If you have no head, then it doesn’t really matter where the black hole is.
Overly simplistic. Certainly the limbic system - and there’s some debate as to what exactly is included in the limbic system - is very important indeed in the formation of emotion, but extralimbic structures are also critical in humans. For example, structures in the prefrontal cortex (PFC / OFC / etc.) and temporal lobes are strongly tied to the representation of emotion / pleasure. Damage to these structures can entirely bugger up emotional representation and expression.
There’s a review of this stuff that gives some idea of the complexity of the cortical interconnections.
Again, simplistic. If you are claiming that emotion resides in the limbic system you’re incorrect. For example, damage to prefrontal brain regions can screw up emotional behaviour (e.g., as inappropriate emotional responses), probably due to the failure of regulatory pathways from PFC to limbic structures (e.g., Tateno et al., 2004). I.e., projections from higher cortical structures back to the limbic system are a fundamental part of emotional representation. PFC and the like do not simply ‘analyze and understand’ emotions.
A further point is that ‘emotional’ behaviour in animals may indeed reside to a vast extent in limbic structures. However, the internal representation and ‘meaning’ of emotions in animals and humans may be quite different. The comparison between animals and humans in this context is dubious.
Sure. And if I murder’s my neighbor’s son because his music is to loud or rape her mother out of lust, please take note that I won’t be responsible for my actions, either. I feel too strongly about a quiet environnement, and just can’t control my sexual urges. :rolleyes:
So, why should I care about some random kid to whom I have no connection whatsoever? The kid has none of my genes to pass on, I have no emotional connection to the sprog, and he does nothing to improve my life in any way. My pets do improve my life and I do have an emotional connection to 'em.
Plus, what do you do to assist random humans in need? Do you do what you can, or - like most people - do you do basically nothing? All those humans out there to care about and who need help, and yet the majority are happy to do bugger all to help them. Hypocrites - At least I’m honest.
In your view surely no-one should have pets at all, given that the money spent on them would be better used to help our own species?
Beats me, you’re the one who said “her cats are her children.” I’m just going off what you said. So you tell me, in what ways does your girlfriend treat her cats like children? Be specific. Give examples. Show your work. But I won’t knock you for spelling.
Listen, idiot, if you don’t want your girlfriend to get attacked, don’t fucking bring her into an online argument as an example.
Second, I didn’t make an adhominem attack on your girlfriend. Please look up the meaning of the word before you use it, m’kay?
Actually, no. Your girlfriend has nothing to do with your intellectual and emotional deficiencies. Your posts in this thread (and probably others, I don’t really keep track of these things) are the indicators.
Even though the settlement may be reduced later, I would have paid good money to be there when the judge made the decision. The look on that guy’s face must have been priceless.
That right there is the problem. You should have an emotional connection to another human being. Even more so a helpless child who is about to have his or her head cut off. You appear to have a complete lack of empathy. Studies have shown that sociopaths lack empathy.
Depends. Does using misleading, emotionally charged language make you think your argument is stronger? You called something “intolerance” when it most certainly wasn’t. You accused someone of poisoning people’s pets because he (see, Who_me? I catch on!) had the temerity to disagree with you. Now you’re calling something murder that is not murder.
Your argument is weak, so you’ve been spicing it up with emotionally-loaded terms. Well, that tactic might work with the crowd at your quilting circle, but here we’re not only a little meaner but we’re also a little smarter. When you try to sway people around here with fallacious appeals to kneejerk emotions, you’re not going to win an argument. I’m sorry that apparently you can’t justify your point without doing so, but perhaps you should take that as a sign that your point is unjustifiable.
And I can define wearing a beehive hairdo as committing war crimes. Doesn’t make it so, I’m afraid. The word has a meaning, and killing a cat doesn’t qualify. No one cares about how you feel but you. Either find an argument, or try to save what little face you have left by stepping away.
And you make a very nice point about people who repeatedly kill animals. Except that it’s not relevant. Just like it isn’t relevant for you to invent a situation in which someone has snuck into your house and started gutting your pets. You can make up whatever situation you like, but that’s not what the argument was about. You keep embellishing the situation to make your own chosen response seem like the only reasonable one. That’s a sleazy debate tactic; again, this place is about argument. We’re not stupid and we don’t succumb to childish tactics like that.
The question was whether an animal’s life is worth as much as a human’s life. Instead of being able to answer it in the abstract (my assumption being that you won’t because you don’t wish to admit the truth) you keep inventing more details to the story. It’s not just killing to protect your pet’s life - in your example, suddenly a deranged, violent criminal who repeatedly tortures animals is in your house about to kill your puppydog. What’s next?
“A ruthless serial murderer and known animal torturer sneaks into your house. Under his foot, you watch him grind your goldfish into the floor. He knocks over your ficus tree, and picks up your cat and guts it with one stroke from throat to tail. Then he picks up your dog, bites its neck and severs its jugular. He shows you a Polaroid of your pet bunny tied to a railroad track. Now he picks up your child and holds his knife to its belly, laughing his hysterical cackle! You have a gun in your hand. Would you shoot?”
Is that what’s coming next? You’ll keep embellishing until the situation has nothing to do with the original question - just because you don’t want to admit that a cat’s life is not an even exchange for a human life.
Well, speaking as a flesh-baby, who has a fur-baby (I can’t believe I just posted that)…
Purposfully killing a person’s pet is considered a form of emotional abuse. Were this to happen to one of Pink Marabou’s pets, and Pink Marabou where to kill the person who did it, she could potentially have some success using a battered woman’s defense. However, having stated on a public message board that those are her intentions, the BWD probably wouldn’t fly.
I love my dog. He’s a good, sweet dog and there’s a chance that he’s the only child-like being that I’ll ever have. So, if I buy him sweaters, cook him treats and let him sleep in my bed, I think you all should cut me a little slack. That being said, I appreciate that he’s not a person. If I had to choose between him and anyone of my friends or family members, he would be going to doggie heaven.
However - I would care more, and be more upset if something happened to MY dog, than if something happened to some random child that I’d never met. Sorry - feeling crushing dispair over the death of every child that was ever killed in the world just isn’t a realistic way of behaving - I would never leave my house.
$45K does seem a bit high, but “bloody fortune” made me laugh my ass off. $100,000,000 is a bloody foturne. $45K is an average yearly income.
You said that everything exists in your head. There are innumerable things that exist independent of your perceptions, like black holes. They were there before you were born, and they’ll be there after you die.
Overly complicated. You’re trying to pick an argument just to argue. The inability to express an emotion outwardly does not preclude the experience of it internally, as anyone who has ever had a broken jaw knows.
My “claim” was unambiguous. Again, you are merely argumentative. Emotion originates in the limbic system in humans just as it does in kittens and puppies. I made no claim about residence.
You’re equivocating. Animals lack a large cerebral cortex through which emotions may cause a cascade of peripheral reactions. A human may devise a plan for revenge as he steams with hatred and anger, but the emotions are not useful in rationalizing the plan. In fact, they are likely to interfere with proper rationale. But that has nothing to do with where the hatred and anger originate.
People die every day, thousands of them, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, in horrific agony and suffering. However, most of us spend our days in pretty decent humor, instead of weeping uncontrollably as if our entire families died that day.
I would probably feel worse, personally, from dropping an icecream cone on the sidewalk than I would due to some random person halfway across the globe dying.
Uh, you’ve already declared that she thinks of her cats as children. You’ve used her as an example of a viewpoint that is crazy. You seem to be backing down from your assertions - is it actually the case that you just misrepresented her views in order to make some silly point? Or does she actually consider pets to be equivalent to humans? If it’s the latter, she’s nutso - whether or not I’ve met her. If it’s the former, well, you shouldn’t have said what you did about her. I’d be awfully pissed if my boyfriend falsely claimed some pathological behavior for me to use as an example in an argument with someone else.
Let me just say this to you: boo-fucking-hoo. You can’t handle people disagreeing with what you say? You have a view that’s batshit insane. You don’t want to hear that? Fine. Stop airing it. But lemme tell ya, sugarpants, insults coming from you don’t sting too much. And if you think we’re all a big clique, one apparently filled with idiots, just because we don’t agree with you, then excuse me if I don’t regret your stomping off in a huff.
People disagree with you sometimes. In this case, just about everyone disagrees with you. If you weren’t batshit insane, you would take that as a signal to reexamine your views and consider if maybe, just maybe, the rest of us are right. But since we don’t agree, we must all be big cliquey idiots. There’s simply no other possible explanation for anyone disagreeing with you. Is that correct?
Oh, and by the way: “You don’t seem to understand that if you maliciously cause harm to me, my family, or my pets I will not be respisible for my actions.” (I’ll refrain from snarkily pointing out the spelling error. Oops, too late. :)) Sweetie pie, let me tell you something: you most assuredly will be held responsible. The court’s not going to care how much you loved little Fluffy. You kill to avenge her? You’re going to jail for a long time.
It was originally put that there was a choice involved.
Hell, I just spent over $2000 saving my dogs life. If little Mbutu were to have come up to me and pleaded for those $2000 to prevent his decapitation, I’d be missing my dog right about now. But since Mbutu had the decency to be decapitated over on the other side of the world, I’m wasn’t really given the choice. If my dog dies on the same day that 10,000 Uzbekistanians die in an earthquake, I’ll be more depressed over Presley.
Battered Women’s Syndrome, though, is not only a pretty tenuous defense (not to say I don’t think it’s valid - I certainly do. But it just hasn’t been used in many jurisdictions, to my knowledge) but she wouldn’t have a claim, I don’t think. It depends on a state of insanity induced by being in an abusive relationship. If it was her husband who did so, then it’d be evidence in favor. But as the scenario was presented, it was not necessarily someone who knew her.
Exactly my feelings about my cats. I love each of them dearly, but I don’t have to pretend they’re children in order to love them. And while I can’t say what I would decide if an evil supervillain made me choose between one of my cats and a random third world child (thank goodness it’s not a decision I’d ever have to make), while I think the morally right answer is to let the kid live, I’d be way more devastated about the cat.
I don’t think it’s too high at all. Not only is the trauma that the woman experienced nontrivial (though I don’t see why it would have made her start smoking.) but the dude also has to face consequences for his utter negligence in letting that dog roam free and the clear contempt he showed for the system by not showing up in court. If that $45,000 fine makes him change his behavior, it could well save a child’s life. I don’t think anything much short of big personal consequences would convince that dirtbag to do the right thing.
I disagree, Lib. At least with your claims about the debate. While my simplistic understanding of neuroscience is also that emotions originate from the limbic system, it seems that he has brought forth a number of citations that suggest that the real situation is much more complex. The functioning of the brain is not a simple matter, and the divisions into specific zones (reminiscent of phrenology, really) are of course simplifications designed to help laypeople understand matters better. Very few things are sharply localized in the brain and the way emotion and rationality are integrated in the mind is something we only have the most basic understanding of. It stands to reason that emotions, as a system, cannot be boiled down to the limbic system, and that much of the experiencer’s internal state stems from other parts of the brain.