In recent discussion of Rope’s article, I have repeatedly made the point that discussion of the ‘Problem of Natural Evil’/Animal Suffering should have a basis in research of real world animal experiences, rather than simply being a collective work of collaborative fiction among philosophers.
To my pleasant surprise, in reading Jerry Coyne’s blog, I came across the following post:
This is based upon the following article in Nature:
Do insects have an inner life? Animal consciousness needs a rethink
The paragraph that most clearly links this to the Problem of Natural Evil is:
The definition of consciousness is complex, but the group focuses on an aspect of consciousness called sentience, often defined as the capacity to have subjective experiences, says Birch. For an animal, such experiences would include smelling, tasting, hearing or touching the world around itself, as well as feeling fear, pleasure or pain — in essence, what it is like to be that animal. But subjective experience does not require the capacity to think about one’s experiences.
The article makes clear that animal consciousness is both a matter of considerable current research, and considerable complexity and ambiguity.
I cannot help but consider that any attempt to come to grips with a ‘problem’ that has its basis in animal “pleasure or pain” and thus animal consciousness, that bases itself on what “Augustine seems to assume” and that William Paley “believed the good in nature outweighs the bad” (without apparent substantiation), rather than taking account of such research, is completely irrelevant, outside of the hermetically sealed Ivory Tower echo chamber that seems to constitute Philosophy of Religion, and its propagandistic offshoot, Christian Apologetics.
But you may ask yourself, who was this “Birch” talking in the above quote? Interesting question. An earlier quote elucidates:
As the evidence has accumulated, scientists are “taking the topic seriously, not dismissing it out of hand as a crazy idea in the way they might have in the past,” says Jonathan Birch, a philosopher at the London School of Economics and Political Science and one of the authors of the declaration.
Jonathan Birch is himself a philosopher – but not just any philosopher:
Birch has published in such journals as BioScience, Animal Sentience and Royal Society Open Science.
I cannot help but think that Jonathan Birch’s work would be a far more interesting topic of conversation for a Science forum such as this, than the work of a theologian/philosopher who started his career by ignorantly (given he lacks the scientific background to evaluate ID’s misrepresentations of science) and intemperately labeling those who consider ID argumentation to be disingenuous to be “conspiracy theorists” (p38 [1]), and whose recent book demonstrated that he has completely ‘drunk the ID Koolaid’ and has little understanding of biology that was not spoon-fed to him by the ID crowd.