Chimp Off the Old Block
…It is worth remembering that Descartes solved the problem by fiat: only humans were conscious; animals were mindless automata…If we shrink from his verdict, we still have to draw the moral line somewhere in the meantime, and let’s err on the safe side, but unless we suspend scientific judgment until we have a better idea of what we’re judging, we have no grounds for confirming, or moving, chatline when we learn more. In the United Kingdom, the law since 1986 rules that the octopus (but only Octopus vulgaris - not any other cephalopods) is an “honorary vertebrate” entitled to legal protection. You may legally throw a live lobster or worm or moth into boiling water, for instance, but not an octopus; it has the same protection enjoyed by mammals and birds and reptiles. Should that law be expanded or retracted, or did the legislators get it right the first time? If we want a defensible answer to that question, we need to identify - and then bracket - our gut intuitions. We mustn’t let our moral intuitions distort our empirical investigation from the outset. [Minds, 338-339]