[staunch]

Chimps hunt down and kill monkeys for food. It's really hard for humans to watch but no chimp would ever even consider the ethics of this, even though they do have a level of ethics (e.g. fairness among themselves)

We're more intelligent than chimps, so we understand that monkeys are pretty evolved and suffer a lot when you eat them alive. Chimps aren't kept up at night by the screams of their victims.

A healthy human that tortures other intelligent lifeforms will often suffer severe mental anguish as a result. Only a human with a severe mental disorder can torture other lifeforms without remorse.

So what does that tell us about intelligence? That an intelligent understanding of a monkey's suffering leads to more ethical behavior.

But humans aren't that intelligent. We still let other people do unethical things on our behalf, like raising animals in terrible conditions for meat. The more intelligent (and knowledgeable) a human being, the more likely they are to have a problem with the suffering of factory farmed animals.

[eli_gottlieb]

>So what does that tell us about intelligence? That your understanding of a monkey's suffering leads you to more ethical behavior.

Rubbish. We don't empathize because we're intelligent. We empathize because we're empathetic. That's a specific mental capacity, separate from causal inference.