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General AR Philosophy
Flaws in the animal rights ideology
author: Homo oregonensis
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Some important flaws in the ideology of animal rights bear attention, with a view towards better serving the long range goals and principles that people who espouse this ideology presumably can agree on with others: more humane, ethical, and ecologically sound human behavior towards other animal and plant species. |
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We should all be able to see that we have a common interest in protecting this Earth that gives us life, which means protecting the full complement of species that live on it. Developing empathy for other life forms is crucial to that end.
Some of us go further, however, and insist that "animal rights," fully or almost fully analogous to human rights, should also pertain to the other species. Thus, eating animals for food, in this way of thinking, is tantamount to cannibalism of other human beings. Also, in this view, according to animal rightists, those of us not assenting to this proposition are committing "speciesism," a vice analogous to such other forms of vicious discrimination as racism, sexism, or classism.
I, however, do not agree with this ideology, and consider it riddled with inherent logical contradictions. Carrying it to its logical extreme can also lead to great divisiveness among otherwise possibly like-minded people. Unfortunately, I have found that it can be very difficult to have a civil discussion on these themes with those who hold these views. Often, in my personal experience, people who espouse the animal rights position will denounce anyone who expresses contrary views with extremely harsh epithets and ad hominem. Therefore, this little essay is in part a plea for civil discussion between people with opposing views.
The crucial point to make regarding "animal rights" concerns logical consistency. The most commonly asserted animal rights position tends to be that, to be consistent about humane treatment towards all living beings, we are required to extend the concept of "rights" to all those beings without distinction, to the extent that this is possible. (Presumably, even animal rightists would acknowledge those cases where it is not possible, such as the right to vote! I will therefore try not to engage in any cheapshots by claiming that their position necessarily leads to such obvious absurdities.)
Perhaps the most compelling analogy that animal rightists offer is to human beings who are disabled, mentally incapacitated, etc. No civilized person today would seriously dare argue that these people do not deserve the full complement of human rights. So why should we be held to any different standard towards animals?
There are several important flaws in this argument.
The first point to make is that, in denying animals "rights" equivalent to human rights, one does not need to make any theological arguments placing animals "higher" or "lower" in any abstract hierarchy of moral worth. In fact, I reject the concept of a "moral worth hierarchy" altogether.
Instead of an abstract hierarchy of "moral worth," which is a concept that is inextricably tied to Judeo-Christian theology and has no necessary universality, there is a very real, universal hierarchy of proximity. One has a responsibility to care most about those who are "closest" to oneself, based on various measures. This is largely a purely practical matter, and certainly subject to constant change and revision, and also to revision based on changes and evolution in moral values as well, obviously.
For example, I care more about my own family members than I do about people whom I've never met. This doesn't mean that I consider those strangers to be without rights, that would be absurd. They have "human rights" by dint of the fact that they and I are equally human, ie, we share proximity on a biological level. For example, even though I've never met them, I know that we can communicate using sophisticated human language abilities and come to very detailed agreements about things, cooperate with each other, etc.
Nonetheless, people I've never even met will have a lower status in my hierarchy of rights than my own family members. In addition to mere "human rights," for example, my own family members are given all kinds of enhanced legal rights towards me that strangers don't have. My family members, for instance, have the right to insist on seeing me if I'm hospitalized. They have the right to make decisions about my medical care if I become incapacitated, etc. Also, even beyond the legal sphere, like many people, I will generally agree to let my own family members come and go in my own house at will, a right that I'm not about to accord to any stranger who might happen by at random. Just because they're human doesn't automatically entitle them to precisely equal treatment!
Assuming that these kinds of distinctions are commonsense and probably acknowledged and accepted on a day-to-day level even by most animal rightists, then I must ask, why should the same hierarchy of proximity not also apply between species?
Even if there are (or should be) such things as animal rights (let us suppose so for a moment, although I'm not sure): In the scheme of things I've described, where rights have to do with some measure of "proximity," why would anyone expect "animal rights" and "human rights" to be equivalent?
I maintain that they are not and cannot be equivalent. Some of the practical reasons why they aren't equivalent include the fact that, as I've already described, humans can devise very detailed and complex agreements between each other. They can come to very detailed agreements about hours of work, for example, or suitable age limits for work. These then become "rights" acknowledged even in international treaties. There is no way, though, for humans and animals to arrive at such complex and detailed agreements. Only humans can come to agreements with other humans about what definitions to attach to "animal rights," if any.
Because "animal rights" is subject to definitions agreed to by humans with other humans, and not by humans with animals, the exact content, if any, that the words "animal rights" actually conveys, will be subject to and limited by the interests of humans who depend on animals for their livelihoods (which animal rightists often refer to as "animal exploitation").
This is a very big difference between "animal rights" and human rights. In the case of human rights, for instance, we wouldn't agree today to accept human slavery and negotiate the limits of it with slave owners, at least not if the enslaved humans get to have an equal say. Today, the human slaves will have heard of the concept of "human rights," and most will categorically reject any slavery outright. There is no way to go about legalizing any kind of human slavery today at all, without it leading to warfare and chaos. Thus, it has been universally outlawed (even if it still gets practiced secretly in some places).
Could what animal rightists call "animal exploitation" ever be similarly outlawed?
While it is not humanly INCONCEIVABLE that this could happen (afterall, some humans, the animal rightists, have already done so!), once again, the change would have to come about entirely within the human realm, not the animal one. One of the major reasons that human slavery doesn't exist today is the initiative of the human slaves themselves. Human beings, once they get the idea in their heads that they have "rights," are very unlikely to settle for less. This factor of initiative on the part of "the oppressed" is unlikely to ever occur, though, in the case of the animals, at least not without several million years of biological evolution endowing those animals with comparable human cognitive capacities.
In the meantime, though, human beings are still capable of empathy with other life forms. Subscribing to an ideology of "animal rights" is hardly necessary for this. Perhaps a broadening and deepening of this empathy will lead to something more and more resembling "animal rights" in the future.
However, once again, another crucial shortcoming of the animal rights ideology lies in failing to acknowledge that it is precisely the unique human capacity for moral thinking that even makes this whole discussion possible! There is a huge distinction between humans and other animals here, in that the latter have not evolved this capacity as far as we know. They will not be able to reciprocate our collective moral commitment to them. That doesn't argue categorically once and for all against ever making such a commitment. It does, however, mean that the incentives for doing so will be extremely different than the ones that exist for extending our universe of moral concerns to all other humans.
There is another possible outcome, differing from animal rights, though, that would also be consistent with the overall trend in world history towards expanding our human sphere of sympathies with other beings.
Another worldview, very different from the animal rights ideology, but still consistent with the goal of increasing empathy and compassion for all beings, is offered by Deep Ecology.
In the worldview of Deep Ecology, animals don't necessarily have political rights. Humans, however, do have moral and practical obligations to the natural world, including all other species. In this view, the survival of all species is interwoven and interdependent. Not only that, but threatening the survival of other species also threatens the survival of humanity itself, and is therefore madness.
Personally, I don't believe that anything very closely resembling political rights ever can or will be granted to animals by humans. One of the reasons for this is that, contrary to the doctrines of vegans and vegetarians, I believe that most humans are and always will be dependent on the use of various animal products for their basic sustenance. Endless arguments on this subject have been made and will continue to be.
However, while rejecting the animal rights ideology, I subscribe to the ideology of Deep Ecology. I'm happy to work with animal rightists on those subjects about which we can find agreement, such as protecting the habitats of wild animals, taking measures to ensure the survival of endangered species, even preventing wholly gratuitous brutality and cruelty to individual animals (although it doesn't affect the survival of whole life forms, which I consider vastly more urgent). Etc.
(By the way: In some ways, Deep Ecology is a lot more radical than animal rights! While we Deep Ecologists don't generally believe in political rights for other species, we do believe that humans have moral obligations to them, but we don't stop there! We even believe in moral obligations towards trees, grass, and rocks! There is no physical matter at all that is so "beneath" us that we can consider ourselves entitled to use it without care and gratitude! Of course, though, that also means that there IS a hierarchy of moral concerns, but once again defined by practical considerations rather than theology.)
To the extent that the animal rights ideology comes in conflict, however, with my understanding of human rights, such as the rights of traditional, aboriginal human cultures to continue their ancestral subsistence practices, such as hunting, I will staunchly take the side of human rights against animal rightists and their definition of animal rights.
Therefore, I hope that animal rights activists will use common sense and exquisite care in prioritizing their struggles. For example, there are plenty of fur farms to target who produce vanity products for rich people. There are plenty of factory farms that pollute the environment while also causing gratuitous animal cruelty. So I hope the animal rightists will exhaust all those targets before picking a fight with me and people I care about over our personal use of animals for meeting more basic human needs.
In return for such consideration, I will happily pledge to my fellow humans who espouse the animal rights ideology that I will refrain from (what I consider to be) gratuitous cruelty towards animals, or cavalier acceptance of the same. I'm happy to make this agreement both for the sake of their feelings, and therefore harmony and tranquility with them, as well as my own personal feelings and sympathies towards other sentient beings. |
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Corresponding point |
27.Jan.2010 02:13 |
It would seem that the notion of according animals rights would also imply the demand for responsibilities from these same animals... Not sure how that would/could be implemented...
No, animal rights is unidirectional. Animal rightists would say that we owe animals rights no less than we owe incapacitated humans rights. The ability to reciprocate is not a requirement for rights.
I happen to agree that rights don't require precise reciprocity. They do, however, require a more abstract sort of agreement. For example, there is such a thing as "intergenerational responsibilities." Likewise, we care for fellow sick and incapacitated humans, both because they ARE human, and because we hope that we too would enjoy the same consideration in the event that the same circumstances befall us or our kin.
Unless we believe in interspecies reincarnation, however, such as the Hindus do respecting cattle, the same principle won't be operative towards other animals.
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A step along the way |
27.Jan.2010 09:39 |
Thank you for taking the time to explain your position. I believe your view is a step in the direction of achieving a more compassionate world. Most people I have met whether they raise animals for food, kill them as part of "wildlife management" or hunt and trap them all say that they believe animals have rights. I find this interesting and strangely hopeful, in that it says to me that people want to be perceived as kind to animals. If you are one who is eating meat from a humanely raised animal farm, that is a step, and certainly better than eating meat from a factory farm. If you simply have reduced your meat consumption in half, that is a step as well. And I appreciate all who are making steps towards a more compassionate lifestyle. However, if you really believe that animals have rights, I believe that at some point you will have to stop eating them. No one who has rights would agree to be killed and eaten, that is only logical. I will not go into all your refutations of animal rights advocates' statements about equating animals to retarded children etc. For me, it can be boiled down to the simple truth that anyone who truly has rights would not choose to be eaten. In the meantime, until more people come to this realization, if you are willing to make some sacrifices--and by the way, it is possible to live off the animal product grid, consider pleather as one example. Yes, it involves a lot of conscious consumerism but I believe it can be done,-- if you are willing to take steps, even small ones to be more compassionate, that is a giant step for human consciousness and a step towards ending animal cruelty. Please just keep walking down that path.
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Oh my GOD, please listen |
27.Jan.2010 12:51 |
You have started with the premise that "obviously" animals are not equal to humans. That, in my opinion, is a flawed premise. It is the same flaw that has appeared over and over again through history, wielded by the oppressor against whatever oppressed group. It's always been wrong, and continues to be wrong.
No, it is not "most compelling" to compare animals to broken, immature, or incapacitated humans. They are not broken. They are not incapacitated. They are not immature. They are equal beings. And you can't see that.
You must realize that humans ARE animals, right? If not, then we have nothing to talk about. And if you do realize that, then surely you can see that we have all co-evolved along side each other on this planet. Humans are CERTAINLY not more evolved than any other species. We are equals.
As humans, we do not "need" to kill, consume, or otherwise use animals. We do not. And yet, look at the suffering we cause them, laying claim to their very bodies, to their very lives. We have based much of our economy - hidden though it is - upon the lives, bodies, and blood of non-human animals. Yes, just as we have done with other exploited groups of humans throughout history, but to a MUCH greater extent. Look around you right now. Chances are, many of the things you see are somehow connected with the deaths of animals. Their bodies are dismantled and made into all kinds of cheap products, and cheap parts of expensive products. There is, quite literally, a war going on against animals. A far reaching war that has gone on for a very long time. At its roots are the same roots of any war: A desire for more. More for me. A pillaging of the very bodies of others.
What really frustrates me is how many people cannot see this. How many people can feel no empathy, make no connection between their lives, and the lives of animals. They cannot see animals as deserving, equal beings. They cannot recognize the equivalence between the suffering of an animal in pain, and their own capacity to feel pain. They see them as something to be used and exploited. A "resource." And then they have the temerity to tell me that it is ME who has the problem, not them.
I was born able to relate to animals as easily as to humans. I was born seeing them for who they are. I was born with the ability to reason with them, to understand them, and to empathize with them. That is a gift that, I was surprised to learn, is very rare in this world. Too many people are blinded by self interest. I came to see it as a kind of brain damage. And that's being charitable. In my less charitable moments, I see it as evil.
It is an evil that grows out of self interest, that blinds people to the patently obvious, and that leads to everyones' detriment. (It is not good for us to eat meat, it is not good for us to deny the sentience of others, it is not good for us to torture and maim others, it is not good for us to cause suffering. The one is bad for our bodies, the others are bad for our souls. But we don't see the harm we cause, to them or to ourselves. We are convinced we "need" to use them like that.)
Non-human animals just seem so different from us. Another species, for goodness sake. How could anyone so different be like me? How could anyone so different deserve the same rights as me? Some people can see the connection between ourselves and others, no matter how different they may seem. Others cannot. I don't know why. Brain damage perhaps.
People who cannot see the connection recoil in horror when people who can see it dare to compare the suffering of animals at the hands of humans to the suffering of oppressed human groups through history. But did you know, all through history, at the time of that oppression, most people saw nothing at all wrong with it? MOST people sounded just like you sound right now. MOST people were unable to empathize with the oppressed, because they were just too different. And they had all kinds of reasons to justify the oppression - economic reasons, usually. They "needed" to exploit, and even kill, the people they perceived as being beneath them, just too different, too "other" to relate with.
So it makes perfect sense to those of us who see the animals for who they are, we can see the same pattern. And it's both frustrating and sad, and bitterly laughable, when people like you get all angry about a comparison between, for example, what is happening in factory farms and laboratories with what happened in concentration camps, or what happens in slaughter houses with what happens in any other war, or what happens in these animal rights debates with what happened in civil rights debates....
In truth, though, the same force that blinded most people to the humanity and equality of indigenous peoples whose lands and resources they "needed," the same force that blinded most people to the humanity and equality of slaves whose labor they "needed," the same force that blinded men to the humanity and equality of women, the same force that blinded most people to the humanity of inmates in concentration camps... this is the same force that blinds most people to the humanity and equality of non-human animals. (And yes, I said humanity. You see? Even our very language is incapable of accepting the connection. Just as our language was, and to some extent still is unable to treat women as equals - the "universal" pronoun "he," and the word "man" still tacked onto the back of so many occupations, for example - fireman, anchor man, police man, etc. It is, after all, the language of the oppressor. What do we expect?) Please allow your mind to transcend the limitations of our very biased, very human language, and see the "humanity" of others.
It's easy to see it in retrospect. Once the hard work and blood of others has shifted the paradigm. It seems so obvious to most of us now; that indigenous people and people of color and women and all the people locked up in the camps, are all as equal and deserving as we are. But it was not so obvious to a lot of people at the time. And those people treated the few who could see, even then, as the misfits. Just as you are now trying to claim it is me who has a problem because I can see that animals are equal to you and me. The problem is yours. You are defending suffering and death, I am defending life. One day, the paradigm will shift, and more people will see it. Until then, it's a painful, difficult world for the animals, and for those of us who struggle for justice for them, and for us. Some days, it's so frustrating and painful I don't think I can bear it. Some days, the ignorance and hatred seem like they might suck the very life from me.
Ad it makes me hate people like you, who keep defending your own ignorance. Just like you probably hate the Nazis when you read of the atrocious things they did. That is exactly how I feel. So please don't ask me to be "civil" about it. Please just listen, and don't just fire off a knee jerk response taking issue with some semantics or whatever. Just listen. It's all I got.
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Are you serious? |
27.Jan.2010 13:00 |
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you've answered your own question |
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"Personally, I don't believe that anything very closely resembling political rights ever can or will be granted to animals by humans. One of the reasons for this is that, contrary to the doctrines of vegans and vegetarians, I believe that most humans are and always will be dependent on the use of various animal products for their basic sustenance."
Surely you're aware of the irony behind that statement? I mean, you do realize that every white senator and newspaperman made the same claims for slavery of African Americans in the South, right?
Just substitute the words: "Personally, I don't believe that political rights ever can or will be granted to black people by white people. One of the reasons for this is that, contrary to the doctrines of the abolitionists, I believe that our economy is and always will be dependent upon the use of slave labor for their basic sustenance."
Sound familiar?
Yes it does.
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not too close |
27.Jan.2010 14:00 |
Not too close the analogy to arguments made by slave states in the US Civil War about the "economic necessity" of slavery. The two are exceedingly different for innumerable reasons. Here are a few: only herbivores are capable of using very large expanses of the Earth's natural biomass for conversion to digestible fats and proteins, as well as other products. It is questionable whether humans could survive long term without depending on this capability.
Slavery was driven by the desire of social elites to enrich themselves by using captive labor to cultivate extensive cash crops, within the context of an emerging commodity trade based economy. Animal husbandry, however, does not owe its origins to the rise of capitalist world trade. It arose in response to the biological necessity of meeting basic survival needs for humans to avail themselves of usable sources of fats, proteins, clothing articles, etc. Its rise predates modern capitalism by tens of thousands of years, corresponding to the transition from Paleolithic hunter-gatherer survival modes to agriculture and herding as predominant survival modes.
Certain nutrients essential for human survival, as well, can only be effectively obtained from animal sources. These include the essential fatty acids and some B vitamins.
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Lets get pissed at those who deserve it |
27.Jan.2010 14:07 |
I think its really important to remember that there are really few people in the world who are privileged enough to eat vegan. The vast majority of people on the planet are at the very least dependent on animal manure to grow food. (just like on the organic veggies we all buy).
I don't really think its possible for a person to "be vegan" when so much of what we use and live off in our culture depends on habitat destruction and massive human and non-human exploitation. Of course, pleather is petroleum based, as are most plastics, and fossil fuel extraction is one of the most destructive practices imaginable. We, as privileged folk, can make the choice to not consume animal products, that does not mean that we are not contributing to animal suffering on some level. Hence why it is so important to focus attention on where it is causing the most damage and coercing the rest of us to benefit from the damage by having no alternative to petroleum products, electricity from salmon-killing dams, paper from trees...etc.
It is possible for humans to have respectful relationships with non-humans. Humans have never been able to survive without using the bodies of other creatures in some way or another, be it for clothing, food, shelter, or poop. (i guess you could change that sentence to say "white people have never been able to survive without using black people in some way or another" but that wouldn't be true)
I really enjoy reading discussions where people are respectful of one another, and write as if they were talking face to face rather than with the filter of cyberspace.
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Would you stop the BS already |
27.Jan.2010 14:20 |
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stop spreading misinformation |
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that EFAs and B vitamins can only be obtained from animal sources. That's just wrong. Do some research already.
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equal yet not equal |
27.Jan.2010 14:42 |
just sick:
I certainly hope for your own sake that you can overcome the hatred you have just expressed for people who, like me, don't have equal solidarity for members of other animal species as they do for humans. I can only imagine that it would be extreme torment to hate the majority of members of your own species, the way most people hate the Nazis, like the example you cited. Maybe if you contemplate the subject long enough, at some point you'll change your mind, though.
Perhaps a key difference that you could wrestle with is the word "war" that you used. According to you, humans are "at war" with animals, and have been for essentially the whole of human history -- but especially, I presume, since the dawn of animal domestication and agriculture.
Wikipedia defines it thus:
War is armed conflict between states or nations (international war) or between factions within a state (civil war), prosecuted by force and having the purpose of compelling the defeated side to do the will of the victor. Among the causes of war are ideological, political, racial, economic, and religious conflicts. Imperialism, nationalism, and militarism have been called the dynamics of modern war.
If one expands this understanding of "war" to include eating animals for food, then we would have to say that the entirety of both human existence and animal existence in general is characterized by war.
This was indeed an ideology held by the Nazis.
I don't agree with this, though. There is a very great difference between social conflict between humans not absolutely required for survival, vs conflicts between different animals, including humans, for means of preserving their biological survival. If we take much more than we really need, and take without any consideration for those from whom we take, and without any sense of solidarity at all, then we have war, something very vicious. If we take only as much as we need, and with lots of care and consideration for the long term survival of other species, as well as avoiding the causing of gratuitous suffering, then that is not war. To honor this principle does not require vegetarianism or animal rights of the sort you demand from your fellow humans.
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science of nutrition and survival |
27.Jan.2010 14:53 |
The fact that SOME human beings in SOME times and places have lived indefinitely as perfect vegans does not prove that all or most of the human species could ever do so.
As I alluded to previously, we could debate endlessly the theoretical question of whether humans could survive long term without animal sources of various nutrients and other important survival needs. Yes, it IS debatable, but the debate cannot be summed up in anything less than many, many volumes. You could tell me that EFAs are available from various green plants and algae. I can respond by pointing out that the common seed oils from which these are obtained have poor bioavailability and excessive mineral-blocking phytates to ensure long term survival of all or most humans, and the direct consumption of algae is a very novel and risky practice not attested to by human evolutionary history, particularly given the presence of dangerous neurotoxins in many algae. You could tell me that we can make synthetic leather or wool. I could tell you that the chemical feedstocks for such synthetics are limited, whereas natural fiber products are completely renewable. Etc. Etc. Etc.
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Just not true |
27.Jan.2010 16:11 |
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not even a vegan and i can see that |
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"Humans have never been able to survive without using the bodies of other creatures in some way or another"
That is just simply not true.
Humans can, and are, surviving very well without using the bodies of others. What you are saying is simply a false assumption.
Also, the notion that it takes "privilege" to be vegan. So not true. There are cultures all over this planet that are vegan, and far from privileged. Unless, by "privileged," you mean privileged to recognize that not eating meat and dairy is healthy and compassionate.
I am not even a vegan, and I have to tell you, these nauseating anti-vegan attacks on this site lately are really starting to grate on my nerves. What the fuck? Is someone home sick with some meat-related illness, and having nothing better to do than to spam this website with nasty arguments slamming vegans? wtf? It all seems like it's coming from the same one or two people, too. I'm getting a little tired of it. Is anyone else?
"The fact that SOME human beings in SOME times and places have lived indefinitely as perfect vegans does not prove that all or most of the human species could ever do so."
Tell it to the Jains.
What, like, those "brown people" are so different than you that the fact that they can do it just fine doesn't mean you can?
You make no sense. Nothing is less sustainable than meat production. Nothing. No debate required. Already settled. Long ago.
You just sound like an idiot.
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Thanks Doc |
27.Jan.2010 18:06 |
I'm glad you're standing up for the poor apathetic murderers. We could not continue to rape the planet without people who think their opinion is the end of all!
http://www.earthlings.com/earthlings/video-full.php
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Reject Identity Politics and Human Vs. 'Animalia' Dualism |
27.Jan.2010 19:13 |
Many ethical and philosphical traditions don't buy into a split between animals and humans. Deep ecology (the web is what's important, not isolated individuals) and poststructualism especially. Foucault and Delueze particularly. Descarte himself nailed dogs to the village wall and, because they yelled until they died, he claimed it proved that the dogs didn't have emotions since they went on yelping when it wasn't doing any good. Rene Descarte, the 'father' of sciene, was brilliant wasn't he. Rawls claim that a dog is always thrown from a lifeboat before any human is likewise flawed -- a 90 year old human who has cancer can volunteer to go overboard and save a 6 month old puppy. That's what's neat about the homo sapien: the ability to think beyond specism and chauvinism.
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what people are you refering to? |
27.Jan.2010 19:16 |
To "not even a vegan": Could you give me some examples of cultures that live entirely off of plant matter other than ones in wealthy countries? Are there peoples who use no manure or skins or bones or fat or oil? Im curious to know because I have never heard of any.
Im not trying to attack vegans, I think eating vegan is great. I just think its an important distinction to make between "eating vegan" and "being vegan". To "be vegan" you would have to not eat any vegetables grown with manure or use any electricity that comes from damns (killing fish), use no petroleum, drink no coffee or any other imported goods...etc. Of course, I think its really fucked how coerced we all are to be part of such exploitation of the earth. obviously, it would be much better if that were not the case. I just think its silly to delude ourselves into thinking that the way we live now does not harm non-humans in many ways.
On the privilege subject, simply having a choice of what diet you will follow is a privilege. most people never have that. Its not like its BAD to be privileged, as it is often something that is or is not forced on people from birth. Its just important to recognize it.
I feel like your angry tone is really unjustified by the way. it doesnt help the conversation move forward, it just makes people listen and hear less.
It would be really interesting to know of a culture that is uses no animal products for anything. please let me know.
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Oh please |
27.Jan.2010 20:38 |
"To "be vegan" you would have to not eat any vegetables grown with manure or use any electricity that comes from damns (killing fish), use no petroleum, drink no coffee or any other imported goods...etc."
What bullshit.
No, nope, nuh huh. Sorry. You're wrong.
SOME vegans might choose to avoid all of those things. It's not a requirement. Not a mandate.
Stop talking about things you know nothing about.
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Asshole |
27.Jan.2010 20:56 |
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tired of you and your stupid article |
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"I'm happy to work with animal rightists"
that makes one of us.
what is it, exactly, that you get out of provoking arguments with people who are doing SO much more in the world than you are, who are already busy enough trying to protect animals they love and really don't need your poking asininity.
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Point granted re responsibilities of animals. |
28.Jan.2010 01:08 |
What would the veganism supporters on this thread think if I started eating humans around me who consumed other animals? I mean, humans are animals on the one hand, so I'd be eating animals...... but on the other hand, assuming I ate only them, I'd be interfering with those who are contributing to the much greater devastation of ecosystems. Is killing always wrong? I bet that not every vegan on here is an absolute pacifist. So what if we slew these humans? And would it be wrong to do so and then NOT eat them?
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Tell what to the Jains |
28.Jan.2010 07:05 |
Ummm, as far as I am aware most Jains still eat dairy, a few total ascetics abstain but almost all the laity and lower monks and nuns eat dairy as long as it has not sat overnight. And by the way portland vegans don't compare in any way shape or form to jainist conviction. The jain adherence to non-violence would require their silence in most of these debates, as they escalate conflict and violence. Jains do not eat root vegetables because they hold plant life on the same level of all other life and a tuber is a living entity. The jains are also completely delusional believing in souls, four levels of cosmic existence, including hell, the transmigration of souls and divinity. All this to say that no culture on earth has ever existed as total vegans. It is also to say that any argument constructed on some narrative based around anything other than material reality is just that a narrative. My narrative says it is wrong to divorce ourselves from the cycles of life, isolate our communities in urban landscapes and centralize the production of food. Factory ranching and industrial agriculture are built upon the antithesis of my personal narrative and i will continue to activate against these institutions and the world views that justify them. My personal narrative also denies the legitimacy of totalizing narratives that project their own sense of deviance and moral rightness upon others and i will continue to activate against them as well. So with one hand i will fight the dehumanizing nature of industrialism and with the other i will fight the self-righteous moralizers who wish to control. So watch out capitalists, industrialists, generals, christians, jains and vegans i am not alone and we are coming for you!!
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compassion over killing |
28.Jan.2010 10:46 |
I think it is good to debate this issue as it allows us to come to conclusions about our personal choices. I agree it is almost impossible to be a purist and refrain from using plastic and other unsustainable products. Why I choose to be vegan is not because it allows me to be perfect, but it allows me to make the most compassionate choices. Animals have feelings, suffer, play, and like all beings, cling to life. I do not want to be the one to rob them of these simple pleasures because of my dietary choice, which is something very simple to alter. You can find examples of every kind of dietary choice in many different societies, but here and now, we can make the compassionate choice, regardless of what anyone anywhere is doing. To me it comes down to that, what am I going to do to save lives and to lead a more compassionate life. I don't personally feel I need to wait til hemp is legalized, which would help tremendously in creating sustainable paper, clothing and fuel, or til solar replaces all electric and coal energy, but I decided to start now by eliminating the most obvious and direct suffering and not eat or consume the products of enormous animal suffering. Let me ask you this, if you could somehow live for one day or week as a cow or pig or chicken, what would you prefer? Life or death? And do you think your preference should matter?
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Another question to Vegan advocates |
28.Jan.2010 17:56 |
OK so what if I ate myself?? I mean at least your obnoxious (though not intentionally so) opponent (me) would cease to exist as a problem, both in regards to animals and more specifically in such debates as these... Yet I would still be eating an animal, and an animal would still have been eaten. Philosophically speaking, I would be committing the same evil as that which I would be negating.
The sheer paradox kinda makes me want to try it. Someone should do it with me tho.
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Indy, that was beautiful |
28.Jan.2010 20:20 |
Thank you Indy for saying that.
Sad that the shit head in the next comment didn't even read it.
Lots of sad things.
No wonder that guy burned himself to death outside Ungar yesterday. Too may awful people in the world.
Yes, you should eat yourself. I don't think any vegans would mind a bit.
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Is Mother Nature |
31.Jan.2010 20:34 |
the lion stalks the gazelle, a giant snake swallows a man, a human consumes a chicken, birds munch on bugs, and the list goes on. A vegan lifestyle is a choice. If Mother Nature intended that humans should NOT consume other species, she would have made their ingestion fatal to humans. Mother Nature is not calm and passive exclusively - she can be peaceful - but she can also be violent and usher forth rage.
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"Man" can also |
01.Feb.2010 11:34 |
rape/commit incest, murder, enslave...and has done so since the beginning. Are you going to argue that we should be doing those things to? "Appeal to Nature" is not an argument. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature
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Fallacies |
01.Feb.2010 14:47 |
Preface. Subjectivity vs Objectivity
While reading on the subject of animal rights I was deeply disturbed by the number of subjective arguments used to both support and discount the notion of giving rights to animals. Since giving rights animal is a legal issue, its validity should be determined on completely objective and materialistic grounds. I believe that this is the only acceptable approach to assessing this issue because emotional attachment to animals, the religious/spiritual significance of animals, and the importance of the pleasure/pain experienced by animals vary from person to person. Since arguments based on these criteria are subjective, they are not reproducible or universal and cannot be used to formulate laws that would be universal in nature.
Since the happiness of any human is also subjective, arguments based on utility will refer to the ability of the article in question to improve the physical well being of a human.
1. Why Humans Have Intrinsic Value to Other Humans.
From a completely objective and selfish perspective, each human is almost infinitely valuable to any other human because of two criteria, intelligence and utility. Since utility is derived from the creation of a physical/intellectual product though the use of intelligence, intelligence is also the controlling factor in determining utility. Any human might use their intelligence to invent a valuable tool (ratcheting box wrench, computer software, scientific method etc.), social construct (capitalism, socialism, democracy, religion etc.), or entertainment product (book, film, music etc.) that can improve the physical well being of another human. Our laws are designed to protect this value. For example stealing from or killing another human is unlawful and foolish because you impede them from possibly making a contribution to our society in the form mentioned above. Even if only one in one million humans invents something that drastically improves your own life, it is foolish to take the one in a million chance of destroying that contribution by in anyway interfering with any other human. Therefore it is always in our own best interest not to interfere with other humans, even if they get in the way of our own goals. Our laws are designed protect the rights of humans and were based on subjective criteria(emotionality, religion etc.) when they were originally composed, but most serve the objective function of giving each human the chance to make some infinitely valuable contribution to society that will improve the lives of many humans.
A. Special Case #1
Self defense acceptable from an objective perspective because a human attempting to murder another human not only has infinite negative value from the perspective of the human being murdered; they also are destroying the possibly infinite value that the human being killed has from the perspective of other humans. Although the future contributions of the attacking human may be lost if they are killed, the future contributions of the victim will definitely be lost if the attacker is allowed to continue. This creates a zero sum situation in which it is objectively acceptable to kill the attacking human.
B. Special Case #2
Humans who are currently incapable of creating a contribution to society due to mental or physical deficiency are suffering from a medical condition. Like any medical condition, it is possible that the damage or intrinsic deficiency can be repaired or mitigated at some future date. Therefore individual humans which are incapable of creating a contribution are given rights to protect the utility they may have in the future when they are capable of making a product that other humans can use.
C. Special Case #3
Young children are incapable of making a contribution to society; however they will be able to do so once they have matured. Therefore human children are not given rights based on their current utility, but because of the utility they will have in the future.
2. Why Animals Have no Intrinsic Value to Humans.
Unlike humans animals are incapable of creating an intellectual or physical artifact which has value to any human society. The most intelligent animals cannot create an invention that has a utility to our society or offer new insight into any problem of physical significance to our society. Since they are incapable of offering an intellectual contribution (any physical invention or idea); the value animals' is proportional to the value of their physical components, activities, and scientific insight derived from the observation of its behavior.
A, Special Cases in Comparison with animals
Infants, and invalid adults, and animals are not sapient and cannot make an intellectual contribution to our society. The functional difference between them is their potential to make contributions. Infants will grow and become sapient, the handicapped can be repaired and gain the sapience that they were denied, but animals are as intelligent as they can ever be and they are still not intelligent enough to make a contribution.
3. Pleasure and Pain are Insignificant.
Pain is simply a physical stimulus that initiates an avoidance behavior. Pain itself is not important. Instead it is the presence of physical damage indicated by pain that is significant. Pain can coerce humans only because it implies that physical damage is being done and humans have and instinctual fear of physical damage. Inflicting pain on humans is not acceptable only because it can damage the mental health of some humans and reduce their physical utility to society. Since it has already been argued that animals have no intellectual utility to society, the pain of animal has no intrinsic value. However pain can be an indicator of inefficiency. For example, if an animal feels pain for a lengthy period of time during slaughter it would indicate that the killing process is slow and therefore inefficient. The process of killing should be sped up as much as is possible, to increase the number of animals killed. This would also prevent the animal from thrashing about and disrupting the processing of its physical components.
Pain is also subjective by its very nature. Masochists damage themselves in order to feel pain because they find it aesthetically pleasing. Although I may think this a waste of time I can see no objective reason to discourage this practice, so long as they do no permanent damage to themselves that reduces their utility. In fact if they think the damage increases their utility I have no right to object to the practice even if my own objective assessment is not in agreement. Sadists damage others in order to observe behaviors associated with pain because they find them aesthetically pleasing. Although I may find this decedent and a waste of time since it is not creating any product that I value, that is a subjective assessment because others may find the product aesthetically or intellectually pleasing. So long as sadism is not carried out on an unwilling human, which would likely reduce their utility, I see no objective reason to discourage the practice.
Likewise pleasure is not important because it is subjective and does not always correspond to an increase in physical well being or utility.
Disregard for pain essentially invalidates the primary argument for animal rights, which is based on utilitarianism.
4. Animals Have No Value to Themselves (Note this argument is dangerously close to subjective as it relies on the non-quantifiable concept of "value")
The term value by its very nature is a human construction. Implying that animals' value their lives because they display avoidance behavior is anthropomorphism. No animal can articulate the abstract concept of value and therefore cannot conceive of it. And if animals have no concept of values then they have no ability to assign value to themselves. Instead it is the human who is subjectively stating that they believe that animals have an intrinsic value to themselves.
Whether they are valued for emotional reasons, religious reasons, scientific observation, industrial/commercial applications, or entertainment, the animal and its component parts are only valuable due to the action of humans and their assessment of the animal's physical/emotional/spiritual value. The animal is worthless in of itself. It has value because humans have assigned that value to it.
A. Example Case #1
During the early nineteenth century in the southern United States the law dictated that humans of African decent had no rights based on the premise that they were not intelligent enough to serve a function to society other than brute slave labor. Dredd Scott disproved this hypothesis by educating himself and making a coherent argument for his own rights. By asking for rights, he proved that was intelligent enough to fully understand the concept of rights and its implications to his personal legal situation. More importantly through, his actions he provided evidence that a human of African decent had comparable intelligence to one of European decent and therefore could make a comparable intellectual contribution to society.
One objective test of the ability of an organism to conceptualize "rights" would be to encourage an animal to give an articulate argument for why it should have rights. However, no animal educated by humans has ever expressed a desire for the human concept of rights.
5. Inclusive Fallacies and Association Fallacies
True Statements: "All humans are animals." "All humans have rights."
Fallacy: ergo "All animals are humans or have the rights of humans.
Arguments supporting animal rights sometimes contend that because humans are phylogenetically related to animals this implies that they are the basically same. This is similar to stating: since all fish are vertebrata, all vertebrates can respire underwater. This is especially jarring when, in the same article, the author describes the differences between species that they interpret as evidence that animal testing does not function properly under any circumstance. This gives the impression of an internally inconsistent argument.
Anthropocentrism is often associated with racism or sexism. This is a fallacy because internal variations in intelligence within the sexes or races have been proven to be greater than the variation of intelligence between races or sexes. An assessment of the data implies that inter-racial the differences are due to social constructs. That is to say that there are few significant differences in intelligence between any two properly functioning human adults. However there is a significant difference in intelligence between the least intelligent valid human adult and the most intelligent animal.
7. Appeals to Nature
Arguments both for and against animal rights are often based on a naturalist fallacy. An example would be that nature is good and we humans disrupt and enslave nature, therefore we are bad. An argument against animal rights that contains this fallacy would be the argument that it is natural for humans to hunt and kill and animals therefore it is good.
These are fallacies since what is best and of the highest utility to a human should be determined solely from the article's ability to physically improve the human condition. Neither the natural nor artificial is inherently superior.
I'm also no fan of Deep Ecology, but that is another issue. Hail the Empire. Praise the Machine. We are Legion.
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Oh not so fast |
01.Feb.2010 17:04 |
"Since giving rights animal is a legal issue, its validity should be determined on completely objective and materialistic grounds."
Except no, it's not merely a legal issue. Might be to you, as you might be a law student. But actually, animal rights is a moral issue. As an aside, it can also be a political and a legal issue. If animal rights were merely a legal issue, then animal rights activists would only be engaging this struggle in courtrooms. It isn't, and we aren't. And nothing about what you just wrote is "objective."
I can see you've read a couple of the old and out-dated tomes they made me read in grad school, whereby anti-animal rights men attempted to break down the argument for animal rights by making it strictly a legal issue and then using (human-made) legal arguments to tear down the straw man they just built up themselves out of legal straw. But in fact, the term "animal rights" actually embraces much more than a legal issue.
If you just want to argue about the legal rights of animals, you will have to do a lot better than this. Read some Tom Regan as a baby step. At least then, you will be better able to form your arguments without making them so boringly trite.
And if you want to argue ANYTHING at all, you will have to do MUCH better than using the long-outdated label "anthropomorphism," as if it explained it all. In fact, even the most jaded researchers are now rejecting that label, as it is painfully obvious to all concerned that it is not a useful or accurate description after all. In fact, animals DO have thoughts and feelings and brain structures that are remarkably similar to our own. It's pure folly to insist that even if it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck it must be something else. That's what you're doing when you insist that, just because animals react the same way we do to a given stimulus, and just because we can predict an animals' behavior based on how we would react, and just because the same sorts of physiological reactions are taking place within their brains as within our brains, doesn't mean the same emotions and thought processes are at work. What, is your head still stuck up Descartes's ass? Do you think animals are just machines, and an animal screaming in pain is merely a broken machine? Check your own logical fallacies at the door please.
(Oh, I forgot. "Pain itself is not important." Isn't that easy to say, when the pain is not your own.)
Yes, animals DO value their own lives. How can we say that? Because you and I value our lives, and we act a certain way to demonstrate that. When our lives are at stake, we fight like hell to save them. Guess what. Non human animals react the exact same way. Sure, it's probably *possible* that they only act exactly like we do in a given situation because they're machines programed to do so, sure, it's *possible* that we can't really interpret their feelings based on their behavior in these situations. It's also possible that green extra terrestrials are living inside their bodies making them act like that just to trick you. But which one is more plausible? Hmmm?
I'm constantly amazed at the length to which allegedly educated people will go in order to deny that non-human animals are much more like us than not. I cannot believe how desperately the majority of humans cling to the notion of superiority over the animals. And I am disgusted at how vehemently so many of you insist that you have the right to hurt and maim and kill animals for the most trivial of reasons. You do not. You might have the "legal" right to do so now, because the law is as flawed as the kiting little cries of the law student. But morally, ethically, you do not have that right. Deep down in your heart, surely you must know it. If you do not, then you're missing some important part of what it means to be human (or non) on this earth.
By the way, there is no such thing as objectivity, and the fact that you think so, and the fact that you think you're fooling anyone else into believing that yours is the voice of objectivity, just really makes it obvious that you have no idea what you're even talking about.
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Fallacies reply Oh not so fast |
01.Feb.2010 18:07 |
Firstly not I'm not a law student. I have a PhD in Geology, focusing on Stratigraphy and Petroleum Geology. I did not get anything I wrote out of a textbook concerning law. I arrived at those conclusions based on objective reasoning.
Secondly morality is subjective. What you feel is moral is not what I feel is moral. If you wish to create a code of conduct protecting animals that is applicable to us all, you must give us an objective reason that we should care about animals in the form of a testable hypothesis. Tell us why each individual animal is so valuable to society that we cannot afford to destroy them. I have already done so for humans.
I do not care if animals feel pain, I do not care if they have souls, I do not care if they wish to remain alive, I do not care to what degree they are similar or dissimilar to us, and I do not care if they have feelings. These things are not objective reasons to keep them alive. You and I contribute to society. We are cogs in the machine. We can offer goods and services to each other. What do animals offer to us?
I cannot kill another human because it is a waste. They may produce something that I need. What do animals produce that is not taken from them. Certainly not labor or intellectual contributions. They only labor when they are forced to and none have displayed to intelligence needed to make a intellectual contribution.
tldr: Be objective in your response. If my logic itself is flawed alert me so that I may correct it. But do not couch emmotionallity as rationality. You can have your own opinions and moral determinations, but they will be different from mine.
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in support of anonymous |
01.Feb.2010 20:49 |
There is absolutely such a thing as objectivity. If there was not then we could not make objective observations and use them to construct predictive models using the scientific method. "no objectivity" is pseudo philosophical nonsense.
Here is a thought experiment for you. I say a pen is red, you say the pen is blue. I get several spectrometers and conduct are series of tests to determine what wavelength of light the pen reflects. All the tests determine that the wavelength reflected is that which is perceived as red by the average human eye. You run the same tests and come to the same conclusion, but insist that you perceive the the pen's color as blue. You are obviously suffering a observational error due to faulty equipment, ie your eye or nervous system is nonstandard.
Your entire argument is based on philosophy. I detest philosophy. It pretends to be objective and testable but is not. I prefer science and religion. Science is testable and objective in spite of observer bias and methodological error. Religion at least admits that it is based on the subjective interpretation of possible supernatural phenomenon which whose existence can never be proven nor disproven. Take you Zen elsewhere.
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reply to anonymous |
02.Feb.2010 17:52 |
I appreciate the opportunity this website gives us to disagree vigorously but civilly, and explain our reasons.
With respect to Anonymous, the line of reasoning you offer has some pretty huge flaws in my opinion, but interestingly, it is in some ways very close to the approach taken by Peter Singer, who is a famous animal rights advocate! He, too, claims that "utilitarianism" is the basis upon which to assign rights. In his case, however, he states that preferring the interests of a human individual over an individual of another species is purely arrant, self-interested bias on the part of the human. We have at least as good a basis for objectively establishing that an animal has "interests" as a human: animals are capable of practically the same, full suite of behaviors for demonstrating a vigorous dedication to protecting their vital "interests" (eg, avoidance of pain) as humans: running, screaming, attacking, cringing, playing dead, etc, etc. If they lack the ability to express their preferences in human language, that is merely an accident of evolutionary biology, and we had might as well conclude that a human with damaged or defective vocal cords also equally lacks "interests" on the same basis (argumentum ad absurdum).
Singer's argument here leads directly to a defense of animal rights because, if we were to deny them and claim that our "human rights" are superior to the "animal's rights," then, applying a Kantian "categorical imperative" line of reasoning, we would see immediately that there is no longer any ethical defense against any human group claiming to put its own interests above those of another human group. Why shouldn't German "Aryans" decide that their interests are superior, as a group? They can claim that people need to speak THEIR language to really properly express true "interests." And if Jews can speak "their" language? Well, that just proves that the Jews are deviously feigning Aryanhood, just like a parrot can simulate human speech. Who is to say that the parrot isn't a human with human rights? Only the human who arbitrarily claims to look into the "soul" of the parrot and sees that it isn't "really human."
I think if we claim to be "objective" about the matter, and start to look into the "soul" of the parrot systematically and scientifically, we would be unable to find any absolutely objective, clear dividing line establishing a discontinuity between the parrot's (or other animal's) ability to sense and dedicate energy to protecting its vital interests, vs the ability of a human to do so. (I've mixed some metaphors here, but the point with the parrot should be fairly obvious: even though we might be able to prove "objectively" that the parrot doesn't "understand" what it is saying, we could never "objectively" prove that the parrot doesn't have "interests" and doesn't "know" what they are. On the contrary, every other "objective" indication would still favor the parrot, never mind its speaking ability or ability to "understand" what it was saying.)
The problem, though, with Singer's argument for utility as the basis of deciding rights, suffers from exactly the same problems as yours, Anonymous: they lead to some pretty serious, practical absurdities immediately:
Your argument rests on two claims, neither of which are very sound: "legalism," and "utilitarianism." But first of all, "rights" are not merely "legalistic," in the same way as, say, contract law. Rights are a bedrock legal, political, and moral construction, with a very specific historical evolution, which they can never be severed from.
Also, even the law itself is exceedingly far from being a purely "utilitarian" system. Different parts of the law vary wildly amongst each other. The content of the law reflects its own complex evolution, containing purely mechanistic, "legalistic" components, such as contract law, and other, far more sensitive and "emotive" components, such as the field of human rights.
The law is not even very close to utilitarian: If the law were based on mere "utilitarianism," then in a capitalist society such as the US, legal scholars might argue (going back to contract law, just to pick on an easy target again) that "freedom of contract" is a paramount area of the law for purely utilitarian reasons, since contracts are a cornerstone of capitalism. They might then, on that basis, decide to privilege contract law over "human rights" law. They might decide, for example, to routinely hear cases that impact on contracts on a priority basis before any cases that impinge on things like voting rights.
Whereas in point of fact, almost the reverse is the case: cases that impinge on areas considered most fundamental to "human rights," such as the right to have an equal vote as a citizen, are prioritized way above contract disputes. These priorities are surely not based on "utilitarianism," but rather on a "subjective" but historically established precedent in which certain rights are judged "fundamental," "inalienable," etc, and are not subject to any diminution on a utilitarian basis, ever.
The courts themselves have made the distinction clear: there are liberties that a government may take when it comes to respecting such fundamental rights, by appealing to "compelling public interests." There are other conceivable liberties, however, which the state has tried to take but the courts have disallowed, under any circumstances. For example, in a public place, public authorities can regulate "time, place, and manner" when it comes to exercises of free speech. Under no circumstances, however, even a "compelling public interest," are they allowed to regulate the CONTENT of that speech. This is clear, and there's not a whiff of utilitarianism about it.
Even in Oliver Wendell Holmes's infamous opinion (Schenck v. United States, 1919, later overturned!) stating that one is not permitted, by dint of free speech, to "falsely yell fire in a crowded theater," his argument hinged on such an extreme analogy as to make "utilitarianism" irrelevant. The courts have ruled that there are circumstances where one's behavior is not merely an exercise of free expression, but an act with immediate practical consequences, for which one can be held accountable (eg, inciting a riot), but mostly those are very clearly distinguishable by the facts of the case, and the content is truly totally independent and apart from them.
Thus, in the case of free speech, to continue with this example, the principle remains: people under our Constitution have an absolute, sovereign right to hold and express their views, the content of which is totally protected from any government intrusion regardless of any notion of "utility" whatsoever.
Now, under other legal orders, such a principle does not exist. In most of Europe, for example, one is not permitted to indulge in "Holocaust denial." Clearly the difference between Europe and the US in this particular area is not attributable to a generally inferior moral or legal stage of development among Europeans, but because of specific historical events.
Suppose, though, we were to try and push for a really thorough application of "utilitarianism" in the law. What would this look like? Well, there could be people who would say, citing books like "The Bell Curve," or authors like the racialist psychologist Phillippe Rushton, that certain races are objectively different in their abilities and "utility," and therefore different sets of "rights" should apply to them. If enough people decided this were true, and decided that the "utilitarianism" approach were the right way to assign rights� then we might very well expect to see a rollback in the previously inalienable "rights" that some people enjoy.
Luckily, in my opinion, that outcome is extremely unlikely in a country such as the United States, where our legal tradition is so extremely "unutilitarian," as I've described. It's a lucky thing for any number of reasons, including some of which I've already described:
Any attempt to roll back the rights that some people enjoy would likely lead to warfare and chaos. No conceivable "utility" could ever be served by that in any case.
Also, any notion that someone's rights could be adjusted or diminished based on some allegedly objective estimate of their "utility" to anyone or anything would create a true slippery slope against which no effective barrier to endless moral injustices and depravities, a la the Nazis, could ever be effectively erected, were "utilitarianism" to be raised as the paramount consideration.
(As I've said, at the moment this doesn't offer a good argument for adopting "animal rights", for the simple fact that no extensive code of "animal rights" has ever been widely established, so there is no question of a "rollback" setting a precedent for other "rollbacks", and also for the fact that there exists a deep, intraspecies (ie, between humans) ability for empathy and identification with others' suffering which is assisted greatly by the extremely developed communication abilities between humans, so no "slippery slope" is in danger of being created even if we were to indefinitely postpone adopting anything closely resembling human political rights for animals. The fact that this "slippery slope" argument isn't really useful at the moment as a practical argument in favor of adopting animal rights, though, does NOT mean that there aren't potentially many other valid reasons for adopting them. Also, hypothetically, if our empathic and communication abilities with animals ever evolve significantly from where they are at now, this could change! In that case, the "slippery slope" argument could start to become much more compelling, and the corresponding need to adopt animal rights in a way more closely analogous legally and politically to human rights. This is the reason why I think formal legal rights for primates, specifically, will start to become more and more common, as for example has already happened in Spain.)
Finally, any argument based on "utility" and claiming to be somehow more "objective" as a result, is faced with an even more fundamental logical problem: "utility" itself is not "objective" and is infinitely malleable. The true historical origins of "rights" have nothing whatsoever to do with any philosophy of "utility". "Rights" owe their origins to a combination of historical social and intellectual movements, and above all to the legacy of Enlightenment philosophy, according to which all human beings are endowed with three foremost, inherent, and interrelated entitlements by nature, those to "Liberty," "Equality," and "Fraternity" (ie, solidarity).
The reasons for why these historical and social movements came to the fore at the time they did are various, but they can be seen logically as the outcome of a millennial evolution in moral and political philosophy, tracing its origins all the way back to what Karl Jaspers described as the "Axial Age." This Axial Age was a period in modern human history extending from about 600 BC to 600 AD, during which the bulk of all the world's known, extant "universalist" moral and religious philosophies, by a pretty astonishing "coincidence" of history, were all simultaneously born. (These dates approximately bookmark the rise of Advaitic Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism in the Indian subcontinet, and Islam in Arabia and Zoroastrianism in Iran, respectively, and between which come Taoism, the Old Testament prophets, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Roman legal thought, Christianity, and much else.) Prior to this Axial Age, human thinking was dominated by "tribalist" thinking, and any recognition of some universal commonality of interests among humans as an entire species was largely nonexistent.
There is a very compelling argument to be made that no "coincidence" is operative here at all, but rather that this evolution reflects a profound movement in human consciousness towards a fundamental expansion in the scope of human thought, and towards a form of rationality that transcends narrowly egoistic, tribal, and "utilitarian" concerns, one which was perhaps made inevitable in some ways by the stage to which our brains, minds, and consciousness had by then evolved. If one gives weight to this interpretation of history, then animal rights can be seen as a perfectly natural and reasonable progression and outcome of this movement. I would agree with this.
Therefore, I don't take issue with "animal rights" in the broadest sense, as an expression of an authentic and welcome expansion of the scope of human moral thinking, my critique is much narrower, having to do with very specific things, including the precise political expression that these "rights" take, and the practical way that we get there starting from where we are at at the moment.
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Anonymous Response |
02.Feb.2010 21:01 |
You seem to have confused by line of reasoning with Singer's Utilitarianism, which is based on the prevention of pain based on an individuals interests. When I refer to utility I am not proposing that it be measured by the prevention of pain or allotment of pleasure. Pain, even my own, is of no consequence to the continued survival of the human species unless it reduces the the ability of human to function and contribute to the species and society as a whole. My argument is based on physical utility, that is to say that the value of something is determined by its ability to allow a contributing member of society or someone who may possibly contribute to society to survive.
As for the Nazis or other regimes that destroy human stock because they do not think they can contribute, they are simply ignoring obvious data that they could be collect through simple empirical observations. 10 million undesirables human subjects were prematurely destroyed by the Nazis. Assuming that they had a normal percentage of males fit for military service within that group, they destroyed more that 2 million potential soldiers. They also destroyed individuals with expertise in logistics, commerce, and and skilled labor. They obviously did not look at the objective value of those individuals and did not recognize the contribution they would have made to their war effort. In summary: the Nazis were weak, the Nazis were fools.
The division between "Aryan" and undesirable was not even defined by an objective quantification physical utility, there fore the distinction is not comparable to the between humans and nonhuman animals fore reasons previously defined in the first post submitted here.
As for capitalistic concerns. The intellectual contributions of humans and their inventions produce more revenue per employee that brute labor. Therefore to preserve this valuable resource current human rights as defined by law should remain. Any good business secures its future source of profit, and defending human rights defends that source of profit. The million in one chance that any possible employee may develop a profitable invention would mean that in order to maximize profit all humans must be given rights under the law to prevent the loss of their contributions.
These things being said. Some organisms, primarily bacteria, insects, and plants, provide some ecosystem services which are not always economically viable to reproduce at this point in time. Therefore certain species may be actively preserved until such a time that their unintentional contribution can be more economically replicated through some mechanical process. At which time they may be allowed to go extinct or remain alive based on the current situation. (An example of this would be a wetland that mitigates flooding by absorbing excess stream flow.)
This however does not entail the organisms to rights since the contributions and well beings of the individual organisms is nearly inconsequential to the maintenance of the whole. Basically these ecosystems are a resource that should be kept functioning until they no longer produce a viable contribution at an economical rate.
I believe that the main point of my argument may not have been concisely stated so I will not do so.
Statement:
The maintenance of human rights facilitates efficiency with human society because it allows for greater contributions by individual humans.
Hypothesis:
The reduction of human rights is likely to result in a decrease in the contributions of individual humans and a subsequent decrease in efficiency.
Hypothesis:
It does not appear that granting rights to animals, including the right to life and bodily integrity, will cause an increase in the efficiency of human society. This is based on the supposition that animals can not make any intellectual contribution to human society. This hypothesis can be tested by attempting to provoke an animal into making an intellectual contribution that would have a physical utility to a human or society at large. I am not aware of any documentation of such an contribution originating from a nonhuman. If there is case study of an animal which contradicts this observation please inform me.
Hypothesis:
Because animals do not have the ability to make an intellectual contribution to society they can only contribute through our harvesting of their labor or component parts.
Question:
How does granting rights to animals create an increase in physical or intellectual contributions to human society?
PS
I am somewhat confused by the supposition that empathy is required for one to express sympathy concerning that well being of another human. When I see someone done on there luck I do not help them because I feel anything. I help them because they are a non-functioning component of society whose is not capable of making a contribution due to their current circumstances. Assisting them is in my own best interest because they will then be able to make a contribution.
I am please to note that others who are somewhat impartial and logical is also interested in religion, I my self am religious and feel that an vocal minority in the scientific community voice that misrepresent science as antireligious. Science simply does not account for supernatural because the scientific method is not meant to account for supernatural phenomenon if they do exist. Science simply does not care one way or another about the existence of supernatural phenomenon. However we must always be sure to exclude religious bias from our objective observations and we should not use such subjective criteria to formulate argument unless it concerns the development of religion from a sociological context.
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In praise of the Precautionary Principle (response to anonymous again) |
03.Feb.2010 00:26 |
If you really do make some computation regarding "utility" or "efficiency" when you respond to others in a sympathetic way, then you are very unique. I won't say whether that's good or bad!
I'm not sure whether, with your utilitarian arguments, you are attempting to describe "the way things work now" or "the way things would or should work in Anonymous's ideal universe," but either way, I think there are some huge blind spots throughout.
As regards your remarks on "ecosystem services," this actually helps to demonstrate why, in my opinion, your approach would be inadvisable in the extreme from the standpoint of human survival! If there is anything that the past hundred years of both scientific and political history should teach us, it would be a healthy sense of humility and distrust of our own human ability to always reliably compute or exhaustively learn anything, including any precise measure of "utility" or "efficiency"! We are living in a time where previously "bedrock" institutions are overturned in the blink of an eye, where research overturns facts previously assumed eternal and unchallengeable, where previously unimaginable threats to whole ecosystems come to light, with implications for the survival of any or all species, including the human one.
What is the significance of the seeming fixation with Nazism that people seem to have, even famous and respected intellectuals, when the subject of ethics and human rights comes up, such that some recourse to examples and analogies involving that regime so often arises? Surely it is not merely on account of a lurid curiosity or obsession with the macabre, nor is it always by way of an ad hominem attack via comparison to "the worst of all evils". It is because the rise of Nazism represents such a stark and shocking aberration in the assumed course of human moral and political progress for most intellectuals.
Sigmund Freud acknowledged sheepishly his own embarrassment that, when he wrote his own early magnum opus, Interpretation of Dreams, and investigated the power of unconscious drives on human behavior, he completely neglected what he later came to describe as the "death drive," which he characterized as the inverse to his earlier "life drive," libido. How else, in his eyes, to account for the totally unforeseen convulsions of universal and unprecedented Total War that shook Europe in 1914, and again even more catastrophically in 1939?!
This shocking aberration in what most educated people assumed was an inevitable forward march of "progress," in all ways, materially, morally, intellectually, socially, politically, served to breach the confidence of modern scientific materialism, and bred a much deeper scepticism and sense of humility around these subjects. It became paramount to avoid any recurrence of such a "backslide."
Your observation that the Nazis were not "truly rational," or "truly efficient," or "truly modern and scientific," etc, etc, is totally irrelevant to this sense of scepticism. It suffices to observe that the Nazis were thoroughly modern and rational in advancing and applying their OWN peculiarly deranged ideology in what was perhaps at that time the world's most scientifically and technologically advanced country. Mere methodical application of certain techniques and technologies is no safeguard against those techniques and technologies being used to advance any idiosyncratic humanly conceivable purpose, however bizarre, immoral, irrational, demented, or ultimately self-defeating it might turn out to be.
The very appeal to "science" and "rationality" becomes deeply suspect in this light. For it is not by the light of some arid philosophy or science of numbers and rationality that any moral and ethical proposition is ever ultimately advanced and defended in the real world. Rather, it is by the light of our deepest emotions and allegiances.
Thus, in the face of a century of constant turmoil, new knowledge, and both massive warfare and unimaginable new threats, alongside breathtaking scientific accomplishments, our current prevailing sense of intellectual caution has been forged. Scientists even have a word for this: the Precautionary Principle. This sums up the enormous gaps in our knowledge. Even our ability to comprehensively, intellectually "know" what our own best and highest interests consist of is quite limited. To a great extent, we still really have to rely on things like "intuition," "emotion," etc.
One can cite countless examples of this emerging understanding. Consider the field of architecture and urban planning, to take one isolated but highly relevant example. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when people like Mies Van der Rohe and Le Corbusier and began their life's work, "modernism" was all the rage. To a man like Le Corbusier, "modernism" essentially meant that, if we had a technology, we should use it, anything less was sheer outmoded "sentimentalism." Back then, you would have been someone after his own heart!
"Le Corbu" was all about "efficiency," and since it was clear that cities that facilitated the maximum flow of mechanized traffic were most "efficient," and since the new building materials made possible immense, monolithic vertical structures of unprecedented size and density, while minimally impeding the automotive traffic far below, the skyscraper was born, and was declared the inevitable inheritor of the entire urban built environment.
Today, however, this ideology is long since on the retreat, and for countless good reasons! It turns out, with the benefit of hindsight, that Le Corbusier's "scientific" and "rational" devotion to the skyscraper was nothing of the sort. It turns out that, if you follow the work of the most avant garde contemporary scientists and scholars in the field of human ecology and the built environment, Le Corbusier had it all wrong! You can learn about the latest developments in actual scientific analysis of the built environment and human ecology by reading some of the work of mathematician Nikos Salingaros of the University of Texas, named by the group "Planetizen" as one of the world's current "top 100" most influential thinkers in modern urban planning theory.
It turns out that, if you apply a technique called "box-counting" to an arbitrary urban scene, by means of which you can statistically group all the perceivable shapes in that scene into "bins" organized according to the size of their largest dimension, and the numbers of shapes in each of the size bins are counted, then a remarkable pattern emerges. The same pattern, by the way, occurs in both scenes of the natural, non-humanly built environment and in HUMAN CITIES prior to the introduction of structural steel and modern skyscrapers. The number of shapes of any particular size varies with remarkable predictability with that size, as an inverse relation of 1/s^p, where s is the size and p is some power a little more than 1. It is ONLY WITH THE RISE OF MODERN BUILDINGS employing newer, late 19th century construction technologies such as structural steel, that box-counted scenes start to deviate wildly from this pattern!
The consequences of this observation are momentous. It turns out that psychological studies validate that, in the limits of extreme divergence from this pattern, observers report the resulting scenes as "unaesthetic," "ugly," etc. On one extreme, for example, returning to the "binning" method described in the box-counting algorithm, when almost all the perceivable shapes in a scene are equally massive, and so concentrated in just a very small number of "bins" at the far end of the size scale (eg, the case approached by a modern skyscraper scene), observers report a sense of "coldness," "inhumanity," etc. But at the other extreme, for example, where all shapes are almost uniformly distributed across the entire size spectrum (a blast zone, for example, in the wake of an explosion or volcanic eruption), viewers report a sense of "chaos," "disorder."
So, beauty is not just 'in the eye of the beholder,' afterall!! This research suggests it is much more likely that, while aesthetic senses do vary among individuals, there is nonetheless a hardwired core in the human brain, by means of which something analogous to this box-counting algorithm happens more or less autonomically, and that the resulting distribution is "compared," once again quite unconsciously, to some equally hardwired "reference norm."
For all we know, the consequences of failing to acknowledge and give due consideration to this hardwired aesthetic sense could be severe. If human beings are systematically being boxed into artificial environments which produce continual low-level stress effects in the human nervous system, the longterm consequences for human mental and physical health could be disastrous. We have been running just such massive, uncontrolled human experiments in which we are all the unknowing and unconsenting guinea pigs. And because they are so promiscuous and uncontrolled, it is, as in the case of many environmental contaminants, almost impossible to know the full extent of the negative effects that have already been sustained.
Bringing the subject back to animals, we know from Husserl's Phenomenology and numerous modern investigations in anthropology and psychology, that animals, plants, and the whole of the natural world have had an enormous and incalculably large influence on the development of human thought and conciousness. In the light of this newest understanding, to attempt to evaluate and estimate with any certainty the importance of this influence becomes an absurdity. Human beings have spent all but the last 10,000 years of their million year history exclusively in "natural environments," ie, environments where all of the most prominent features were not put there by human intervention. They have spent all but the last hundred of those last 10,000 years in environments where, even in the few places where deliberately humanly introduced features dominated the landscape, that landscape nonetheless continued to conform to important "natural" patterns, as revealed, for example, in the feature size distribution pattern observed in the box-counting algorithm described by Salingaros. One could rightly say, therefore, that "nature" has everywhere, in all times and places, dominated the lives of human beings, except for an exceedingly short, recent blink in the totality of human history.
Given all this, there is no conceivable way at the present time that a "utility estimate" can be applied to the natural world, or to the importance to human beings and human survival of other species, and it would be the height of reckless ignorance to even attempt it.
That's not such a bad argument for "animal rights" afterall! Although I've been referring to "species" and "nature," the point made by Phenomenology bears careful consideration: Human beings have a "hardwired," ie, innate tendency to "anthropomorphize." This is not a defect, it's there on purpose! (an evolutionary purpose, to be sure, the full significance of which we scarcely yet understand).
If you consider all the so-called "nature religions" and forms of "animism," they were nothing more nor less than this innate human tendency to attempt to "interact" and "communicate" with all components of the world around them. The view of the natural world and all its components, trees, rocks, plants, as alive and possessed of "souls" was not mere arrant superstition, no! It was a result of the way that human consciousness and the human brain innately work. If you have any doubt about this hypothesis at all, you need do nothing more than observe a struggling modern human in front of a cantankerous modern computer or piece of computer software!
The modern person does not "believe" with his or her "rational mind" that the obstreperous modern computer is truly "alive," but the modern human curses, damns, and sometimes even physically assaults the thing just the same! It is not a feature of ourselves yet subject to our extremely recently developed faculties of "reason" and "science." No, it is hardwired much, much deeper than that.
So, we may well need to develop and apply "animal rights" sooner than we think. By imbuing animals with these "rights," we may be facilitating the development of a very salutary Precautionary Principle vis-a-vis the entire natural world. For it is not by way of sympathy with abstract philosophical entities and principles that our emotional commitment to any moral ideal or principle gets actualized or strengthened. Rather, we interact and sympathize concretely with specific, tangible "rights holders," specific animals, for example, in whom we perceive specific personality traits, whether "objectively" or not, and whether we can even suitably define "objectivity" or not.
The Endangered Species Act, for example, is all well-and-good. We have undertaken in the US to refrain from destroying whole species. But a more thorough moral development may require laws that assign rights even to individual animals themselves. I certainly won't dismiss the possibility, given for example the developments in Spain concerning primates, and despite any other criticisms or reservations I listed in the article above.
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Anonymous Response |
03.Feb.2010 09:27 |
I would like to stress that any model of human behavior, including my own, which relies on the assumption that everyone in the model are rational actors will not perfectly describe the real world. That is to say that the model of behavior I described relies on the subjects making correct assessments of the value of other humans and acting accordingly. Due to observational errors or incomplete data it is not possible for myself or anyone else to always act in their own best interest by protecting the utility of other humans.
It would appear that many laws that exist today remain in place because they increase efficiency of society. They may have originally been put in place to conform to morals of those the instituted them, but that does not mean that they do not serve a useful purpose in society today. Laws may also be changed or simply go out of favor over time if they do not somehow protect or and enhance the utility of humans.
The only reason that I used Nazi Germany as a example rather than say the Stalin era USSR, is because your previous post stated,
"Also, any notion that someone's rights could be adjusted or diminished based on some allegedly objective estimate of their "utility" to anyone or anything would create a true slippery slope against which no effective barrier to endless moral injustices and depravities, a la the Nazis, could ever be effectively erected, were "utilitarianism" to be raised as the paramount consideration." and they had previously been mentioned in your reference to Singer's utilitarian philosophy.
I was merely keeping the discussion consistent by using the same political group as an example of non objective assessments of the physical value of individual humans which lead to a decrease in the efficiency of the society that group was a part off.
As for the the aesthetics of human artifices or natural environments, I cannot say that I prefer either. I also am not the person to ask opinions of on the concept of beauty. I have not seen the relevant data concerning what type of city people find pleasing to look at, so I can cannot make any statement on that issue.
In response to your assertion that human behavior has been shaped by the natural environment, I completely concur. But I am not sure why remaining connected to biosphere is so preferable to being separate from it. I personally have no opinion about this either. And it cannot be determined at this time whether allowing humanity to remain a part of the biosphere or to slowly separate from or replace the biosphere is a more efficient method of resource utilization. This was the problem that I had with deep ecology. Stating that the biosphere has an intrinsic value and that it should continue to exist seems almost like a religious or philosophical principle. It is fine if you feel this way, but frankly I am indifferent to this issue.
I think the reason people hit there machines is because when electronics still used vacuum tubes and large transistors, hitting the machine would cause loss parts to seat more firmly in position. It is probably more a hold over from that time that is perpetuated by imitation by younger people. That said a machine that could replicate, extract energy or matter from the surrounding environment, and react to stimuli would technically be alive. Modern machine only fulfill two of those criteria though.
The protection of certain species does have at least own function to society. In case a species generates a useful chemical or product we are not aware of, the organisms population is maintained so that we may discover that product at some future date.
If you want me to define objective utility then think of it like this. If a process or product reduces that amount of calories needed for a human to do a specific task, or increases the number of calories a that are available to be used to complete a task; then it has objective utility. (Here I am using calories as a measure of energy expended in the process of a human or machine doing work in newtons.)
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The Myth of "Objectivity" |
03.Feb.2010 16:10 |
"There is absolutely such a thing as objectivity. If there was not then we could not make objective observations and use them to construct predictive models using the scientific method."
Except that, no, there is not. And you cannot. You can only approximate objectivity.
The more we learn, the more we realize we can never really be objective about anything. We are subjective beings, and our perceptions are ALWAYS conditioned by who we are, what we know, what we have experienced, and etc.
This is how "objective" scientists can come up with completely different theories about the same phenomenon, and can then "prove" their theories. This is how one idea will be supported by "objective" science for years and years, until there is a paradigm shift in social attitudes, and then suddenly "objective" science supports a completely different idea. You know, the way women were "scientifically" inferior to men for years and years, and now they're not. How science once determined that women's brains aren't capable of math and science, the way men's brains are. But now it determines the opposite. How science once deemed homosexuality to be a mental illness, but now it doesn't. (Well not always, anyway.) How science once determined that animals don't have minds and cannot think or experience emotions, but now science is determining the opposite.
What we choose to study, what questions we choose to ask about our subjects, which data we choose to collect and which we choose to ignore, how we go about collecting that data, how we interpret the data we collect... all of these are subjective considerations. We are ALWAYS present in the decisions we make, and everything we do involves our subjective presence/experience/interpretations.
This is even more true of armchair philosophizing, which is really what the three of you (anonymous, KT, and HO) are doing. Come on. You can't possibly believe anything you just said is actually even approximating "objectivity," can you?? If so, you serve as a perfect example of how deluded we can be into believing that our own voices are appropriate vessels for the God Voice of Authority ala Objectivity. I think it should be pretty clear to anyone *else* reading this thread that you are being very subjective, and not at all objective. It pains me to think this could be so unclear to you.
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Look how "objective" anonymous is |
03.Feb.2010 16:55 |
"I do not care if animals feel pain, I do not care if they have souls, I do not care if they wish to remain alive, I do not care to what degree they are similar or dissimilar to us, and I do not care if they have feelings."
Yes, that's painfully obvious. You don't care about others, because you cannot relate to them. You could give a shit whether they live or die. We get that. We also get how seriously this lack of compassion or empathy on your part are skewing your ..."objective"... viewpoint.
"These things are not objective reasons to keep them alive."
Ahem. There are no objective reasons to keep you alive, either. In point of fact, no one is claiming the need for objective reasons to "keep animals alive." The discussion is about not killing them. Having good reasons not to harm them, not to cause them suffering, not to kill them, is a lot more compelling than simply finding reasons, as you say, "to keep them alive." See what a myth your alleged "objectivity" is? The very thing you choose to focus upon has been skewed by your subjectivity. It makes a HUGE difference whether we're talking about reasons not to kill someone, vs reasons to "keep them alive."
"You and I contribute to society."
Again, a most UN-objective "fact." How so? How can you conclude that, when you don't even know who I am? Right: You "know" because you merely assume. A subjective assumption if ever there was one. "You are human, therefore you must contribute to society. A non-human is not human, therefore she must not contribute to society." Just a flawed, subjective, human assumption. Like the rest of your philosophizing.
I would like to add a couple of observations, every bit as "objective" as your own. First, "contributing" is extremely subjective. When we live in a world being killed by our own parasitism, I have to ask just how much of a "contribution" you think you're making? As a consumer, you are helping to destroy the planet. Right, I don't know you, but if you can sling the assumption that we're all "contributing," I can point out that really the human species has done very little other than cause extinction, pollution, erosion, suffering, and death. Some "contribution."
A second observation: my dog gives me far more comfort, love, inspiration, and warmth than you ever will. Might be subjective, but that's kind of my point: Subjective facts count for more in real life than your pretend "objective" ones. (You know, like how we're all "contributing," and all. Yes, very "objective" of you.)
"We can offer goods and services to each other."
Well, we CAN, but we don't always. Sometimes, we drop bombs on each other, shoot each other, hurt each other, take each others' stuff. Sometimes we just parasitize off each other. So... what's your point? Oh, right. The very "objective" point you're trying to make is how obvious it is that humans are better than non-humans, so we have reasons to "keep them alive" whereas we don't have any reason to "keep animals alive."
"What do animals offer to us?"
Is that really an "objective" question??? Come on. You don't think that's an objective question, do you?
To answer you subjectively, they make the world more interesting, more exciting, a better place. They make my household more interesting. They give me love and compassion when they come into my home. You can't put a qualifier on that. You just can't. But more to the point, why should that matter? I mean, what do you give to me? Exactly nothing. In fact, you detract from my world, because I find you annoying. Is that a valid reason for me to kill you? No. Because it would be wrong to kill you. Why? Because it's wrong to cause someone else unnecessary suffering, just because YOU can't find a reason to "keep them alive."
Sure, that might be subjective. Of course it is. And isn't it a good thing for you that some of us realize that the subjective matters? Otherwise, what reason would I have to "keep you alive"? What? Because "it is a waste" you say? No, not really. I really don't care if you live or die. Your life means nothing to me. It is only the subjective reality that it would be morally wrong for me to cause you suffering just because I can't find an objective reason to keep you alive.
"What do animals produce that is not taken from them"
Scary that you actually think this is an objective question. Think of all the groups you could say this about. Are you, then, justified in killing them because you can't think of an objective reason to "keep them alive"?
"They only labor when they are forced to and none have displayed to intelligence needed to make a intellectual contribution."
Wow. Am I being patronizing to find this sentence humorously ironic?
More to the point, why should their ability to contribute to YOU determine whether or not they deserve their own lives?
"Be objective in your response."
No.
"If my logic itself is flawed alert me so that I may correct it."
Done.
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What objective means. |
03.Feb.2010 17:04 |
Just a few things.
Firstly you do not try to prove a theory, you try to disprove a hypothesis. If you cannot disprove the hypothesis and it appears predictive under a certain set of conditions then the hypothesis becomes a theory which itself is open to further testing. Theories not usually disproven, but instead are modified because they did not account for something when it was originally formulated. The theory of gravity for instance has undergone multiple alterations to account for special circumstances that occur under conditions that Newton did not know existed. That does not mean that even the unmodified theory did not correctly describe the action of gravity on the surface of the Earth an the basics of planetary movement. No one here is saying theory's and hypothesis are objective because they can be influenced by operator error and observational bias. We are arguing that data collected by impartial observation is objective an can be used to formulate hypotheses that are unlikely to be disproven.(See the pen example.) One way to ensure that data is objective is to use multiple observers, which is done at every opportunity.
As for your example of someone claiming that women were not capable of mathematics. There are two probable causes for that error. Either whoever formulated that hypothesis had a data set that only included women who had never been taught mathematics and they did not account for this, or they never actually collected any data and just made a claim based on anecdotal evidence which is not considered objective. In the first case that hypothesis was incorrect because that data described the women's current ability to do math not their ability to learn to do it. In the second case it is not even a hypothesis because it has no data to back up its claim.
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Anonymous reply to Look how "objective" anonymous is |
03.Feb.2010 17:41 |
Your objection to the statement "You and I contribute to society." is excellent regardless of any of your other arguments. You pointed out that I can not make this absolute statement without providing any data on whether or not you and I are contributing to society at the present time. The statement should have been phrased as "As humans you and I are both capable of contributing to society."
As for that statement that the planet(biosphere) is being destroyed by human society. This may be true, although there is contention on this issue. I only can say that it is also possible that the biosphere may be replaced by human artifices over a long period of time. Whether we rely on technology or the biosphere for survival makes no particular difference to me. I can assume from your statement that you would prefer the biosphere to be preserved, which it may be if enough people share your opinion on its aesthetic worth.
Of course my pain, pleasure, soul(if such things exist), and emotions hold no interest for you, they do not have any effect on my functionality. However since I am a small, but not insignificant figure in the study of the Marcellus Gas Shale, I can say that I do contribution to the production of electricity that we are using to run our computers in my own small way. All I can say in response is that if you are able to use a computer then you are intelligent enough to make a contribution to society, and I therefore have a objective reason to want to keep you alive.
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Wow, you really are lost in your own meandering non sequiters |
03.Feb.2010 19:26 |
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and that applies to "both" of you KT/anonymous |
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Yep. Everyone else here can see the rampant subjectivity and the mournful selfishness of your "objective" ravings.
sad that you can't.
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KT last response |
03.Feb.2010 21:27 |
It has become pretty obvious that a few people here don't think that objective observations are possible, possibly due to the concept conflicting with their personal philosophy. Since it's just becoming a debate about that issue instead of the practicality of animal rights, I don't think I have anything more to add.
All I can say in defense of that Anonymous guy is that while his system for determining the value of individuals is based selfishness it still supports the no killing or stealing from humans precedent set down in actual moral codes of conduct. In this case at least selfishness does not seem to be equivalent to immorality.
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Last respose? |
04.Feb.2010 09:09 |
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isn't it pretty to think so |
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"It has become pretty obvious that a few people here don't think that objective observations are possible, possibly due to the concept conflicting with their personal philosophy."
You have only to re-read your own comments, this time a little more critically if not more ..."objectively," to see that there really IS no way to discuss this objectively. To claim otherwise, and to pretend to be the one who is "objective" is to claim more authority for yourself than is warranted.
"I don't think I have anything more to add."
Yes. I think that's clear.
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Engineer's wisdom: Pride comes before a fall |
04.Feb.2010 14:47 |
> All I can say in defense of that Anonymous guy is that while his system for determining the value of individuals is based selfishness it still supports the no killing or stealing from humans precedent set down in actual moral codes of conduct. In this case at least selfishness does not seem to be equivalent to immorality.
Hmm. I'm not so sure about that. An awful lot of people positively hate the legacy that careless ancestors have left us today as a result of similarly egoistic attitudes. Consider the Chesapeake Bay. Once upon a time, only a little more than a century ago, it was so full of oysters, hundreds of billions of them, in fact, that it took just 4 hours for a complete filtration exchange of all the water in the Bay! Talk about some ecosystem services! Today, the same process takes closer to 4 years! The oyster beds were destroyed by pollution and careless development by people who didn't have a clue.
The injury was done to the oysters, and other marine life, but it turns out, the injury was to us humans, too.
Isn't it pretty incumbent on us to learn a lesson from that? Boundless egotism has a price. It could be future generations who pay, or it could even be our own selves or future selves down the line. Just because *I* don't think that *I* care right now about something, doesn't mean that others won't care a great deal, or that a future version of myself won't turn out to care
This reminds me of one of the chief differences between scientists and engineers. Scientists presume they are learning about reality, and have hit upon some number of truths. That's dandy, but good engineers are more conservative, and assume that, while they know a few things, there's even more they DON'T know. That is why they "overengineer" their designs to account for their own likely ignorance. That is the PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE I described before, in action! Likewise, there is a saying: "The first principle of intelligent tinkering is, save all the parts!" If these principles are true of a design of one's own invention, how much more so are they imperative when it comes to something that one did not and could not have ever designed oneself?!
This also gets back to the rational value of humility. Developing humility requires experience and knowledge of history. Mere rote memorization of formulas in textbooks might be enough to land you a job at an engineering company. It won't however, make you a great engineer or designer. Likewise, the human race won't progress by applying mere textbook formulas that purport to be accurate measurements of anything. The notion that you can always simply apply some consistent formula that always leads to the results you want would be laughable to any experienced engineer. The same observation certainly applies no less to ethics. People who preen and pride themselves on their purportedly flawless rationality usually turn out to be the biggest fools of all, as the saying "Pride comes before a fall" eloquently summarizes.
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Anonymous reply |
04.Feb.2010 15:52 |
My answer to this discussion of the precautionary principle was already covered when I used to example of preserving a wetland for flood control purposes. That said I was under the impression that the water quality of Chesapeake bay degraded over the years due to a combination of industrial and agricultural runoff from further upstream, garbage dumping(in earlier times), and occasional spills off materials being shipped. I have never heard anything about the claimed number of oysters before development and how fast they could filter the water, and I cannot find any data online to support or refute that claim so I can't really comment on it. It would be interesting if someone would do a material balance to determine amount of services in dollars the oysters provided and and the total tonnage of oysters that could have been harvested today compared to the amount of goods or services produced during the development of the area that reduced the bay's water quality. Was such a study conducted? I am just curious.
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autism spectrum disorder |
04.Feb.2010 16:03 |
It's awfully hard to know what is a total put-on vs dead serious when you read things people have written anonymously online. But to whoever wrote this:
"am somewhat confused by the supposition that empathy is required for one to express sympathy concerning that well being of another human. When I see someone done on there luck I do not help them because I feel anything. I help them because they are a non-functioning component of society whose is not capable of making a contribution due to their current circumstances. Assisting them is in my own best interest because they will then be able to make a contribution."
This is not meant as a cheapshot or slight in any way, but the kind of affective response you are describing sounds a lot like some variant of Autism Spectrum Disorder. This can cause someone who has it some serious problems. If you told most "neurotypical" people this, especially, say, your girlfriend, it would scare the sh*t out of them! Likewise, if you told a medical school you were considering applying to that the reason you wanted to work in medicine had nothing to do with any feeling of empathy for the sick or dying, but was purely egoistic, you can be pretty sure you would never gain admission, anywhere.
If what you have described is indeed your attitude in life, then for me, as someone closer to "neurotypical" in this regard, there is no way for me to completely understand where you are coming from, or vice versa, sort of like the way a person born blind could not learn from a sighted person what the meaning of the color "magenta" is.
Suffice it to say, if you do study the matter some more, you will discover that there is indeed an affective pattern called "empathy," it definitely objectively exists, and it has some pretty huge ramifications in the world of human affairs. But if you don't ever experience this trait personally, you may still be able to get by ok in life, and far be it from me to stigmatize anyone else for any trait they were born with or without.
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oysters of Chesapeake Bay |
04.Feb.2010 16:20 |
Refer to the wikipedia article, "oysters," for more precise numbers. I was summoning them up from memory, and got the exact numbers wrong, but the orders of magnitude are still on the mark. The article says "4 days" for the time it formerly took to filter all the bay's water. Now, it says that number would be one year.
Was a RETROSPECTIVE study ever done by anyone? I don't know. That would be a titanic undertaking to do after the fact, and fraught with a whole lot of hypotheses and guesswork. Was a PROSPECTIVE study ever done, such as an Environmental Impact Statement? Surely not! The National Environmental Policy Act was only enacted in 1970, long after the damage was done. One of the benefits of an EIS/EIR is that it gives the opportunity (and usually the requirement) to analyze alternative proposals, so as to mitigate the likely harm of a project. Certainly nothing like that ever occurred in the case of Chesapeake Bay. Unfortunately, we're still paying the price for that reckless ignorance.
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Anonymous reply autism spectrum disorder |
04.Feb.2010 21:04 |
I may have given the wrong impression of my assessment of emotions by the way I worded my arguments. I am no making a claim that emotions or empathy do not exist or are necessarily negative or positive. My argument was simply that they vary so widely between individuals that they should not be the basis on which laws are formulated. There is evidence that emotions exist, it is simply that the emotions themselves are not quantifiable.
That said, if most people are indeed motivated to assist other humans by empathy, then I would suppose that empathy would be considered positive under those circumstances since it assists someone in becoming a productive member of our society.
As to me having atypical neurological functions, it seems probable. I do feel emotions, I just try my best to keep them from affecting my assessments and biasing my observations. I suppose an emotion I feel which you would consider as positive would be loyalty.
