Professor Professorson PhD.
Published in: Journal of Comparative Neuroscience (2020)
It was recently brought to my attention that certain association of fluffy rights activists quoted a paper of my authorship: Comparative Neuroanatomy of Humans, Ponies and Fluffies, published earlier this year, as part of their argument as to why fluffies should receive certain legal protections akin to animal rights. It is important to clarify the activist’s quoting of said paper hinges on a misunderstanding of the results presented.
It is true that in the research we found that fluffies possess a complex enough brain to sustain consciousness. This is a non-controversial statement since fluffy consciousness is readily observable by its behavioural correlates. To clarify, if the complexity of a human neural network is assigned, as a starting point, a value of phi = 1 according to the Integrated Information Theory, ponies average a brain complexity around phi = 0.9, while fluffies average brain complexity lies at a value of phi = 0.7. If we consider that common domestic animals possess a phi averaging at 0.2, it is not difficult to make the argument that fluffies are more proximate to humans in terms of consciousness than most other species. However, what fluffy rights activists fail to recognize is that the presence of consciousness does not imply entitlement to rights. In fact, I shall argue that it is precisely the presence of consciousness together with the nature of fluffies what ultimately bars them from legal protections.
Fluffies are Moral Agents.
As it was demonstrated by my research, fluffies possess a fair amount of consciousness, which has many implications but only one is relevant for the present article: consciousness is one of the elements of responsibility, the other being freedom.
Let us use an example to illustrate this: when a dog eats his master’s food, the dog cannot be made responsible for that action since he is only responding to a set of instincts. In a sense, the dog has no other option but to consume nutrition when it is available, not realizing what kind of action he is performing when stealing. This is not the case with fluffies. The level of consciousness of a fluffy, described by the research, means they are aware of the things they do, and do not respond to their environment in a purely instinctual manner. Meaning that when a fluffy steals food, it knows what stealing is and also knows that stealing is the KIND of act classified as wrong.
Here, an example by Huggermayer et al. (2019) becomes especially pertinent. What follows is the transcript of one of the interviews with an experimental female fluffy asked about different morally charged situations.
Researcher: So why is it bad if I take your food?
Fluffy: Cus, cus fwuffy am hungwy.
R: So?
F: Fwuffy nee nummies.
R: So?
[subject becomes visibly agitated]
F: Cus nu faiw! Nu faiw! Am fwuffy nummies!
[subject begins crying]
The concept of fairness has only been observed in humans, primates, and ponies, and is associated with the higher understanding that things ought to be in a certain way, which in turn requires complex though processes and abstraction. It is precisely the understanding of “oughts” what distinguishes morally responsible agents from non-moral agents. Thus, fluffies are responsible for their actions.
Fluffies are Immoral.
Unlike species who lack consciousness and thus are amoral, the understanding of “oughts” poses the possibility of realizing or ignoring said “ought”, making moral agents either moral or immoral. As a brief example: people ought to stop at red lights while driving. Failing to do so constitutes an immoral action. As such fluffies provide no shortage of traits exemplifying their immorality: cannibalism, gluttony, sloth, egocentrism, disregard for basic hygiene, paedophilia, rampant reproduction, etc.
Here my opponents might argue that fluffies are not always immoral, citing examples of mothers caring for their foals or similar observations. Even these examples, under close analysis, do not demonstrate moral actions but, at best, selfish coincidences of priorities between foal and parents. In other words, fluffies do not care for their foals from a disinterested, altruistic motivation. In fact, parents will turn against their foals and vice versa with surprising ease. In 2019 Boxfield and his colleagues ran an inspired experiment which demonstrates this point:
Fluffy mares with around two months of pregnancy were separated from their mates for a period of two weeks, after which they were given the opportunity of mating with a perfectly healthy stallion. The entire female population declined the opportunity explaining to the researchers that: “enfies nu gud fow tummeh babbehs”. A pregnant fluffy engaging in intercourse results in 98% chances of spontaneous abortion at all stages of pregnancy (Jellenburgh, 2017). At first sight, it seems the mares were caring for their unborn foals’ lives. This changed during the second phase of the experiment, when the mares where offered the opportunity to mate with a horned smartie, loaned to the researchers by one of the top national breeders. Almost 100% of the females accepted the offer, subsequently losing their pregnancies. When asked about their reasoning, all the mare’s explanations were basically the same: it was “a little” sad to lose their babies, but now they would have a smartie’s babies, which, in turn, made them better mothers.
Fluffies care for their young for the same reason they care about anything: it makes them feel special.
Fluffies are Relativists.
Fluffies lack the capacity to understand universal rules. This is relevant for the hedonistic tone it gives to their immorality and also because it demonstrates an unsurmountable obstacle to steer them into morally acceptable behaviour. Another example from the Huggermayer et al., (2019) interviews:
Researcher: So, you no longer dig up the flowers in the garden.
Fluffy: Nu, daddeh maddies wen fwuffy dig.
R: You do not want to dig anymore?
F: Fwuffy WUV diggies! Feww gud in hoofies.
R: Your daddy probably spent a lot of time planting those flowers, don’t you think it is mean to dig them up?
[subject giggles]
F: Siwwy wady, fwuffy am gud fwuffy!
R: What if, for example, I went and stepped on your nest? Would I be a mean?
[subject is visibly irritated, puffs cheeks]
F: Yus! Wai be meanie if fwuffy am gud fwuffy?
R: What if you stepped on my nest then? Would you be a meanie?
F: Nuuu! Fwuffy gib gud stompies, wady be meanie!
Although Huggermayer does not comment on the further implications of fluffy relativism, to my knowledge, there is no literature demonstrating that fluffies can be educated into understanding that certain actions are intrinsically bad or good. It might be a concept too abstract to understand, and I theorize that the extreme relativism natural in fluffies plays a role in said lack of objective moral understanding. If these qualities were present in a human, we would be describing a psychopath.
Psychopathic tendencies in fluffies are not merely of superficial similitude with their human counterparts. In a rather extensive study, now known as Calhoun’s Extended Enclosure Experiment (1999), one fluffy couple and one single male fluffy were quartered in an extensive area. These “teams”, as they were called, lived peacefully for an average duration of two months, period after which the single stallion would start attempts at seducing the mare. In the cases where his attempts proved unsuccessful, the single stallions started demonstrated increasingly antagonistic passive-aggressive tendencies against the paired stallion, culminating in his killing.
What is of special interest is the way they performed the killing. After the passive-aggressive period, a new stage of excessive comradery and supportive attitudes followed. Once the paired stallion demonstrated sufficient trust on the single one, the latter would come up with a pretext to take the former to a relatively secluded area of the enclosure, where he would attack from behind. To the mare, the stallions would say a monster had killed their mate and resume seduction attempts.
On some selected teams, the researchers informed the mare of the real situation. Those mares would consistently reject the stallion’s attempts at mating and would be subsequently raped by them.
The following transcript reflects the average rationalizations these single stallions would provide:
Fluffy: Nu. Odah fwuffy was sew-sewfw…
Researcher: Selfish?
F: Yus. Dewe mawe bu fwuffy nu couwd gib peshaw huggies! Nu faiw!
R: Well, she was his special friend. Special friends are for one another.
F: Buh wah abou fwuffy?! Am gud fwuffy, desewbe peshaw fwen, desewbe peshaw huggies.
R: You deserve them even if the mare doesn’t want to?
F: Yus! Mawe be dummeh, nu kno mawe want fwuffy, buh fwuffy show hew. Mawe enjwoy enfies.
R: Were you not friends with the other stallion? You seemed to get along.
F: Nuuuu! Odah fwuffy be bad poopie fwuffie. Nu gud fow fwuffy fwen, nu wet fwuffy gib peshaw huggies to pwetty mawe. Fwuffy onwy gud fow wowsest stompies.
As a matter of contrast, in an article still in press, I have demonstrated that ponies, be them Earth, Pegasi or Unicorns, not only understand concepts like “justice”, “value”, “crime”, “transgression”, etc., but also seem to present a sort of moral development akin to Kholberg’s theory. These means that, unlike fluffies, ponies of all subtypes move from a “punishment” based morality when they are foals to a Social Order-sustaining morality when they mature.
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In short: fluffies can be made responsible for their actions, their actions are usually immoral, and their immorality seems, according to all available data, a fixed trait in them, i.e. their nature. Just as it is in plant’s nature to always be photosynthetic, fluffy’s nature makes them always immoral.
Since the appropriate response to immorality is some sort of corrective punishment, we can derive that fluffies are to be always punished. To this point, proponents of fluffy rights would say that even in this case, certain extreme levels of cruelty (maiming, killing) should still be forbidden, and that punishment should only be used in hopes of behavioural correction. That argument would be valid if we were talking about humans. Human nature makes us ends in ourselves, meaning that we all keep certain inalienable rights, even in cases of imprisonment. Fluffies on the other hand are bio-toys, means to an end: human entertainment. In this sense, their nature not only allows for fluffy abuse, but also makes it the only natural use for fluffies.
