5 ms·

It appears so. What a filthy guy. Don't read if you don't have the stomach for it https://blog.timesunion.com/animalrights/descartes-and-animal-rights/4114/ ht

It appears so. What a filthy guy. Don't read if you don't have the stomach for it https://blog.timesunion.com/animalrights/descartes-and-animal-rights/4114/ https://blog.timesunion.com/animalrights/descartes-and-anima... Gary Francione (Introduction to Animal Rights): “Descartes and his followers performed experiments in which they nailed animals by their paws onto boards and cut them open to reveal their beating hearts. They burned, scalded, and mutilated animals in every conceivable manner. When the animals reacted as though they were suffering pain, Descartes dismissed the reaction as no different from the sound of a machine that was functioning improperly. A crying dog, Descartes maintained, is no different from a whining gear that needs oil.”

pmarreck 8y ago
Curses omitted from this comment. If you would believe some materialists, we're ALL just biological machines with illusory feelings, though...
- krapp 8y ago
  We are all just biological machines, whatever that means. However, it would be a mistake to presume that our feelings are an illusion, or that pain is meaningless without some ephemeral abstraction beyond the material to grant it a Platonic "reality" that mere nerves and synapses can't aspire to.
- sam0x17 8y ago
  See, I'm ok with that. That doesn't mean your feelings and the feelings of others don't matter.
- int_19h 8y ago
  Funny thing is, Descartes was approaching it from literally the exact opposite angle. To him, the soul was all the difference between real pain and "mechanical reaction".
  - pmarreck 8y ago
    For such a smart guy, to act on such an assumption without any evidence for either a soul in us or no soul in animals seems grossly out of character... although he probably predates the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution of thought
- goldenkey 8y ago
  illusory? In that real feelings exist in a more real form? The world is what our bodies make of it - its as real for me as it is for my cats. IQ doesnt imply worth.
rleigh 8y ago
Horrific. That wouldn't pass any ethics review board today. I worked for a short time in an animal facility nearly two decades back as part of an immunology undergraduate research project. I did all the ethical and vetinary training and exams. Some scientists do take Descartes' line, that animals don't feel like human beings do. I don't. I think it's a convenient philosophical position to take to avoid agonising over inflicting pain and suffering upon other organisms. It's a line of work I got out of at the earliest opportunity; I found it stressful and nauseating, even while working under strict ethical guidelines and practices which minimised pain and suffering to the highest possible extent, and had strict regulation of animal welfare. While it's possible to debate the relative intelligence and sentience of different species, I strongly suspect that all higher mammals experience emotions similarly to ourselves, and I suspect that this may well extend to lower mammals and possibly other species such as amphibians and fish. Though this is obviously difficult to investigate and prove. It's dangerous to anthropomorphise human behaviour, feelings and emotions in other animals. However, I think it's equally, if not more, dangerous to assume that animals are incapable of none of the feelings and emotions that we do. Dogs can clearly experience pain. The anguished yelp if I accidentally tread on my dogs paws wearing heavy boots is sufficient to tell me that! And arthritic pain in old age was less obvious, but they took clear steps to avoid actions which would hurt. They clearly experience fear. I've seen my dog's legs turn to jelly when faced with a herd of cattle, and I couldn't drag him past them because he dug all his paws into the ground and refused to take a step further. Another cried when they were too scared to walk across wobbly and loose rocks on a mountain, and I had to carry them over. The same applies to other animals as well, though the means they use to communicate pain or fear may differ. I liked the direction taken by Emory university e.g. this recent research: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0376635714000473 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037663571... which gets past interpreting behaviour and instead uses fMRI to see how dogs respond directly. Hopefully this will show the similarities in our reactions as well as some of the differences. Research like that summarised in https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/11/24/smart-dog-border-collie-learns-language-grammar/3691967/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/11/24/smart-d... is also important. This shows that dogs can have sophisticated linguistic and reasoning capabilities. How many other species have such untapped potential, which we simply haven't noticed?

pmarreck 8y ago

Curses omitted from this comment. If you would believe some materialists, we're ALL just biological machines with illusory feelings, though...

krapp 8y ago
We are all just biological machines, whatever that means. However, it would be a mistake to presume that our feelings are an illusion, or that pain is meaningless without some ephemeral abstraction beyond the material to grant it a Platonic "reality" that mere nerves and synapses can't aspire to.
sam0x17 8y ago
See, I'm ok with that. That doesn't mean your feelings and the feelings of others don't matter.
int_19h 8y ago
Funny thing is, Descartes was approaching it from literally the exact opposite angle. To him, the soul was all the difference between real pain and "mechanical reaction".
- pmarreck 8y ago
  For such a smart guy, to act on such an assumption without any evidence for either a soul in us or no soul in animals seems grossly out of character... although he probably predates the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution of thought
goldenkey 8y ago
illusory? In that real feelings exist in a more real form? The world is what our bodies make of it - its as real for me as it is for my cats. IQ doesnt imply worth.

rleigh 8y ago

Horrific. That wouldn't pass any ethics review board today. I worked for a short time in an animal facility nearly two decades back as part of an immunology undergraduate research project. I did all the ethical and vetinary training and exams. Some scientists do take Descartes' line, that animals don't feel like human beings do. I don't. I think it's a convenient philosophical position to take to avoid agonising over inflicting pain and suffering upon other organisms. It's a line of work I got out of at the earliest opportunity; I found it stressful and nauseating, even while working under strict ethical guidelines and practices which minimised pain and suffering to the highest possible extent, and had strict regulation of animal welfare. While it's possible to debate the relative intelligence and sentience of different species, I strongly suspect that all higher mammals experience emotions similarly to ourselves, and I suspect that this may well extend to lower mammals and possibly other species such as amphibians and fish. Though this is obviously difficult to investigate and prove. It's dangerous to anthropomorphise human behaviour, feelings and emotions in other animals. However, I think it's equally, if not more, dangerous to assume that animals are incapable of none of the feelings and emotions that we do. Dogs can clearly experience pain. The anguished yelp if I accidentally tread on my dogs paws wearing heavy boots is sufficient to tell me that! And arthritic pain in old age was less obvious, but they took clear steps to avoid actions which would hurt. They clearly experience fear. I've seen my dog's legs turn to jelly when faced with a herd of cattle, and I couldn't drag him past them because he dug all his paws into the ground and refused to take a step further. Another cried when they were too scared to walk across wobbly and loose rocks on a mountain, and I had to carry them over. The same applies to other animals as well, though the means they use to communicate pain or fear may differ. I liked the direction taken by Emory university e.g. this recent research: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0376635714000473 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037663571... which gets past interpreting behaviour and instead uses fMRI to see how dogs respond directly. Hopefully this will show the similarities in our reactions as well as some of the differences. Research like that summarised in https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/11/24/smart-dog-border-collie-learns-language-grammar/3691967/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/11/24/smart-d... is also important. This shows that dogs can have sophisticated linguistic and reasoning capabilities. How many other species have such untapped potential, which we simply haven't noticed?