OK - What I was getting at is that I don’t know, and at the present state of science, neither you nor I can prove it one way or the other. I just think it’s dangerous to use an unprovable statement like this as your sole basis for this kind of argument. As I said above, various earlier generations were 100% convinced that blacks, jews, etc, had none of these “human” qualities either. But answer my earlier queston: Would it be wrong for humans to cause the extinction of mosquitoes? We are, BTW, trying to do that. Should we stop? Should we more judiciously exterminate them, making sure we preserve enough for future generations?
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This is clearly an extreme case - one which, I will freely admit, is hard to argue against. Mosquito-borne diseases kill millions of people per year, and even I think it’s pretty unlikely that mosquitoes can think, feel, etc. What about the thousands of other species whose only harm to man is being in the way of “progress”, and which may be advanced enough to think and feel? I’ll counter you with the other extreme: Humans came close to wiping out elephants in the last century. Elephants are known to communicate and be deeply societal, and are reported to exhibit enough thought, feeling, or something as to re-visit, and apparently recognize, the remains of long-dead family members. Can you argue (convincingly) that it wouldn’t have been wrong to exterminate them?
It would be wrong to cause elephants to go extinct, unless it was necessary for our survival. But it would not be wrong from the elephant’s perspective, because elephants are not capable of right or wrong. It would be wrong to deprive fellow humans the ability to experience elephants, which are no danger to us. If elephants are capable of right and wrong, we should set up elephant courts to try them when they commit a wrong. That’s silly, of course.
A more interesting question might be: If another species of the genus Homo were alive today, would it be wrong to cause its extinction? Imagine a species with whom we were incapable of interbreeding, but who were capable of discerning right and wrong. Now, that would be a conundrum, even for a non-relgious type like me!
John, you’re obviously a bright guy, but I’m starting to get the feeling I’m talking to a wall. How can you prove to me that human beings are the only species with any concept of right and wrong??? I’m not talking human right/wrong (as if there even were that kind of universal, which clearly there isn’t), but some moral system that fits their species.
I wish I had a million bucks at this point, 'cause if you could prove it, I’d fork it over…
PhD: Well, I’m sure you’re smart enough to know that one cannot prove a negative. One cannot prove that elephants don’t know right from wrong. It’s actually you who must prove that they can. You yourself acknowledge that insects don’t know right from wrong but humans do. What makes you think elephants can tell right from wrong? I’m very familiar with the research about the mental capabilities of elephants. But none of it indicates a moral capability.
I agree that exhausting resources would facilitate a “die-off” point with which a species can eventually recover, However, we are talking about human beings who seek to usurp the natural order of things.
Consider one scenario. Lets say we run out of Oil in 10 years. No oil means no civilization. No civilization mean no laws. no laws means everyman for himself. Wars are started. The Have nots will be wiped out by the haves. Still doesnt matter because after decades of wiping each other out to achieve balance, oil is not renewable no matter how dependent we are of it. wars wipe out farmlands, industries, more resources. Doomsday weapons are used. man dies. Oh sure, you have the occasional group of aborigines and bushmen in Africa, Australia and the Amazon, but you also have mass destruction of many ecosystems with artifical contagions and toxins that will eventually diffuse throughout the world. We may not have the power to utterly destroy the earth, but we have sufficient power to destroy it enuf so that it can not maintain us. Those who play God thinking they know who should live and who should die are usually the least qualified for the job.
I’m glad dinoboy posted to this; I think it also needs the views of Desmostylus and Thylacine!
IMHO the basic point is well addressed by iampunha’s first post to this thread, addressing as it does the idea that humans are equipped to evaluate and make moral choices.
I prefer not to get into the rather abstract ethical question of whether it’s “right” to take actions that lead to the extinction of a species by indirect means – this gets into the question of on what metaphysics do you base your ethics, and other subjects that will lead us far, far astray from the basic topic. In my Liberal Christian opinion, we’re given stewardship over the Earth, which belongs to God, and it ill behooves us to eradicate a part of His creation. But that’s a quite different discussion.
Rather, I have a very pragmatic reason – and a personal one – for favoring maintaining as much biodiversity as possible. Most participants to this thread will have heard the hypothetical argument made by eco-advocates of the plant somewhere in the rainforest whose sap contains a cure for cancer – but it was driven extinct before scientists ever got a chance to study it. I have a quite real and personal story of the same ilk.
In the Orinoco Valley of northern Soiuth America lives a critter called the Giant Proboscis Leech. Unlike most leeches, this one doesn’t have a mode of penetrating to a bloodvessel and sucking out the blood. Instead, it looks for open wounds and uses its proboscis to lap up the blood from them, secreting an enzyme that keeps the blood from clotting.
When I had my heart attack, the thromboses blocking my cardiac arteries were dissolved by a dangerous drug that can induce strokes. Heparin was then used during recovery to thin my blood, along with an experimental drug that I agreed to which would prevent additional clots from forming.
During recuperation I read an article about the Giant Proboscis Leech and its endangered habitat, and the fact that its salivary enzyme is being studied to create new drugs to prevent dangerous clotting, as in cardiac and stroke patients. They mentioned a couple of experimental drugs. Hmm – life-saving coincidence no. #338 – guess what experimental drug I agreed to?
I’ve been a low key advocate of maintaining biodiversity ever since – I may come down with cancer and need that plant sap extract!
Take 2 male elephants, one fully mature and one that is, say, less than half the size of the first. Allow them access to just enough food for the larger elephant to survive. Do you think the larger bull will forgoe food so that the smaller one can live? Or do you think the larger one will monopolize the food and cause the smaller elephant to die?
First off, I dispute that you cannot ever prove a negative - “The moon is not a star” can, I suspect, be proven very conclusively. I think you’re confusing this concept with “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” (which, by the way, is also germane here).
As for whether it’s you or I who needs to prove our respective case, I submit that it’s a matter of how we (yes, the only proven morally-capable species) want to approach the rest of life on this planet: “Innocent until proven guitly”, or “Shoot first, ask questions later”…
By the way, I never said insects don’t know right from wrong; I simply said that even I doubted it.
Proves nothing - just because this kind of thing would offend your human moral code doesn’t mean it doesn’t/wouldn’t fit fine with any conceivable code that might exist with elephants.
Absent scientific facts, we are going to have to agree to disagree.
But I hope you recognize that we actually have come to the same conclusion (that it is wrong to kill elephants) but have simply done so by a different process. You did see that in my posts, didn’t you?
The only thing I would add is that my process is consistent both with the idea that it is wrong to kill elephants, but not wrong to kill mosqitoes. Good luck dealing witht he mosquito issue using your method.
For the sake of argument, do you have any proof that they do? I would say that while most animals have developed the sense of survival not to kill off their prey entirely (whether that prey be vegetation or animalia or both), that does not necessarily mean that it is some inner moral code, for example.
Yes, I did get that you agree on the issue that killing elephants is wrong. I think, though, that the particulars of how we came to that conclusion are different in a very non-trivial way.
As I read it, your argument has at its root that puposely exterminating elephants would be wrong because of what they signify to humans (if I missed a shift from that as your basic premise, I apologize). I refuse to accept that alone as a morally right or safe basis for deciding the fate of another species, especially if there is a chance that said species may have some of the most important traits we cherish as our humanity. I accept that the mosquito issue is a much less clear-cut one… I may have to go back and re-read some of the same debates that were waged in the 60’s and 70’s, when it became clear that we were on the verge of eradicating an even more noxious “species” (smallpox virus).
I apologize for implying that this was my argument. As I said, it wasn’t very well thought out, and certainly there are reasons that I didn’t bring up. But frankly, I had a feeling that those I was responding to would be hostile to “touchy-feely, tree-hugging, liberal” reasons, so I tried to be “practical.”
That’s a very good point, and we’re probably not as far apart on this as you might think. Had we been talking about chimps, I would not have been quite so certain about the “non-consciousness” issue. But I still can clearly see that, for both chimps and elephants, there is no doubt that either species would eradicate another species without a second “thought” as to whether or not it was “right” to do so. Of course elephants are vegitarians, so we’d be talking about plants, but chimps would kill and eat the last monkey on earth if given the opportunity. I don’t think you could deny that. So, if the species in question would eradicate another similar species, then can that first species have a “right” to existence? BTW, I’d also argue that it would not be “wrong” for chimps to eradicate humans, if they could.
One might argue that we, having a “higher” moral sense, therefore have a higher moral responsibility than either of those species. And that could very well be true. However, I have a hard time putting together a coherent argument that it is in fact true without resorting to a religious argument. And you already guessed correctly my religious inclinations.
I get the feeling that if they believed they were sufficiently threatened by the chimp population, any other animal population would do its damnedest to remove that problem. If successful, their ability to do so would measure, at least to some extent, their ability to evolve if it could be shown that there was some specific evolutionary trait that contributed to the downfall of chimps (as per the example). And of course if they were unsuccessful and one could demonstrate that the chimps had evolved to deal with potential onslaught, that would point to the same for them.
I think that’s relevant to this, anyway…I’m pretty sure this is. Note especially Koko amd Washoe.
I find that even if we set aside emotional or moral arguments, there are still compelling reasons not to exterminate species willy-nilly. One such argument that I’ve been pondering today is that each species represents a unique solution to a problem, be it a mechanical, biological, or other. As such, even if we proceed from a selfish perspective, there is a great deal to be learned that can be directly applied to our own species. How do sharks remain virtually cancer-free? How do vultures survive without major illness from eating rancid meat? And so on. If we were to drive all the great apes to extinction, we would lose out on an opportunity to glean information about our own origins.
Every species which goes extinct represents, if nothing else, information lost to us forever.
DF: But that is still an argument based on the value of a species to humans, which is what several of us have put forth already. Am I missing something?
Yes, but it also assumes that all species can have potential value, not just those which obviously do. As such, I don’t think it is as clear-cut which ones we can “safely” get rid of, even assuming a purely selfish motive (granted, I do not agree with the “only keep 'em around if they’re useful” argument; I put it out there for those who do ascribe to the more selfish philosophy as yet another reason to keep 'em around).
I think it can also be said that there are things that other animals can learn from each other (and as such the element of “but only if it’s useful to us” need not be introduced), so to speak. The recent posts in Ben’s “Creationist Challenge” thread re: the evolution of the eye seems to be one.
As soon as we can , the DNA of all these endangered species should be recorded; this will be a huge task, but the next few centuries will almost certainly be marked by incresaed human pressure on the environment.
This is inevitable and unstoppable- there is no point saying humanity is a bad thing and should be eradicated by retroactive birth control…
I have every confidence that we will be able to produce stable environments to support the creatures that survive this current diversity bottleneck, and allow the ones which will only exist as saved DNA to become viable once again.
Resources -
everyone considers material resources to be limited on this world- ok, so where are they going? A few atoms escape at the top of the atmosphere; the rest are all still here, waiting for us to use them.
The Sun gives us enough energy to allow us to arrange those elements as we require- a thousand times more energy than we currently use, and more if we go off planet.
The resource that is disappearing is the information contained in the DNA of the endangered species- lose that and no amount of imported energy will get it back.
