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Apart from cognitive skills, an important factor is the capacity of suffering. So even dumb animals might be able to feel intense pain. In humans, while forms
by enugu 10y ago
Apart from cognitive skills, an important factor is the capacity of suffering. So even dumb animals might be able to feel intense pain.
In humans, while forms of suffering like loneliness, depression can be bad, pure physical pain can itself a terrible thing. For instance severe torture for 10 minutes can be worse than months of depression.
Now even if cognitive aspects are diminished in animals, the physical senses are active and often much more sharp(birds eye sight, dogs hearing).
So, what we can do is independent of whether we are eating animals or not, is to recognize this fact that animals can suffer, and ensure that factory farms which deal with billions of animals atleast stop some of the more terrible forms of animal cruelty (dunking birds in hot water while still alive).
- bduerst 10y agoCephalopods are the only invertebrates that are banned from certain types of research because of this.
- lostlogin 10y agoGuidelines or laws and where? My Googling shows Canada having laws for Cephalopods, the U.K. for octopodes (I read the above Greek guide) and the EU considering them. To my amusement the Nature article (2011) mentions researchers complaining at potential paperwork burden and that some research might not be allowed. Are the laws new?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- pacaro 10y agoIn her book "Animals make is human" - Temple Grandin makes the argument (among many others, this is not the main thesis of the book) that we can have a symbiotic relationship with animals, wherein we provide secure food supply, protection from predation and the associated stress, etc. and in return we eat the animal. Factory farming, by contrast has more in common with a parasitic relationship.
- gm-conspiracy 10y agoI think our ancestors called it hunting.
- actsasbuffoon 10y agoTo play devil's advocate, would you accept the same trade? We've provided you with medicine, police protection, and subsidized food and shelter. Does that give me the right to presume that I should be able to eat you?
- jacobush 10y agoWell, since we were discussing different forms of suffering... They [the state, the company] effectively eat most of my soul and half of my conscious life. In return I get wages and spend them on police protection, medicine etc.
- actsasbuffoon 10y agoSo you're saying it might be moral to eat the unemployed? They don't pay time or money to anyone, yet they still receive some basic level of access to infrastructure. They take more than they give, and that means killing them and eating them could be a viable way to make up the difference. That's before you get into the fact that we don't give animals a choice in the matter. They can't opt out of our protection and their eventual slaughter. We presume that it's acceptable to agree to that bargain on their behalf. Like I said, it's a thought experiment, but it's one that leaves me uneasy with the consequences.
- Pxtl 10y agoGreat article on eating lobsters by the inimitable, late David Foster Wallace: http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_lobster.html http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_l...
- overcast 10y agoGood lord, ten pages.
- Pxtl 10y agoThere is no TL;DR version of DFW's prose, you read his stuff because it's fun, not to get to the point.
- graedus 10y agohttp://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_lobsterd996.html?printable=true http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_l... (For those who dislike clicking through 10 pages, or want to save to pocket or similar)
- mturmon 10y agoIt's worth the time.
- chucksmash 10y agoFWIW, the last 3 pages are footnotes.
- Pxtl 10y agoYes, but the Pratchettesque endnotes are part of the fun. It's too bad they're left to the end instead of being inserted into the footer to stand alongside the main article.
- Graphon1 10y agooh, thank you for this. Really good stuff.
- white-flame 10y agoIt's also interesting to read up on how plants have community, call for help and offer resources, have fear responses, and such things as well. In many ways they are a generally equivalent form of social macro life forms as "humans" and "animals"; they just happen to move slower and eat differently.
- uhtred 10y agoAnyone who thinks animals do not suffer is an idiot. They have nervous system, therefore they feel pain, just like us. They also suffer emotional pain, not just physical. Kill a pig in front of another pig and he/she is going to be terrified.
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago>They have nervous system, therefore they feel pain, just like us. // The second part doesn't follow from the first. People have largely the same nervous systems and largely the same brain structures (AFAIK), and yet they react quite differently to pain and in the extremes they react exceedingly differently to the suffering of others. Do you think that sows when they crush some of their piglets by lying on them behave how a human mother who accidentally sat on and crushed their own child would? Many animals eat their own offspring seemingly without any response one could term emotional. You're anthropomorphising. Now pigs are an interesting species and I wouldn't be personally surprised to find that they show some response which could be deemed a form of emotion. Just because an animal exhibits herd behaviours, eg wariness when a member of the herd is wary/alert, doesn't mean they are empathising with that other animal. >Anyone who thinks animals do not suffer is an idiot. // The question is whether there is an internal pain that matches the external one. If I program a robot to exhibit pained behaviour and to scream when it's stabbed, then stab it, would you consider that robot to be in pain? The external reaction isn't necessarily linked to an internal feeling. Someone who refuses to leap to such a conclusion IMO is acting logically.
- shanusmagnus 10y agoOne annoying thing when this conversation comes up is where the burden of proof seems to lie: somehow, despite the fact that animals produce unambiguous behavior that they feel pain very profoundly, we are called upon to 'prove' that they can actually feel it, instead of the pain-deniers being called upon to prove the opposite. It's so analogous to the days when people debated as to whether black people should be enslaved for their own good, or whether they were too stupid to mind being enslaved [see e.g., 1], that it would be farcical if it wasn't so fucking sad. Who else, one wonders, might not feel pain? Autistics? Mutes? Republicans? [1] Plous, S., & Williams, T. (1995). Racial Stereotypes From the Days of American Slavery: A Continuing Legacy. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 25(9), 795-817.
- PerfectElement 10y agoI agree. Some humans have lower cognitive capacity than farm animals, still we wouldn't think it's okay to use mentally challenged humans for food, vivisection, etc. Focusing on cognitive skills to make ethical judgments is incredibly flawed when you think about it for more than 2 minutes. Specially when you add companion animals into the equation, given that pigs seem to have higher cognitive abilities when compared to dogs[1]. [1]http://animalstudiesrepository.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1042&context=acwp_asie http://animalstudiesrepository.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...