Oh fuck off. I didn’t want an AR thread. I didn’t make it one, and I laid that out pretty explicitly. Your dumb ass came in here and tried to make it one, despite being told repeatedly that you were a pussy wasting people’s time.
Clearly, they are tortured and live tortured lives. But whether or not that life is worth moral concern is still an open question. One which, I might add, I don’t have an answer for.
This thread is about inconsistency. I explicitly left babies out of it, but since someone else brought them in and you’re a dickhead, they do figure in. You’re the one that claimed communication of complex emotion is a necessary condition to give something moral concern. Don’t blame me that you’re too stupid to follow the direct logical implication of your own statements.
I didn’t and don’t say that veal production is wrong. But I do have a hard time coming up with any argument as to why veal production is ok and hurting beings of similar or less capacity is ok. You tell me.
You’re the one who dragged the thread towards AR, in your OP and explicitly in that post. Your entire argument rests on the AR premise that animals suffer similiarly then we do; if they don’t then it may indeed make sense to care about stem cells but not about veal calves.
You did quite a bit of animal rights defending after that, and before I jumped into the conversation. There were several posters before me who took you to task on the AR angle. This was your OP, not my hijack.
No. My arguments that veal calves don’t suffer as we do is a rebuttal to your argument that it’s inconsistent to care about stem cells but not veal calves because veal calves suffer and stem cells don’t. I’m rebutting you, not proposing a moral system of my own to defend.
Are you ever gonna answer my question? Why do you think animals should have rights? Is it solely because you think they can suffer like we do?
Really, by refusing to answer a question that’s so pivotal to your OP you betray both your motives for the thread (slyly starting an AR thread in veal calve’s clothing) and the weakness of your position by being unwilling to directly argue the underlying premise.
Really? Where did I say that? I’ve said that communication of complex emotions is necessary evidence that complex emotions exist, and I’ve said that I complex emotions (and the communication of them) is how I determine how capable a being is of suffering, but I’ve never said that they’re a necessary condition for giving something moral concern.
Oh, and because you’re probably going to come back and say that I was ignoring the part of the quote right after the bit I bolded (“even if they are far less like our own than they might seem and far less complex”), I’m not. You may have said that they’re simpler then we are, but you do seem to think that they’re not so simple that they don’t suffer emotionally (similiar to what we’d feel). So even though you acknowledge they’re simpler, you still think they’re complicated enough to suffer like we do, which is what’s relevant.
At least, I think that’s what you believe. It’s hard to tell, given that you keep refusing to actually present and defend your views on AR.
Veal is not, and never will be human. Therefore, I feel OK eating it. I don’t know how I feel about stem cells. Also, veal can be bought and sold, babies cannot be. This means that our current legal system places a higher value on humans than non-human animals. If you want to change that, then the burden of proof is on you. Stem cells are not babies, nor are fetuses, but likewise they are also not animals. This is the problem that most people have, that there is a grey area. Now, if you want to convince me that it is OK to play with stem cells, you have to prove to me that they aren’t human and so far, you haven’t made your case. OTOH, it is well known that we all started out as stem cells so they have the potential to be human.
Our legal system recognizes potential value, that is why you can sue for future loses. Say I have a trained monkey that plays the accordion in a little red suit while people put money in my hat. You kill my monkey, I lose my source of income. The legal system will let me sue you for the future income my monkey would have earned for me, had you not killed it (I use the general you, and am not accusing anyone of being a monkey killer).
Veal is more along the lines of my education…here is the truth about veal.
Veal is a byproduct of the dairy industry. There are two types of cows, beef cows and dairy cows. Beef cows don’t give good milk, but taste good, dairy cows give good milk, but don’t taste good as adults. Dairy cows come in two sexes. Female dairy cows are good for making more dairy cows and giving milk, male dairy cows are good for…nothing. You need like three in the country and AI. Males make up half the dairy calves born (roughly) and are useless once born. If you destroy the veal industry, what do you propose we do with these calves? At one point, veal prices were so low that you lost money by raising them and selling them at market. Farmers were shooting them and dumping the bodies into trenches. Guess what…PETA got their panties in a bunch over that too. If you want to make veal go away, you have to make the dairy industry go away. no milk, no cheese, no icecream, no whey powders, concentrates, isolates, etc. That will not happen. Veal is here to stay. If you are going to let the dairy industry stay and get rid of veal trade, are you going to provide pasture for the millions of head of dairy bulls? They will kill each other. So, you could fence them away from each other in stalls, but is that any better than the calves in stalls or on tethers?
Veal are not tortured and tormented every moment of their lives. PETA would like you to believe that they are living in closets, but they are really living in condos with room service. Everyone who raises animals knows that unhappy animals fail to flourish and die. Dead animals cannot enter the human foodstream and therefore are not profitable for the farmers. Therefore, it is in the farmers’ interest to make the veals’ environment somewhat accomodating. I have never seen veal anywhere but on tethers with little veal houses, like many people do with their pet dogs. Cows are dumb and lack initiative. They will stand behind a fence that isn’t there just because they think it might be there. You can contain them by painting lines on the road and they won’t cross the lines. You can’t project human-complexity thoughts and emotions on them. Go visit a farm and spend some time with the animals and the people and see if you still agree with PETA.
I realize that this is an industry website, but it is not more biased than all the animal rights websites are.veal house
When you go back and read something that directly contradicts your own muddled thinking, the general honest course of action is to realize that you are wrong, not concoct some hurried excuse after the fact in a followup post.
I said at least they have feelings and emotions to begin with. I never said they were like humans, and in fact I said the opposite. I don’t know what “similar to what we feel” means to you or how it would be measured. I do think it pretty likely that when you jab a needle into a dog vs. into my own arm, there’s no real reason to think that it “feels” differently: we are after all built on a pretty much identical model for pain perception and response. I have all sorts of additional psychological capacities that make my suffering more interesting and complex, but I don’t really see how that’s directly relevant, because no one bases their moral cases against inflicting pain or abuse on those: the simple harm, the experience of harm, and the interest in not being harmed are generally all anyone references or needs to. No one at THAT point invents some convoluted system of explanation that carefully singles out dog pain as meaningless. In fact, most states and most people think inflicting that pain is barbaric. It’s only when the subject gets a closer look, like if I also want to claim that it’s wrong to do hurt a baby as well, when that baby has, if anything, less capacity than the dog, that out come all the complex rationalizations that never seem to have been brought up in the simple case against doing harm. But of course, you’ve never met a touchy question you can’t squirm away from, so I don’t expect you to address that either.
Your arguments make no sense then. I never said veal calves suffer “as we do.” All that matters is that their suffering is a hell of a lot more like ours than it is like stem cells, which have no CAPACITY to suffer. AT ALL. It doesn’t matter how much or how little you value or appraise animal suffering: all that’s relevant is that they can do it and stem cells can’t.
I already answered your question in fairly great detail, and you are a disingenuous shit for saying that I have not, especially because your demand is premised on me having a hidden motive that I do not. I’m not sure where to draw the line on animals, capacity, and so forth. There is no clear demarcation to be had. For instance, I don’t think one can make a very strong case that it is wrong to painlessly kill most animals, especially non-socials. But then again, I’m not sure likewise a strong case can be made for an inherent reason to not painlessly kill babies, other than that OTHER humans don’t like it because of the degree to which we project all sorts of deep motives on babies (sort of the way you project your own obsessions onto me).
There is no “underlying premise.” Whether we should or should not grant or consider some animals to have rights is not relevant to the question of whether their suffering is of more or less moral concern than stem cells. And I already answered your question. I don’t know where to come down on the pain, suffering, and killing of animals. But I do know that to come down in such a way that delicately bypasses them in the range of different beings to which we might consider giving moral concern is ridiculous.
Worthy of a Clinton, and you clearly know that you’re struggling out of a mess. If communication of complex emotions is necessary evidence for them, and it doesn’t exist, then babies are shit out of luck. They can’t provide the neccessary evidence you require. You can always claim that you have some sort of magical fairy-dust reason for giving something moral concern, but unless you present it, you’re shit out of luck as well.
I already made it pretty darn clear where I stand, your bullshit to the contrary: capacity capacity capacity- something about the being itself that’s relevant to the moral question being considered (can something experience pain and have interests against doing so? If yes, then that makes a pretty strong case that it’s immoral. If no, then not possibly)
So slight differences in DNA is your only criteria for moral concern?
That’s not the way morality works. Morality is not “law.” That people don’t allow the purchase of babies, even that they value them, doesn’t magically establish anything other than convention. The burden of proof in morality lies on EVERYONE to justify some system of morality that is consistent and non-arbitrary (not something, by the way, that I’m entirely certain is even possible in the end)
Before going further, let me point out why this line of argument is worthless. You are simply taking for granted that there is something special about being human. And actually, even that is being too generous. You instead seem to only care whether or not a specific definition of the word “human” can be applied to something before you care about it. That’s exactly the kind of empty moral reasoning to which I refer. What you need is some account of WHY humans in particular are deserving of special concern. Make that case, examine historically why that might be, and you might reveal a lot more that’s relevant to this discussion.
There are all sorts of different beings in existence. Some could be called human by some definitions and not by others. Some would never be called human, but might well have MORE capacity to suffer than humans (for instance, a super-intelligent species: not something we know to exist, but something we certainly wouldn’t want our morality to exclude simply because of species). But definitions are irrelevant and if you have to rely on definitional semantics to make a case, then you aren’t really making a case. The question really is: what is it about this particular being or that particular being that makes it’s treatment by you or others more or less of a moral concern? Answer that, and you might get somewhere.
So does every cell in your body. So does virtually every molecule on the planet.
I don’t agree with PETA. Cows are extremely stupid, at least compared to human beings. I don’t project any sort of deep self-identity psychology on them. I don’t think any sort of strong case can be made against raising them and killing them for food if that were the only thing on the table. And I’m not even making a definate case here that they should not be abused in the course of this process. What I am saying is that if we expand our moral considerations beyond feeling humans then the abuse they suffer is worth considering long before we get anywhere near insentient and never-sentient human beings like stem cells. Citing some cases in which they are given nicer treatment is nice, but irrelevant to this question (nor is it really the norm).
On the other hand, I don’t necessarily measure the wrongness of causing pain to something by how intelligent it is. If that were so, then abusing the mentally retarded would then be at least the tiniest slightest bit less worse than abusing someone who wasn’t. But I don’t necessarily think that’s the case, because I don’t really think intelligence alters capacity to feel pain, or even to experience some forms of suffering.
I was gonna reply to the rest of your post, but there’d be no point. You’re just not really capable of following even a simple argument. If you consider chaining two different prepositions together (“the communication of complex emotions is necessary to know they exist” and “how complex somethings emotions are determines how much it suffers”) to be “Worthy of a Clinton” then you’re beyond hope. You should probably buy a Readers Digest subscription, and amuse yourself with that for the remainder of your uninsightful life.
And if you somehow think either of those propositions means that a baby isn’t of moral concern, then even Readers Digest is probably too advanced for you. Maybe “Ranger Rick”? Can adults buy that?
Ok Metacom, I give up: why do you think infants have moral weight?
I say you have to draw the line somewhere, and that line should be based upon the neural functioning of, say, the top 1% of humans at a given age. Then add a safety margin.
Using those criteria, fetuses begin to acquire moral relevance in perhaps the 30th week of pregnancy, near the beginning of the third trimester. Cite.
Alas, the cite does not explicitly address the “top 1%” aspect. I would welcome additional research or analysis on this subject.
Apos
------ On the other hand, I don’t necessarily measure the wrongness of causing pain to something by how intelligent it is. If that were so, then abusing the mentally retarded would then be at least the tiniest slightest bit less worse than abusing someone who wasn’t. But I don’t necessarily think that’s the case, because I don’t really think intelligence alters capacity to feel pain, or even to experience some forms of suffering.
Plausibly, intelligence correlates at a species-level with capacity for suffering. At a species level, necessary conditions for suffering include an audience (something to display the suffering to) as well as a sense of identity.
I covered the audience bit earlier. Here, I argue that without identity one can certainly feel pain, but not despair: one cannot say or feel, “Woe is me,” without a sense of identity. Evidence: Buddhists alleviate their suffering by artificially repressing their sense of identity.
I grant you that this last argument has middling evidence. It’s possible that while identity is an aspect of suffering, a morally relevant sort of pain can exist without it.
Isn’t all pain morally relevant? No. Any decent high school athlete will experience physical pain while training. It builds character. Pain also has obvious survival benefits.
Despair and soul-crushing loss though, are different matters: nonprimate capacity to feel something akin to this isn’t clear to me.
But see the NYT Magazine feature by meat-eater Michael Pollen:
Emphasis added.
Separately, I just stumbled upon a book entitled Physiology and Behaviour of Animal Suffering by Dr. Neville G Gregory, Royal Veterinary College, London UK. Good bedtime reading.
That there is a major difference between veal and stem cells. True, they share many traits, but they differ in many others.
Yes, at least the biggest, because even slight differences in DNA make a huge difference in the organism. Case Study: E. coli, The strain known as K12 is benign, the strain known as O157:H7 is lethal. They are so similar that they are the same species. They are much more similar to each other in DNA sequence that stem cells and veal. The percent match of DNA doesn’t tell you much about the similarity of the organisms.
No, the burden of proof lies in the person that wants to change the status quo. Morality is not law, but law is based in the morality of the people making the law. If you want to change the law you have to change the morality of the people. If you want to change the morality of the people, you have to convince them that they are wrong, and so far, you aren’t.
There is something special about being human. No other animal in the known history of the world has been nearly as complex as the human. No other animal has invented machines, societies, multiple languages, artificial environments, recorded history, religons, etc, etc, etc. Again, if you want to change the common perception to humans are no different than other animals, the burden of proof is on you, because simple observation dictates that there is a difference between humans and animals. How you define ‘human’ is up to you, since you seem to like DNA as proof, you have to accept that a stem cell is more human than veal. If you are arguing morals, most people’s morals are based in their religon. Most religons place humans at the top of the world, being created in the image of or to serve a deiety or deities. To those that don’t have such a religon and have animal gods, or believe in the power of Mother Earth, they are probably going to have more of a problem eating veal, but not necessarily have less of a problem with stem cell research. But again, you haven’t proven that stem cells don’t have feelings or emotions, but merely that they aren’t obvious to a casual observer. You haven’t proven that they aren’t worthy of protection, just attacked people who believe that they are.
I tried, you weren’t paying attention. Our current moral and legal system places a higher value on humans than non-human animals and a higher value on animals than on plants. I can kill my plants to my hearts content with toxic chemicals or by withholding water and the legal system can’t touch me. I can kill animals only in certain ways, but I can still kill them at my whim. Likewise, some animals are more protected than others. I can kill bugs with toxic chemicals, I cannot feed anitfreeze to your dog. I can starve my fish (although that might not be legal, it is not going to be prosecuted, either), I cannot starve my cat. I cannot kill humans in most situations, and those situations where killing a human is allowed are very limited. When it comes to infants and children, they are even more limited. When it comes to the elderly, infirm, retarded, etc, they are actually less limited. For example, Schaivo was starved to death. Try to get away with starving a baby to death. Try to get away with poisoning any human. When you think about it, you can make an argument that the moral and legal (remember they are related) structure of our society should give fetuses more protection than babies and stem cells more protection that fetuses. Why? Because they have more potential and are less capably of caring for themselves. Is this right? That is for you to argue because you want to change the status quo.
No, every cell in my body and every molecule that might become part of my body is part of me, or might be part of me one day. Stem cells have the potential to become a discrete individual. This arguement only holds water if you are consuming stem cells.
That is your perception because you hear about the Horrors of Animal Industry from folks like PETA and want to believe that corporations are full of heartless autobots. Again, I argue that you do not know for a fact that stem cells are insentient and they definitly posess the potential of being much more sentient than you average veal. We, as a society, recognize that animals do have the ability to suffer and have decided that we are morally opposed to that and as a result, there are laws about what you can and can’t do to animals. In one way, we give them more rights than humans in that we can euthanize ill or severely injured animals instead of letting them suffer until they die and euthanasia is actually legally preferred to letting an animal suffer. If you want to make a case that there is a moral disconnect, that is the one to argue. Why do we see that an animal is suffering from terminal cancer, and euthanize it and see a human is suffering from terminal cancer and make them linger until a tumor grows so large that it impairs their function so that they starve or suffocate or poison themselves with their own toxic byproducts? Animals have the right to a peaceful death, humans often do not.
Then what exactly is you argument, because you are all over the board. It isn’t DNA, it isn’t intellegence, it isn’t capacity to feel pain…what is it?
---- Apos: So slight differences in DNA is your only criteria for moral concern?
---- xbuckeye: Yes, at least the biggest, because even slight differences in DNA make a huge difference in the organism.
My hair and blood contain human DNA. I don’t have a problem with haircuts and I don’t make a fuss if I lose a drop of blood, their DNA content notwithstanding. I don’t see the relevance of your point. Humans and chimpanzees may share 99% of the same DNA, but I don’t use that as a basis for advocating advances in Chimp welfare.
---- How you define ‘human’ is up to you, since you seem to like DNA as proof, you have to accept that a stem cell is more human than veal.
First of all it’s “calves” or “sows” and not “veal” or “hamburger” which are the morally controversial entities here. Second, a stem cell is just as human as a hair clipping. Neither are especially morally relevant, IMO:
a) Consider the hypothetical functioning, “Human brain in a jar”. Is it worth fighting for or caring about? Yes, IMO, an active mind deserves protection. What about the headless body? In terms of mass, it’s “more human”: it certainly contains lots of DNA. Yet, I considerate it morally empty and not worthy of protection or concern (except insofar as to not upset the former relatives, of course).
b) The “Potential” argument was addressed in posts 62 and 63.
c) Humans society (which xbuckeye aptly described) isn’t made up of stem cells. Arguably, dogs might be (though I’d rather not go there.)
--------- But again, you haven’t proven that stem cells don’t have feelings or emotions, but merely that they aren’t obvious to a casual observer.
Frankly, I’m not sure where you’re going with this xbuckeye, other than wanting to defend farmers. I have some sympathy along those lines, since any farmer who doesn’t minimize his costs will be more likely to leave the industry.
At the same time, notwithstanding the opinions of Metacom et al, I don’t think this is really an AR thread. It’s a thread about what’s morally important.
For myself, I can’t see the intrinsic worth of a toenail clipping, a stem cell, a three month fetus, or a decision to advance potential human life by engaging in unprotected intercourse throughout one’s entire adult life. Indeed, the latter strikes me as irresponsible.
In contrast, a currently conscious entity has at least has some basis for moral weight, although not enough to stop me from eating hamburger.
Calves are animals: not caring about them contravenes American values and is therefore deplorable, whether or not you care about stem cells. Or so I gathered from the American Meat Institute. So since everybody is in agreement, I guess it’s a wrap.
Separately, it seems that almost half of all male dairy calves in the US are raised in crates. Ergo, about half are not. Maybe we should have labeling requirements.
Alternatively, we could take the British option and ban veal-crates; the EU plans to do so in 2007. Apparently, farm animals are treated better in Europe. Of course food is more expensive there as well. Decisions, decisions.
Don’t be too sure about that. In general, traditional animal cruelty seems to have more of a hold in Europe, but factory-farming cruelty has less of a hold.
Fois gras is a spread and a luxury good; the number of animals affected must be orders of magnitude less that those affected by factory farming in the USA.
Fois gras is produced in the US as well (in NY). The California ban was only passed last year and goes into effect in 2012, pending further lobbying.
Production is banned in the UK, Switzerland, Germany and other European countries (excluding France naturellement). cite.
So, yeah, I will assert that most farm animals are on average treated better in Europe than in the US.
Nonetheless, I reiterate my call for systematic research along the lines of the “Report of the EU Scientific Committee on Animal Health and Animal Welfare on Welfare Aspects of the Production of Foie Gras in Ducks and Geese”. Which I haven’t read. (But thanks for the wiki ref).
Fair enough: while I’ll take your “on average” position as probably true, I do think that there are areas where cruelty is more accepted in EU, and it tends to be areas of traditional cruelty, rather than the areas of industrial cruelty that are more prevalent in the US.
That is not my complete point. Stem cells A) contain human DNA and B) have the potential to develop into a seperate human individual. Your hair and blood does not. If it did, we wouldn’t need to use embryonic stem cells as our source for undifferentiated human cells for research or therapy in the first place
Actually, ‘veal’ is commonly used to refer to calves being raised for veal just like you describe a heard of beef cows as ‘50 head of beef’ and to differentiate from the different types of calves there can be, depending on their intended usage. This may be a regional thing, but when I hear veal, and type veal, I mean the little critter on hoof most of the time. I don’t mean to confuse the issue.
I’m not saying that it makes logical sense, but most people don’t base all decisions completely on logic and to many people, the intrinsic worth of a potential human is more that the intrinsic worth of any animal. You can’t just throw potential out the window because you want to, it is what many people base their feelings towards stem cells on. If a person wants to base a decision on feeling or religous teaching, instead of science, they are allowed to. You just have to reconcile yourself, not your society.
I personally don’t care enough about stem cell research to have a strong opinion either way and I am not saying that stem cell research shouldn’t happen ever ever ever. It seems to me a better use of unwanted embryos than leaving them in a freezer for all eternity or dumping them into the garbage. But it also seems to me that the potential for stem cells research to cure anything is really really overexaggerated by people who want to do stem cell research.
Because, you say it is pain and suffering and then agree that pain and suffering is determined by the observer because you can’t really tell what an animal is thinking. As several posts have mentioned, even plants and bacteria have physiological reactions to unplesant stimuli.
If you are saying it is the observation of pain and suffering that makes raising veal (the calf) cruel, then you have to admit that to someone else, manipulating stem cells and destroying them may appear to cause pain and suffering to the cells. As you (I think) pointed out somewhere back in the liver fluke era of this thread, there is no distinct, scientifically defendable, line between organisms capable of feeling pain and suffering and organisms not capable of feeling pain and suffering. As such, if I choose to interpret the physiological changes in a stem cell thet is being manipulated as suffering, then you have to acknowledge that that is my frame of reference.
The bigger point is that the decision isn’t just based on pain and suffering. If I choose to make a continuum that places organisms (and stem cells thereof) in a hierarchy be how similar they are to me and then draw a line that includes stem cells as protected and veal (the calf) as nonprotected because the stem cells are capable of becoming a human, complete and entire, that is my line.
Unless you want to declare one person or a group of people as the decision-making body to make such decisions for society as a whole as to what is permissable and what isn’t, and that would seem alot like the role of Congress and the President.
Again, I’m not necessarily saying it makes sense to everyone, but this is the position of a large number of people and explains the other side of the OP.