Animal rights, split from dictator thread

[insane_alien]

whats wrong with eating animals? we have canine teeth for a reason.

[Hellbender]

whats wrong with eating animals? we have canine teeth for a reason.

This is not a good indicator of carnivory. Male horses retain canines (rather impressive ones, actually), but they are well-known herbivores. We have a typical omnivore dentition with molars adapted for grinding plants, that also have raised cusps for slicing meat.

[bascule]

- strong emphasis on animal rights (including making it illegal to hunt animals for sport, use them for food, experiment on them, etc.)

 

Without animal experimentation we have no biomedical science. I think it's silly to forego the future benefits of biomedical research which has the potential to save countless human lives just to save the lives of animals. I mean, bottom line, if someone made me pick between killing a human and killing, say, a thousand gorillas, I'd save the human every time. Human life is more precious than animal life, and I refuse to see humans hurt because certain people have the unrealistic notion that animals are our equals. Bottom line, we're sentient and they are not.

[bascule]

Essentially, the only support you have for that is the fact that we are humans, and they aren't.

 

That or our massively enlarged cerebral cortex and our ability to spread memes which convey abstract knowledge or concepts, and that the memetic evolution of our species has so ridiculously transcended that of any other that they are simply incomparable.

 

One could easily argue in favor of there being a fair number of sentient non-human species, and could argue in favor of the value of an individual of another intelligent species, or from a species threatened with extinction, intelligent or not. Just because someone else's morals are different from yours doesn't mean they're wrong or unrealistic.

 

Let me ask you... was it not worth the animal sacrifice required to procure insulin for diabetics? Should all diabetics simply have been doomed to die so that the animals we needed to experiment on to create insulin products could've lived? How about vaccines for anthrax? Chicken pox? Cholera? Diptheria? Flu? Hepatitis? Measles? Mumps? Polio? Rabies? Rubella? Smallpox? Tetanus? Whooping Cough? Yellow Fever?

[AzurePhoenix]

That or our massively enlarged cerebral cortex and our ability to spread memes which convey abstract knowledge or concepts, and that the memetic evolution of our species has so ridiculously transcended that of any other that they are simply incomparable.

The point isn't what you are able to know, it's what you can feel. And there are many species that can be deemed sentient. On a population wide scale, a retarded individual unable to function is of less practical value than a trained search and rescue dog. But on a closer, personal level, that person should still be cherished, because he is a sentient, feeling being, whether he is as sapient as we or not. The same applies to the higher non-human animals. I'm not saying the life of one parrot is neccessarily just on par with that of a single human's (not saying it isn't either), but it's still worthy of love, rights and protection.

 

---

 

I do support animal testing in the case of finding ways to combat disease, as long as non-sentient species are the ones being tested on. If a higher species is necessary for success, test on violent criminals rather than innocent chimps, who are actually a step beyond sentience, into full sapience. Plus, then the testing is actually done on the species it's meant for.

 

Also, more research should be put into finding ways to fight diseases that threaten animals alone.

[bascule]

The point isn't what you are able to know, it's what you can feel.

 

So you think an animal's existence can compare to being able to swim in the vast sea of the human memetic experience? The very kinds of lives we can live thanks to the immense power of human collaboration depend on a mutual respect for our own kind and adhering to a set of rules in which our standard of living can increase. But

 

a retarded individual unable to function is of less practical value than a trained search and rescue dog.

 

I agree, but just as a search and rescue dog has loving owners who wouldn't give it up for testing, a retarded individual has parents and family who care about that individual and don't want to give them up for testing.

 

I do support animal testing in the case of finding ways to combat disease, as long as non-sentient species are the ones being tested on. If a higher species is necessary for success, test on violent criminals rather than innocent chimps

 

Such testing would in many cases be tantamount to a death sentence (i.e. inject a vaccine, then deliberately infect the individual and see if they survive)

 

What if the "violent criminal" is in fact the innocent falsely accused?

 

And bottom line, this violates the Geneva convention. Didn't we learn anything from the holocaust?

 

Or perhaps you're more concerned with the "Holocaust On Your Plate"

[AzurePhoenix]

So you think an animal's existence can compare to being able to swim in the vast sea of the human memetic experience?

What effect does that have on feeling happiness or pain? Or affection, even love similar to or possibly even equal to love as we know it? These things are not intellectual, they are a basic part of the mind, they are primal, and shared by many species.

 

I agree, but just as a search and rescue dog has loving owners who wouldn't give it up for testing, a retarded individual has parents and family who care about that individual and don't want to give them up for testing.

[b']But on a closer, personal level, that person should still be cherished, because he is a sentient, feeling being, whether he is as sapient as we or not.[/b]

You left out the part where I said the exact same thing.... If you want to make me out to be a monster just because I have feelings for something beyond my own species, fine, but don't do so by twisting my words.

 

Such testing would in many cases be tantamount to a death sentence (i.e. inject a vaccine, then deliberately infect the individual and see if they survive)

Violent criminals. And I think all criminals who maliciously commit cruel crimes of severe violence (not necessarily murder) should be on death-row anyway.

 

What if the "violent criminal" is in fact the innocent falsely accused?

In my scenarios, only those with irrefutable, damning evidence could be placed on death row. It wouldn't be perfect, but it's the best I can do.

 

And bottom line, this violates the Geneva convention. Didn't we learn anything from the holocaust?

The perception of such things (human testing) are biased towards being squeamish. Just more bureaucracy. The Holocaust was one of the most despicable atrocities ever against fellow man, but these test-sunjects wouldn't be crimes committed against innocent victims of prejudice, these would be vicious killers, rapists and abusers. We put down innocent dogs for less. At least this way men doomed to die anyway die serving a greater purpose.

[In My Memory]

Insane_alien,

 

whats wrong with eating animals? we have canine teeth for a reason.

Dont you know you cant derive an "ought" from an "is"

 

Bascule,

 

Without animal experimentation we have no biomedical science. I think it's silly to forego the future benefits of biomedical research which has the potential to save countless human lives just to save the lives of animals.

[derail]

Somewhere, someone said a great cliche "in as much as we can suffer, animals are our equal". Have you ever heard that phrase, or could you see how it might be relevant to biomedical research?

 

If I know you based on your posts, I dont think you are the type of person who is terribly superstitious, and probably doesnt entertain ideas like humans having a soul or the idea that humans have a divine right to dominate animals. Having said that, I would challenge you to explain what makes humans being a member of a human species suddenly have moral value that non-humans do not? And if it isnt species membership, then I'd challenge you to explain what moral quality humans have, from every newborn infant to every insane animal rights activist, that is present in humans but no where else in the animal kingdom.

 

Needless to say, those are impossible challenges, but they serve to demonstrate a very powerful rhetorical point: there is no difference between killing a human and killing an animal, and if you dont believe that then maybe you'll find it more reasonable that there is no real difference between the suffering.

 

If you dont mind me invoking Godwin's law, theres a book called Doctors from Hell: The Horrific Account of Nazi Experiments on Humans, documenting experiments on humans that yielded valuable medical research that contributed to saving thousands of human lives (for instance, it used to puzzle doctors why soldiers would drop dead from hypothermia 20 minutes after stepping out of the water until the famous freezing water experiments, malaria vaccines were developed, dehydration sickness and treatment was studied, etc.).

 

I dont mean to milk people for their sympathies, but I find it genuinely disturbing that people could conduct experiments on animals that feel pain every bit as much as humans, and not shed a single tear. But if a human infant were in the place of the animal, it would be horrific crime. The difference in attitude resulting from equal treatment between those two beings, where the only real difference between the two is species membership, demonstrates an utterly irrational inconsistency that is fundamentally no different from racism (i.e. there is no difference between giving preferencial treatment to beings for non-moral reasons such as being a member of your own species, than there is to giving preferencial treatment to beings for non-moral reasons like being a member of your own race or gender or nationality etc.).

 

Now, if you have any objections to farming humans to be used in medical experiments, then there is single difference between your moral priorities and mine: that I apply my moral reasoning consistently.

 

I dont talk about animal rights because its trendy and cool, but because it seriously matters.

[/derail]

 

But no political platform is perfect. If IMM will forgive me for speaking of her in the third person for a moment, I have a problem with her "animal rights" and her agenda to legislate animal morality on us, but I'd probably vote for her anyway.

Thank you!

 

*Tallies 1 more vote* Only 49% of the country to go!*

[bascule]

Somewhere, someone said a great cliche "in as much as we can suffer, animals are our equal". Have you ever heard that phrase, or could you see how it might be relevant to biomedical research?

 

The suffering of animals is horrible, but the suffering of humans is worse. Which scene would more greatly disturb you, discovering a field of dead animals, or discovering a house full of (human) cholera victims?

 

If I know you based on your posts, I dont think you are the type of person who is terribly superstitious, and probably doesnt entertain ideas like humans having a soul or the idea that humans have a divine right to dominate animals.

 

No, I am a materialist deeply rooted in the philosophy of Dennett regarding the nature of consciousness, and I see humans as meme exchangers as being on an entirely different evolutionary plane than animals around us. Basically, I can't even begin to imagine what life would be like without a large cerebral cortex, but I can certainly appreciate the richness that it (along with all the memes which have infected me throughout the course of my life) brings.

 

Having said that, I would challenge you to explain what makes humans being a member of a human species suddenly have moral value that non-humans do not? And if it isnt species membership, then I'd challenge you to explain what moral quality humans have, from every newborn infant to every insane animal rights activist, that is present in humans but no where else in the animal kingdom.

 

What other creature on earth would give pause to consider something so abstract as the ethical implecations of killing other animals, rather than killing at the instant their instincts command it? This is but one example of how much richer the human experience is than that of animals. We can be taken aback by an awestriking city or landscape which is mere terrain for an animal. Looking at art or listening to music can be a very powerful and moving experience for us. The bottom line is I respect the beauty of the human conscious experience as being something unique in the animal kingdom, and while animals may share the basest levels of it, by being unable to communicate or understand the complex abstract concepts required to appreciate art, music, philosophy, or the other elaborate creations of man or nature, they are missing out on the most beautiful parts of what makes us human.

 

The more I study human consciousness the more I am taken aback by how amazing humans and everything we have accomplished as a species throughout the course of our history really is, and this respect for the majesty of human endeavor seems to be lacking in most animal rights activists. Most of them come off quite misanthropic...

[In My Memory]

Bascule,

 

The suffering of animals is horrible, but the suffering of humans is worse. Which scene would more greatly disturb you, discovering a field of dead animals, or discovering a house full of (human) cholera victims?

Darling, you have no idea how many times I get questions like this. The answer is always the same: theres no difference to me between human life and non-human animal life. I could no more look at a field of dead animals than a house full of dead people.

 

What other creature on earth would give pause to consider something so abstract as the ethical implecations of killing other animals' date=' rather than killing at the instant their instincts command it? This is but one example of how much richer the human experience is than that of animals. We can be taken aback by an awestriking city or landscape which is mere terrain for an animal. Looking at art or listening to music can be a very powerful and moving experience for us. The bottom line is I respect the beauty of the human conscious experience as being something unique in the animal kingdom, and while animals may share the basest levels of it, by being unable to communicate or understand the complex abstract concepts required to appreciate art, music, philosophy, or the other elaborate creations of man or nature, they are missing out on the most beautiful parts of what makes us human.

 

The more I study human consciousness the more I am taken aback by how amazing humans and everything we have accomplished as a species throughout the course of our history really is, and this respect for the majesty of human endeavor seems to be lacking in most animal rights activists. Most of them come off quite misanthropic...[/quote']

Good. Now, I hope that after you've said that, you figure out exactly why human babies are as valuable as the rest of human society despite their obvious lack of appreciate for beauty, moral reciprocity, fondness for philosophy, and capacity to reason abstractly. I think when you figure that out, you'll probably concede that you still find infants valuable despite lacking all of those qualities, which obviously implies that none of the qualites you mentioned were relevant to the moral worth of an organism in the first place. After all, what more can an infants do than experience pain and pleasure, and how does this make it different from a mouse or rabbit or a chimp or other animal that humans frequently experiment on?

 

If human infants can be just as morally valuable as you or I despite lacking just as many of the qualities you mentioned as animals, then you have about three options to make your moral reasoning consistent: (1) you should either lower infants to the status of animals, (2) or raise animals to the status of humans, or (3) deny that the qualities you mentioned are relevant to the differences between human and animal moral worth. I dont think option number 1 is reasonable, so you would probably choose numbers 2 or 3, which brings us in strikingly close agreement with one another.

 

So, its really not true that animals rights activists miss the beautiful human experience and the arts, but it really has to do with the fact that arts and poetry and music dont matter morally. Part of the reason the animal rights movement has been so successful is due to different approaches: people who kill animals like to focus on just how different animals are between humans, but people who endorse animal rights like to focus on just how similar humans and animals are. As far as the differences go between humans and animals go, there are plenty, but those differences dont matter morally; but the similarities are more profound, because animals share with human the capacity to feel pain and value the continuation of their own existence (those matter morally), and there is no good reason to refuse to consider any of those capacities regardless of how far humans have come as a species.

[LucidDreamer]

In my memory, I am going to make a challenge about medical research on animals in the debate section of the forum, if you are interested.

[bascule]

Bascule[/b']Darling, you have no idea how many times I get questions like this. The answer is always the same: theres no difference to me between human life and non-human animal life. I could no more look at a field of dead animals than a house full of dead people.

 

This leads me to wonder if you've ever seen a cadaver...

 

Good. Now, I hope that after you've said that, you figure out exactly why human babies are as valuable as the rest of human society despite their obvious lack of appreciate for beauty, moral reciprocity, fondness for philosophy, and capacity to reason abstractly. I think when you figure that out, you'll probably concede that you still find infants valuable despite lacking all of those qualities, which obviously implies that none of the qualites you mentioned were relevant to the moral worth of an organism in the first place. After all, what more can an infants do than experience pain and pleasure, and how does this make it different from a mouse or rabbit or a chimp or other animal that humans frequently experiment on?

 

If human infants can be just as morally valuable as you or I despite lacking just as many of the qualities you mentioned as animals, then you have about three options to make your moral reasoning consistent: (1) you should either lower infants to the status of animals

 

Consciousness is something which arises out of our mental plasticity at least several months (if not over a year) after birth. In that I have no morally justifiable argument against the use of babies for biomedical experimentation, but I offered some other reasons on the animal testing thread about why using infants for biomedical testing is simply infeasible:

 

http://scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?p=207029#post207029

 

I think the most fundamental opposition you're going to find to using young infants in lieu of animal testing is that we currently do not possess the technology to bring a human child to term without a human mother' date=' and what human mother would wish to bring a child to term only to donate it to medical testing instead of putting it up for adoption?

 

A human baby is a valuable commodity, both economically and culturally, compared to a chimpanzee. Even if you found a mother willing to sell her baby to those who wished to use it for medical testing, what company would shell out sufficient money to buy it when they could use chimpanzees for a fraction of the price?[/quote']

 

There's also the issue of human potential to consider. A baby already has all the physical hardware to be a meme exchanger, it's just a matter of getting up the Baldwin curve. An animal can never be a meme exchanger.

 

So, its really not true that animals rights activists miss the beautiful human experience and the arts, but it really has to do with the fact that arts and poetry and music dont matter morally.

 

I feel a moral obligation to protect human consciousness that I do not with animals. If you ask me, the legacy of the reptilian/mammalian brain is humanity's greatest shortcoming.

 

...people who kill animals like to focus on just how different animals are between humans, but people who endorse animal rights like to focus on just how similar humans and animals are.

 

That makes it sound like you're unappreciative of the beauty of human consciousness.

 

As far as the differences go between humans and animals go, there are plenty, but those differences dont matter morally; but the similarities are more profound, because animals share with human the capacity to feel pain and value the continuation of their own existence (those matter morally), and there is no good reason to refuse to consider any of those capacities regardless of how far humans have come as a species.

 

Well, it sounds like neither of us is going to convince the other of anything. But here's a few parting thoughts...

 

Do you regret being immunized with vaccines derived from animal testing?

 

Would you immunize your children with animal-derived vaccines? If you had a diabetic child, would you withhold insulin because it's made from animal-derived products? Wouldn't doing anything less make you a hypocrite?

 

Do you have any diabetic friends? Do you think they deserve to die so that animals might live?

[AL]

I have pet cats. I feed them lots and lots of dead pig, cow, chicken and tuna. I could probably feed them vegetables, but then that'd be "experimenting" on them, and we can't have that.

[Commie_Pinko]

Dont you know you cant derive an "ought" from an "is"

 

Except for Kant's principle, kinda. Ought implies is in the form of can.

[bascule]

I have pet cats. I feed them lots and lots of dead pig, cow, chicken and tuna. I could probably feed them vegetables, but then that'd be "experimenting" on them, and we can't have that.

 

Don't get me wrong, I have two cats, I'm a pet lover, and most of the time I eat a vegetarian diet (I guess I had a lot of meat to eat today, but that's an exception, not the norm). But I see the enormous benefits of biomedical experimentation to humanity, and that's something that has helped not only humanity as a whole, but my family and friends.

[In My Memory]

LucidDreamer,

In my memory, I am going to make a challenge about medical research on animals in the debate section of the forum, if you are interested.

I appreciate the offer, but I'm not interested. Maybe another time

 

Bascule,

 

In that I have no morally justifiable argument against the use of babies for biomedical experimentation

You mean suffering doesnt occur to you as a justification?

 

There's also the issue of human potential to consider. A baby already has all the physical hardware to be a meme exchanger, it's just a matter of getting up the Baldwin curve. An animal can never be a meme exchanger.

Bascule, you are such a fan of Dennet, but you're not using his arguments anymore.

 

And yet, disregarding that fact, have you ever considered just how truly bad that "potential people" arguments are? There is no logical rule that says "x is a potential y, therefore x is morally equivalent to y" - but even if there were, the argument would justify protecting potential meme exchangers in the infant stage as well as in the unborn and pre-born stage (i.e. the argument equally justifies prohibiting abortion and birth control). And taken to its logical ends, it would equally justify the premise that that young girl being a potential queen has all the same rights as queens, or that children as potential voters have all the same rights as voters, or the frightening extreme that all children who potentially will consent to sex are equivalent to people who have consented to sex - no one seriously entertains any of those ideas.

 

(There are a few morbid suggestions why the "potential" arguments just dont work, such as the fact that humans are replaceable so that as long as someone promises to have another human later in life there is no net loss in terms of meme exchanging; or another consideration is that humans could be farmed in such a way that none are intended to ever participate in meme exchanging, meaning they were never potential meme exchangers in the first place.)

 

I feel a moral obligation to protect human consciousness that I do not with animals.

You are not protecting any human consciousness by valuing the lives of infants - they arent conscious or self-aware. Obviously there is something more than consciousness that makes you find the lives of unconscious humans valuable - but, if you have given thought to what that additional something is, then I leave you to consider whether your inclusion of infants in your sphere of moral consideration is consistently applied, or whether you exclude animals that have all the same cognitive abilities infants for non-moral reasons like failing to be members of the human species.

 

Well' date=' it sounds like neither of us is going to convince the other of anything. But here's a few parting thoughts...

 

Do you regret being immunized with vaccines derived from animal testing?

 

Would you immunize your children with animal-derived vaccines? If you had a diabetic child, would you withhold insulin because it's made from animal-derived products? Wouldn't doing anything less make you a hypocrite?

 

Do you have any diabetic friends? Do you think they deserve to die so that animals might live?[/quote']

Yes I regret vaccines being developed through animal experimentation because its miserable for the animals. A point that keep going back to is the idea that there is no fundamental difference between humans and animals, and that if anyone finds experimentation on infants disturbing, then obviously the reasons why it would be wrong to experiment on infants apply equally to animals. (Its strange that people believe that animals are so similar to humans that they can mimic the effects of sickness but simultaneously so dissimilar to humans that their suffering doesnt matter.) Even ignoring the lack of distinction, in the simplest utilitarian calculation there is more suffering involved in the research and production of vaccines than the suffering relieved.

 

On vaccines, I dont think I could bring myself to vaccinate using vaccines containing gelatin or filtered through bovine fetal serum. (Personal comment: Unfortunately, most vegans I know cant be rational about vaccines. Most insist on perpetuating myths like the link between autism and vaccines or cause people to lose natural immunity or other myths from the anti-vaccine cult. I've even seen some vegan sites recommend homeopathic remedies and even fasting as an alternative to vaccines - I think those kinds of people turn people off to veganism.) I dont think there is any such thing as a vegan vaccine, so I associate them with everything frightening about animal experimentation - this isnt necessarily a bad thing, because despite the fact most vegans dont vaccinate they seem to be as healthy as the general population as a whole. Of course, I dont have any reservations about producing antibodies via willing human subjects, genetically modified plants, or from people in irrecoverable comatose states (that last example sounds morbid, but its equivalent to being an organ donor).

 

On insulin, it hasnt been an animal derived product for 20+ years. See Recombinant DNA technology in the synthesis of human insulin. If I remember correctly, the discovery was specifically called "Humulin" in 1982.

 

 

And now that the thread has been desperately derailed offtopic... how about those dictators?

[bascule]

You mean suffering doesnt occur to you as a justification?

 

Why is it that animal rights activists look at the suffering as completely one sided? There will be suffering regardless, but the suffering of higher lifeforms can be eased through the sacrifice of lower lifeforms. You must weigh one against the other, and decide if the ends of easing human suffering justify the means of sacrificing animals and causing them to suffer. You seemed to embrace this Machiavellian sentiment yourself earlier, albeit not in regards to life and death matters.

 

...have you ever considered just how truly bad that "potential people" arguments are? There is no logical rule that says "x is a potential y, therefore x is morally equivalent to y"

 

I prefer to keep logic seperate from morality. Morality is completely relative and varies from person to person. But this is one of many arguments I made, and in the case of a one year old human I would consider the evolution from a proto human to a meme exchanger largely complete and a mere matter of adaptation of our innate mental plasticity, as opposed to say a human blastula/gastrula which is essentially equivalent to any animal embryo minus the genetic potential. It'd be like burning down a nearly finished house versus burning the forms off of a foundation... which one is really arson? It depends on how much conscious complexity has been reduced to a state of entropy.

 

When you begin to mix morality with logic I think your argument begins to break down. From that standpoint I think we should construct a test for a state of meme exchanging consciousness, and anything less is fair game for biomedical testing, be it a human baby, a mentally retarded individual, or an animal. That would be cold hard logic for you, but morality has this fuzzy quality which doesn't exactly fit into the constructs of logic.

 

But bottom line, I am perplexed as to how the superiority of humans over other animals is not inherently obvious. Humans are so ridiculously amazing creatures compared to animals, why do you not see a distinction? We've done so many amazing things... does humanity not impress you?

 

Ed: Whoops? Why am I still arguing? This is pointless...

[-Demosthenes-]

I would challenge you to explain what makes humans being a member of a human species suddenly have moral value that non-humans do not?

 

It's a difference of morals, some think that it's wrong to hurt animals, some don't care, and there are different degrees in between. Like Bascule said:

Morality is completely relative and varies from person to person.

 

Humans have been hunting animals for food, for clothing, and stuff for thousands of years for food, it's pretty safe to say that the traditional "moral" of humanity would address little worth to animal lives.

 

In more modern times some defend animal rights on two seperate grounds:(1) to protect the environment, which is ultimately for our (human's) benifit, and (2) that animals (or some of them, usually the cute furry ones ) are some how sentient or aware and deserving of some kind of rights.

 

...but I find it genuinely disturbing that people could conduct experiments on animals that feel pain every bit as much as humans...

Again, really dependent on opinion. We know that some animals have some kind of "inteligence", but what we don't know if they are aware in any way. It's possible for some animals, I suppose, but isn't the most common lab animal like a mouse or rat? I find it extremely hard to believe that they are in any way aware of their own existance.

 

And I've mentioned it before, most animal rights people I know (except AP ) only really care about the animals that are cute and fuzzy, they love bunnies, monkeys, and stuff.

 

You are not protecting any human consciousness by valuing the lives of infants - they arent conscious or self-aware.

 

You know this how?

 

When you begin to mix morality with logic I think your argument begins to break down.

I'd have to agree.

 

 

And now that the thread has been desperately derailed offtopic... how about those dictators?

Yeah, we proably should get back.

[zyncod]

Now, if you have any objections to farming humans to be used in medical experiments, then there is single difference between your moral priorities and mine: that I apply my moral reasoning consistently.

 

Hark at you! You do understand that even a vegan, organic diet leads to the death of many small mammals every year (field mice, etc) through threshers and combines. We'll take the conservative estimate that 100 mammals die every year because of you, your diet, your lifestyle, etc. Would you still want to go on living the way you do if 100 people died every year for your lifestyle? Many people have given up their lives for strangers, and I know of no vegans that have moved out into the woods and grown their own food so they can stop this wholesale slaughter of mammals, let alone given up their lives for a mouse. And I'm not even going into the thousands upon thousands of lesser vertebrates and invertebrates you cause to die each year.

 

So spare us the self-righteous rhetoric about your "consistent morality." You do not apply it evenly - you hold human life to a higher standard than other life, or you wouldn't even be posting on this forum due to the number of animal lives you are ending by using electricity distributed by high-tension lines. I'm a vegetarian; I like to see animals' lives and quality of life preserved whenever possible, but I do not pretend to equate human life with animal life. And you shouldn't pretend that you do either.

[-Demosthenes-]

[quote name=']Hark at you! You do understand that even a vegan' date=' organic diet leads to the death of many small mammals every year (field mice, etc) through threshers and combines. We'll take the conservative estimate that 100 mammals die every year because of you, your diet, your lifestyle, etc. Would you still want to go on living the way you do if 100 people died every year for your lifestyle? Many people have given up their lives for strangers, and I know of no vegans that have moved out into the woods and grown their own food [b']so they can stop this wholesale slaughter of mammals[/b], let alone given up their lives for a mouse. And I'm not even going into the thousands upon thousands of lesser vertebrates and invertebrates you cause to die each year.

He's got a point

[In My Memory]

I originally stopped replying to this thread because I didnt want to derail it but...

 

 

Demosthenes,

 

He's got a point

No he doesnt. He's being smug and pompous. (Feel free to skip to the last paragraph of this post, because for most of it I'm just venting because this thread has made me upset.)

 

I think I'm probably the only person on the board who goes out of her way to go on a vegan diet for the sake of reducing animal suffering, avoids drinking milk or eating eggs because the animals are treated so horribly, buys organic food and clothing for the sake of the environment, does not shop at Walmarts or megastores for the sake of reducing human suffering and rights abuses, uses only non-animal tested cosmetics and hygiene products, semi-regular involvement in animal care and liberation, and huge sums of annual income donated to famine relief overseas...only to be told that I'm being inconsistent, that if I really cared about reducing suffering, I should move into the woods (this suggestion is actually more mild than what comes up every so often: "any consistent vegan would kill themselves" or some other nonsense).

 

People who make those kinds of suggestions dont actually care about suffering themselves, but they are just trying to make an outrageous statement to offend others. (I've heard more offensive things, like people comparing vegan parents to the most ruthless child abusers. And there are some really bizarre things said, such as trying to "stump" the insane vegans by asking them how they discriminate against organisms simply because they dont have a brain - as if the fact that plants and bacteria dont suffer is suddenly forgotten.)

 

I've heard these kinds of claims every day for the 5 or 6 years that I've committed myself to veganism, and I find them frustrating because the comments are simply smug and offensive rather than genuine. See this salient quote on the subject:

Meat eaters often like to goad vegans with "the plant question. [how can you justify killing all those poor defenseless plants?]" It is a convenient way to deflect attention and guilt about their own violent eating habits and transfer the focus onto the person who has chosen a more peaceful, if less conventional, path. By putting the vegan on the defensive, meat eaters can feel less pressure to justify their own indefensible behavior.

 

In general, people who pose this type of question are trying to rile the vegan more than they are seeking to understand vegan ethics.

That quote describes most people I've ever known who have asked about veganism - they just have a fascination with trying to offend people. That speaks more volumes about the people who ask those kinds of questions than the actual reasonableness of veganism. Because I dont have the patience of a saint, I usually ignore all the slanderous and offensive questions that upset me.

 

Based on my experience, most people who ask "stumpers" to vegans are fully aware of the answers in advance (i.e. people who ask the "plant question" know that plants dont feel pain, people who ask "can animals suffer" already know that they do, etc.).

 

Having said that, (1) I'm fairly sure that zyncod is aware that my way of living causes the least amount of intentional suffering than himself and probably most people he'll ever meet. And (2), I'm pretty sure that while he accuses me of being self-righteous (I admit, I'm incredibly vain and have a ego the size of an airship), he knows that I dont care about life for the species that it belongs to, but rather its capacity to suffer and have its interests fulfilled, and that there is no inconsistency in saying that some humans (because they can suffer more and have more interests to be satisfied) are more valuable than mice (whose capacity to suffer emotionally is limited and have relatively few interests) - in other words, life is valuable for its morally relevant qualities rather than its species membership (to prove this point, try to guess what my reaction is to abortion that causes no suffering on the unborn human, and compare it with my reaction to electroshock reinforcement on mice that suffer considerably). Anyone who is interested in what I have to say about animal rights is free to start a new thread or PM me, but until then I am through derailing this thread.

[Pangloss]

IMM, there's nothing wrong with you doing whatever you want to "lessen animal suffering". But expecting others to go along with your unsubstantiable opinion is functionally akin to expecting children to pray in schools or give their souls to Jesus. It's your belief. You're entitled to it. But that's the end of it.

 

I do agree that people shouldn't pick on you for having that opinion, but it doesn't make them insensitive to the plight of animals, it makes them intolerant human beings.

[AL]

IMM' date=' there's nothing wrong with you doing whatever you want to "lessen animal suffering". But expecting others to go along with your unsubstantiable opinion is functionally akin to expecting children to pray in schools or give their souls to Jesus. It's your belief. You're entitled to it. But that's the end of it.

 

I do agree that people shouldn't pick on you for having that opinion, but it doesn't make them insensitive to the plight of animals, it makes them intolerant human beings.[/quote']

To be fair, zyncod was responding to a comment by IMM in which she essentially insinuated that her ideological opponents haven't given their position much thought. If she wants to believe that, that's her prerogative, but she shouldn't reasonably expect that some wouldn't take it as pejorative.

 

Also, I object to your characterization of other people's disagreement as intolerance. I argue with my loved ones all the time -- sometimes quite vehemently -- but I would hardly call it intolerance.

[Mokele]

Just poking in on a few things:

 

An animal can never be a meme exchanger.

 

Factually incorrect. Numerous primates' date=' particularly chimps, have been shown to have "culture" (in the sense of behaviors typifying individual populations and transmitted by teaching rather than genes), and that cultural behaviors, memes, are transmitted.

 

this isnt necessarily a bad thing, because despite the fact most vegans dont vaccinate they seem to be as healthy as the general population as a whole.

 

This is actually an example of "herd immunity". Vaccines don't work in every person every time, but if enough of the people are immunized, the disease will be unable to find a foothold, unable to spread, and become locally extinct. However, should too few people be immune, the disease might make a comeback. An actual account of this, as a direct result of lack of vaccination, can be found here

 

But bottom line, I am perplexed as to how the superiority of humans over other animals is not inherently obvious. Humans are so ridiculously amazing creatures compared to animals, why do you not see a distinction? We've done so many amazing things... does humanity not impress you?

 

No. We're an advanced, tool-using monkey, and that's it. Yes, we have amazing brains, but what's so hot about brains? Why should we value brains above, say, the sophisticated venom-delivery system of a viper, or the chromatophore system of a cuttlefish? Only because the preference for brains is geneticly and culturally embedded.

 

From a biologically realistic POV, we're the the last in a long line of now-dead monkeys, and one day, like every other species, we'll be nothing but fossils.

 

We're just another leaky sack of dirty water.

 

We know that some animals have some kind of "inteligence", but what we don't know if they are aware in any way. It's possible for some animals, I suppose, but isn't the most common lab animal like a mouse or rat? I find it extremely hard to believe that they are in any way aware of their own existance.

 

This depends on how one defines "aware". Even bacteria are aware of their surroundings and internal state via numerous chemical receptors that trigger protiens in response. How does one precisely delineate "aware"? And, more importantly, how does one devise a testable definition that does not collapse under cross-species examination as the "mirror test" does.

 

Anyone who is interested in what I have to say about animal rights is free to start a new thread or PM me, but until then I am through derailing this thread.

 

I'm probably just going to split this thread up, if I can.

 

Edit: Done; it's not perfect, but it should be good enough.

 

Mokele

[In My Memory]

Mokele,

 

Thank you for splitting the thread, I appreciate it

 

 

Everyone else,

 

My apologies for becoming upset yesterday. I've mentioned in other posts that animal rights is my most sensitive issue, and I'm very prone to letting it affect me on a personal level.

 

I try to be reasonable, and I do a good job about 95% of the time.

 

 

AL,

 

To be fair, zyncod was responding to a comment by IMM in which she essentially insinuated that her ideological opponents haven't given their position much thought.

Actually I'd say this is probably true for 99% of the people on the planet on every political topic. Pangloss, being a moderate Libertarian, should be particularly aware of just how poor and shallow political discourse is in America - everything people say and think can be articulated in 30-second soundbytes, summed up in the talking points of today, or written in some garden-variety pundits next best seller.

 

To prove this point, consider the best philosophy a few hundred years ago, "On Liberty", "On the Principals of Moral Obligations and Legislation", "The Leviathon", etc. All of these works were read by nearly all voting men, discussed intelligently. However, the works of today of comparable quality, such as Rawl's "A Theory of Justice" and Nozick's "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" are read by a small number of academics and first year philosophy students, I have not seen any of these works referenced in mass media for the last 10 years. The most popular works nowadays are Ann Coulter's "How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)", Micheal Savage's "Liberalism is a Mental Disorder", and Michael Moore's "Fat White Men" - I've read all of these books and considered if they are what the majority of Americans read for their "informed" political opinions, then reason is dead forever replaced with ideologues memorizing apologetics and rationalizations. (I might add that one more way to prove how people enjoy their fast-food apologetics is simply like this: how many people do you think will skip over this quite reasonable post because its a moderately lengthy read? Maybe I'm just being cynical, but I think it brings up a good rhetorical point: ideologues dont care what their opponents have to say.)

 

Having said that, I think I'm in a pretty good place accuse my ideological opponents of giving their opinions relatively little thought, and peoples opinions on animal rights is no exception. I partially blame PETA on lowering animal rights to the status of Micheal Moore by relying on outrageous spectacles to get their point across, but if animal rights has to keep up with current state of fast-food news and the "if it bleeds, it leads" mentality, then the demonstrations are the only way to accomplish it - however, as long as my "ideological opponents" continue to attack animal rights in the same ways that PETA defends it, then they are rightfully called uninformed and have given their position no thought.

 

I've personally never been interested to read PETA's "Holocaust on Your Plate", I have more compelling things to base my deeply held convictions upon. I've preferred to read the legitimate academic (although not as emotional or flavorful to read) discussion on animal rights, relying heavily on Peter Singer's "Animal Liberation" and "In Defense of Animals" - it puts veganism and animal rights as a position based on philosophy, and reveals the lack of consideration for animal rights to be a mish-mash of contradictory values that is morally intolerable.

 

Hopefully, I've got across my point: I think there is good reason to believe that my ideological opponents are uninformed, and that my veganism isnt "faith" like Pangloss seems to think it is. Based on my experience, I genuinely believe that 99% of all of my ideological opponents, if they are unwilling to put away the credulity that I see everyday or even take a few hours out of their day to read "Animal Liberation", are simply uninformed - I'm sure I could probably try to talk about the principles of equal consideration of interests and the merits of preference utilitarianism, but I doubt my points will be recieved well by many people. (I'm to the point where I think as long as reasoned discourse is dead and people continue to base their meat eating on the fact that they like the taste of steroid-saturated meat, then maybe the best case I could ever make for veganism is to write a cookbook of my favorite recipes.)