty clear moral anti-realist stance that is also not equivalent nihilism. Though, to many Westerners, who deeply insist on a clear distinction between creator-created, it often does look like nihilism (but, again, it's not!).
> What convinced you to believe that your own existence is dependent on people’s feelings, beliefs, or attitudes, towards you?
I'm not a moral nihilist, but I haven't really been convinced of anything really, especially in terms of morality. Lack of the objective does not mean only subjective exists.
If I am holding a cup, the 'cupness' of the cup and the 'handness' of the hand arise together in the chain of causality. This does not imply that 'cupness' and 'handness' exist independently, or especially, that one is an initiatory cause for the other.
The same notion applies to all 'facts', including moral facts.
I don’t think this answers why you believe your existence is dependent on other people’s beliefs, feelings, or attitudes.
> If I am holding a cup
What do you mean by this? If you are subjectively holding a cup dependent on my attitudes and beliefs towards you? Or if you are holding a cup independent of my feelings towards you?
It’s original. Maybe there’s something similar out there but if so I don’t know what it is. There’s a follow up: my sympathies are with the ape. I’m a subjectivist about morals.
That suggests a lack of imagination. My own moral subjectivism says that predators can’t be reasoned with, but that is hardly an apology for them. I think many moral realists believe that subjectivism is no different than nihilism. I disagree with that.
Brilliant. The type of suffering that I enjoy perhaps the most is the one that moral realists go through when they confront someone who doesn't share their intuitions.
(Bit of an exaggeration, but it truly does give me pleasure to see and hear them squirm.)
Just remember folks the most human element of the fabulous conversation is the conversation. Meetings makes us human. And that is that the moral of the story, and not the positions held and argued for, those are details that come and go on the winds of fashion. Our preference is to meet and converse and argue and nurture, and thus 'police' those for whom conversation means nothing. That is our good. (This is a worldly soteriological position of worlding ataraxia for the self that is not us).
For anything to count as objective morality there must objective consequences for acting immorally. It is indeed not clear why being irrational about some moral norms would result in harmful consequences to the offending agent if the agent could otherwise ‘get away with it’. Moreover, obeying objective morality must be in the interest of any rational agent, or else it would not be rational to be moral. These criteria are satisfied in my defence of moral realism as presented here: https://philpapers.org/rec/KOWODO.
Nevertheless, a simpler (but very limited in scope) demonstration of moral realism can be produced in Discourse Ethics. We can define the simplest form of discourse ethics like this: one must not Always and not with Everyone act in a way that precludes mutual understanding. In order to posses agential capacities such as language and reasoning one must obey discourse ethics, or else one faces objective, detrimental consequences for one’s agential capacities. Every agent values their agency, which is precisely what makes self-interest persuasive.
To violate discourse ethics as defined above would preclude one from understanding anyone or learning anything. One could not even learn to how speak a language without it. Discourse ethics is essential to being a conscious rational agent; to reject discourse ethics would have real consequences, forfeiting or severely degrading our agency.
I can’t really respond here in the depth necessary to adequately address your discussion in the paper. I’ll just indicate my general thoughts about this approach.
Insofar as there are any objective norms, I would expect them to have the sort of character you discuss: binding on agents in virtue of their rationality or agency. So this general approach does seem to me the most promising to establish some kind of objective norms.
However, I have quite a few reservations.
First, it seems very unlikely that norms of this kind would suffice to ground anything like standard altruistic morality. I address why this is important in a more recent substack post (the Callicles one). I have no particular view on what logic or mathematics is, and I don’t really care whether there might be some objective norms governing our rationality unless those have substantive moral implications.
Second, I don’t find the arguments in the piece you linked persuasive. I don’t think an agent is committed to any of the things you suggest. I don’t think we are committed to the norms of discourse ethics. I think agents could exist with no desire to speak or communicate. They might easily have more salient preferences that outweigh any need or desire to communicate. I think your arguments smuggle in seemingly plausible but false assumptions about preferences that agents ‘must’ have. A useful counterexample to the intuitions you rely on is a constructed agent: a robot. We could construct a robot and program it with whatever norms we choose, including not being interested in communicating and not recognizing the value of other subjects. You might be tempted to deny such a robot’s agency, but I think agency can very easily accommodate a non-communicative being that interacts with the world without considering the agency of others.
Anyway, thanks again for drawing your ideas to my attention. Very interesting.
Just a few brief points to counter these general objections.
I do not claim that morality must be altruistic; in fact I argue that it must be self-serving to be motivating, and that only indirectly this self-interest is served by regarding others in a similar way, to a degree.
I argue a priori that non-social conscious agents (robots, conscious AI, etc) are impossible, and reflexive relations among multiplicity of beings of the same kind are the basis of consciousness. This is also a presupposition in discourse ethics; that language and subjective thought are social phenomena. In any case, even if you could program conscious robots, discourse ethics applies to humans in order to learn anything at all. It would still be a moral norm for humans even under your scenario.
I also argue that valuing our agency is a priori implied in every intentional action or choice, insofar as we choose and are motivated to act rather than not act, whereas non-agents are not a problem for moral philosophy. It is not necessary to call it ‘value’, but it is necessarily the common motivator, and this is sufficiently normative to motivate choices that serve our agency.
I think this work of yours Michael might work better in a non-philosophical framework, (this occurs to me as I observe you and Eugene converse in a meeting) (Meetings make us human, or at least Homo sp.)
Tigers don't encounter gorillas in the wild as they live on different continents. Furthermore it is unlikely that a tiger would ever encounter an adult gorilla alone, as gorillas are highly social animals that always travel in a pack; and even if this situation occurred, the tiger still would likely choose not to attack, as a gorilla's size and strength means that it could likely kill or seriously injure the tiger if an ambush attack isn't successful in immediately taking it down via a bite to the throat. This is why gorillas have no natural predators (unless you count humans) on their home continent of Africa.
I think the piece says only says "ape," not "gorilla;" there are other kinds. I'll look it up in a minute, but I believe tigers and orangutans have, or at least have had, overlapping ranges. Also, I've read that leopards sometimes prey on gorillas anyway. If so, why not then a tiger, which is larger and stronger? Not that such minutiae much matter in a whimsical parable, of course.
Okay, but how do you know the ape in the parable was a gorilla, and not an orangutan, which tigers do prey on? Or even if it was a gorilla, that it wasn’t an immature or sick one?
In the face of ambiguity, one is forced to guess based on the assumptions that seem most reasonable. I would suggest that if you use the word "ape" with no further specificity, on average people are most likely to picture a gorilla as emblematic of that word. Many people may not even be aware that orangutans or chimpanzees are classified as apes, instead thinking of them as "monkeys." The classification of gorillas as apes on the other hand is much more firmly established in the popular imagination.
I guess that's possible. It's not the case with me, but then I read a fair amount of primatology. But even if it is true in general, the fault would seem to lie with the limits of popular perception, not with the author of this piece. And even if a gorilla was implied, why not an immature or sick one? For that matter, it's not even clear to me that a tiger wouldn't stalk a full grown gorilla, if their ranges overlapped and it was hungry enough. They do kill and eat boars and black bears. A full grown Siberian tiger might outweigh even an adult male silverback by something like 300 lbs. In a fight to the death, I'd give heavy odds on the tiger.
Again, when there is a lack of specificity, we must simply fill in the blanks with the most reasonable approximation. In common language, when we refer to another person or an animal, we understand that they are well unless otherwise stated--people do not respond to "I saw Jimmy playing baseball at the park yesterday" with "oh is he sick? I hope he feels better!" They will only understand Jimmy as being sick if you specify it, i.e. "I heard Jimmy has been out of school for a week because he's sick."
It is certainly possible that a starving tiger might attack a gorilla out of desperation, but such a large and powerful target would surely be far down its list of preferred prey. It is also possible that a tiger could outweigh a gorilla by 300 lbs, but only if one were to pick a particularly large tiger and/or a particularly small gorilla. The size difference would not be nearly so severe if we assume average specimens, likely less than 100 lbs, and if we stipulate a starving tiger then the gorilla may even be the one who is heavier!
Thus it is possible that a tiger could attack a gorilla and kill it in a fight to the death, but the implied casual superiority of the tiger as displayed in this story is not warranted.
make the tiger aware of evolutionary debunking arguments, then do some mental simulation—imagine reducing suffering and coordinating for an ever complexifying expansion of degrees of freedom, swap the goofy rationality™️ talk for fallible intersubjective consensus & off we go re-engineering reality.
yea but maybe it'll change that stance, idk... + the rest who don't might as well eugenix or just exterminate such traits tf out of existence so... come on tigris, let's tango.
Come, and see the violence inherent in the system.
It’s a jungle out there
In a coat of gold, or a coat of red
Great allegory! It illustrates many of the key issues I have with moral realism in a really engaging way.
I think the best argument for the ape would have been to say that someday a larger and stronger predator than a tiger might show up in the jungle, and so it would be in the tiger's own interest to uphold a norm of not killing sapient animals. (The tiger scoffs at the possibility, and eats the ape anyway; soon after, a human hunter shoots the tiger for its pelt)
I think that’s about right.
Very nice tale to question the moral realism standpoint. In case you don’t know it, you might like Ken Binmore’s Natural Justice book.
If Aesop and David Hume collaborated on a parable....
Morality truly is a blind spot for so many people for some reason. I personally don’t believe you exist. Therefore, you actually do not exist! Whether morality exists *to you* or not, does not affect whether it *exists* or not. A tiger is not a moral agent and neither is an ape. In the story, the tiger appears to be acting immoral because it seems as though the tiger is intelligent enough to know that it’s causing pain for its own amusement and has the willpower to avoid doing so. The parable is apt for a serial rapist/killer—that can’t experience morality—arguing about why preferences are all that matter, to their next victim, while still not being able to make the morality of their wrongdoings disappear.
Objectivity can be difficult to understand, I get it. Hopefully, you can get over whatever bias you have against morality and realize it is just as objective as nearly any other category of things that nearly all of us believe exist objectively as well.
Well, some apes are moral agents because we are both apes, albeit hairless talking ones.
You say 'the serial killer can't experience morality'. Why not? If the serial killer doesn't feel bad about torturing, and you want to say torturing is wrong, that's fine. But why should the serial killer obey this rule, 'don't torture'? Why are we saying this is an 'objective rule'? What makes it objective? For a rule to be objective, everyone is obligated to obey it. What makes the serial killer obligated to obey the rule? If the serial killer is not obligated to obey the rule, then its not really objective morality, it is just _your_ morality. If the serial killer is obligated to obey the rule, you should be able to explain why. If you can't, what does the obligation consist in?
Hm, I don’t see us as apes in the same way I don’t see alligators as archosaurs. You can call alligators archosaurs, but people would likely look at you weirdly because people generally use ‘alligators’ to identify those types of creatures. I imagined a hairy primal chimpanzee in the story when you mentioned ‘ape’. I guess you intended us to imagine a human conversing with tiger?
Idk why the tiger in the story and serial killers in real life cannot experience morality, I just assume that most of them can’t. Like blind people that cannot experience sight. There being objective moral facts means that they exist *regardless* of people’s attitudes, feelings, or beliefs, towards them.
Objective moral facts exist in the same way that objective physical facts exist. Or objective mathematical truths. Or objective logical facts. To doubt one category without any reason would be irrational.
Okay, if objective moral facts exist regardless of people, that’s fine. But should we guide our behaviour based on these facts? Why?
Objective moral facts existing is the same thing as oughts that affect how we should behave existing. Accepting them in one instance and questioning them in the next makes no sense. Do you accept the existence of objective moral facts? If no, why not?
> To doubt one category without any reason would be irrational.
Yup, that's why you should doubt the existence of objectivity in all the other categories as well. Well, insofar as you aim to be rational (which it is not clear that one should
do this, as a given, either).
> Or objective mathematical truths
Famously, Gödel proved that all true mathematical derivations rely on truths that cannot be proved from within the mathematical system itself.
I won't even get started on addressing the notion of objective physical facts, given how bad the human sensory apparatus is at interpreting its environment with high-fidelity or consistency (not to mention that, as we know from physics, at a small enough scale, the act of observation changes the nature of the observed).
So, at most, you could say math is objectively consistent, but not that it is objectively true.
And, indeed...
> I just assume that most of them can’t [experience morality]
There you go revealing that you are relying on an axiom based on intuition, not objectivity.
Certainly, you can make the claim that your intuition is equivalent to what is objective. That squares the circle for moral realism.
But, ultimately, as you so eloquently point out, you cannot provide a justification for such a claim.
It seems to me that at least some objective facts exist. How can that be false? Whatever reasoning you would give would all have to be based on your subjective beliefs. Which although they can apparently alter gravity, make completely red things also be completely blue, and make 1+1=3, these imagined abilities are still are not convincing enough to me to doubt the much more obvious appearance that at least some objective facts exist. Such as the fact that you are real and you are having a conversation.
What convinced you to believe that your own existence is dependent on people’s feelings, beliefs, or attitudes, towards you?
Hey there, sorry, I don't have too much time to pull this thread further for now. Will just say a couple things.
> It seems to me that at least some objective facts exist
Yes, specific emphasis on *it seems* and *to me*. I suggest you look into the doctrine of 'dependent origination' from Buddhism for why I am emphasizing those particular worlds (seeming, i.e., perception, and me, i.e., self).
Here is a quick LLM summary I've made, in case you need it to get started.
https://imgur.com/a/AHCNnqH
Just to be clear, I am not a Buddhist, nor am I claiming Buddhism is ultimately true.
However, it does provide a pretty clear moral anti-realist stance that is also not equivalent nihilism. Though, to many Westerners, who deeply insist on a clear distinction between creator-created, it often does look like nihilism (but, again, it's not!).
> What convinced you to believe that your own existence is dependent on people’s feelings, beliefs, or attitudes, towards you?
I'm not a moral nihilist, but I haven't really been convinced of anything really, especially in terms of morality. Lack of the objective does not mean only subjective exists.
If I am holding a cup, the 'cupness' of the cup and the 'handness' of the hand arise together in the chain of causality. This does not imply that 'cupness' and 'handness' exist independently, or especially, that one is an initiatory cause for the other.
The same notion applies to all 'facts', including moral facts.
I hope this is an adequate answer for now.
I don’t think this answers why you believe your existence is dependent on other people’s beliefs, feelings, or attitudes.
> If I am holding a cup
What do you mean by this? If you are subjectively holding a cup dependent on my attitudes and beliefs towards you? Or if you are holding a cup independent of my feelings towards you?
This seems familiar. Is it original?
This is an apology for predators, aka psychopaths. A bold choice.
It’s original. Maybe there’s something similar out there but if so I don’t know what it is. There’s a follow up: my sympathies are with the ape. I’m a subjectivist about morals.
I have an inkling that moral subjectivism is necessarily an apology for predators.
That suggests a lack of imagination. My own moral subjectivism says that predators can’t be reasoned with, but that is hardly an apology for them. I think many moral realists believe that subjectivism is no different than nihilism. I disagree with that.
I'm not ready to argue it, but I have an inkling.
I agree that predators can't be reasoned with, and that is the truth that the parable illustrates. It's an excellent piece for that.
Brilliant. The type of suffering that I enjoy perhaps the most is the one that moral realists go through when they confront someone who doesn't share their intuitions.
(Bit of an exaggeration, but it truly does give me pleasure to see and hear them squirm.)
Just remember folks the most human element of the fabulous conversation is the conversation. Meetings makes us human. And that is that the moral of the story, and not the positions held and argued for, those are details that come and go on the winds of fashion. Our preference is to meet and converse and argue and nurture, and thus 'police' those for whom conversation means nothing. That is our good. (This is a worldly soteriological position of worlding ataraxia for the self that is not us).
(warning: neologism ahead) Κοσμοσωτηρία (Kosmosōtēría)
https://whyweshould.substack.com/p/kosmosoteria
For anything to count as objective morality there must objective consequences for acting immorally. It is indeed not clear why being irrational about some moral norms would result in harmful consequences to the offending agent if the agent could otherwise ‘get away with it’. Moreover, obeying objective morality must be in the interest of any rational agent, or else it would not be rational to be moral. These criteria are satisfied in my defence of moral realism as presented here: https://philpapers.org/rec/KOWODO.
Nevertheless, a simpler (but very limited in scope) demonstration of moral realism can be produced in Discourse Ethics. We can define the simplest form of discourse ethics like this: one must not Always and not with Everyone act in a way that precludes mutual understanding. In order to posses agential capacities such as language and reasoning one must obey discourse ethics, or else one faces objective, detrimental consequences for one’s agential capacities. Every agent values their agency, which is precisely what makes self-interest persuasive.
To violate discourse ethics as defined above would preclude one from understanding anyone or learning anything. One could not even learn to how speak a language without it. Discourse ethics is essential to being a conscious rational agent; to reject discourse ethics would have real consequences, forfeiting or severely degrading our agency.
Thanks for the comment and the link, Michael.
I can’t really respond here in the depth necessary to adequately address your discussion in the paper. I’ll just indicate my general thoughts about this approach.
Insofar as there are any objective norms, I would expect them to have the sort of character you discuss: binding on agents in virtue of their rationality or agency. So this general approach does seem to me the most promising to establish some kind of objective norms.
However, I have quite a few reservations.
First, it seems very unlikely that norms of this kind would suffice to ground anything like standard altruistic morality. I address why this is important in a more recent substack post (the Callicles one). I have no particular view on what logic or mathematics is, and I don’t really care whether there might be some objective norms governing our rationality unless those have substantive moral implications.
Second, I don’t find the arguments in the piece you linked persuasive. I don’t think an agent is committed to any of the things you suggest. I don’t think we are committed to the norms of discourse ethics. I think agents could exist with no desire to speak or communicate. They might easily have more salient preferences that outweigh any need or desire to communicate. I think your arguments smuggle in seemingly plausible but false assumptions about preferences that agents ‘must’ have. A useful counterexample to the intuitions you rely on is a constructed agent: a robot. We could construct a robot and program it with whatever norms we choose, including not being interested in communicating and not recognizing the value of other subjects. You might be tempted to deny such a robot’s agency, but I think agency can very easily accommodate a non-communicative being that interacts with the world without considering the agency of others.
Anyway, thanks again for drawing your ideas to my attention. Very interesting.
Just a few brief points to counter these general objections.
I do not claim that morality must be altruistic; in fact I argue that it must be self-serving to be motivating, and that only indirectly this self-interest is served by regarding others in a similar way, to a degree.
I argue a priori that non-social conscious agents (robots, conscious AI, etc) are impossible, and reflexive relations among multiplicity of beings of the same kind are the basis of consciousness. This is also a presupposition in discourse ethics; that language and subjective thought are social phenomena. In any case, even if you could program conscious robots, discourse ethics applies to humans in order to learn anything at all. It would still be a moral norm for humans even under your scenario.
I also argue that valuing our agency is a priori implied in every intentional action or choice, insofar as we choose and are motivated to act rather than not act, whereas non-agents are not a problem for moral philosophy. It is not necessary to call it ‘value’, but it is necessarily the common motivator, and this is sufficiently normative to motivate choices that serve our agency.
I think this work of yours Michael might work better in a non-philosophical framework, (this occurs to me as I observe you and Eugene converse in a meeting) (Meetings make us human, or at least Homo sp.)
"discourse ethics like this: one must not Always and not with Everyone act in a way that precludes mutual understanding. "
thanks for this as well from me
Meetings made us human. Your words appear as a strong version of that statement.
A marvelous fable. Very Nietzschean!
Tigers don't encounter gorillas in the wild as they live on different continents. Furthermore it is unlikely that a tiger would ever encounter an adult gorilla alone, as gorillas are highly social animals that always travel in a pack; and even if this situation occurred, the tiger still would likely choose not to attack, as a gorilla's size and strength means that it could likely kill or seriously injure the tiger if an ambush attack isn't successful in immediately taking it down via a bite to the throat. This is why gorillas have no natural predators (unless you count humans) on their home continent of Africa.
0/10 author did not do his homework
Fuxking owned
Tigers and gorillas don't talk either
Not many people know that
I think the piece says only says "ape," not "gorilla;" there are other kinds. I'll look it up in a minute, but I believe tigers and orangutans have, or at least have had, overlapping ranges. Also, I've read that leopards sometimes prey on gorillas anyway. If so, why not then a tiger, which is larger and stronger? Not that such minutiae much matter in a whimsical parable, of course.
Leopards do rarely prey on gorillas but only if the gorilla is immature (i.e. not full-size), sick, etc.
Okay, but how do you know the ape in the parable was a gorilla, and not an orangutan, which tigers do prey on? Or even if it was a gorilla, that it wasn’t an immature or sick one?
In the face of ambiguity, one is forced to guess based on the assumptions that seem most reasonable. I would suggest that if you use the word "ape" with no further specificity, on average people are most likely to picture a gorilla as emblematic of that word. Many people may not even be aware that orangutans or chimpanzees are classified as apes, instead thinking of them as "monkeys." The classification of gorillas as apes on the other hand is much more firmly established in the popular imagination.
I guess that's possible. It's not the case with me, but then I read a fair amount of primatology. But even if it is true in general, the fault would seem to lie with the limits of popular perception, not with the author of this piece. And even if a gorilla was implied, why not an immature or sick one? For that matter, it's not even clear to me that a tiger wouldn't stalk a full grown gorilla, if their ranges overlapped and it was hungry enough. They do kill and eat boars and black bears. A full grown Siberian tiger might outweigh even an adult male silverback by something like 300 lbs. In a fight to the death, I'd give heavy odds on the tiger.
Again, when there is a lack of specificity, we must simply fill in the blanks with the most reasonable approximation. In common language, when we refer to another person or an animal, we understand that they are well unless otherwise stated--people do not respond to "I saw Jimmy playing baseball at the park yesterday" with "oh is he sick? I hope he feels better!" They will only understand Jimmy as being sick if you specify it, i.e. "I heard Jimmy has been out of school for a week because he's sick."
It is certainly possible that a starving tiger might attack a gorilla out of desperation, but such a large and powerful target would surely be far down its list of preferred prey. It is also possible that a tiger could outweigh a gorilla by 300 lbs, but only if one were to pick a particularly large tiger and/or a particularly small gorilla. The size difference would not be nearly so severe if we assume average specimens, likely less than 100 lbs, and if we stipulate a starving tiger then the gorilla may even be the one who is heavier!
Thus it is possible that a tiger could attack a gorilla and kill it in a fight to the death, but the implied casual superiority of the tiger as displayed in this story is not warranted.
make the tiger aware of evolutionary debunking arguments, then do some mental simulation—imagine reducing suffering and coordinating for an ever complexifying expansion of degrees of freedom, swap the goofy rationality™️ talk for fallible intersubjective consensus & off we go re-engineering reality.
Yeah, but it wants to increase suffering.
yea but maybe it'll change that stance, idk... + the rest who don't might as well eugenix or just exterminate such traits tf out of existence so... come on tigris, let's tango.
Excellent.