Right - the thing is little more than a biological robot, reacting to stimuli according to a program.
The question is, is a mouse any different. Sure, it’s pain-detection system and harware are more similar to ours, and it’s programming is doubtless somewhat more complex, but that doesn’t mean it knows anything more than the spider does, or makes value judgements either.
There is indeed a continuum of ‘likeliness that it’s feeling pain’, as Alan Smithee notes - and I set the bar very low, at ‘seems to feel pain or something like it based on its reactions’. Thus, and being completely serious, some computer game characters feel pain. That is, they react to damaging stimuli with a change in their internal (‘mental’?) state resulting in behavioral changes of a type relatable to the damaging stimuli. In many cases these behavioral changes are deliberately chosen by their designers to mimic human reactions, flinching and limping and fleeing perhaps; sometimes the reaction is to focus their attention on you; sometimes the reaction is to change state in some other predictable way, such as changing color or pulling into their shells. In all cases I categorize this as a ‘pain’ reaction - based on the fact the results are correlated with damaging stimuli.
What does having such a low bar for describing reactions a ‘pain’ mean with regard to the suffering of mice? In my case it means that I don’t consider merely causing pain in something to be inherently a severe moral wrong. Sure, it’s probably somewhat worse than not inflicting pain all things being equal, but things are never equal. In the mouse case I find the idea of killing it directly more distressing than the idea of causing it some lingering pain - I care more about my minor distresses than I care about it’s major distresses. (Assuming it even has major distresses.)
With regard to humans, I’m not respecting their pain due to social contracts like Chessic Sense - with me it’s pure humanocentrism, or at least I think it is. On reflection, it may actually instead be a certain respect for entities that I know can reflect on and preemptively fear distress in a way I can relate to, becasue they talk about it. This means that if we were visited by an alien race that used the same sort of nervous system and basic biology as insects, but demonstrated a humanlike intelligence and anticipatory and emotional capacity, I would feel distressed at the idea of one being tortured, despite their alien biology.
And he might well be an idiot or moron, too. Do you have the IQ test to tell, one way or the other? Narcissist is an insult, when used in this context, because it is a known, defined psychiatric diagnosis, which you do not have available to judge.
Glue traps are necessary in some circumstances where spring traps would be dangerous or less effective. When I’m at war with a colony of mice my attitude toward them is not full of moral concerns, it’s more akin to a battlefield commanders. The mouse is my enemy, and he must be crushed to enable the perpetuation of the human dominion, and to stop him from shitting in my silverware drawers.
Having said this it is (IMO) kind of bad form to just toss a glue trapped mouse. It disrespects the mouse as a combatant. They deserve a clean, quick death. Smashing or physically pulverizing them seemed (to me) to be unnecessarily personal and angry, so I tried the more scientific solution of putting the entire trap with mouse attached into a quart sized Zip-Lock poly bag and pouring in an once of two of isopropyl alcohol, but this was not all that great as the mouse lasted several some time, and was obviously writhing in agony stuck to the board as the alcohol burned his eyes before his small body shivered and died when the was finally overcome by the fumes.
Ok, I understand your argument. I disagree to some extent. But you appear to be rational. You aren’t necessarily anthropomorphizing your guinea pigs, animals have feelings, and humans can be empathetic to the feelings of other animals. I think there is something wrong with people who can’t distinquish between humans and other animals, but you don’t have to draw a line that says concern for non-humans is irrational or unnecessary. However I don’t see anything wrong with intellectually torturing people who can’t distinquish the differences between humans and non-humans. In that regard I would support your argument.
Where do ability and motivation come into it? Call it a clause of the contract. It says “I won’t hurt you if you won’t hurt me” and later defines “hurting me” as basically having the motivation and means. Even that, though, is an oversimplification. Perhaps I should say that the contract is more of a sandwich board that everyone wears. It says “I don’t hurt people unless they can and would hurt me.” Thieves don’t have that sandwich board. Since they steal from people with the boards, then it’s OK to hurt them in return. The tribe in the jungle can’t hurt me, so they don’t pertain to that clause.
Ultimately, it’s not about what the attacker thinks of you. It’s the people beside you…the ones on your side of the contract. So when the boxers step into the ring, they don’t look at the opponent and go “Is it cool if I try to hit you?” They look at the referee and the judges and the audience and go “I’m going to start hitting this guy, cool?”
Let’s revisit the pilot over the jungle. Does he stick his head out the window and go “Is it cool if I bomb you guys?” No. He looks at his copilot (analogous to the rest of society) and goes “Can I bomb those guys?” In this case, the copilot says no because that’s the kind of society we live in.
But that’s a derived rule. It stems from other agreements we’ve made that essentially determine how best to enforce the contract. One of those rules is “You don’t kill defenseless humans that are no threat to you.”
Yet it’s entirely conceivable that it is OK to bomb and enslave this tribe. This assumes that the copilot (and thus, society) says it’s OK. This has happened throughout human history when one nation fights and dominates another. Why do we not do that anymore? Because we’ve modified, I guess you could say “contract law”, not the contract itself. We have extra rules and regulations that say we can’t kill and enslave anymore.
For real world, modern examples, consider the morality of fighting a government-declared war and taking POWs. That’s killing and enslaving right there. But it’s moral. Because, to continue the analogy, the copilot said “Yeah, that’s cool. Bombs away.”
“King of the world”, here, is a fictional character that has the OK to do whatever he wants. Roman emperors don’t qualify because, as you pointed out, they’re limited. Where do those limitations come from? From might? Not exactly. They’re derived from agreements with the people, particularly other powerful people. Those others have the ability to revolt and kill the king. But the “king of the world” has no such potential enemies. Perhaps you should just consider the KotW to be God himself and that might make the analogy clearer.
The KotW is just a theoretical starting point to see why we do the things that we do. Imagine one guy standing amongst the whole population and going “I will be KotW and do whatever I want!” Then another guy says “No, that’s not acceptible.” So the first guy goes “OK, how about just 98% KotW powers? I’ll keep, like, a Senate or something. But mostly, I’ll do whatever I want.” And some of the people agree but some go “No, that’s not good enough.” So he goes “OK, OK. I’ll only be 94% KotW, you still get the Senate, I won’t wage wars or seize lands without yaddayadda legal procedure…good?” and people sorta look around, nodding, and say “Yep. Good. Hail Caesar!”
For more information on how that dialogue actually plays out, and why it does it differently in different places, see Buena de Mesquita’s Selectorate Theory.
No, it wasn’t, because there were people outside of Germany that disagreed with the moral acceptability of the holocaust. That’s why I couldn’t say “King of America” or “Emperor of China”. I had to use “King of the World” in my previous examples. If enough people in the world agreed to it, then yes, it would be moral. When you look at things in a global aspect, when enough people agree, anything becomes moral. Because humans define morality in the first place. If the whole world turned on the Jews, then you could say they’ve “exhausted their appeals”, so to speak.
Fact is, people didn’t agree to it. Some did. Some didn’t. You know what happened next.
First of all, I don’t think “torture is sometimes OK” puts me at odds with the rest of civilization. Sometimes Dopers like to pretend that debate topics are settled, when they rarely are. Besides, when I say “torture”, that puts Guantanamo water boarding in your mind. But it neglects, say, solitary confinement or even just imprisonment in general. That’s torture too. But most of western civ isn’t against that.
Second of all, if I seem inconsistent in my views, or antithetical to western culture, it’s a product of trying to boil down a complex theory, revised and rebuilt many times on the path to a BA in Political Science, down to a few message board posts that are long enough to inform but short enough for people to not skip past. Tell me where the holes are and I’ll fill them in as best I can.
If you like, I could email you my 22-page Political Philosophy thesis. But I won’t post it on here.
Your moral philosophy is obviously more sophisticated and more complex than I thought based on what you posted before.
I disagree that morality is dictated entirely by society, but I think it’s largely a difference in terminology. If we have a disagreement about what is right, I want to look at more than what the rest of society says about it. I want to be able to ask whether society is right. If everyone but me is in agreement that X is right, I want to be able to mount a reasonable argument for my position. I’m sure you allow for that somehow, but from what you’ve said so far, ethics is just sociology.
The benefit to you apparently is that it allows you to maintain that morality is something real and objective without resorting to metaphysical dualism. My alternative is (essentially) simply to take moral beliefs as preferences. We can still make moral arguments, just like we can make aesthetic ones. If it turns out that your preferences are fundamentally incompatible with mine, I have methods other than argumentation to deal with that.
Anyway, you’re right. That’s more than enough philosophical background for this thread. Back to the subject at hand.
It is my strong preference that all suffering be minimized. I especially - but not exclusively - dislike human suffering. This aversion to all suffering is something of an essential preference to me, such that anyone who doesn’t share it, even if much less strongly, is someone whose values and preferences are likely to be very much at odds with mine. Someone who cannot appreciate and understand my aversion to suffering, including non-human suffering, even without sharing it, is likely someone with whom I simply cannot have meangful ethical discussion and whom I would not wish to associate with.
I can’t believe that statement at all, I believe that morality is entirely based upon society and the age in which you live. Throughout this entire thread different people have based whole arguments about suffering, animal abuse, human vs. animal rights solely on what they believe is the accepted “morality” of us all, never giving a thought to the fact that in most cases animal abuse is a fairly new concept limited to the middle and upper classes of urban and suburban Europe and North America
When I first purchased my home I had a pellet gun that I had from my childhood. I knew from checking out the neighborhood prior to the homes purchase that pigeons were going to be an issue. Within a month or two I had chicken wired the bottom of my air conditioner and all the eves of the house. I thought that that would pretty much cover it. Didn’t happen. My next door neighbor did none of these things and his house was a haven for them. With so many around they were still all over my home too. Crap on the walkways, the cars, everywhere. My first thought was the pellet gun. I hadn’t used it years so I got it out, cleaned it, sighted it and left it by the garage door. The next time I saw one that I thought I could stalk and get a clean shot at, making sure it would fall in my yard, and not hit anyones property I did the deed. In my haste I had forgotten it was a woefully underpowered gun, and the bird did indeed fall but I had to chase it around the yard for 5 minutes before I could get the kill shot. I put the gun away.
I thought about using poison but there were some songbirds that visited my pines and I didn’t want to kill them. I looked into pest control but as a new homeowner I couldn’t afford to employ them. I decided to save my money and buy a thousand fps Gamo pellet gun with a scope.
I won’t tell you that I enjoyed killing pigeons after that but I will say I could live with myself knowing that I could kill them without the suffering I had caused the last one. I haven’t had to shoot many since then, maybe 3 a year, but everytime I do I remember the one that suffered.
The question to ask is, do you try to avoid the animal suffering to help the animal (the end result is the same) or to help yourself?
I have killed all sorts of animals for all sorts of reasons, generally the least amount of suffering is the goal but it’s a goal of the killer and not the killed, and only part of the goal at that. All the rituals and rules we place on how to properly dispatch an animal are there to protect the killer because they are the ones that have to live it. I have never been able to ask but I sure doubt the dead mouse cares either way.
These rituals and rules we as human s and killers of animals create are selfish in nature, we do it to make us feel better, and by following these rules we make others that are aware of the killing feel better as well.
By breaking these rules the friend of the Op simple did not play by the rules. The Op’s outrage at the friend was not about the extra few hours of suffering the mice endured but more about his breaking of the rituals and rules, the social pact we have for the killing of the animal.
Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil…As long as the rules are met I don’t have to feel bad, make it known that the rules weren’t met then I have to feel bad, I don’t want to feel bad so play by the rules.
How any of this pertains to the dead animal… it’s still dead
I agree that the ‘social contract’ is based on this, but some humans empathize with animal suffering, and aren’t just being selfish. Given a choice, I don’t think many animals would choose suffering. But I doubt a mouse can make choices in the sense that humans do either.
Sorry, sitchensis, I think that’s a minority position. Most of us, I to be sure, are actually concerned about the animals’ suffering. I don’t like seeing animals suffer through other causes, either. It bothers me when a bird hits a window or an animal is hit by a car, especially when the suffering in either case is prolonged. It bothers me that animals suffer in nature, too. Of course there’s nothing that can reasonably be done, and I don’t get too worked up over it. Nor do I get too worked up by all the people suffering in poverty around the world. But if I had my druthers, the world would have less suffering.
I think most societies have some concept of animal suffering and our duties towards animals. It typically is a very low level priority, but I think most people in any society would agree that it is wrong for a person to torture animals for no reason whatsoever, and would also agree that at least a slight good has been done by someone putting a suffering animal out of it’s misery. Those concerns may be outweighed by even slight benefits to humans, such as convenience, entertainment, cuisine, etc., but that doesn’t mean the concern is completely unknown to that society.
Yes, if “society” truly felt there was nothing wrong with anything a human does to a non-human and we lived in an “anything goes” world, would this improve humanity, or lessen it? My guess is it would be a backward step in our evolution as a species.
You’re an animal. The only* reason you think it’s okay to inflict suffering on animals but not on people is because people can talk.
*There are other reasons, but all of them stem from the fact that people can talk.
But you don’t really know what other people are feeling. You only really know what YOU are feeling. Yet you would for sure object yourself to inflicted suffering. So in 100% of all cases you can really know about, it’s wrong.
Yet it’s not a stretch to say other people have feelings: we can observe it. We can also observe that animals feel pain and have feelings, although we frequently deny this, to make ourselves feel better.
Therefore it’s only by constructing a definition of in-groups and out-groups that you can say who it’s okay to inflict pain on.
And your definition of people is a moving target.
The truth is, in the recent past, it was okay to inflict pain and suffering and enslavement on some people. Slavery was okay in many places two hundred years ago. Science and religion were invoked to justify this artificial construcion of who was in, and who was out.
Heck, I’ve seen it argued in print by physicians (back in the 1960s, maybe?) that human babies don’t feel pain, which seems to have been a rationalization to justify circumcision. I’ve read that at one time operations were performed on babies without anesthetic – by educated doctors. The only possible reason such a thing could occur is that babies don’t talk.
Now we know better about the babies and the slaves. Has knowledge ended? Are you proposing we now know everything? Perhaps soon we will realize that the infliction of pain on animals is not scientifically or ethically different than on humans, they just don’t talk, vote, or shop.
