by Mike O’Brien
I recently read a post by Agnes Callard discussing a philosophical novel (how dreadful) entitled “The Man Without Qualities”. The titular character is an essayist, a figure standing in stark contrast to philosophers. The essayist seeks novelty and surprise, the ephemeral glitters of new and interesting “perspectives”. He lacks the courage for the philosopher’s burdensome and risky enterprise of seeking long and hard for answers that may never reveal themselves. “Thinking long and hard”, writes Callard, “makes sense if you want answers; it makes less sense if the highest reward you anticipate from your intellectual efforts is surprise”.
I was already conscious of the distinction between the writing that I do, and what is done by the philosophers whose work I discuss. But it stings a little more when someone else points it out. Thanks, Agnes.
Casting “The Man Without Qualities” as a cautionary tale of stunted intellectual life, Callard writes that “[t]he book … shows us what it is like to be a thinker without a quest; perpetually idle in spite of all one’s ceaseless, restless intellectual activity.”
Such a description could find no more unfitting targets than Jonathan Birch and his latest book, “The Edge of Sentience”. This publication, like the rest of Birch’s voluminous output, exemplifies the ethic of philosophy as productive work, rather than some kind of divine communion, or clever puzzle-building, or sly apologetics. Birch clearly explains his project to the reader, and frequently re-iterates the book’s key principles and criteria to keep that project firmly in view. He is not trying to surprise or dazzle, or hide gems for only the most insightful and subtle readers to discover through exegetical pilgrimage. This book is not trying to showcase Birch’s talents or seduce the reader into sharing Birch’s prejudices, but rather seeks to clearly convey relevant information and to articulate a consistent set of proposals with reasonable chances of implementation in public institutions. “The Edge Of Sentience” is a book with a public agenda, and Birch executes it well. A recent review in Nature called it “a masterclass in public-facing philosophy”, in case my opinion isn’t authoritative enough for you.
In reviewing an article co-written by Birch and Kristin Andrews for a previous column, I noted that it was nearly impossible to summarize without restating the whole article point for point, because it comprised so many independently important details and argumentative steps. This book presents a similar challenge, having little extraneous information to cut or inflated themes to compress. A less good book would be easier to summarize: “the author argues X, repeatedly, in a variety of ways, over the course of 200 pages, and it basically amounts to this… “. Birch, by contrast, argues A through Z, sequentially, over about 350 pages, and only repeats himself deliberately. So, I will not attempt to discuss much of the content of this book (the zoological research, the histories of medical decision-making, the emerging theories of artificial intelligence, etc.). Instead, I will try to describe the book’s educational and political project, and the methods it employs to accomplish that project. Readers will no doubt enjoy all the substance that I omit here when they encounter it while reading the book for themselves.
The subject matter of Birch’s book is the zone of possibly sentient beings who may have welfare interests that should be respected. This zone includes humans with persistent “disorders of consciousness” (e.g. comatose patients), human fetuses, invertebrate animals of many kinds, artificial intelligence, and “neural organoids” (masses of human neural tissue grown for experiments). At the outset, it is uncertain which beings are likely sentient, it is uncertain what criteria should be accepted as indicative of sentience, and it is uncertain what protective measures are appropriate to protect beings which are deemed sentient. It is even uncertain what definition of “sentience” should be adopted for these questions.
Birch adopts “the capacity to have valenced experiences” as the working definition of sentience, although he discusses alternatives with metaphysical commitments that lie outside the scope of the book’s project. He stakes out five “realistic” positions regarding prerequisites for sentience, ranging from most restrictive (requiring a granular prefrontal cortex, found only in primates) to least restrictive (requiring something functionally equivalent to a midbrain, which may admit insects). He excludes positions requiring language or an adult human brain as unrealistically restrictive (sorry not sorry, contractualists), and positions admitting anything with a spinal cord, or even non-nervous tissue, as unrealistically permissive.
For beings possessing some of these features but not yet accepted as sentient, Birch adopts the concepts of “sentience candidate” and “investigation priority”. The former category includes those beings for which the evidence of sentience is strong enough that it would be irresponsible to ignore in policy decisions, and rich enough to identify welfare risks and design precautions for them. The latter category includes beings that could plausibly be identified as sentient if more research was done, and which are affected by human activity in such a way that would create welfare risks if they are sentient. The lines between beings recognized as sentient, as sentience candidates or as investigation priorities will be drawn differently depending on one’s beliefs and working criteria, of course. But these categories allow for greater clarity about the substance and scope of disagreements over sentience.
This search for clarity in a disputed zone (rather than consensus on one preferred stance) drives the structure of the book. It opens with a list of all the proposals that Birch will make, regarding the precautionary framework generally and various cases specifically. These proposals are re-stated throughout the book in the context of the supporting evidence and argumentation. The three stipulations that compose this guiding framework are (1) There exists a duty to avoid gratuitous suffering, (2) Sentience candidature can warrant precautions (to avoid gratuitous suffering), and (3) Assessments of proportionality (of precautionary measures) should be informed, democratic and inclusive.
The main body of the book is subdivided into five parts, comprising seventeen chapters. Part One deals with the “zone of reasonable disagreement” about sentience and the relationship between physical and mental phenomena, covering the philosophical and scientific challenges of definition and explanation. Part Two deals with the “precautionary framework”, whereby Birch tries to identify a range of defensible principles and positions from which policy recommendations can be made, along with prescribing democratic procedures by which these recommendations can be reached. Part Three deals with human cases (neural organoids, fetuses, and people in coma-like states), drawing on some very interesting medical research and history while avoiding the tangled debates around reproductive rights or “dignity”. Part Four deals with (other) animals, and is also replete with biological and historical information, as well as discussions of how to give proportionate protection to welfare interests when they are threatened by defensible human activity. (I suspect that Birch believes most of the harm we currently do is indefensible, but he cannot simply propose a moratorium on all human enterprise as a feasible policy within his framework.) Part Five deals with artificial intelligence, including extant technologies like LLMs and future developments guided by cognitive theories of consciousness. I am generally much less interested in AI than in animal cognition, but found this section quite interesting and of properly urgent importance to the book’s project.
There are some definite conclusions in the book, despite its general approach of upholding reasonable disagreement. Octopuses are sentient. Plants are not. Language requirements for sentience are out. Torturing animals is wrong (and not for the crazy reasons—my words, not Birch’s—proposed by Kant or Carruthers). But arriving at such conclusions is not the point of the book. Beyond accepting some minimal stipulations (duty to respect welfare interests, commitment to abide by standards of evidence and logic), Birch is trying to create the conditions for productive discussion, not win a debate.
Does the book succeed in this project? I suppose that largely depends on factors outside of Birch’s control. He has certainly made a good case for the range of possibilities that he believes to merit consideration. Whether that consideration, and subsequent decision and implementation, will be forthcoming at the level of governments, industries and professional bodies is yet to be seen. He has written a book that is worth reading on its own merits, and the more people benefit themselves by reading it, the more influential it may prove to be. Writing a good book is a pragmatic necessity to advance Birch’s project of protecting the welfare of sentience candidates.
My personal assessment of the book is quite positive. I came to it expecting something more like Ed Yong’s work in “An Immense World”, which is a tour of the science and philosophy of animal perception aimed at a lay but somewhat scientifically literate audience. That book is more entertaining, more narratively satisfying, and less goal-directed in Birch’s policy-minded sense. I don’t wish to contrast these two authors critically, as Yong is not shallow and Birch is not boring, but they are clearly doing different things. Both serve to raise awareness and appreciation of non-human beings’ capacity for mental experience, and of the welfare questions that follow. But Birch is making a case, not leading a tour, and as such he can give cause for dissent. As I have been thinking about animal welfare issues and their political challenges for quite a few years, I occasionally had to smooth down my hackles to give Birch’s proposals a fair hearing. Interested readers who have not yet formed their own definite opinions will likely experience less friction with the arguments of the book.
My main point of discontent (I can’t really call it a disagreement, and it is barely a criticism) lies with Birch’s advocating for and describing in much detail the role of democratic consultation and citizens’ assemblies for creating policy proposals. It is not just some hand-wave to the value of democracy, as democratic and inclusive bona fides are integral to the third principle of his precautionary framework. But I felt that the book didn’t explain why these particular policy matters (precautionary measures to safeguard the welfare of sentience candidates) merited extraordinarily democratic and inclusive processes to create recommendations. Birch could argue that these are deeply important matters of moral significance, given the numbers of beings potentially affected, and any similarly vast and dire matter should also be addressed by similar procedures.
I suppose my gripe is that I wanted a more explicit explanation of why (human-only) democratic procedures should be any more credible than expert dictatorships insofar as their decisions impact the welfare of non-human (and therefore not democratically represented) beings. But I suspect Birch might have a good answer for that. He does state that “[i]f a citizens’ panel … were to decide that there should be no limit [on our abuse of sentient beings], then I would have to accept the force of that verdict for public policy (though not for my own private life).” The use of the word “force” rather than “legitimacy” or “right” might point to a simply pragmatic answer to this. Politics is, after all, the art of the possible.
I don’t wish to make too much of this point. Birch hangs his hat at the LSE, hardly a den of political radicalism, and works in the intersection of research and policy where certain political realities and values must be taken for granted. Opposing democracy on behalf of octopus rights would not help his project gain any traction in government or industry. A substantive political discussion would introduce a whole other dimension to his pragmatic considerations, and probably make the project of “The Edge Of Sentience” impossibly unwieldy. It is a defensible choice to assume (or hope for?) a morally responsible and reasonable government (and licenced bodies in research and industry) to which carefully tuned consultative mechanisms can deliver their recommendations. I suppose that living next to the USA, in a country poised to elect its own Republican-Lite government, makes it easy for me to forget that some countries do still have credible prospects for state-level moral advancement.
This quibble reminds me of the criticisms thrown at John Rawls (mostly by people who have not read his work) for being a weak-kneed incrementalist, or tinkering apologist for the status quo. His criteria for a minimally decent society are in fact incredibly, perhaps impossibly, demanding from the standpoint of existing societies like his own USA. He didn’t need to shout “the status quo is horribly unjust” on every page, because the thoughtful reader should be able to recognize the radical disconnect between the world they inhabit and the world prescribed in Rawls’ work. Similarly, Birch doesn’t need to point out that humanity’s relationship to non-human beings (and human beings) is horrible every time he mentions existing institutions. There is an incongruity between the conscientiously constructed, better-angels-harnessing procedures that Birch proposes, and the often amoral-at-best superstructure into which they will deliver their recommendations, and that incongruity makes me itchy. But that’s a me problem, not a “The Edge Of Sentience” problem.
That’s it. That’s all the criticism I have of Birch’s book. I’m in no position to pick apart the massive amount of empirical and philosophical literature that he cites (the bibliography runs thirty-six pages). I have no counter-proposal to replace the very large and very sturdy edifice of proposals that he has constructed. I can’t fault him for being too restrictive or too permissive in setting his criteria, at least in light of the evidence and arguments he provides for those choices. I can’t even fault it for being boring, because it isn’t, despite running nearly 400 pages and being oriented more towards influencing policy than entertaining casual science and philosophy buffs. The quibbles about meta-political quietism and democratic legitimacy are largely peculiar to me, as my eyes glaze over whenever I hear words like “reasonable” or “consensus”.
This is a wonderfully informative work of science and philosophy writing, even to readers who are already well-versed in the issues discussed. Birch’s writing is engaging, earnest and easy to follow, with flashes of wit and style that indicate that he could flex some rhetorical muscles if he wished, but has the good sense to refrain. He judiciously and seldom exercises his prerogative as author to give any privileged place to his own views, except at the level where opinion is the only currency, such as in stipulating that moral duties to other sentient beings do exist.
I look forward, as I am sure Birch does too, to seeing a fruitful response to this book in the form of counter-arguments, corrections and amendments from other experts. I also admire that Birch would put as much work into this book as he obviously has, knowing full well that the often very recent evidence on which it rests is constantly being added to and revised. He could have stepped back from the edge of current research and written a more abstract book with a longer shelf life. But this book is not intended to sit on shelves. It is intended to have an exploitable use-value, to be a tool for bending the arc of history towards justice, and by happy coincidence it also provides a positively valenced experience to sentient systems like me.
“The Edge Of Sentience” by Jonathan Birch is published by Oxford University Press and is available in print, digital and audio-book formats.
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