Open Access Archivangelism

AN INTERVIEW WITH PROFESSOR HARNAD

Interview by Michael Gold Animal Justice UK (2) 2016 (hyperlinked version)

Stevan Harnad is Professor of Psychology at the Université du Québec à Montréal and Professor of Web Science in the Department of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the journal ‘Animal Sentience’.

Abstract: A 2-stage strategy to (1) inform and sensitize the public -- through CCTV, web-streaming and crowd-sourcing -- about the suffering inflicted on animals in commercial breeding and use for meat, dairy, fur and fashion, followed by (2) a graduated tax on producers, vendors and consumers of animal products, claimable as a rebate by producers, vendors and consumers of non-animal alternative products.

MG: In 2004 the [UK] Court of Appeal referred to animal suffering as being determined by “scientific...value judgements”. Given your background in cognitive science, how would you describe the current degree of scientific understanding of animal suffering or well- being?"

SH: It is certain that cognitive psychobiologists whose research is devoted to understanding how animals think (cognition) and feel (sentience) have extensive knowledge and evidence about what is required for animal well-being. Neither the law nor the courts have come anywhere near giving this evidence the weight it deserves, in the way it has done for the medical and psychiatric evidence on human well-being.

Notice that I am using ordinary-language terms such as thinking, feeling and well-being rather than abstract technical terms that formalise and desensitise what is really at issue. Another such ordinary-language term that everyone understands is suffering. Many current laws allow enormous amounts of suffering to be inflicted on animals - suffering that is evident to anyone who looks and feels, and that does not need “scientific” analyses to "prove" the victims are indeed suffering.

Trying to protect animals from suffering operates under an enormous logical handicap, well-known to philosophers: the “other-minds problem.” It is logically impossible to know for sure (“prove”), even for scientists, whether and what any entity other than oneself is feeling. Even language is not a guarantor: if someone says “that hurts,” they could be pretending, or they could even be a robot - a zombie, that does not feel at all. Logically speaking.

But it is obvious to all who are trying to be honest about the problem of human-inflicted animal suffering that it is disingenuous to invoke the ‘other-minds problem’ in order to create doubt about suffering in animals where we would not invoke it in the case of humans. We know that just about all mammals and birds suffer if they are confined, deprived of access to their kin and kind, or forcibly manipulated. We recognise the mammalian and avian signs of stress, pain, fear and depression; and where we lack personal experience (such as with reptiles, fish or invertebrates), there are not only scientists but lay people — with abundant experience observing and caring for animals — who are highly capable and more than willing guide us.

It would be a shameful pretence to act solemnly as if there were any uncertainty about the vast, obvious amounts of gratuitous and indefensible agony that humans are inflicting on animals in the bred-animal product industries.

“Stress” is a formal, sanitised term for harm - both physical and mental, both felt and unfelt - that is incurred by an organism’s body. There do exist some subtle cases of stimulation, manipulation, and background conditions where it is not yet known scientifically whether they are stressful. Those are the ‘unresolved scientific problems’. But the elephant in the room — the countless instances and practices that not only virtually all cognitive psychobiologists but all decent laymen would immediately recognise as suffering — are still so immeasurably widespread, legally permissible, and un-policed today that we are far from reaching cases where there is any genuine uncertainty that calls for scientific expertise.

MG: In the same judgement it was stated that emergent “evidence...[for] an identifiable deficit in net well-being” caused by restricted feed could give credence to a legal challenge against the practice. Does this type of statement imply courts trailing behind scientific consensus in their reasoning?

SH: It is very hard, even for a cognitive scientist, to force oneself into the sanitized, almost psychopathic jargon of “restricted feed” and “identifiable deficit in net well-being” when the question really being asked is whether starving chickens causes suffering.

“Broilers” have been selectively bred to grow from chicks into adult-sized (indeed pathologically oversized and deformed) invalids in an extremely short time. Not only does this put tremendous strain on their bodies and legs (crippling them and sometimes making their legs snap off) but it makes them so ill that they cannot survive till breeding age unless the ones that are to be usedas breeders are systematically starved throughout their short, agonized lives so as to slow the rate of their devastating growth enough to allow their pathological genotype to keep being reproduced.

Of course it causes suffering to be kept constantly on the threshold of starvation. There is hardly the need for the learned opinion of “poultry scientists” to attest to this — unless one is trying to make mischievous or malevolent use of the “other-minds problem” to protect economic interests.

MG: Is there scope for greater cooperation between lawyers and scientists regarding animal welfare? How do you think this could be achieved?

SH: Yes, there is enormous scope. And enormous good will as well, especially among the younger generation of lawyers. And “cognitive psychobiologists” are also people -people who know that nonhuman animals, like human ones, are feeling creatures that can be, and are being, made to suffer gratuitously by economics-driven industry, perverted, industry-driven "animal science," and uninformed as well as misinformed consumer demand. If asked, the impartial experts are well-equipped and eager to inform the public and protect and help promote sentient animals' well-being. That is the convergence and collaboration that the journal (Animal Sentience) is devoted to fostering.

The way we are doing it is through “open peer commentary.” Every “target article” published in the journal is circulated around the world, across all specialities — to zoologists, ethologists, ecologists, evolutionists, psychologists, legal scholars, bioethicists, nutritionists, veterinarians, social scientists and animal activists — inviting them to provide commentary that elaborates, integrates, critiques, supplements or applies the content of the target article. The commentaries are published as formal mini-articles following the target article; the author responds to them. The journal is online and open access so that the target articles as well as the commentaries can be published as soon as they are reviewed and accepted. The target article by the biologist Brian Key on whether fish feel pain has already drawn over 50 commentaries. Among the target articles currently undergoing commentary are ones by: a philosopher (Colin Klein) and a biologist (Andrew Barron) on insect sentience; an economist (Yew- Kwang Ng) on welfare biology; a law professor (Martine Lachance) on veterinary reporting of abuse; a philosopher (Mark Rowlands) on animal personhood; a cognitive psychologist (Arthur Reber) on the origins of mind, and a psychologist (Thomas Zentall) on cognitive dissonance in animals and humans.

Among the signs of progress are the growing number of countries and states where animals are being formally accorded the legal status of sentient beings with biological needs (instead of just property). Just here in Montreal, the Student Animal Legal Defense Fund of McGill University convened an important and influential symposium on animal law in 2010. (It was this symposium that made me into a vegan!) In the same year, the International Research Group on Animal law of the Université du Québec à Montrèal (UQAM) convened an international animal law conference in Paris on Animal Suffering: From Science to Law. Since then both France and Quebec have granted animals sentient-being status. A new course on animal law offered by Professor Alain Roy (specialist in child protection law) at the Université de Montréal was filled with one hundred law students on the very day it was announced.

I will be directing the 7th Summer School in 2018 of the Cognitive Sciences Institute at UQAM, whose theme will be The Other-Minds Problem: Animal Sentience and Cognition.

MG: You are passionate about pushing for CCTV in abattoirs. What would you like to happen?

SH: Not just in slaughterhouses. In all locales where animals are commercially bred, confined, or used in any way by humans.

The strategy is in two phases:

Phase I (Public Sensitisation)

1. Adopt a law that recognises animals as sentient beings with biological and psychological needs.

2. Require, by law, 24-hour, 360-degree audio/video surveillance and recording at all locales where animals are commercially bred, confined, or used in any way by humans in order to monitor and ensure that the animals biological and psychological needs are being met according to existing regulations (which of course are far from adequate).

3. As the enormous volume of surveillance recordings cannot possibly all be inspected by government inspectors, all the recordings must be coded, web-streamed and made permanently open-access online, so that their inspection can be crowd-sourced for public inspection: A clear description of the pertinent existing regulations (with which the producers need to comply) has to be made available online for the general public, and relative to those existing regulations, any citizen can then report any observed violation, noting the code of the video on which it occurs and the timing of the violation.

4. Not only will this help immeasurably to ensure that existing (inadequate) regulations are complied with, and thus ensure that what goes on is only that which is allowed by existing law, but it will have the even more important effect of allowing the public to witness all the horrors that go on that are still allowed by the existing laws (especially in industrial breederies, transport and slaughterhouses).

5. It is these “authorised” horrors that Ag-Gag laws and lobbying are aggressively trying to prevent the public from witnessing.

6. The hope is that once the public has open access to the full scale of the horrors (especially in industrial breederies, transport and slaughterhouses) the majority of thus-sensitised citizens will exert pressure on their elected lawmakers not only to make existing regulations increasingly rigorous, in the protection of animals’ biological and psychological needs, but also for introducing legislation for a reduction in what is permissible and a transition to alternatives to animal production and consumption:

Phase II (Graduated Taxation on Animal Production and Consumption)

1. Require, by law, a surcharge on the production, vending and consumption of animal products, available as a rebate to incentivise the production, vending and consumption of non- animal alternatives.

2. The percentage surcharge can be increased with time.

3. The surcharge should be imposed on all three involved parties: the producer, the vendor and the consumer.

4. The rebate should likewise be available to all three parties: the producer, the vendor and the consumer. (The implementation of the rebate will be complicated initially, but that should not be accepted as an excuse for not imposing the surcharge. With thought, testing and planning, a fair, efficient rebate system can be developed by the time the graduated surcharge reaches significant levels.)

5. For producers, especially, the rebates will provide strong incentives to produce non-animal alternatives.

6. All surplus in the tax revenues should be used to provide sanctuary for the former production- animals that are liberated by the change in production and consumption patterns. And any left-over from that should be used to invest in the development of non-animal alternatives.

Michael Gold is a first year law student at Queen Mary University and will be piloting one of ALAW’s first university subgroups.

The accession to power of the likes of Donald Trump is by far the greatest catastrophe -- moral and environmental -- to befall the planet since WW II, perhaps ever.

With control of the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives and the Supreme Court all ceded to Trump, all the US consitution's intended checks-and-balances are check-mated and Trump's malign destructiveness is unchecked.

Since the free and open media helped get him there, it is unlikely that they will be able to constrain him now.

Bottomless ignorance, incompetence, pettiness and malevolence have been empowered limitlessly.

And by 2020 immense, irreversible damage will have been done.

Even a violent revolution could not prevent it, just make it worse.

Only a quick impeachment from one of the pending court cases against him can mitigate the damage (though Pence et al are not much better).

From: Lovász László
Subject: Letter from President Lovasz
Date: October 24, 2016 at 3:38:45 AM GMT-4

Dear Colleagues:

I address this letter to Honorary and External members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Several of you have resigned from ourAcademy, protesting the policies of the Hungarian government and assuming that the Academy did not work to mitigate these. This is a very serious loss for us. I understand their concerns, and respect their decision, but I would like to make some comments about the Academy's position.

Democracy in Hungarian society is still evolving and sadly it has been and still is deeply divided between - roughly speaking - a liberal and conservative side. Throughout society, including intellectuals, this leads to opposing camps, and the tribal mentality often dampens the critical balanced approach that could be expected from such people.

The Academy is one of the very few places where such divisions nevertheless enable creative activities, and where people voting for either side are willing and able to cooperate for the benefit of science and education. I was nominated and elected by all members on both sides of the line, and I promised to maintain this fruitful cooperation. From this it follows that I should not make any political statements in the name of the Academy, since I was not elected on any political platform. Any political statement would be opposed by a considerable fraction of the members.

Of course, it is not always easy to draw the line between political and moral concerns. On issues when politicians from both sides advocate one-bit answers, we try to express a scientifically supported, balanced opinion. This requires rigorous work and advice from experts. For example, our Academy did carry out a thorough and (I hope) unbiased study of the composition of migrants, and with some recommendations, released it to the government; this is now publicly available. On the also hotly debated issue of public education, we did not take sides on whether it should be run by the national or local governments, but started more than a dozen research groups to design education methodology based on real experiments performed in real schools. An extensive volume about the status of the Hungarian legal system has just been published by our research institute (this is also freely available from our web site). We publish well-researched (and often critical) studies about many other legal, sociological, educational, economic issues of our society.

We must cooperate with the government (which was reelected with more than 50% of the votes cast) on a number of issues like research funding (we maintain a research network of institutes employing about 3000 researchers), education, water management and other problems raised by climate change, just to mention a few.

I regret the resignation of several of our external and honorary members. I hope very much that those who have resigned will maintain their close relation with the Academy, their collaboration with Hungarian scientists. I also hope that your expert and wise advice will help the Academy to work for progress and ensure that decisions are made on scientific basis. I want to thank those external and honorary members who expressed their support for a policy as outlined above.

I am at your disposal should you have any questions, and so are your collaborators in research, as well as the leaders of the section of your research area.

Laszlo Lovasz
President, Hungarian Academy of Sciences

From: Stevan Harnad
Subject: Reply to Letter from President Lovasz
Date: October 24, 2016 at 9:05:09 AM GMT-4
To: Lovász László

Dear Professor Lovasz,

Thank you for your message to External and Honorary Members.

I regret that I cannot agree that the underlying issues are merely a matter of political differences of opinion between between liberals and conservatives in an evolving democracy. 

Nor can I agree that — in the name of keeping science separate from politics — there is nothing more the Academy can do. I think the Open Letter of the Internal Members and Doctors indicates what the Academy can do.

But I fully understand the difficult position you are in, in view of the fact that the Internal Members’ salaries and pensions as well as their research grants are under the control of the Orban regime.

Please believe that our resignations and critique are not intended to harm the Academy but to help it.

This is a reflection of my view only. I do not speak for the other resignees.

Yours sincerely,
Stevan Harnad

From: Stevan Harnad
Subject: Fwd: Letter from President Lovasz
Date: October 24, 2016 at 8:34:23 AM GMT-4
To: Thomas Jovin, Israel Pecht, Torsten Wiesel, Daniel C.Dennett

Dear colleagues,

The... letter, sent today by the President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences to all the External and Honorary Members, is unfortunately a confirmation of the degree to which the Academy is now under the thumb of the Orban regime. It recites the all-too-familiar — and highly misleading — talking points of the Orban regime, marshalled for every occasion: 

(1) Hungary and the Academy have democracy and pluralism 

(2) the issues cited by the resignees are merely political differences between liberals and conservatives

(3) the current government is a reflection of the free will of the majority of the populace

(4) an Academy of Science must be independent of politics

(There is also some muted indication that the President’s and the Academy’s hands are tied because they are dependent on the government for support and subsidies. This is certainly true. But the rest is quite the opposite of the truth.)

1. Democracy in Hungary is not evolving, it is devolving, being systematically dismantled by the Orban regime.

2. The differences among the members of the Academy, and in the general population, are not differences between liberals and conservatives, but between proponents of democracy and proponents (or fellow-travellers) of autocracy.

Opposing the Orban regime are not just liberals but centrists and conservatives, although they are all collectively labelled as liberals (and communists and traitors) by the Orban regime. Even the neo-nazi Jobbik party, which is as far right as one can be, is opposed to Orban’s kleptocracy.

3. The current government is not a reflection of the free will of the populace: It is the reflection of a population under duress from an ever more autocratic and corrupt machine that is controlling their media, their education, their livelihoods, their health, their laws, their tax money and their elections. None of this is a liberal/conservative matter.

4. In a democracy, an Academy of Sciences should be independent from politics. In an increasingly flagrant autocracy, an Academy of Sciences, like every individual and institution, should be opposing the autocracy in any way it can.

The many international, nonpartisan reports in the database linked to our call for resignations contain some of the abundant and definitive evidence of the ever-growing anti-demcratic actions of the Orban regime.

The signatories of the Internal Members' and Doctors’ call for the Academy to investigate and openly debate these actions. This is the way the Academy can do its part in trying to restore freedom and democracy in Hungary. Not in trying to reassure External Members that these are all just partisan political differences on which science is best served by remaining mute.

I close with an illustration of how the familiar tactics of the Orban regime are again palpable in Professor Lovasz’s letter (without a doubt vetted and partly also redacted, by the Orban regime’s minders):  

One of the signatories of the 2011 Open Letter about the "philosopher affair” (which had been a microcosm and harbinger of what was to ensue in the country as a whole in the next 5 years) had been successfully persuaded to withdraw his signature — by receiving a barrage of the apparently polarized views on the issue (government press and police harassment campaigns against Academy members critical of the Orban regime)—  that this was just a partisan political matter on which he could not make a judgment one way or the other. The ensuing five years have since demonstrated to the world that the polarization is not between liberals and conservatives in a democracy, but between opponents and collaborators of a malign and sinking autocracy. This time this prominent academician resigned. I doubt that Professor Lovasz’s letter will persuade him to withdraw his resignation, or to rue it.

Yours sincerely,
Stevan Harnad

From: Lovász László
Subject: Letter from President Lovasz
Date: October 24, 2016 at 3:38:45 AM GMT-4

Dear Colleagues:

I address this letter to Honorary and External members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Several of you have resigned from ourAcademy, protesting the policies of the Hungarian government and assuming that the Academy did not work to mitigate these. This is a very serious loss for us. I understand their concerns, and respect their decision, but I would like to make some comments about the Academy's position.

Democracy in Hungarian society is still evolving and sadly it has been and still is deeply divided between - roughly speaking - a liberal and conservative side. Throughout society, including intellectuals, this leads to opposing camps, and the tribal mentality often dampens the critical balanced approach that could be expected from such people.

The Academy is one of the very few places where such divisions nevertheless enable creative activities, and where people voting for either side are willing and able to cooperate for the benefit of science and education. I was nominated and elected by all members on both sides of the line, and I promised to maintain this fruitful cooperation. From this it follows that I should not make any political statements in the name of the Academy, since I was not elected on any political platform. Any political statement would be opposed by a considerable fraction of the members.

Of course, it is not always easy to draw the line between political and moral concerns. On issues when politicians from both sides advocate one-bit answers, we try to express a scientifically supported, balanced opinion. This requires rigorous work and advice from experts. For example, our Academy did carry out a thorough and (I hope) unbiased study of the composition of migrants, and with some recommendations, released it to the government; this is now publicly available. On the also hotly debated issue of public education, we did not take sides on whether it should be run by the national or local governments, but started more than a dozen research groups to design education methodology based on real experiments performed in real schools. An extensive volume about the status of the Hungarian legal system has just been published by our research institute (this is also freely available from our web site). We publish well-researched (and often critical) studies about many other legal, sociological, educational, economic issues of our society.

We must cooperate with the government (which was reelected with more than 50% of the votes cast) on a number of issues like research funding (we maintain a research network of institutes employing about 3000 researchers), education, water management and other problems raised by climate change, just to mention a few.

I regret the resignation of several of our external and honorary members. I hope very much that those who have resigned will maintain their close relation with the Academy, their collaboration with Hungarian scientists. I also hope that your expert and wise advice will help the Academy to work for progress and ensure that decisions are made on scientific basis. I want to thank those external and honorary members who expressed their support for a policy as outlined above.

I am at your disposal should you have any questions, and so are your collaborators in research, as well as the leaders of the section of your research area.

Laszlo Lovasz
President, Hungarian Academy of Sciences

From: Stevan Harnad
Subject: Reply to Letter from President Lovasz
Date: October 24, 2016 at 9:05:09 AM GMT-4
To: Lovász László

Dear Professor Lovasz,

Thank you for your message to External and Honorary Members.

I regret that I cannot agree that the underlying issues are merely a matter of political differences of opinion between between liberals and conservatives in an evolving democracy. 

Nor can I agree that — in the name of keeping science separate from politics — there is nothing more the Academy can do. I think the Open Letter of the Internal Members and Doctors indicates what the Academy can do.

But I fully understand the difficult position you are in, in view of the fact that the Internal Members’ salaries and pensions as well as their research grants are under the control of the Orban regime.

Please believe that our resignations and critique are not intended to harm the Academy but to help it.

This is a reflection of my view only. I do not speak for the other resignees.

Yours sincerely,
Stevan Harnad

From: Stevan Harnad
Subject: Fwd: Letter from President Lovasz
Date: October 24, 2016 at 8:34:23 AM GMT-4
To: Thomas Jovin, Israel Pecht, Torsten Wiesel, Daniel C.Dennett

Dear colleagues,

The... letter, sent today by the President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences to all the External and Honorary Members, is unfortunately a confirmation of the degree to which the Academy is now under the thumb of the Orban regime. It recites the all-too-familiar — and highly misleading — talking points of the Orban regime, marshalled for every occasion: 

(1) Hungary and the Academy have democracy and pluralism 

(2) the issues cited by the resignees are merely political differences between liberals and conservatives

(3) the current government is a reflection of the free will of the majority of the populace

(4) an Academy of Science must be independent of politics

(There is also some muted indication that the President’s and the Academy’s hands are tied because they are dependent on the government for support and subsidies. This is certainly true. But the rest is quite the opposite of the truth.)

1. Democracy in Hungary is not evolving, it is devolving, being systematically dismantled by the Orban regime.

2. The differences among the members of the Academy, and in the general population, are not differences between liberals and conservatives, but between proponents of democracy and proponents (or fellow-travellers) of autocracy.

Opposing the Orban regime are not just liberals but centrists and conservatives, although they are all collectively labelled as liberals (and communists and traitors) by the Orban regime. Even the neo-nazi Jobbik party, which is as far right as one can be, is opposed to Orban’s kleptocracy.

3. The current government is not a reflection of the free will of the populace: It is the reflection of a population under duress from an ever more autocratic and corrupt machine that is controlling their media, their education, their livelihoods, their health, their laws, their tax money and their elections. None of this is a liberal/conservative matter.

4. In a democracy, an Academy of Sciences should be independent from politics. In an increasingly flagrant autocracy, an Academy of Sciences, like every individual and institution, should be opposing the autocracy in any way it can.

The many international, nonpartisan reports in the database linked to our call for resignations contain some of the abundant and definitive evidence of the ever-growing anti-demcratic actions of the Orban regime.

The signatories of the Internal Members' and Doctors’ call for the Academy to investigate and openly debate these actions. This is the way the Academy can do its part in trying to restore freedom and democracy in Hungary. Not in trying to reassure External Members that these are all just partisan political differences on which science is best served by remaining mute.

I close with an illustration of how the familiar tactics of the Orban regime are again palpable in Professor Lovasz’s letter (without a doubt vetted and partly also redacted, by the Orban regime’s minders):  

One of the signatories of the 2011 Open Letter about the "philosopher affair” (which had been a microcosm and harbinger of what was to ensue in the country as a whole in the next 5 years) had been successfully persuaded to withdraw his signature — by receiving a barrage of the apparently polarized views on the issue (government press and police harassment campaigns against Academy members critical of the Orban regime)—  that this was just a partisan political matter on which he could not make a judgment one way or the other. The ensuing five years have since demonstrated to the world that the polarization is not between liberals and conservatives in a democracy, but between opponents and collaborators of a malign and sinking autocracy. This time this prominent academician resigned. I doubt that Professor Lovasz’s letter will persuade him to withdraw his resignation, or to rue it.

Yours sincerely,
Stevan Harnad