In My Memory

Snail, Gotcha, I read your comment too fast the first time without noticing the source of income is fish. But basically, I dont think people should have that kind of job or any kind of job in a slaughterhouse for that matter, they should find another job or someone should step in and feed them until they can find another job. I'd hope Eduador could learn to make better fiscal decisions and help their economy, but their currency is so unstable that no one wants to trade with them, and the US and UK giving such huge agricultural subsidies to farming corporations that no latin farm can compete against really doesnt help either. I think if they really needed it, then US or UK assistance would be obligatory. Padren, Hell no! 100s of animals are rescued everyday who would otherwise be tortured and killed. If nobody ever did anything, then there would be no hope for any animals at all. As far as economic damage is concerned, look at this: And are you aware of what ALF did to Huntington Life Science center's stock? Wikipedia entry: Can you say "w00t!"? I knew you could SwansonT, I'm having trouble parsing "fish suffered relative to existence outside of the fishery", what are you asking? I'm sure they do, but fortunately people are lot more sympathetic to house pets (companion animals), and an animal police does the work that ALF would normally take up. I'm pretty sure that ALF would intervene on mistreated house pets if they needed to. Callipygous, Thats almost sig worthy (One of the things I notice is that, for how strongly people believe their moral convictions, the vast majority of them dont know why. I've even been pretty amazed in thread that, in the 5 years people have had to think about 9/11 and every other act of terrorism before and after, the best arguments against terrorism are "but the MAJORITY decides whats right!!!" and "morals are subjective!!!". Thats it, that is the disappointing best that people can come up with, and that is the extent of the inkling of rationality use... its almost a morbid parody of morality, because its so wishy washy and unprofound that it doesnt even come close to discrediting equally irrational justifications for any kind of terrorism at all. I hope to god that people objected to 9/11 for better reasons than "morals are subjective!!!!!!!1!1!one!"...)

gcol, Its worth noting...

Dak, Yes, those companies only continue to operate because theres a profit to make, and if they cant profit, then fewer animals are harmed overall. It would be better if the fish didnt die, but apparently whoever released them didnt have enough foresight on what what would happen to them and they screwed up, but its better overall because the Kame's fishery is £500,000 poorer and £500,000 taken out of the pool of money that contributes to animal suffering. ALFs moves didnt accomplish something more ideal, but it accomplished at least a little. I would be amazed if other fisheries could meet the demand, but I guess I should think about it this way: maybe fisheries and slaughterhouses should be sabotaged with more frequency so that their continued operation is a net loss and makes it impossible to meet the demands. Paranoia, *** IMM re-reads her comment, notices that she didnt write anything at all even remotely implying that principles are subjective *** What exactly are you replying to? I never said that bad principles are subjective anywhere in my post. If you actually think bad principles are subjective, then basically you should turn your criticism on yourself, and question how you could even object to acts of terrorism in principle. Sisyphus, Not in principle, no. And in fact, there is nothing that morally binds a person to obeying the law in the first place, theres nothing immoral about breaking the law, because laws and morality are not necessarily correspondant. Believe me, there are numerous examples in history where laws are blatantly immoral and breaking the law is actually good. Seriously, there are good criticisms are terrorism, but criticisms like "it forces the will on the majority!!!" and "it breaks the law!!!" are really the most unsophisticated criticisms. *** spits out those words Sisyphus just shoved into her mouth *** Oh no People making their own laws! Its total anarchy now! Just wondering, but exactly should a majority refuse to give mercy to those who save [Godwin]? Snail, WTF? How can you say that ALF is motivated by self interest, what are they gaining for being labeled as terrorists and liberating animals from slaughterhouses? It has nothing to do with self interest, but for animals interests, they are perfectly selfless. If you have a problem with people motivated purely by self interests, take it up with the people who torture and kill animals for profit.

Paranoia, So, whats the problem? There isnt anything intriniscally wrong with forcing your will on the majority, because there are plenty of times where a majority just has bad principles which are genuinely harmful to others. Consdier that almost every civil rights fight in history has pitted a minority of people against a majority. For example, gay rights is a current topic where a minority of gay rights supporters are against the status quo that says "smear the queers". Lets just take a hypothetical situation: - 30 years ago, being opening gay meant the risk of being abducted and beaten to death. If witnessed people attacking and killing gays, but the police or government didnt care at all, there wouldnt be much you could do but intervene on gays behalf with violence... do you think you'd be justified doing the right thing, even if likeminded people were in the microminority? Probably, and no amount of "you're forcing your will on the majority!!!!" comments will mean anything to you. A lot of ALF members look at animal liberation in the same way: animals cant defend themselves, and the governments dont care about animal abuse, so ALF defends the animals on their behalf.

I dont really care if the fishery lost so much money hat it couldnt build anymore fisheries, I'd be more concerned if ecological damage was caused. At the very least, it is better that the fish were released even if they died, not so much because the fish were better off released than killed, but because it means the fisheries cant profit from the fishes deaths. gcol, Maybe if the principle was "my god wants me to kill you", then yes, any act of terrorism can be defended. But I dont think "its wrong to exploit animals for profit", which is the one that any ALF member would use, really justifies every act of terrorism. Of course, I think its also important to realize that not all terrorism is the same, people are definitely endangered by militant Muslims and white supremecists who *want* to kill others than by the ALF who only destroy property. But in any case, terrorism itself is not inherently bad at face value, because at least in the case of ALF they are trying to use it accomplish good ends (sometimes they screw up though, like in the halibut incident above). The reason why people would even consider terrorism in the first place is because sometimes theres just nothing the governments or lawmakers will do. I'm pretty sure every congressman in the US gets 100s of letters every year, especially during hunting season, to stop passing laws that kill more animals... but letter writing doesnt always work, it doesnt accomplish anything.

Oh great... Just two seconds ago, I did something bad... I wanted to make a pasta casserole, but I was washing dishes at the moment and didnt have any baking pans, so I substituted a pot instead. The casseroles are supposed to be covered with tin foil, but I didnt have any, so I just used the lid to my pot. 40 minutes later, I just took my pot out of the oven, and I noticed that the lid looked odd: its supposed to have a little plastic handle on the top so you can grab it off the pot, but instead of finding a handle, I found a melted puddle of plastic on my lid. And thats not the worst part, when I took the pot out I'm like "oh my god!" and I tried to form the plastic puddle into a pseudo-cap shape before it set permanently. So, trying to form the molten plastic into shapes with my unprotected hands... yeah My casserole came out fine, except for a chunk of plastic I picked out of it (it melted straight through the screwhole in the lid).

Dr Dalek, Yes, but they are doing the right thing. Bachelors in Finance and Business, associates in Economics, and a specialized degree in technical and fundamental analysis (<--- techniques to predict stock patterns) which I earned as an intern for TD Waterhouse and California College of Business. I earn a living as a professional technical analyst (read that as "stock investor")... ... so if you ever needed a broker, I'm the girl you can count on... but no, they have nothing to do with biomedical research. (And if you wanted to know, I work for an investing firm who emphasize in "ethical investing", so we try to invest mostly in Green funds, or environmentally friendly corporations.) *** huggles *** Good, I'm glad you're at least taking the time to think (And thank you for being very kind and polite in this post, I appreciate it )

I'm tempted to say "sex", but I want to keep things G-rated and say "shopping" instead Also, I like to practice yoga, its relaxing, and its also a good way of keeping a feminine figure when I cant go to the gym And if I have nothing better to do, I have one of those shower heads that can adjust to shoot a wide angle or narrow stream of water. So I set my shower on "pulverize" mode and turn the water a little hotter and just let it massage the tenseness out of my back and body.

Ok, I'm sure none of your are just dying to know, but heres what happened anyway: My ex-husband (affectionately known as ELL) lives about 3 hours away, and he came to visit. I was planning a special night and a very good meal: a spicy farfalle (with peppers and some jalopeno peppers) which an exotic spinach salad... except I couldnt use spinach because of the ecoli scare, so I substituted romaine and red lettuce. So I'm dressed up in my most adorable skirt and blouse, and my husband is at the door, and here are our first words: IMM: hello! ELL: hi! IMM [at a loss for words]: w00t! ELL: w00t w00t! IMM: w00t w00t! ELL: w00t! *** IMM purrs *** *** ELL huggles with IMM *** I just remember seeing him and melting inside, becuse he looks even younger than he did before, and he's been working out a lot more than he used to. (swoon!) So we catch up on things, and it turns out my husband had a pretty lousy time dating too. Apparently he went on a date with a woman at a restaurant, and the woman tried to pay for the meal, but then the waiter comes back and says "I'm sorry, your credit card wont go through, the machine says its stolen", so the woman "checks" for another card in her car and drives off, leaving my husband to foot the bill. But anyway, basically everything I had planned didnt go right. The spicy pasta was good for about the first bite, but then afterward we noticed it was a little too spicy, so much that it couldnt be eaten. And the salad was bland, because usually I like to use greek vinaigrette but I tried to be fancy and used a walnut and red wine vinaigrette that just didnt have any flavor... ... so for dinner, we made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Apart from that, everything else worked wondefully we talked for hours, and basically decided that ELL is going to find a job in my town (because I already own my house), and try to make things work and be more interesting for ourselves. We arent going to have kids anytime soon, but we've decided just to be very happy together. Thats good news for the two of us, but bad news for all the younger guys I spent all my time flirting with

iglak, Yes it is, but still, its a little too much to say that torture and murder of child is no different from torture and murdering the parents. Parents always suffer less. I'm sorry' date=' I cant parse that. What are you trying to say? Ummm... yes it is, you said this in your last post: "when talking about babies or children, one must take into account the parents as well. killing and torturing the child would be morally equivalent to killing and torturing and the parents (because they tend to be connected on such a level).". When you talk about the torture and killing of another person, you are talking about pain and death... but if pain and death dont figure into your moral system, then what you said before doesnt make any sense, because the torture and killing of another person wouldnt have a moral consequence. I'm sorry, I dont follow. You posted that quote above as a reply to my comment that you dont have an argument justifying abortion. Remember, in your last posts, you said you had no problem with people having abortions (even if the fetus could potentially affect society), but then you posted that its wrong to kill children because parents would be upset and feel hurt --- you cant have both of those at the same time, because some people feel hurt when others have abortion (or kill animals), and that makes it wrong by the principle you stated earlier. Dont take this wrong way (believe me, everyone has this problem), but I dont think you've thought about your moral beliefs very much, and so you tend to contradict yourself left and right. I'd be interested as to how you identify mechanical desires or what that term even means, or how a mechanical desire like masturbating in public differs from (presumably) non-mechanical desires like listening to music... I do appreciate your attempt to lay out your moral system' date=' but at the very least words like "dehumanize" and "humanize" havent really been defined. And when you say animals cant be dehumanized, then I think that whatever unstated definition "dehumanize" you have in mind must be an incredibly loaded term, think of it this way: by whatever process, such as killing a person or torturing them endlessly, leads to dehumanizing that person, the same process can be (and usually is) done to animals and affects the animals in exactly the same way --- but the only difference between torturing the animal and torturing the person is that they belong to different breeding groups. Thats it, just a difference in breeding groups. So how exactly does a trivial difference like belong to different breeding groups determine whether a being matters morally or not? As far as I can see, whatever you mean by "dehumanize" involves some arbitrary presumptions, such as turning someones membership to a breeding group into a moral characteristic. The fact something is a human or not means nothing, because species membership isnt a moral characteristic. (Also, I'm pretty sure that most of the things you accept as normal, like someone doing a factory job day-in and day-out, are pretty dehumanizing too.) Dr Dalek, No, we dont, because there are moral constraints on what we can do. To put in perspective, there are thousands and thousands of people who need organs and blood everyday, and they die because theres just not enough needed material to go around and there are no other alternative... would it be justified for the government to harvest people off the street so that their blood and organs can be used in someone else? No, of course not, that would be completely intolerable, even if the number of people saved by such acts greatly exceeded the number of people killed. I'd LOVE to hear whether you think the government should propose an organ harvesting program, because after all it is a paramount necessity that people have organ transplants and blood donations to preserve their lives. If you think the government should be doing that in spite of the necessity, I'd like to hear why, and I'd like to hear how your explanation doesnt automatically apply to animal experimentation. At least for me, heres why I think the government has never proposed a government harvesting program to save dying people: because preserving peoples right to life and experiential welfare is of paramount necessity, but simultaneously it is also worse to kill people than to let them die (thats part of the reason why failing to send food to starving people overseas is not the same thing as sending those same people poisoned food). In the context of preserving life, it takes more effort to save a person than it takes to refrain from killing them, so we can state that a person is more at fault if they kill another than if they are unable to save them, so we do people more harm by killing them than not saving them. From the principles above, in a case where a doctor who refuses to kill people on the street to save other patients, the doctor does less harm to the patients he fails to save than the harm we would do to the people he killed. However, people usually believe that if a doctor killed a person and saved 10 others, it would still be wrong, which indicates that killing people is wrong on a significant magnitude almost to the point where killing is categorically wrong. This can be generalized to animal experimentation, where doctors do less harm to the people they fail to save than to the animals they kill, and killing the animals is signifantly outweighs the benefit of saving others lives (<--- this is compounded by the fact that animal research frequently doesnt save lives, such as in the case of psychological and cosmetics testing which exterminates millions and millions of animals a year but saves not a single persons life or contributes to a single inkling of comfort in a persons life). However, some other principles can be considered. For instance, someone might say that if a person is pulled off the street for harvest, then they are wronged in ways that dont apply to a person who needs those organs; for instance, pulling a person off the street moves them from a position of safety to a position of danger which violates their rights, but the rights of a person who needs organs arent violated because they arent moved out of a position of safety into anymore danger for not having access to others' organs. In this way, we can say that a person is harmed for being killed and harvested, but a person isnt harmed at all (or not so significantly) for not being saved; perhaps the principle would be true if people were bred for experimentation, because they are being deliberately deprived of their lives where they would otherwise be in a position of safety. And these principles generalize to animal experimentation too, where animals are harmed for being the subjects of experiments, but people are not harmed for not being saved. Like almost every argument for animal experimentation, it applies equally to human experimentation. Human experimentation can and has benefitted humans, in fact I picked the freezing experiments above because they had the most relevant applications: the German army noticed that whenever their soldiers went through the water and stormed the coast, they'd die 10 minutes to a half hour later from hypothermia, so the Nazis performed experiments on concentration camp victims to develop ways to prevent that problem. All of the benefits the Nazis discovered were translated directly toward saving more German lives. The data today could still be useful, but medical journals just wont publish it because of the unethical ways the data was collected... so experimenters recreate the freezing experiments on animals. Of course, your comment also implies that when the animals themselves benefit from animal experimentation, its almost like you're saying you're doing the animals a favor by killing them, like the animals are martyrs for their own kind. That kind of statement is almost a parody of morality, and it betrays an almost macabre irony: 8) Just as irrelevant as the fact that there are no alternatives to harvesting people off the street for organs and blood. Nonsense, all of my replies have been direct, too the point, and intellectually honest. However, all of the replies to my posts have been almost pitifully non-academic, full of internal contradictions and naive leaps in logic (and yet this is supposed to be a science board!). However, I actually appreciate the posts by iglak because he at least tries to be nice, but you are almost too willing to take potshots at me. And yet, when you're taking potshots at me, you're also sacrificing you're integrity at the same time; for example, I think its a very poignant observation that your use of the word "necessity" is just a descriptive statement and not a prescriptive one, making the statements "its necessary to experiment on humans to save lives" no more remarkable than the statement "its necessary to torture humans so they will suffer" (both are descriptive, not prescriptive statements). But, rather than take the time to defend your initial comments, or to show that I misread you, you uncritically replied "no, you're the one playing with definitions!!!!". You can see then, that if you are unwilling to put together at least a half-honest defense of your comment, that I might think that you dont actually have an argument for animal experimentation, and that your "necessity" argument amounts to nothing at best. And in any case, necessities go both ways, so lets take two "necessities" together: its necessary to preserve human lives, but its also necessary to categorically abolish animal experimentation. So far as I can tell, you dont have a single argument as to why the first claim should be preferred over the second, which is why your argument from necessity is just a word game and nothing more profound. The necessity of animal experimentation has nothing to do with its continued practice, because its also necessary to preserve animals lives, its continued practice has EVERYTHING to do with the fact that animals cant defend themselves. Of course, when humans attack and exploit other humans who cant defend themselves, like the mentally retarded or babies or unarmed women, people fall all over themselves to punish the exploiters no matter how much more powerful they are. Sisyphus, I dont think animals being killed in factories is just "incidental", its willful and intentional. The goal of factories is to kill as many animals as they can for profit, but thats not the same goal as a farmer. In any case, you might as well say "if peoples deaths in car accidents are incidental, why not just run them over your car on purpose", it just doesnt make sense. Cyberman, Say that when someones idea of living as they see fit means killing you and your whole family for sport.

Sisyphus, I'm not sure if this answered the question in the way you wanted iglak, Ummm... I dont even know how to respond to that. How do you justify that? So in other words, torturing and killing children isnt wrong because it hurts the children, but only because it hurts people sympathetic to children? I have to admit, thats really counterintuitive... ... however, you open yourself up to a number of objections: - too much empahsis is placed on others feelings, and almost no emphasis at all is being placed on the feelings of the tortured being. - you dont have a conceivable objection to secret killings, where no one ever knows that children are tortured and killed at all. We could imagine that couple have a child, but dont care for it, so they burn its face off with a blowtorch and no one ever discovers the murder... theres not anything obviously wrong with that based on what you said, and in fact it might be considered to the right thing to do (after all, if peoples feelings matter so much, you would take obviously steps to conceal your actions and avoid hurting peoples feelings). - its not clear that you have an argument for animal experimentation, because I and a few million others definitely sympathize with the lives of animals, and it hurts us very much. But then you dont have an argument for abortion either, because some people empathize with the life of an unborn fetus. I've criticized a lot of peoples ethical systems for being internally inconsistent and naive, but yours is the first I've seen that is almost wantonly cruel.

Gutz, Your question is too big to be answered in a single post' date=' and actually philosophers have written volumes of books over 1000s of years dedicated to that single question alone. Most people agree that the foundation of ethics can be described by the philosophy of language, but that is really cumbersome to read (if you dont know what I mean, heres a direct quote from a short essay by John Skorupski on the topic, "the only concept of a reason for acting that we have is one that makes a reason a relation between an objective, an actor, and an action, thus: there is a reason for a person P whose objective is O to do X. That will hold when P's doing X is a way of bringing about O. How storng the reason whill depend on how effective X is doing - how probably it makes the acheivement of O"... it goes on like that for 25 more lines in the remaining paragraph, and 25 more pages in the essay). I actually have my own longwinded cumbersome explanation for the foundations of morality as well, but here is the short and sweet explanation: There are some characteristics of objects or events that dont reduce down to matter; but rather, those characteristics are emergent properties of certain interactions. A really simple example of such a characteristic is friendship: a "friendship" isnt a tangible object, its not made of matter or energy, but we can talk about it coherently as if a "friendship" exists. A "friendship" is abstract, but it does actually exist in a non-conventional way: it exists [i']between[/i] people and their interactions. If there werent any people interacting with each other, than friendships wouldnt exist at all. And I think notions of good and bad are similar to friendship: they dont exist concretely, but they are properties which emerge out of the interactions of people (or feeling beings in general). The hard part about ethical systems is explaining how good and bad correspond or emerge from actions, but I think its pretty simple: In the infinite number of actions a being can perform, a being may narrow down a set of actions to persue or avoid; and so, this process describes particular reasons to persue or avoid actions. Reasons for behavior can be attached to actions, and so we have a basis for attaching the properties of good and bad to actions (because good and bad fall under scope of reasons to persue or avoid actions). That in itself is one way to describe the foundation of morality, or at least describe how good and bad correspond to behaviors. After this point, a moral theorists is challenged with describing just what it means to describe good and bad (or equivalent value and disvalue). Fundamentally, in metaethics, we can call something with intrinsic value value something that is persuable in itself without reference to other entities, and intrinsic disvalue is something worth avoiding for itself without reference to other entities. A moral theorists needs to show that some properties or actions are described by those definitions of intrinsic value and disvalue, however once again I think at least a few properties can be taken for granted: for instance, happiness has intrinsic value because its an experience worth persuing for just the experience itself, and likewise pain has intrinsic disvalue. So, actions can be described as good if they are reducable down to an intrinsic value or set of intrinsic values (i.e. giving to charity might be called good by reference to happiness, in the sense that it increases happiness). So, at the very least, we have an metaethic in the making, one which describes the existence of goods and bads emerging from our actions, and so far all discussion has relied on very minimal assumptions, so that we can talk about morality in a materialistic universe just as reasonably as we can talk about friendships. But in actuality, your question depends on what you mean by the foundation of an ethical system. I'm not exactly sure what your idea of "foundation" But of course, you're essentially right, we have to question the foundations of morality, and I think at the root of it all, the absolute foundation of morality has to do with being able to interact with other beings, its basically observation that starts with building an ethic. We could always question if other beings exist, or that our sense information actually corresponds to things in the universe. Iglak, At the very least, I dont know what you mean by "influencing culture" --- I for one have a very dim and pessimistic view of humans as a whole, and I think 99.999% of people will live their lives not affecting anything. They wont contribute any scientific, technological, philosophical, artistic, or other kind of knowledge into the world that will affect anything, much less have a redeeming value. Some people live their whole lives amounting to nothing... I think at the very least, you have some loose ends in your philosophy that you need to tie up, such as what it means to influence culture, why influencing culture is morally relevant or be weighted in our moral calculations, and just how much or how little a person has to influence it in order to have a claim to moral value. However, your comments are basically just a reiteration of potential person arguments. On my vegan website, I wrote a direct response to "potential people" arguments here: http://juliet.php0h.com/article.php?id_article=6 However, at the moment, my website isnt working. When it does, you can read my article in full, but for now I hope you'll be satisfied with just the gist of it in this little post: basically the problem with potential people arguments is that they just arent taken to their logical ends, for at least three different reasons: - Do you ever see people arguing that its ok to torture and kill terminally ill babies or the mentally retarded? No matter how you put it, those people wont affect culture, but people still believe their lives are valuable even if they arent potential persons, so the whole potential persons argument is based on a red herring. - But of course, think about the argument in the abstract sense: potential person arguments literally say "X is a potential Y, therefore X is morally equal to Y". However, if a baby sets something on fire, people are willing to forgive the baby because it doesnt know what its doing, and it would be irrational to punish the baby because it happens to be a "potential rational adult" -- so, we're treating the baby with exactly the properties that it has right now, not its potential properties. Similarly, you wouldnt believe for a second a persons argument for pedophilia on the basis that "children can potentially consent to sex, therefore they are equivalent to someone who has consented to sex". Heres another one: you are a potential corpse, so it wouldnt be wrong to bury you. If you reject those arguments above, then implicitly you reject the claim that "X being a potential Y is morally equal to Y", and so you reject potential person argument as valid basis for morality. - If we had people being bred for experimentation, then those people are NOT potential members of society, they are only potential experiments. Would you say its wong to save those people? If so, then the value of those people doesnt necessarily depend on what their potential is. Of course, you have to understand the mechanics behind a potential person argument to understand why its useless in moral philosophy: potential person arguments state that only influential members of society are valuable; the potential person is not valuable itself, but its only valuable for the sake of bringing into existence. But think about it this way: you cannot harm a person by not bringing them into existence, because there is no person to harm in the first place and you cant harm non-existent people (if you think people are really harmed for not being brought into existence, then your acceptance of abortion is inconsistent, but also you had to object to people using birth control and not breeding as much as humanly possible). So then, what harm is done by killing a potential person? You havent harmed any existent people, and you havent harmed the non-rational human because its only a potential and not of any value --- so the, theres nothing objectionable about killing potential people at all. Ironically, potential person arguments imply that it is morally acceptable to take the lives of babies indiscriminately, so its not an argument for preserving life at all, its very misanthropic! ... but then, what if you reject the claim that its ok to kill potential people all you want? You would have to be rejecting the claim on the basis that potential people actually have value in themselves, and not just for what they are potentially, but this concession is a rejection of the potential person argument. And so, the value of babies doesnt depend on the potential, but some other characteristics that makes their continued existence valuable enough to protect... however, I'm almost positive you couldnt state just what any of those characteristics that dont automatically apply to animals. I think my comments taken as a whole provide a basis for rejecting potential person argument as a valid moral distinction between animals and people. And more importantly, they make more sense: people believe that abortion is murder and that its just as wrong to take the life of an adult human, however a fetus doesnt share any morally relevant characteristics in common with adult humans, so theres explanation as to how the two are even remotely comparable. A claim can be made that, because the fetus has no mental or feeling capacities, then it has no claim to moral value, so that abortion isnt wrong. I dont think your question is much different than, "why is the survival of my race less important the survival of another race". But in general, the answer to your question and the race question works like this: its not that you're less important, but rather that your interests are being weighted equally against the interests of all the beings you affect, and the moral values you hold dear are being taken to their logical ends.

Padren, Its a good question, but think of it this way: trucks will driven no matter what, even if I dont buy ice. The only thing I can control is how much power I put into my freezer, so the net affect on the environment can be either: - trucks drive and IMM runs her freezer cold - trucks drive and IMM runs her freezer very little I'm not moving the energy, because the trucks and dry ice manufacturers use the same amount no matter what I'm doing, but overall I'm using less using less of it At least I think so, I havent worked the numbers. Probably my worst habit though, as far as using energy, is leaving my oven on. Today, I forgot to turn my oven off before going to work, and I walked into my house and it was sweltering. My thermostat only goes up to 90 degrees, and it was maxed out. So, yeah, time to open a window

Ok, for those of you who've known me for the past year and a half, you probably already know that my husband and I divorced because we just werent in love anymore. I worked nights, he worked days, and we only ever saw each other for 2 hours at the most in a day, and usually one of us was tired and wanted to sleep... and it was like that for almost 4 years. Then he said, "are we still in love", and I said I didnt know, and he said "thats not really a yes is it?", and so we parted ways peacefully. And so for the last year, I've been using online dating services, because its really hard to meet vegetarians and vegans in the real world, so I put aside at least one night a week to go on a blind date with someone I'd met online... ... so on my veggieromance.com profile, I put "looking for lasting love" on my profile, and almost immediately I get a few people who want to meet up, and I'm like "w00t! this is going to be so fun!". So on my first date, I meet with a guy, and we spend about 10 minutes or so talking and getting to know each other, and the guy was incredibly nice. We were going out for dinner and a movie, and I didnt bother to ask what restaurant we were going to or what movie (I like surprises ), so I get into the car and I just keep talking not paying attention to where we are, and the rest of the night ends like this: *** car pulls into a space at a parking lot *** *** IMM gets out of the car, notices the sign, it says "Buffalo Wild Wings" *** IMM [obviously upset]: ummm... why are we here? Suitor [cheerfully]: Because we're on a date. IMM: I hope we're not here to burn the place down, because thats really more a of second date thing. Suitor: no, you'll love this place. IMM: are you joking? Suitor [noticing somethings wrong]: what? IMM: we met on a site for vegetarians and vegans, so if this is a joke, its not very funny. Suitor: I'm a vegetarian, but I dont mind eating meat on special occasions. IMM: I'm not going in there, and I dont want to continue this date anymore. Please take me home. *** IMM and suitor drive home, not saying a word to each other the rest of the night, not even saying goodbye *** So, that didnt go so well. I went on a bunch of other dates with other people after that, but they didnt really stand out as remarkable. So at this point, I edited my profile to say "looking for romance". So, now I get responses from a bunch of new guys who have slightly different interests, and most of the dates are so-so, but at least one stands out as the most memorable: *** IMM has prepared food at home, delicious lasagna florentine with noodle soup side *** *** a new suitor sits down at the table, and we begin introducing ourselves, suitor finishes telling his life story and he's obviously charming and likes to make jokes *** Suitor: so tell me about yourself, IMM? IMM: I came down to the US to get my degrees in business years and years ago, but originally I'm from Canada. Suitor: Canada, really? Did you know they call Canadians "snow niggers" IMM: ... Suitor: ... *** 30 seconds of silence go by *** Suitor: oh, that was bad. IMM: yes it was. Suitor: and this date is over, isnt it? IMM: I'm afraid so. That whole episode is funnier in retrospect, but still, I re-re-edited my profile to say "looking for fun". And the new group of people I was introduced to werent very fun at all, most of the dates were just uneventful. Some of them talked about cars the whole time (which I dont really care about), and some of them talked about sports (which I care about even less). However, I got a request from a guy just last week, and I liked his profile picture, but he was only 20 years old, much younger than the guys I feel comfortable dating, but I decided it wouldnt hurt to give him a try... *** IMM fixes up food, and greets a brand new suitor at the door *** IMM: Hello! *** Suitor grabs my hand like a gentlemen and gives it a gentle kiss, which is coming on a little strong, but is quite a greeting *** Suitor: you are very pretty. *** IMM feels embarrassed *** *** IMM and suitor talk for a while, then suddenly suitor asks this *** Suitor: I didnt catch your age, how old are you? IMM [thinking to herself]: oh $%&*! I didnt plan for this... I better fudge my age just a little... IMM [out loud]: 22. Suitor: oh, I wouldnt have guessed anything under 25. IMM: ummmm... *** chooses to ignore that comment because he didnt seem to be intentionally meanspirited, so much as socially inept *** Suitor: you looked a little different in your profile picture, like you had it cleaned up a little to hide your age. And I can tell that you're out of shape too, theres just a little fat hanging and you need to go to the gym more often. *** for the record, I'm a 116 lb vegan who goes to the gym twice a week, and I pick up on the fact that this guy was just being a jerk *** Suitor: Also, I like women with much bigger breasts. *** wtf? I get fed up with him... *** IMM: I thought the same thing about your profile picture too, you looked so much more buff, but not so much in person. And I can tell by your pants that you're penis isnt as big as I had in mind. Suitor: ok, thats a little-- IMM: and you'd look better if you could actually grow a goatee, you're facial hair looks like it has AIDS and cant get cant out of bed, I've never seen one so weak and patchy. Suitor: well, if you're going to be a bitch then I'm going. IMM: I'm just a "bitch"? I've been called worse things by buffer guys with better beards and bigger penises than you. This date is over. Some people are just vile. And so at that point, I was just about ready to give up men entirely. But, just out of the blue, I decided to look up my ex-husband on google, and he's moved to another state, but I managed to find his number and give him a call: *** calls number, feeling perfectly fine *** Ever Lasting Love: Hello? *** IMMs heart drops suddenly *** IMM: hello. ELL: Hi IMM IMM: I just wanted to give you a call and catch up on things, its been almost two years and... *** IMM stops mid-sentence *** ELL: and... IMM: are you still single? ELL: yes. Are you? IMM: yeah, and thats kinda why I called, I figured that if I'm single and you're single then... maybe we can be single, together? ELL: absolutely, I'd love it IMM: I'm so glad ELL: by the way... IMM: Yes? ELL: "be single together", that was such a bad line. IMM: I know *** embarrassed *** So, me and my ex husband are back together, or at least not officially. We still have to have our second "first date" tonight and see how it goes, then we can be together officially. So w00t! I'm so happy, I'm doing a little happy dance right now.

Dr Dalek, No I'm not. If I cant understand your question, I cant answer it. iglak, Because theres no argument that we should care about something before we afford it moral value. Simple example: Do you think the actions of the Nazis were wrong no matter how much or how little they connected with their victims. Do you think terrorists mentally connect with any of the victims they kill? Do you think sociopaths think twice about blowing someones head off? If so, then its pretty easy to see that beings can be wronged, even if their abusers are completely apathetic to their suffering. When I became a vegetarian and eventually a vegan in '99, I did it out of principle, because I thought the arguments people used to defend killing animals ("they taste good", "they cant think", "I just dont like them very much") were intellectually lacking and pretty much thoughtless. But, I didnt become a vegan because I was hit with a sudden bleeding heart liberalism for cute animals, it didnt really phase me to see meat or animals lead to slaughter -- but I compelled myself not to use animal products anyway. Because the discrimination is arbitrary and indefensible. Non-human animals are feeling beings with an experiential welfare, and they are the mental and feeling equivalents to human infants, so they have a claim to moral value equal to any infant's. The only difference between animals and non-humans is that they arent a part of our breeding group, but being a member or non-member of our breeding group doesnt mean anything, its not a moral characteristic. If we have no objections to arbitrary discrimination, then morality breaks down altogether, and we have no objections to the arbitrary discrimination of racists against non-members of their race or any other kind of discrimination for that matter. People already reject discrimination against race, namely because the color of a persons skin has nothing to do with whether their needs and interests deserve to be satisfied, and the argument against discrimination against non-members of your race is fundamentally the same. I dont understand that question, because its semantic nonsense. For example, the phrases "be less important than" and "is of greater importance" are moral evaluations, but they statement necessity [of animal experimentation] is being morally evalutated against the statement morality, which makes no sense. If anything, "necessity" itself is moral terminology, but thats not what Dr Dalek is implying by the word. The only way I can make sense of his question, is if he's talking about necessity in a non-moral sense... but now the phrase "is of greater importance" doesnt make sense, because while importance does have non-moral meanings, it just doesnt make a coherent statement. First and foremost, how can you even talk about the necessity of animal experimentation in principle and say that it is of greater importance than something else, if your not making a moral evaluation? Second, Dr Dalek is comparing the non-moral necessity against morality, so inexplicably animal experimentation has some kind of non-moral value -- whatever that even means. However, if taken literally, the necessity of animal experimentation is supposed to be stated outside of the context of morality, but in that case, necessity only has one other meaning*, but not a useful one to answer Dr Daleks question. But if we're talking about something outside of the scope of morality, then animal experimentation has no claim to being necessary at all, and nor does the claim that we should protect human or animal lives. * Necessity has a different philosophical meanings, such as a condition that must be true and couldnt not be true (i.e. the condition of being shaped is a necessary characteristic of squares). Another what to understand necessity is a condition that must be true for a claim to be true, for instance its necessary to wear a seatbelt to reduce your risk of injury if you get in a wreck <-- thats the only kind of "necessity" I can think of that makes sense in Dr Daleks question. But then you notice a problem with that definition: that kind of necessity only reports facts, which are just facts and not anything else. That definition doesnt embody a quantity that can be said to be of greater or lesser importance than anything, much less morality. When I asked Dr Dalek to at least explain what he meant, he took a potshot at my intellectual integrity, claiming that I'm intentionally making everything to complicated, when in actuality, I dont know what he's asking. His question fits all the syntax rules of grammar, but I cant parse it, kinda like the question "Do colorless green ideas sleep furiously?". Paranoia, Personally, I dont think you understand why you think morality is subjective <--- this isnt an insult, I just dont think you have the relevant information about morality to make a very informed judgement about whether its subjective, objective, intersubjective, or something else, so its similar to the way creationists criticize evolution without really knowing anything about it. But in any case, even if morality is subjective, it still must be consistent, otherwise morality breaks down. I wrote about this in another post: I'm a live and let live person too! As long as people dont hurt anyone else, then its not obvious that they're doing anything wrong... ... but, and correct me if I'm wrong, you eat meat, use animal tested products, and wear leather, right? And its not just animals, I think you probably shop at Walmart and own a number of clothing and other items that come from sweatshops and countries with a history of profound human rights abuses. So you're not exactly a live and let live type are you, and probably willing to do things to others that you would never ever want them to do to you? More like a, "do whatever you want so long as theres no legal consequence and victims cant defend themselves" person?

Dr Dalek, According to your comments above, you dont really like the way that I reason through "through logical means rather than an internally motivated justification", and so your question to me is literally asking "why should we be logical, in which case you're asking for a logical reason for why people should be logical... in which case, I cant answer that question. Its not that the question "what logical reason should we be logical" has no answer, but that it doesnt need one. But more importantly, you have to think about morality from an objective point of view, because peoples personal wants and desires dont always correspond to whats moral. After all, Well, sadism benefits sadists from their own point of view, but you probably think that sadists are immoral no matter what they think. But even more importantly, you have to realize that just refusing to give moral consideration to non-members of your species, even though they have all of the same feeling and mental characteristics as your species, is just an arbitrary exclusion, and morality breaks down at the objective and subjective level if theres no constraint on people arbitrarily picking and choosing who gets protection and who doesnt. If you dont find anything out of the ordinary about someone arbitrarily ignoring the value of animals, then how could you possibly object to someone arbitrarily excluding you from moral consideration? At this point, anything can be justified as an abitrary flicker of moral reasoning, so that someone deciding to kill animals is no more out of the ordinary than deciding to kill your whole family or kill all the Jews or any other segment of the human population. Of course, finally theres the the problem of morality itself: if morality means anything, its that moral disputes should be fundamentally resolvable. This implicitly implies that there should be reasons to prefer one moral claim over any competing alternative; otherwise, without reference to logical discouse and reason, theres no reason at all to prefer the statement "human life is sacred" over the competing statement "humans should be tortured and murdered".

You have to use a scripting language like PHP or ASP, then with scripting magic you do this: Yourpage.php <form action="otherpage.php" method="post"> Signup: <p> Username: <input type="text" name="username"><br> Password: <input type="password" name="password"> </p> <p> <input type="submit" value="register"> </p> </form> otherpage.php I dont know PHP, so everything written below is wrong: <? php mysqlConnect(mySQL) executeSQLQuery("INSERT INTO usertable values ('$username', '$password')") // You should probably check to see if the // username already exists in the database. // Just check to see if the number of records // where username = $username > 0. ?> Thats all it really takes, just execute SQL statements with your scripting language.

- You think the government not passing religious laws on your behalf is persecution. - You label all judges who make rulings you dont like "activist judges". - You write a book called "Godless: The Church of Liberalism" to the bewilderment of Christians who represent 85% of all liberals. - You think we should combat terrorism by suicide bombing muslim churches. - You think Osama would vote Democrat. - God hates all the things you hate. - You think the war in Iraq is a holy war. - You think Michael Moore should be president. - You believe gay marriage is a bigger threat than terrorism - You think 9/11 was carried out by the US government - You think the Nazis were liberal. - You dont care who wins or loses, you just want a good war - You hug your kids with nuclear arms. - You think its ok to kill animals (and sometimes people) because your god wants you to, but point out how wicked and evil muslims are for killing infidels even though their god wants them to. - You criticize atheists for being moral relativists, without wondering for a second why your own "absolute" morals mirror the values and mores of your particular culture. - You think Ayn Rand is really bright and insightful. - You call yourself a libertarian because you read Atlas Shrugged (twice!), but you've never even heard of Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia. - You dont flinch for a second when politicians are exploiting your religion and national disasters for their own political gain, unless those politicians are the opposing political party. - You blame all the pitfalls of the Bush administration on Clinton. - You believe every life has an intrinsic value and should be protected at all costs... but criticize welfare, public health care, government sponsored food, and section 8 housing as evil government handouts. - You think the government should compell women to give birth against their will in order to save a life, but laugh at the idea of government compelling people to donate blood and organs against their will to save lives.

Rebiu, Not to derail the thread in semantic debate, but atheism and agnosticism have different academic and non-academic meanings (kinda like the way "theory" in science and "theory" in informal discussions with your friends have two totally different meanings). Academically speaking, certainty has nothing to do with being an atheist. Atheism and theism have to do with what you believe, whether the number of gods you believe in is greater than zero; agnosticism has to do with what you think you can know, such as whether you think the nature of God is fundamentally knowable through logic or science. People can be agnostic atheists (those who dont believe in any gods, but also say that concepts of gods arent subject to rational discourse), or gnostic atheists (those who dont believe in any gods, and believe that gods existence can be examined by philosophical arguments or scientific evidence), or agnostic theists (usually deists who believe in a god who has no other definable attributes), or gnostic theists (which make up the majority of theists, those who believe God is knowable through philosophy, science, or revelation). Talking about certainty is totally different, its a concept seperate from a/theism and a/gnosticism. A person can be a weakly agnostic atheist (apathetic to god questions), or a strongly gnostic theist (fundies), or any other mix. So there are 3 axes of belief: 1) atheism / theism axis 2) agnosticism / gnosticism axis 3) certainty / doubt A lot of websites like to say "there are no such things as atheists, because they cant be absolutely certain without being god themselves, so they are agnostics", which is pretty absurd because even if it were true, all of those agnostics can count the number of gods they worship on no hands.

The difference is really simple: companion animals are part of the family

Some of my clothes have "hand wash only" on the label, and until now I never really attempted to hand wash my clothes. But coincidentally, I found myself out of laundry detergent, and I didnt really feel like running down to the organic store to pick up anymore. So, I had a bright idea : use liquid dish detergent instead. So as a test, I filled up my bathtub with warm water and suds it up with dish detergent, and threw some clothes in. (And then I suddenly realized why I never handwashed clothes, because kneeding everything by hand is an intense workout!) I kept like colors with each other, so the first batch of clothes were a bunch of black skirts, dresses, and sweatshirts. I didnt stop to ask myself "hey, is this a good idea" until I saw the water turn a very very murky brown, and I think the detergent was pulling all of the dyes out of the clothes. I dont really want to risk hurting any of my clothes, so I havent tried washing anymore. So, I'm interested in what makes Laundry Detergent different from Liquid Dish Detergent (and powder dish detergent for that matter), and is it safe to use on clothes?

Dr Dalek, I'm almost tempted to say that you might be right, but not quite in the way you think. There might be a moral difference between humans and animals if humans can make moral decisions... however, the types of moral decisions that people make are positively harmful, and people really do not embody any morally admirable behavior at all. A simple example, people happily exclaim that that the harm of 10s of billions of animals tortured and murdered every year without end matters less than peoples preference for something as trivial as a flavor (<--- it doesnt take more than 10 seconds to see someone justify eating animals with "because they taste good"). Factory farming alone causes more harm than anything on the planet, and because people are morally accountable for their actions and willfully cause so much harm, then I think an argument can be made that humans are actually worth less than any non-rational being, because at the very least people are consciously and wantonly murdering every other being on the planet. (I'm just a little misanthropic ) However, lets just ignore those completely misanthropic comments above, and speculate on what is implied by an ethic that says beings who can make moral decisions really more valuable than ones who cant. Even if that was true, it doesnt imply the intuitional beliefs that "if a being is worth more than that one, then its ok for that being to kill the lesser one, right? a lesser beings suffering doesnt matter as much, right?". The answer is no, because the intuitional belief completely ignores the fact that we're bound to other moral principles, such as minimizing the harm that we cause to feeling beings; we're still bound to minimize the harm we cause to beings even if they dont have as strong of a claim to moral value as we do. More importantly, an argument can be made to say that beings who are capable of making moral decisions have special duties to non-rational beings, and they are obligated to protect lesser-rational feeling beings in a paternalistic way. I dont really think of it much differently from the fact that we make special accomodations for the severly mentally disabled, when despite the fact that they cant take care of themselves or be rational beings, we actually think its worse to abuse or exploit the mentally disabled than a rational adult. What would be the point of abusing a mentally retarded person, even if they are less rational they you? So in a way, peoples ability to make moral decisions makes them more valuable, but it also makes them more responsible for protecting non-rational beings. Evolution isnt a moral theory Let me just point out something ironic: in your opening paragraph, you said that only humans are capable of moral thinking, and that animals are completely non-moral beings entirely. But inexplicably in the paragraph above you're trying to take your moral inspiration from them? Which is it? Are they non-moral beings, or beings so morally wise that we should follow their example? I'm guessing the first one, and I really dont find it necessary to glean my moral beliefs from emulating non-rational non-moral beings. You misunderstand me. When I say we should experiment on humans, I'm being facetious, not serious. People seem to believe that its wrong to experiment on humans, but in reality the arguments that justify animal experimentation carry over to humans (usually infants) as well... but when people realize the repugnant consequences of their arguments, people reject the arguments, and so they reject animal experimentation too. ^^^^^ sometimes there are some really funny examples of when people argue against human experimentation and animal rights. For example, lucaspa's posts above are almost verbatim a discussion I had with my co-workers son, and it went like this: IMM: Seriously, how can you even defend eating meat, theres nothing morally consistent about it at all. Guy: Morally consistent? Guess what, veganism kills animals too, animals get killed when harvesting farmland. Now doesnt that make you a hypocrite? IMM: Who are you to call me a hypocrite? You just said two seconds ago that its wrong to kill people, but you drive a car and dont think twice about the fact that people kill each other on the road everyday. Now who's the hypocrite? Guy: That doesnt even make sense, and it doesnt have anything to do with what I said about killing people. Car accidents are completely unintentional and--and you cant call someone a hypocrite for accidentally killing someone. IMM: so then what were you saying about farming? Guy: wait, I didnt say... @#$%, nevermind I dont know. IMM: lol, you just got totally pwn3d by a girl in a skirt, stfu

lucaspa, That's a premise. I challenge it. There are several differences' date=' one being that the animals are not of our species.[/quote'] I'm talking about moral differences, not physical differences. Animals are not members of our species, but that doesnt tell me anything about their actual moral characteristics; in the same way, the difference between killing man and killing someone like me is because men arent members of my sex, and but I'm pretty sure you wouldnt be impressed by that trivial physical difference, because making statements about my gender neatly ignores all the other moral characteristics that men have that would make their lives relevantly similar to mine. The same is true for animals, because they can feel pain, have needs, and have mental lives as complex as a child, the moral differences between killing animals and children really start to dissolve until theirs no difference between them at all. I challenge that premise and so on and so on... But lets just say I took what you said at face value, and agreed that morals are we decide they are; I can still make an argument for animal rights very easily, because even if morals are human-created fictions, we have to insist on taking out moral claims to their logical ends and being consistent with them. Otherwise, if we have no expectation that people will be consistent in their actions, morality (as a human invention) cant serve its purpose and theres no rational constraint on any action. I'm sure you agree with that much... ...now, you can probably see where an animal rights ethic can be built from two accepted basis: 1) taking the moral principles we hold true for humans to their logical ends, so that our humanistic principles are truly universalized. 2) If we dont universalize our ethics, then its the same as not applying them at all, because then we wouldnt have an argument against hypocrisy when someone says one thing and does another (such as saying "human life has intrinsic value" and then killing people anyway). So if someone says "its wrong to make innocent people suffer", then they're bound to universalize that ethic into the animal world and take it to its logical ends. A point has to be made that when people object to human suffering, their objecting the nature and elements embodied by "human suffering", which effectively seperates the experience of suffering from the experiencer. On universalizing their ethics, a claim can be made that animals have such similar sense organs and processing facilities that their suffering embodies the same elements as human suffering, so that an objection to human suffering is fundamentally inclusive to animals suffering as well (*). Because we're bound to be consistent in our actions, we're bound not to cause suffering to innocent animals; if we go around torturing animals, then we're not being consistent, and we have no objections to someone torturing us. (*) Footnote: if you dont know what I'm talking about, pick up some books by John Searle and look for information on Token Modal value judgements. Basically, it takes moral statements and seperates their nature and elements embodied by the particular moral statements and treats them as abstract classes, or tokens. This is important, because by looking at the nature of certain moral claims, we can provide a genuine rejection to the statement "its wrong to cause people suffering, except on Tuesday" on the basis that the nature and elements embodied by suffering on all other days is identical to the nature and elements embodied by suffering on Tuesday. But, saying the phrase "nature and elements embodied by ..." is cumbersome, so its just easier to say "tokens". One could imagine an argument that animal and human suffering have the same tokens like this (please dont mind that this is a really imaginative example): lets say a being had the capacity to become other creatures, and that when the being is in the state of those creatures, it literally is the creature in every sense having all of the creatures mental and feeling states. So that when the being is a horse, it has the mind of a horse completely, and when the being is a human it has the mind of a human completely. Lets also imagine that the being has the capacity to enter into a third state where it is not any animal, but just has the capacity to recall its experiences from its other lives. From that vantage point, the being could identify the tokens of beings suffering directly. If this particular were in a state of suffering, and possibly through a glitch in its species shifting techniques it transitioned through a number of creatures, such as horse, mouse, human, dog, a few other creatures without knowing just what species it was at the time, would it be able to identify which species it was at the time. In its undefined state, could it say which creature it was based on the tokens of all those beings suffering alone? I dont think so, because the sensory organs and processing facilities of all those animals are so similar that they would induce similar experiences, so theres no identifiable difference in the nature of human suffering or animal suffering. But like I said, this is an imaginative example. Yes I do. No' date=' you don't. Non-sequitor. Races are, by definition, members of our own species. In fact, the whole history of "rights" is in getting us to view other groups of humans (such as races) as human! Once we do that, then we automatically extend morality and ethics to them. You want to extend ethics beyond our species. That is very difficult at best, impossible when the species are not sentient.[/quote'] Not anymore impossible than extending rights to non-sentient humans, such as infants and the severely mentally retarded. You're missing the point. When people say that we only need to care about members our own species because they are, in fact, members of our own species, then we can identify a general principle that says "I only care about members of my own group". Species is just one group people belong to, and race is another group. Some people dont deny that slopes, kikes, and ragheads are members of human species, but they just dont give these people moral consideration because they dont belong to a particular race. Now, you're saying that these people are wrong to do that because all races belong to humanity... but then, I dont see how your reasoning is any better off than a racists reasoning, you're just arbitrarily picking a different group from the racist. And if I object to killing humans and mice because "they are both mammals", I'd just be defining my own group, and I'd be no better off than you or the racist. But even though an ethic based on either anthropocentricism, racism, and mammal-ism are all mutually exclusive, theres no way to determine which one is closest to the "correct" one, because they're all based on the same "I only care about members of my own group" general principle, so those mutually exclusive ethical systems are irresolvable. That indicates a severe weakness in the argument that we should protect members of own species, because choosing species as a moral line is just as arbitrary as race or religion or sex or any other possible group that beings belong to. I dont see how your comment follows from mine. But in any case, bacteria arent feeling beings, they dont have an experiential welfare. They lack all the prerequisites necessary to make a claim of moral value. Fine' date=' then non-members of the species H. sapiens have no claim to moral value. We're done.[/quote'] You misread my comment, by skipping over one of the "no"'s in my comment and reading the opposite of what I said. Thats it? That's the profound reason you believe its ok to experiment on animals? Because other species do it? Do you have any idea how naive and infantile that justification is? Its not only riddled with elementary logical fallacies that even a first semester philosophy 101 could point out, but its not even factually correct. Let me explain: - You cannot derive an is from an ought, so that there is no reason why things being the way they are right now has anything to do with they way the should be. For example, its a fact that Hutus are committing a genocide against the Tutsies in Rwanda, but just because that is a fact does not mean that is the way things should be in Rwanda; additionally, just because that is a fact in Rwanda does not mean it should be a fact in other parts of the world. You can see where I'm going with this: it is a fact that animals kill other species for their own survival, but that doesnt imply that we should either do or abstain from the same behavior. - Let me explain something about using evolution as a moral theory: evolution states NOTHING about valuing the lives of an entire species. It is wholly consistent and reasonable for sufficiently dominant group in a species to section off other members of its species for its own survival and comfort. Remember, species are not only in competition with other species, each individual or group of individuals is in competition with all the others, and there will exploit each other in the name of survival. Come on, please dont tell me you cant see that the very principle you defined for destroying non-members of your own species doesnt apply equally (and through the same argument and reasoning) to members of your species at the same time. I dont know why you say that its wrong to kill members of your own species, you dont have an actual argument against it. Nonsense. Not only do we have no rational alternatives to producing food outside of farmland, but the deaths that result from farmland are incidental, not intended, and cannot be conflated with one another. Your comments are a word game at best, and the rhetoric behind them is identical to the following: you say that its wrong for people to kill members of their own species, but you have no problems with people driving on roads and killing each other in accidents everyday, you hypocrite!!!!!! In my ideal world, we might take on farming like this: - teams of people would scour through farmland picking up and relocating animals. - or better yet, the government would give every family its own green house, or give neighborhoods a slightly larger greenhouse, where vegetables could be grown for everyone in local organic gardens. At least this way, farmland is fenced off, roofed, and harvested by hand so that animals arent hurt in the process. Garbage. I've been a supporter of the Sierra Club and Green America for a long time, and I happily endorse the idea of sectioning off large portions of land as wildlife sanctuaries. And to say theres no outcry about depriving animals of their habitat is ludicrous, as if you've never even heard of the words "environmental movement", Sierra Club, Earth First, and a number of other environmental organizations. A number of animal rights philosophers such as Peter Singer have argued that we should not interfere with wild environments, and Ingrid Newkirk has made comments that we should fully and completely divorce the human world from the animal world and no longer destroy habitats for business. Just for fun, just compare the guidelines endorsed by the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front:

Dak, I think we should test drugs on people to treat horses.

Dr Dalek, Dont underestimate the value of human trials and cruelty free methods like computer models, cultures of human cells, and so on. Perhaps governments should use a few millions of dollars to develop new methods of drug testing without animal participants. No AR activist ever says anything about stopping drug testing in its entirety, just animal testing. Yes, I know that. But theres no difference between killing animals and mentally similar humans. One of the justifications for animal experimentation that always comes up is "animals just reproduce faster", but people say we need to test on animals to reduce the number of lives lost. Its ironic that people insist on testing on animals who are killed at a rate 1000s of times faster than whats possible for human experimentation, but say that human testing is wrong because it would take too many lives. Yes, of course. I'm not really sure where you got the idea that I wanted to see all these untested drugs released into the market. Irrelevant. Animal testing kills animals who are feeling beings with an experiential welfare (and they are just as valuable as mentally similar humans), and at a rate thousands and thousands of times higher than that of any human experimentation. You keep coming back to a principle that says "testing on people is wrong because its hurts people", but your not even thinking about the equivalent "testing on animals is wrong because it hurts animals". Thats a naive ethic, you cant determine whether something is morally permissible by the way it affects only the beings you care about, you have to make decisions based on all the beings affected; which for animal experimentation, you have to take the point of view of the universe and not just the anthropocentric view, otherwise you validate an ethic that says "we can perform tests on certain races because we just dont care about those races very much". I call red herring, because whether or not people are egoistic has nothing to do with whether they should treat beings with moral consideration. But also, keep in mind, not all groups of humans care about all other groups equally; many only care about members of their own family, country, race, or religion. The principle you've defined is basically "I will give X preferential treatment because X is a member of my own group, I will use all non-members of my group to persue my own ends". As soon as you say "we humans care about human well being over other animals because we are human", you have no objection to racists care about members of their own race and would happily kill all other races to persue their own ends, and you have no objection to any country invading and conquering any other country because the invading country just wants more land and resources. Basically, the choice to protect only humans, or only white humans, or only mammals because they happen to be a member of your species / race / biological family is arbitrary; the possible groups that people belong to can be as narrow or wide as possibly imaginable, but there is no argument that non-members of their group have no claim to moral value. The value of a being has everything to do with its mental and feeling capacities and it doesnt matter what species they belong to, because species membership (like race or sex membership) is not a morally relevant characteristic. In other words, you're basing animal testing on retribution, basically revenge against them for something they might have done in a non-existent hypothetical universe. You cant seriously believe that forms the basis for any ethic (or if you do, why arent you sitting in jail right now because the hypothetical criminal you likes to commit crimes). I also happen to have a lot of compassion for children and infants, who (just like animals) lack the rationality and mental prerequisite to care about others lives. iglak, Fine then. Start breeding groups of humans for experimentation, so that even more information can reach the clinical trial stage.