Animal Testing

[In My Memory]

Dr Dalek,

But we still need to test it on something . .

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.

 

After all animals may not always react exactly the same way as a human would but usualy what kills us will kill them.

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.

 

So do you think we should use only human test subjects?

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.

 

And potentialy kill the humans

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".

 

Self is the center of the universe, we humans care about human well being over that of other animals because we are human. All animals (including homo sapiens sapiens[/i']) look out for #1 it is basic survival.

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.

 

You seem to have so much compassion for creatures that probably don't care if you live or die. If the position were reversed the animals would not hesitate to test their drugs on you.

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,

think about this, if there are less tests on animals, more drugs can potentially reach the clinical trial stage, with less information.

Fine then. Start breeding groups of humans for experimentation, so that even more information can reach the clinical trial stage.

 

humans remain the center of our universe in this regard simply because animals are currently a renewable resource. no animal will ever impact human society the way any human can (besides through animal testing).

humans are not a renewable resource' date=' not until we farm and harvest human clones.[/quote']

All this time I was being pretty facetious about breeding humans, and didnt really think anyone would take it seriously. However, I'm willing to bet if you published a book on how to farm humans for experimentation, you would be arrested for severe human rights violations and you would be treated as the next Hitler.

 

Of course, even if we found a way to make humans were a plentifully renewable resource, I'm pretty sure we'd have fewer clinical trials because people would have ethical objections to how the information for clinical trials were gathered. And I bet no medical journals in the world would publish your results for the same reason. And I bet no one would want to purchase your drugs on the market for the same reason. And you'd probably have to constantly fight groups like PETP who are demonstrating against you and your facilities day and night.

 

But the, you'd have to wonder why people would object to breeding humans for experimentation but not animals, even if they were both renewable resources? I think the reason would have to do with the fact that humans are feeling beings with a value in themselves, and their value is NOT diminished by the utility to others, so testing on them no matter for whatever benefit it brings to people is categorically unjustified... but those reason apply equally to animals who are feeling beings with a value in themselves and entitled to the same claim to moral value as their mentally similar human equivalents. But testing on one is ok and testing on the other is not...

 

... the reason for the difference in attitudes in human and animal experimentation has nothing to do with animals being a renewable resource or not, it has everything to do with people just not caring about animals. Thats it. People then play a game of moral schizophrenia, where its ok to kill animals all they want because they dont care about the animals and the animals cant defend themselves, but simultaneously insist its wrong for uncaring sociopaths torture children who cant defend themselves and wrong for racists to kill other races who they dont care about. I think that gives a good indication that no matter if animal testing leads to more clinical trials and drugs on the shelves, that its based on such a naive ethic and so full of unforgivable moral contradictions that the permissibility of animal testing refutes itself.

[Dr. Dalek]

Fine then. Start breeding groups of humans for experimentation' date=' so that even more information can reach the clinical trial stage. . .

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.[/quote']

Here seems to be another very obvious flaw with your argument; if it is immoral to use testing on animals then how come it is not immoral to use it on humans? Your not solving the morality problem your just changing who or what is subjected to it.

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.

Methods involving computer testing and cultured cells are just as, and quite possibly more imprecise as using animals. The cells can not duplicate the complexixty of a full living system and the computer modles cannot plausably duplicate that either.

Also no testing method that involves a living subject, human or other wise, within mecine can is "crulty free" because an untested drug is never free of risk.

 

Your comments on "Red Herrings" are themselves Red Herrings, beause your not realy considering what I have to say seriously your just using it as an excuse to dismiss my opinions.

You look at what I say with intention of disprooving it and not considering it.

[lucaspa]

 

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.

 

Don't overestimate them, either. The government has ALREADY spent tens of millions to develop drug testing without animals. Where do you think the computer models and cultures of human cells came from?

 

All of these methods have limitations. For clinical trials, there are the ethical questions of using humans where they could be harmed. Cells in culture don't address problems of absorption, distribution, modification, and excretion of the drugs. Computer models are only as good as the data that goes into them, and the whole animal/human system is very complex.

 

But theres no difference between killing animals and mentally similar humans.

 

That's a premise. I challenge it. There are several differences, one being that the animals are not of our species. Ethics and morals are what we decide applies to our species.

 

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.

 

It's not ironic. The goal is to save human lives. Mice and rats aren't of our species.

 

 

Animal testing kills animals who are feeling beings with an experiential welfare (and they are just as valuable as mentally similar humans),

 

This presumes a couple of things:

1. That animals are indeed "feeling beings"

2. That ethics based on the ability to experience are indeed valid.

3. That animals are just as valuable as mentally similar humans.

 

I challenge all of those premises. I say none of them are valid. Without the premises, your conclusions collapse.

 

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;

 

No, you don't. Morals applies to your own species. ALL species on the planet survive by hurting other species. Even plants survive by crowding out plants of other species and taking nutrients which would feed those other species of plants. The naivete is that you can extend "morality" to just those species you want to while claiming what you do above.

 

We hurt animals all the time. Every time we farm, we hurt the animals that used that land when it was not farmland. We mustdo so or we wouldn't be able to grow the plants we need to survive. Ever see the movie NIMH? It starts with all the rodents in a field scrambling because it is "moving day" -- when the farmer plows his field. Now, do you advocate that farmers go thru their fields each spring and gently move any nests of rodents that are there?

 

otherwise you validate an ethic that says "we can perform tests on certain races because we just dont care about those races very much".

 

No, 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.

 

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.

 

And they do so by downgrading the other group to a status less than human. "Slopes", "kikes", "ragheads", etc. are all terms designed to demote the group out of humanity.

 

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,

 

If that is so, then you have a problem. Because you cannot exist without harming members of other species. If you extend this, you can't even take antibiotics because you are killing millions of bacteria! Nor can you use soap for the same reason.

 

but there is no argument that non-members of their group have no claim to moral value

 

Fine, then non-members of the species H. sapiens have no claim to moral value. We're done.

 

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.

 

You just said above that it was! After all, you said that non-members of a group have no claim to moral value.

 

Yes, what species you belong to is completely relevant. Is a beaver being "immoral" when it builds a dam? Think of the number of other species it harms as it floods the valley behind its dam. That isn't immoral because the beaver is not harming other beavers.

 

Think of a deciduous forest replacing a grassland. The species of the forest are harming any number of species of grasses, yet this isn't immoral. Because the trees are not harming their own species.

 

Think of any carnivore. They must kill animals for food, but you don't consider them immoral. They are harming other species. Only when a carnivore is "cannibal" do we even entertain the idea of immorality.

 

But the, you'd have to wonder why people would object to breeding humans for experimentation but not animals, even if they were both renewable resources? I think the reason would have to do with the fact that humans are feeling beings with a value in themselves, and their value is NOT diminished by the utility to others, so testing on them no matter for whatever benefit it brings to people is categorically unjustified..

 

Remember above where you said there were clinical trials? That contradicts the sentence I bolded. After all, we DO conduct testing on humans for the benefit it brings to people. So it is not "categorically unjustified". We can and do justify it under certain circumstances.

 

... the reason for the difference in attitudes in human and animal experimentation has nothing to do with animals being a renewable resource or not, it has everything to do with people just not caring about animals. Thats it.

 

No, it doesn't. Many scientists -- like me -- who animal research care deeply about animals. We are pet owners. We take exquisite care to avoid unnecessary pain and suffering to animals. We design our experiments so that we use the minimum number of animals possible.

 

However, we simply recognize that morality applies to our own species. That all species exploit other species for survival and that there is no immorality in doing so. The one exception would be a sentient species like us. However, even you aren't claiming that rats and mice are sentient. There's no schizophrenia involved. People killing people is wrong. But it isn't wrong for a shark or a polar bear to kill a person. Nor is it wrong for people to kill other species.

 

I think that gives a good indication that no matter if animal testing leads to more clinical trials and drugs on the shelves, that its based on such a naive ethic and so full of unforgivable moral contradictions that the permissibility of animal testing refutes itself.

 

The only naive ethic is the one that you are using. And the only moral contradictions are the ones that arise from your position: it's immoral to kill animals in research but just fine to kill them with plows.

 

 

What are your thoughts on Animal Testing?

 

Done within IACUC guidelines, it's fine.

 

I recently visited http://www.stopanimaltests.com and got a very graphic education on the subject. I always knew that I didn't vouch for animal testing but this has REALLY opened my eyes. Also, check out http://www.kentuckyfriedcruelty.com This is unbelievable. Are there any scientists part of this community that are involved in any way with animal cruelty / testing?

 

You got a very biased set of propaganda. The second site has nothing to do with animal testing -- it is food processing of chickens.

 

I notice that you put "cruelty/testing" together as tho they are the same thing. No bias there.

 

Yes, I am involved in research on regenerative medicine and I use animals. We have a paper under review where we used adult stem cells to regenerate the meniscus in the knees of rabbits. This week I will be making gaps in the thigh bones of rats to test the ability of adult stem cells to regenerate bone to heal hip and recalcitrant fractures, especially in the elderly.

 

115 million animals (not counting rats,mice, and birds because they are not covered by the Animal Welfare Act and go uncounted which also account for 80-90 percent of all animals tested) are killed in the US alone each year. This is ridiculous.

 

How many are killed in the wild by predators?

 

The animals I am working on get surgeries done basically as they are done in humans. The animals are anesthetized thruout the surgery and receive analgesics for 3 days post-op. They have an internal plate similar to what is affixed to human fractures, and the sutures are ones taken from the operating room.

 

You have objections to this? Why?

 

 

I do however strongly dislike pontentially harmful testing on more intelligent species such as primates. I would much prefer if we used violent criminals in their place (beings who had actually EARNED potential harm and torment)

 

Many people have agreed to this. However, what happens when, years later, DNA evidence exonerates the "violent" criminal? How much testing on people who may be innocent do we as a society tolerate?

[lucaspa]

 

I call red herring. What wolves do is irrelevant and has nothing to do with our behavior.

 

It is totally relevant. You are saying that human morals are true irrespective of species. That is, it is wrong for one species (human) to kill another species in order to survive or improve the lives of that species.

 

Now, if your ethics are not just special pleading, then the idea of "no species barrier" must apply to all species, not just humans. But wolves kill members of other species every day. Why is this not wrong?

 

Are you going to exempt eating? Well then, the second website of the OP is exempt also, because those chickens are being killed for food. However, doesn't eating fall within the broader category of "benefit"? Eating allows the wolves to live longer and better lives. After all, starvation is not pleasant.

 

So, if we kill animals in the process of research to provide longer and better lives for humans, what's the difference?

 

We we reject anthropocentricism, yet still insist that human have basic rights to live and to be free from torture, then we can say animals have the same rights, and their rights would be based on nothing more than a logical extension of the humanistic principles that people already hold. So rejecting anthropocentric ethics leads very naturally and easily toward rejecting the permissibility of animal experimentation.

 

But that rejection of "anthropocentrism" is not held to. As I pointed out earlier, you have no problems destroying habitat of animals for farmland to grow the food you need to survive! So, is starvation not a form of torture? It is defined so by the Geneva Conventions for humans. Yet by depriving animals of their habitat, you condemn them to starvation. But no outcry there.

 

The postion of animal rights advocates is hypocrisy pure and simple. They simply have too much wealth and time on their hands.

[Dak]

That's a premise. I challenge it. There are several differences, one being that the animals are not of our species. Ethics and morals are what we decide applies to our species.

 

i challenge your challenge: several people have ethics that apply to animals. IMM is an ethical vegan; i wont eat lamb because i think it's harsh to kill young animals for food. several people descide to have ethics that only apply1 to us but apply2 other species aswell

 

(ie, i doubt imm thinks woulves are bad for being non-veggies (ie, the ethic doens't apply1 to animals), but i think her 'dont eat meat' ethic excludes more than just eating human (ie, the ethic applies2 to non-humans).

[Drug addict]

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.

 

 

Why don't you have a look at where fetal calf serum (widely used in cell cultures) is obtained?

[In My Memory]

lucaspa,

But theres no difference between killing animals and mentally similar humans.

 

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.

 

Ethics and morals are what we decide applies to our species.

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.

 

Animal testing kills animals who are feeling beings with an experiential welfare (and they are just as valuable as mentally similar humans)' date='

 

This presumes a couple of things:

1. That animals are indeed "feeling beings"

2. That ethics based on the ability to experience are indeed valid.

3. That animals are just as valuable as mentally similar humans.

 

I challenge all of those premises. I say none of them are valid. Without the premises, your conclusions collapse.[/quote']

1. Its ignorant to challenge the claim that animals are feeling beings, especially in the midst of a post defending animal experimentation, because animal vivisectionists themselves make a huge point that they never mean to cause animals pain and will anesthetize them if necessary. Animal vivisectionists even rely on the fact that animals feel pain to develop human models of stress.

 

2. Its incoherent to talk about morality outside of the context of the way we directly or indirectly affect one another, because that would be a denial of morality outright. Morality implicitly talks about the interactions between beings. I'm not sure what your alternative concept of morality is that doesnt depend on how we interact with each other.

 

3. Value depends directly on the morally relevant characteristics a being has, and in so far as two beings have the same morally relevant characteristics, then they have an equal claim to moral value and entitled to the same moral consideration. Morally relevant characteristics are intrinsically connected to a beings feeling and mental capacities; and many animals have feeling and mental capacities greater than or equal to certain humans (mostly infants), so they have an equal claim to moral value.

 

You are free to challenge anything I say, but I dont think you'll get very far trying to argue that animals cant feel pain or that morality doesnt have anything to do with our interactions with each other.

 

Now, do you advocate that farmers go thru their fields each spring and gently move any nests of rodents that are there?

Yes I do.

 

otherwise you validate an ethic that says "we can perform tests on certain races because we just dont care about those races very much".

 

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.

 

But also' date=' 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.[/quote']

 

And they do so by downgrading the other group to a status less than human. "Slopes", "kikes", "ragheads", etc. are all terms designed to demote the group out of humanity.

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.

 

Basically' date=' 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, [/quote']

If that is so, then you have a problem. Because you cannot exist without harming members of other species. If you extend this, you can't even take antibiotics because you are killing millions of bacteria! Nor can you use soap for the same reason.

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.

 

but there is no argument that non-members of their group have no claim to 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.

 

Yes' date=' what species you belong to is completely relevant. Is a beaver being "immoral" when it builds a dam? Think of the number of other species it harms as it floods the valley behind its dam. That isn't immoral because the beaver is not harming other beavers.

 

Think of a deciduous forest replacing a grassland. The species of the forest are harming any number of species of grasses, yet this isn't immoral. Because the trees are not harming their own species.

 

Think of any carnivore. They must kill animals for food, but you don't consider them immoral. They are harming other species. Only when a carnivore is "cannibal" do we even entertain the idea of immorality.[/quote']

Ummm... wheres the argument behind any of this. What I'm reading are conclusions without an inkling of thought behind them to tell me why the conclusions are valid in the first place. I dont see how your examples differ from saying "Americans killing non-Americans is fine, but its only immoral when they kill other Americans", its just a categorical statement. I get the feeling you're just being facetious.

 

However, we simply recognize that morality applies to our own species. That all species exploit other species for survival and that there is no immorality in doing so. The one exception would be a sentient species like us. However, even you aren't claiming that rats and mice are sentient. There's no schizophrenia involved. People killing people is wrong.

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.

 

It is totally relevant. You are saying that human morals are true irrespective of species. That is' date=' it is wrong for one species (human) to kill another species in order to survive or improve the lives of that species.

 

Now, if your ethics are not just special pleading, then the idea of "no species barrier" must apply to all species, not just humans. But wolves kill members of other species every day. Why is this not wrong?[/quote']

I've never said it was wrong, and I do think the principles of human apply to other creatures, including wolves (although I wouldnt fault wolves in the same way I'd fault humans for killing other animals, because wolves arent capable of making moral decisions). I'd like to live in a world where no one ever killed other species for their own gain...

 

... but you can see how thats such an idealist world that it isnt even remotely achievable, at least not right now. The globe is so many millions and millions of square miles (on land and in oceans) and there are so many billions and billions of ecosystems, and there are only a limited number of human resources that cannot (even with the wildest optimistic expectations) be spread over the entire globe to police the whole of wildlife. So even though it would be ideal for us to stop all predation, how could we?

 

We just dont have the remotest capacity to police nature, and so we cant be held accountable for not policing it more than we already do. However, at the very least, we are rational being who can make ethical decisions about our diet and choose to minimize the harm we cause, so we are obligated to do that no matter what other animals are doing for themselves.

 

But that rejection of "anthropocentrism" is not held to. As I pointed out earlier, you have no problems destroying habitat of animals for farmland to grow the food you need to survive!

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.

 

Yet by depriving animals of their habitat, you condemn them to starvation. But no outcry there.

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:

1) To inflict maximum economic damage on those profiting from the destruction and exploitation of the natural environment.

2) To reveal to' date=' and to educate the public about the atrocities committed against the earth and all species that populate it.

3) To take all necessary precautions against harming any animal - human and nonhuman.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Liberation_Front[/quote']

TO liberate animals from places of abuse' date=' i.e. laboratories, factory farms, fur farms, etc, and place them in good homes where they may live out their natural lives, free from suffering.

2. TO inflict economic damage to those who profit from the misery and exploitation of animals.

 

3. TO reveal the horror and atrocities committed against animals behind locked doors, by performing non-violent direct actions and liberations.

 

4. TO take all necessary precautions against harming any animal, human and non-human.

 

5. To analyze the ramifications of all proposed actions, and never apply generalizations when specific information is available.

 

http://animalliberationfront.com/ALFront/alf_credo.htm[/quote']

The credos of the ALF and ELF are almost identical, which probably explains why there is so much crossover between the groups.

 

Most vegans and animal rights activists like me are also environmentalists, and fight against corporations clearcutting entire forests, destroying rainforests and wetlands, running gas pipelines through sensitive ecosystems like Alaska, destroying entire species. In fact, one of the standard arguments found in any AR 101 handbook is the profound environmental damage caused by factory farms. Basically, if you've never seen a connection between veganism and environmentalists, you've spent the last 30 years with your head in the sand.

[Dr. Dalek]

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.

Logical Fallacy

[ecoli]

Logical Fallacy

 

I'm not so sure. I think it comes merely from a difference of opinion. While one may see a distinction in morality when it comes to speciation, IMM does not. It's not logically fallacious to have a different opinion.

[Dr. Dalek]

I'm not so sure. I think it comes merely from a difference of opinion. While one may see a distinction in morality when it comes to speciation, IMM does not. It's not logically fallacious to have a different opinion.

 

Good point, I felt uncomfortable about my responce any way, I'll change it.

[Dr. Dalek]

I'm talking about moral differences' date=' not physical differences.[/quote']

Here is the moral difference between humans and animals in a nut shell: We humans are the only species willing to waste valubal time and energy to think about morals!

Animals behave in ways that benifit themselves, and members of their pack / pride / colony / offspring / and to a lesser extent their entire species.

All animals care more about the well being of others of their species (NOT gender, IMM!) for simple evolutionary reasons. All humans are animals therefore in theory all humans should put the wellbeing of other humans ahead of that of other animals.

(This is a generality of course, if it came down to the wellbeing of my Dog verses someone like a serial killer then my Dog would be #1. For emotional as well as logical reasons if anyone asks me to explain.)

 

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[/url']. I'm sure you agree with that much...

But the human preference for human wellbeing over other life forms serves a logical purpose too. If a bunch of cave men went out and were gathering food they might find a buch of berries. Say that they have not brought any weapons with them, and that they find an animal and it's children eating the berries. Since they have no weapons they can't kill the beasts, at least not easily, but all of a sudden one of the cavemen asks "Ug fug mug do-bug" whcih means "Do we have the greater right to these berries than these animals. Is it moral to cause them to potentialy starve to death than to have us potentialy starve to death?" So they leave the berries to the animals. Now they might find another source of food, or they might not. If they do they will survive. If they don't they starve to death.

The human preferance for the survival of other humans is simply a result of evolution, those who care about other animals more than themselves may not survive as easily. Selfishness, dispite it's negative conotation has a logical purpose.

 

And once again you seem to have a preferance for testing humans only with no animals. Here is the predicament whcih you seem to have ignored:

if it is immoral to use testing on animals then how come it is not immoral to use it on humans? Your not solving the morality problem your just changing who or what is subjected to it. . . . . Methods involving computer testing and cultured cells are just as' date=' and quite possibly more imprecise as using animals. The cells can not duplicate the complexixty of a full living system and the computer modles cannot plausably duplicate that either.

Also no testing method that involves a living subject, human or other wise, within mecine can is "crulty free" because an untested drug is never free of risk.

[/quote']

[Cyberman]

Originally Posted by Asac

Any thoughts... or comments for that matter?

My opinion is simply that at the moment the best way to test new medicines is to test animals, test humans, put it on the market.

This is a time tested method, and though it has its moral drawbacks it is the best system we have right now. Maybe in the future these "Crulty free" mehtods will reach a certain point where they will be as reliable as the real thing so that it is not necisary to test animals, but untill then we have to grit and bear it.

[lucaspa]

i challenge your challenge: several people have ethics that apply to animals. IMM is an ethical vegan; i wont eat lamb because i think it's harsh to kill young animals for food. several people descide to have ethics that only apply1 to us but apply2 other species aswell

 

Your "challenge" consists of personal opinion -- what you decide to do for yourself. That's not the same as a universal, objective ethic. Is it ethical to kill young animals for food? Yes. Do you eat eggs?

 

(ie, i doubt imm thinks woulves are bad for being non-veggies (ie, the ethic doens't apply1 to animals), but i think her 'dont eat meat' ethic excludes more than just eating human (ie, the ethic applies2 to non-humans).

 

You say ethics by humans must not only apply to other humans but other species. However, you say that ethics does not apply to other species. That's where the logical disconnect comes in and what undermines your argument. Ethics need to be universal, otherwise you can't use them to tell us what we ought to do. If ethics are relative, and only apply where you want them to because this is what you want, then you have special pleading. Your argument is that it is unethical to kill living beings not only within your species but outside your species. However, that argument must apply to ALL species. So it is also unethical for wolves to kill.

 

Uou are still working with human ethics -- what humans decide is ethical. You simply want to extend human ethics to other animals. That is a desire of yours, but it is not an ethical imperative or rule.

 

The rest of us say we should treat animals humanely, but this is based on the idea that humans who wantonly mistreat animals are going to mistreat humans, also.

[In My Memory]

Dr Dalek,

Here is the moral difference between humans and animals in a nut shell: We humans are the only species willing to waste valubal time and energy to think about morals!

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.

 

Animals behave in ways that benifit themselves' date=' and members of their pack / pride / colony / offspring / and to a lesser extent their entire species. All animals care more about the well being of others of their species ([b']NOT[/b] gender, IMM!) for simple evolutionary reasons. All humans are animals therefore in theory all humans should put the wellbeing of other humans ahead of that of other animals.

...

The human preferance for the survival of other humans is simply a result of evolution, those who care about other animals more than themselves may not survive as easily. Selfishness, dispite it's negative conotation has a logical purpose.

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.

 

And once again you seem to have a preferance for testing humans only with no animals. Here is the predicament whcih you seem to have ignored:

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

[Y-S]

IMM! I remember u lol

[Dr. Dalek]

IMM: Seriously' date=' 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.

[/quote']

Your not actualy arguing about the point your just leading people around to make them frustrated and quit debating so that you can claim victory. This will not work on ME!

 

If you or someone else finds a way to make these so called "crulty free methods" suficently equal in accuracy, or superior in accuracy to curent animal testing methods then I wil support it. Because dispite the fact that it seems that animal testing at the moment is neccisary, I like animals too. Some I like because they make decent pets, or stews, but I like them just the same. In the mean time neccesity is of greater importance than morality.

[ParanoiA]

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

 

You seem to come from a moral perspective from that of the universe. Your ideas seem to be externally decided through logical means rather than an internally motivated justification. Your arguments are logical and make relative sense, but there's nothing to suggest we should extend our morality to other species. You define morality from the perspective of the universe, while most of us define it internally - from a self interested perspective.

 

All of the disagreements seem to be the logical ends of these points of view.

 

So, my question is, why do you think you should be an "objective observer" rather than a "subjective participant"?

[In My Memory]

Dr Dalek,

If you or someone else finds a way to make these so called "crulty free methods" suficently equal in accuracy' date=' or superior in accuracy to curent animal testing methods then I wil support it. ...

In the mean time neccesity is of greater importance than morality.[/quote']

On what basis? Keep in mind, by your own words and stipulations, you cannot talk about the necessity of animal experimentation in a moral context without automatically refuting the very claim that necessity supercedes morality. I honest cant parse the words "necessity is of greater importantance than..." as anything apart from a moral claim, but then you'd be saying the moral claim is greater than morality, which doesnt make any sense.

 

What exactly do you mean?

 

 

Paranoia,

You seem to come from a moral perspective from that of the universe. Your ideas seem to be externally decided through logical means rather than an internally motivated justification. Your arguments are logical and make relative sense, but there's nothing to suggest we should extend our morality to other species. You define morality from the perspective of the universe, while most of us define it internally - from a self interested perspective.

 

All of the disagreements seem to be the logical ends of these points of view.

 

So, my question is, why do you think you should be an "objective observer" rather than a "subjective participant"?

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".

[Dr. Dalek]

Dr Dalek,

 

On what basis? Keep in mind, by your own words and stipulations, you cannot talk about the necessity of animal experimentation in a moral context without automatically refuting the very claim that necessity supercedes morality. I honest cant parse the words "necessity is of greater importantance than..." as anything apart from a moral claim, but then you'd be saying the moral claim is greater than morality, which doesnt make any sense.

 

What exactly do you mean?

 

You seem to be intentionaly making this more complicated than it is.

[iglak]

i'll summarize their questions for you:

 

why should we extend morality to non-humans who we do not easily mentally connect with?

why should we not discriminate against non-humans?

why should necessity be less important than morality?

[bombus]

I would like to see human testing being done more...maybe on untreatable/reoffending criminals.

 

Personally I am not against it but I think if we gain the benefits we should be part of the negative aspects as well.

 

The idea that I should feel some sense of union with another human just because he is another human is just an opinion. I'd rather experiment on some rapist than on an innocent dog, rat, or amoeba. Just because he's a human doesn't make me have to like or care for him. In fact most humans are c**** so being a human makes me less likely I'll care for him! I am my own species - f*** the lot of you!

[ParanoiA]

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.

 

This reminds me of a dog chasing its tail...

 

And then you answered my question after all, so apparently you understood quite well what I was asking.

 

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.

 

I thought that might be your answer. But since morality is a subjective application fabricated by humans for a variety of reasons, you haven't given me a good enough reason to define it by looking through "something else's eyes" rather than my own. What's good for the universe isn't necessarily good for me, and vice versa. So, my ideas of morality are going to differ from someone else's ideas of morality when they're going for an "objective" approach.

 

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.

 

Thank you for making assumptions about my views.

 

I don't see a moral line with sadists. I'm more of a live and let live kinda guy. I have no interest in judging someone's behavior as long as they're not hurting someone else...that uh, doesn't want to be hurt that is. Most of the things I do for fun are considered immoral by most and drenched in sin.

 

 

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...

 

There's nothing arbitrary about drawing the line between the species. It's a quite natural, sensible, meaningful line. I would draw the same line between humans and superior intelligent life as well - and so would that superior lifeform. The universe doesn't revolve around humans, so what makes you think we should extend our goofy ideas beyond ourselves?

 

Morality is made by and for humans.

[iglak]

The idea that I should feel some sense of union with another human just because he is another human is just an opinion. I'd rather experiment on some rapist than on an innocent dog, rat, or amoeba. Just because he's a human doesn't make me have to like or care for him. In fact most humans are c**** so being a human makes me less likely I'll care for him! I am my own species - f*** the lot of you!

 

that brings up an excellent other question which i was hesitant to post.

 

 

why should we not discriminate? in general.

 

if you truly believe that the criminals should be experimented on (the murdering and raping ones), then i can't really touch you.

however, what's the limit? what if you were accused of a murder or rape you did not commit, and were put in prison? that happens every once in a while.

 

also, what happens when the criminals adamantly refuse? i suppose you could give them a sedative and restrain them. but that wouldn't be the best scenario, because it wouldn't be as much of a real-life situation for the drugs. the drugs may react differently.

 

but also, what about when the criminal is let go? i know the first thing i would do in that situation is kill everyone around me to survive, and i would struggle endlessly to get out of the restraints and kill my experimentors. this would make for a very dangerous job that many experimentors would not want to do.

 

also, what about drugs that are focusing on a certain demographic or peresonality, or a wide range of them? prisons inmates tend to have very similar personalities and demographics. it would be really hard to test appropriately.

 

 

 

 

so i guess i'll try to answer the discrimination in general question.

i'll kill you if you try to kill me.

but i don't mind if you simply want me to leave.

therefore, in the interrest of staying alive, i would rather not intend to kill or seriously hurt anyone.

[GutZ]

that brings up an excellent other question which i was hesitant to post.

 

 

why should we not discriminate? in general.

 

if you truly believe that the criminals should be experimented on (the murdering and raping ones), then i can't really touch you.

however, what's the limit? what if you were accused of a murder or rape you did not commit, and were put in prison? that happens every once in a while.

 

also, what happens when the criminals adamantly refuse? i suppose you could give them a sedative and restrain them. but that wouldn't be the best scenario, because it wouldn't be as much of a real-life situation for the drugs. the drugs may react differently.

 

but also, what about when the criminal is let go? i know the first thing i would do in that situation is kill everyone around me to survive, and i would struggle endlessly to get out of the restraints and kill my experimentors. this would make for a very dangerous job that many experimentors would not want to do.

 

also, what about drugs that are focusing on a certain demographic or peresonality, or a wide range of them? prisons inmates tend to have very similar personalities and demographics. it would be really hard to test appropriately.

 

 

 

 

so i guess i'll try to answer the discrimination in general question.

i'll kill you if you try to kill me.

but i don't mind if you simply want me to leave.

therefore, in the interrest of staying alive, i would rather not intend to kill or seriously hurt anyone.

 

I was being semi-serious but I am talking about lifers and death row inmates, people who are just sitting in their cells wasting other peoples money. You would pick inmates that are 100% guilt of their crimes, that alot easier because they probably committed many horrible crimes.

 

I'd like to add that my view is very much like a combination of In My Memory and ParanoiA. I completely agree that morality is completely subjective, but on the same hand to keep our society running you need rules. We should try to minimize the confliction within those rules. So if it's not ok it kill/test people, then it should not be ok to kill/test animals. Ultimately I see no reason to believe either is correct, but if you adopt one, you should adopt the other.

 

Morality/Ethics is a difficult subject from what I have seen on these boards. There seems to be two basic catagories within it. The group and individual morals. The group is more absolute, the individual is more subjective, but thats another topic.

[In My Memory]

Dr Dalek,

You seem to be intentionaly making this more complicated than it is.

No I'm not. If I cant understand your question, I cant answer it.

 

 

iglak,

why should we extend morality to non-humans who we do not easily mentally connect with?

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.

 

why should we not discriminate against non-humans?

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.

 

why should necessity be less important than morality?

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,

I thought that might be your answer. But since morality is a subjective application fabricated by humans for a variety of reasons, you haven't given me a good enough reason to define it by looking through "something else's eyes" rather than my own. What's good for the universe isn't necessarily good for me, and vice versa. So, my ideas of morality are going to differ from someone else's ideas of morality when they're going for an "objective" approach.

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:

But lets just say I took what you said at face value' date=' 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.[/quote']

I personally think that most peoples moral convictions are a product of their time and culture, and that for the most part they dont have an inkling of rational reasoning behing it (i.e. I notice that people seem to think human life has intrinsic value, but I've asked "why should we bother protecting human life" and gotten the most convoluted replies that tell me that person, for so forcefully believing as they do, has never thought about the question even once). However, thats just people, and theres no reason why morality itself is subjective in principle.

 

After all, moral systems can be abstracted into a particular kind of language (first order predicate calculus to be specific), so that its principles can be analyzed apart from peoples minds and subjective expectations. And this opens up a world of things we can do with morality, namely we can apply the rules of logical inference and deduction to morality in order to evaluate the consistency between moral claims or draw out new claims. And if we can apply the rules of logic to our moral claims, then they are, in principle, resolvable by rational means, and not just by peoples subjective flickers of emotion.

 

I don't see a moral line with sadists. I'm more of a live and let live kinda guy. I have no interest in judging someone's behavior as long as they're not hurting someone else...that uh, doesn't want to be hurt that is. Most of the things I do for fun are considered immoral by most and drenched in sin.

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?