That’s a fascinating interpretation, but I don’t agree at all. And even if you were right, it’s definitely a comment about Chessic Sense as a person and it does not address the merits of his argument. That’s not what we want in this forum. Discuss and argue the ideas rather than making statements about the posters you are talking to.
His comments are narcissistic then. Said argument has already been addressed, and no doubt will be further.
That’s allowable even if it’s not the most productive thing to say. Anyway, carry on - but without the kind of statements I quoted when I gave the warnings.
You are violating the social contract. You must realize that some people find the unnecssary suffering of animals highly disturbing. You may not care yourself, but to many people the suffering of animals is nearly as bad as the suffering of humans. The social contract involves respect for the feelings of those people. There are many potential aspects of life that large numbers of people find repulsive, and we are all obligated to maintain a reasonable level of behavior to avoid unnecessary acts that are disturbing to others, even when legal. In theory had you allowed animals to suffer unncessarily, without anyone else ever knowing, you’ve done no harm. But now you have let the world know of your intentions, and in doing so have breached the contract. Animal cruelty laws are rational, because they protect people from behavior commonly considered despicable.
Now I don’t know if you are going to intentionally allow an animal to suffer, and animal cruelty laws aren’t intended to apply to pests either. Many people would also exagerrate the effect of others behavior to the point of breaking the social contract themselevs. And the social contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on, anyway. But you sort of sound like you have a disregard and lack of respect for other people. I hope that you are just being argumentative about this topic.
You don’t sound like you’ve ever formed a bond with an animal. Cattle aren’t exactly lovable, but a farmer would not leave a seriously injured animal to die a slow death. It is part of human nature to empathize with non-human animals. Once people feel the pain of a friend, human or not, it becomes difficult to accept your viewpoint.
Will do.
Anyway, am I the only one who takes issue when someone says “animal suffering means nothing” ? Aren’t we technically animals too?
They can be, depending on circumstance. For example, in some places trapped animals are protected under law. It is the responsibility of the trapper to ensure there’s no unnecessary suffering. If he was doing something like setting it alight, then technically that would be an offence under the relevant Act.
Every animal deserves that basic protection.
I think society in general cares less about animal suffering than the human counterpart. Otherwise how could you explain Michael Vick being welcomed back to the NFL while Worthlisberger is being forced to sit out some games?
I agree with your general point - people may get more emotional about animal abuse, but abuse of humans is treated more seriously - however this example is not accurate. Vick missed two full NFL seasons while he was in court and in jail, and after being released from prison and signing with a new team, he served a four-game suspension. He lost tens of millions of dollars from his contract with the Falcons, not to mention all the endorsements he lost. He was a star and now he’s a part time player recovering from bankruptcy. Roethlisberger is likely to miss four games and lose some endorsements. The difference is that Vick was convicted of crimes and Roethlisberger was never charged. And if anything I think people were more outraged at Vick. It was clearer he did something that was a) disgusting to most people, b) premeditated, c) happened over a long period of time, and d) for profit. What happened with Roethlisberger was between two drunk people and nobody can prove what really went down even though a great many people think he did something very stupid and possibly got a girl drunk and raped her.
I’m a vegetarian and I do care about the suffering of animals, but I agree with the basics of what Chessic Sense is saying. I wouldn’t claim animals suffering is objectively wrong. It’s something we have chosen to treat as undesirable. I think there are very good reasons for doing that and I support those reasons in general but I think we should recognize the choice for what it is.
I’ve never had to deal with mice anyplace I’ve lived but I don’t see a problem with glue traps. People don’t have some kind of moral obligation to expose themselves to mouse bites and disease; human safety comes first by a long shot. People should use whatever they find works. There’s still no reason to throw the trap in the trash with the mouse still in it. It’s not an effective solution to the problem because a living mouse does have some minute chance of escaping, and I agree it’s cruel. There’s no perfect mouse trap - you know what they say about those - so I don’t see a moral problem with glue traps. I don’t think I could do kill a mouse with the screen + hammer method. It’s probably humane but it sounds creepy.
Ah, but the contract isn’t between another person and me. It’s between me and humanity. Sure, I can beat the child in the basement, or drop bombs on the tribe in South America, but then what defense do I have against people doing it to me? It doesn’t have to be that child or the tribe…it could be anybody.
If someone steals from me, is it OK for me to steal from him? Take, for example, MeanOldLady’s recent car break-in. Lots of people wished for the thief’s death. Is that wrong? Not in my book.
But why is it OK? Is it because we no longer have a contract of civil behavior between us? No. It’s because that person has sworn off his contract with everybody. So not only can I steal from that guy (and he deserves it) or even imprison him, but everyone else can too.
If I torture the child in the basement, is it OK for her to torture me, given the chance? Yes. But it’s also OK for other people to torture me too, like, say, the Department of Corrections. They can torture me by tossing me in a cell for life or by sticking a certain needle in my vein. These are all perfectly moral and justifiable actions.
Fine. But the friend wasn’t tossing rodents into dumpsters just to be a dick to GavinB. He was doing it to dispose of a rat. If GavinB had manned up, pulled the rat out of the dumpster, and killed it himself, I doubt the friend would have objected.
But I like how you’ve said that if I kill the animal without telling anyone that I’ve done no harm. And that’s my entire point. It’s not about the animal. It’s never been about the animal. The only important thing is how it makes humans feel. Sure, it’s natural to feel empathy toward a seriously injured animal, but it’s not demanded. That’s especially true when the animal isn’t my friend (like my cattle) but my adversary (like the rat).
In fact, I have bonded with animals, my pets. But now allow me to really blow your mind- they’re guinea pigs! Yes, that’s right, I love rodents. I’ve had nightmares where I accidentally let them outside and they get lost.
But if you’re to understand my argument, it’s important that you understand that the above is only a nightmare because of how it makes me feel. It makes me sad. Why? Because I’ve anthropomorphized my animals and pretend that they’re my friends. I don’t get upset at Peruvians that roast guinea pigs because those ones aren’t my pretend friends. I place no moral judgment on the Peruvians just because I happen to like guinea pigs. That’s because I understand that it’s not about the animals, it’s about people. It’s not necessary to consider how the animal feels.
Again, you fail to prove your stance. You’ve just said that it’s bad because it’s bad. You haven’t demonstrated, or even attempted to demonstrate, why suffering of animals is bad. You treat it like it’s a given, when it’s actually the entire debate topic.
You can’t, on the one hand, say that humans are animals and thus, our suffering is equivalent, and then on the other hand say that we have some moral obligation to act differently than animals.
Which is it? Are we the same as animals or not? If not, then there’s no contradiction between treating humans nicely and animals differently. If so, then I should be able to gleefully bat around a seal just like a whale or tease an antilope to death just like a lion(ess?).
So are you fine with literal torture as well? Wedges under fingernails, the whole nine yards, as long as the victim has done something to violate the social contract? If so, you are pretty clearly at odds with all mainstream Western ethics.
In any event, I made it clear that in both cases, the potential victims have expressly renounced the social contract, even more clearly than the car thief. The little girl in my basement has said (per the hypothesis) she wants to murder everyone, she just can’t. The lost tribe in South America has (again per the hypothesis) threatened all outsiders and demonstrated a willingness and desire to attack anyone outside their tribe that they can. So what are the limits on what you can do to them?
It’s not just desire to hurt me that counts. It’s ability also. Motivation for the torture/war/enslavement is an important factor too. It takes more than just verbal announcement that you wish to hurt me to void the contract.
But in either case, the limits of what you can do are derived from the society around you. If I were the king of the world, I could kill that child and the tribe because it’s morally acceptible for the king of the world to do whatever he wants. Any limitation on that power is a derived limit, not a naturally occuring one. If I’m just a regular ol’ Joe, then what I can and can’t do are derived from the sovereign. Who or what is that sovereign? Depends on the society. In the real world, it’s American culture and law.
As for torture, all the acceptable arguments against torture are about the efficacy of the practice and the ramifications of the action. I find unconvincing the arguments that torture is wrong just because it’s causing pain.
In other words, torturing is malum prohibitum, not malum in se. Now, that’s obviously not true in the legal sense but rather in my personal philosophy.
I’m not quite sure what you mean here. If all prohibition of violence comes from the social contract, how do ability and motivation come into play at all? And why isn’t a verbal announcement goods enough? Do amature boxing matches at the gym have to have a written waiver of the social contract? Is it only moral to throw the second punch? I’m not sure if your moral philosophy is confused and inadequate or if I just don’t understand it, but there seems to be some serious ad hoc reasoning going on here.
Besides, the Amazonians have not made a verbal renunciation of the social contract; they’ve physically attacked people (well, an airplane). The attack may be laughable in its ineffectiveness, but the intent was clearly to attack. I believe some tribes have been shown by anthropologists to have no social prohibition on killing non-tribe members. (If I’m wrong, just imagine such a tribe.) They clearly don’t have any social contract with us and have made no promises, implicit or explicit, not to hurt us. (They just lack the means and possibly the motive to launch an attack - but that is different than having an implicit agreement or contract.) Can we commit genocide against them? Enslave them?
How, exactly, do I know whether someone is covered by this contract or not?
What do you mean that “it’s morally acceptible for the king of the world to do whatever he wants”? We’ve never had a king of the world, but the closest we’ve had were Roman and Chinese emperors who were basically held in theory to posess ultimate sovereignty over other nations, which were, again in theory, always vassals or tributaries. In ancient Roman, ancient Chinese, and modern philosophy, the ruler was nevertheless held to certain moral standards that did not include doing whatever he wanted. (Legal standards may have been different.)
And not all societies have American culture and law. Was the Holocaust morally acceptable just because Hitler was the legitimate governor of Germany and the German people agreed to it?
Earlier, your philosophy seemed inconsistant, but here it just seems at odds with all contemporary moral standards. If you are working from fundamentally incompatible moral assumtions and axioms, you may simply be outside the pale as far as the rest of society goes. For such people (including, for example, sociopaths and criminals), the appropriate response is not debate but to ensure that you remain unwilling or unable to commit actions the rest of us agree are wrong, possibly by locking them up. There’s your social contract!
Again, there’s nothing inconsistant with such a stance, it just puts you at odds with the rest of Western civilisation. Not a position from which I’d like to argue about social contracts!
I said why I don’t care - because if something is obviously in pain based on its actions, then pointing at their physionomy or neurology or psychology or whatever as justification for arguing they’re not in real pain strikes me as a very, very, very transparent and flimsy excuse for ignoring their obvious behavior.
You’re just pretending I haven’t made an argument because you have no counterargument against it and it annihilates your position.
I think I’ll decide that human women don’t feel pain. I’m pretty sure all that extra estrogen blocks it out, or something, and after all we can dismiss the evidence of their behavior and reactions and so forth 'cause that’s just behavior, right?
No, what’s ridiculous is saying that things that are displaying obvious pain reactions aren’t feeling pain, or something entirely equivalent.
Okay, now that we’ve both established that each thinks the other is wallowing in the absurd, now what? Would you like to make an argument that entities whose (limited) awareness of the world is codified in simple electric reactions can’t experience pain? Because there’s something about the human brain you should know first…
Just because insects can feel sensations, it doesn’t mean they can feel pain. Check up on “nociceptors”… apparently, insects don’t have them, and this is why they don’t feel pain.
Fine, they don’t feel “pain”. They just feel “pAin”. Which is completely different in its underlying mechanism but has exactly the same result.
Morality is all about results.
Have you ever pulled a spider’s leg off? Does it act more distressed when you are simply holding it by the leg than it does after you’ve pulled the leg off? That’s because it doesn’t hurt to lose a leg, but being held by something is something to avoid. Not because it leads to pain, but because if it isn’t avoided, they usually end up dead.
In other words, it’s limited ways of expressing distress are already pegged, making us unable to discern additional distress. Right?
I think this is a fascinating side discussion you two are having about insect pain. I don’t think either side is being ridiculous. All evidence we have suggests that all humans (and indeed all mammals) process and perceive pain in pretty much the same way. We cannot prove that they experience pain the same way, but it seems like a very reasonalble belief that they do, and unreasonable to assume otherwise. Nevertheless, philosophers have pointed out that if there were people who responded behaviorially to pain-causing stimuli in exactly the same way that we do, but who did not experience the sensation of pain that it would be impossible ever to know this. Some philosophers have even concluded (rarther absurdly) from this that our own sensations are illusions that we do not actually experience.
At the other end of the spectrum, rocks have no reaction whatsoever to being crushed, and no mechanism by which such reaction is even remotely conceivable. In between, we have plants, some of which, like the mimosa, have a physical reaction to stimuli that resembles in some way the behavior of an animal reacting to pain. There is strong evidence that plants, including the mimosa, lack any sort of nervous system whatsoever, and have no analogous system by which they might “experience” pain (or anything else.)Somwhere further along the spectrum are insects, which have nervous systems and clearly respond to stimuli in a manner somewhat analagous to other animals like mammals. Their response to stimuli we would find painful is very different in some ways to ours. They tend not to respond to damage, and appear oblivious to damaged or amputated limbs or other members. In other ways, they respond similarly, e.g., by fleeing from fire that is burning them.
Mammals are nearly identical to humans in how they process and perceive pain, but their experience may alos differ from ours. The book “Animals in Translation” by Temple Grandin, PhD, makes the case that many animals can control their response to pain and appear to block out pain hte way humans can do only slightly and with great training or motivation. Humans are debilitated by much less apparent pain than many mammals. Those animals, however, are likely to be much more debilitated by fear, whereas humans can often control their response to fear relatively easily.
Somewhere along this spectrum me<–>other humans<–>other mammals<–>insects<–>plants<–>rocks it makes sense to draw a line at which to say things at this end experience pain, things at that end don’t. The evidence for which end is which is very cear and compelling, if not absolute. The evidence for where in the middle to draw the line is much fuzzier.
I think there is strong evidence that insects don’t experience pain, at least in anything like the manner we do and other mammals do. But the evidence is not 100% certain. Unless you think we should avoid doing anything that might hurt a pebble, we have to draw the line somewhere, but I think reasonable people can disgree about where they feel comfortable drawing it.
No. It’s not actually feeling distress - it just seems distressed. If it was an insect struggling in a spider’s web, it wouldn’t be sensing impending doom, it would just “know” that it was better off free, than trapped. It’s not like it is making a value judgement though!