3 ms·

Dennet wrote a lot about animal perceptions and self consciousness It's hard to tell if the life they live makes some difference for the individual It's hard

Dennet wrote a lot about animal perceptions and self consciousness It's hard to tell if the life they live makes some difference for the individual It's hard for us humans to fathom it, but is it for them? We still don't know for sure. https://lafavephilosophy.x10host.com/dennett_anim_csness.html https://lafavephilosophy.x10host.com/dennett_anim_csness.htm...

ornornor 6y ago
If in doubt, why not err on the side of caution and just not inflict animals this existence, just in case they might care?
- notreallytrue 6y ago
  We are not doing it though What do you do if a snake or a cockroach appears in your house? What happens if a bear wants to share the same living space you live in? I understand your position, but the simple fact that we live in a modern World and we are at the top of it "inflicts animals this existence" I like to not do it on purpose and I don't own a fur, if that's what you are curious about, but I'm not lying to myself believing that mink farming is worse than living in big cities that pollute the environment irreparably Am I being cautious enough? I don't think so...
  - ornornor 6y ago
    We’re talking about farming animals and killing them for food or fur here. I personally go out of my way to not kill anything. I catch bugs and throw them outside. I move frogs and snails off the road when I get the chance so people or cars don’t step on them. I’ve never faced a bear yet though. But that’s a bit extreme. How many people face bears? It’s not a competition, because something is worse than something else or not doesn’t mean we should keep doing it. Farming animals is unnecessary in the vast majority of cases so why not stop doing it? Same with cities and pollution, it’s not all or nothing. There are more and less damaging ways of building, ways that are a bit less obnoxious than the way we’ve mostly been doing it for the last couple of centuries.
    - notreallytrue 6y ago
      > We’re talking about farming animals and killing them for food or fur here and they are two completely different categories, orders of magnitude different, and serve two completely different purposes the amount of furs produced every year has been dropping for decades, meat consumption is not > I personally go out of my way to not kill anything Everyone does. But being a S. Francesco is something we do for ourselves, it doesn't change much (it is nothing actually, but I don't want to sound insensitive) Assuming you save 10 animals a day (which is very very very hard) it's 400 thousands animals in a lifespan of 100 years. Meanwhile millions die everyday to keep our lifestyle going. Meanwhile Cats kill billions of birds every year and even more tiny rodents and other mammals in the United States It's a matter of scale, not of will of the individual. > because something is worse than something else or not doesn’t mean we should keep doing it But maybe we should have priorities, so if something is not impacting the ecosystem in a meaningful way, the time used to fight it it's wasted and could be better spent on something vastly more dangerous.
      - ornornor 6y ago
        > it doesn't change much (it is nothing actually, but I don't want to sound insensitive) Of course, I also don’t eat meat eggs or milk, don’t wear leather, and haven’t for over 15 years now. But it didn’t happen all at once, and if I just thought that moving snails out of the way wouldn’t make any difference anyway I probably would have given up there and then. But instead I did a little bit more every once in a while until I’m at the point where I am. So yes cats kill billions of animals a day for example but that’s only if you let your cat out. Every vet we spoke to said that it’s better to keep cats indoors because they live longer lives, don’t get diseases, don’t get maimed, don’t fight, don’t get hot by cars or even caught and tortured by humans (that’s a thing), don’t get obese from eating at home and at the neighbor’s and as long as you make sure they have toys and windows to look through they don’t mind. My cat has killed maybe four mice in the 8 years I have her, tops. It’s unfortunate that cats must eat meat to survive but the canned food is pretty much the only meat we buy which is a fraction of what most people consume. That cat was abandoned and we took her in. In conclusion, yes, focusing on the wrong thing is diminishing your impact. But I’d bet that for most people it’s not choosing between high impact and lower impact actions, but rather between nothing at all and anything at all. In that case I still believe anything at all is better than nothing at all. And doing anything at all might raise your awareness to do more and more on top of it.

ornornor 6y ago

If in doubt, why not err on the side of caution and just not inflict animals this existence, just in case they might care?

notreallytrue 6y ago
We are not doing it though What do you do if a snake or a cockroach appears in your house? What happens if a bear wants to share the same living space you live in? I understand your position, but the simple fact that we live in a modern World and we are at the top of it "inflicts animals this existence" I like to not do it on purpose and I don't own a fur, if that's what you are curious about, but I'm not lying to myself believing that mink farming is worse than living in big cities that pollute the environment irreparably Am I being cautious enough? I don't think so...
- ornornor 6y ago
  We’re talking about farming animals and killing them for food or fur here. I personally go out of my way to not kill anything. I catch bugs and throw them outside. I move frogs and snails off the road when I get the chance so people or cars don’t step on them. I’ve never faced a bear yet though. But that’s a bit extreme. How many people face bears? It’s not a competition, because something is worse than something else or not doesn’t mean we should keep doing it. Farming animals is unnecessary in the vast majority of cases so why not stop doing it? Same with cities and pollution, it’s not all or nothing. There are more and less damaging ways of building, ways that are a bit less obnoxious than the way we’ve mostly been doing it for the last couple of centuries.
  - notreallytrue 6y ago
    > We’re talking about farming animals and killing them for food or fur here and they are two completely different categories, orders of magnitude different, and serve two completely different purposes the amount of furs produced every year has been dropping for decades, meat consumption is not > I personally go out of my way to not kill anything Everyone does. But being a S. Francesco is something we do for ourselves, it doesn't change much (it is nothing actually, but I don't want to sound insensitive) Assuming you save 10 animals a day (which is very very very hard) it's 400 thousands animals in a lifespan of 100 years. Meanwhile millions die everyday to keep our lifestyle going. Meanwhile Cats kill billions of birds every year and even more tiny rodents and other mammals in the United States It's a matter of scale, not of will of the individual. > because something is worse than something else or not doesn’t mean we should keep doing it But maybe we should have priorities, so if something is not impacting the ecosystem in a meaningful way, the time used to fight it it's wasted and could be better spent on something vastly more dangerous.
    - ornornor 6y ago
      > it doesn't change much (it is nothing actually, but I don't want to sound insensitive) Of course, I also don’t eat meat eggs or milk, don’t wear leather, and haven’t for over 15 years now. But it didn’t happen all at once, and if I just thought that moving snails out of the way wouldn’t make any difference anyway I probably would have given up there and then. But instead I did a little bit more every once in a while until I’m at the point where I am. So yes cats kill billions of animals a day for example but that’s only if you let your cat out. Every vet we spoke to said that it’s better to keep cats indoors because they live longer lives, don’t get diseases, don’t get maimed, don’t fight, don’t get hot by cars or even caught and tortured by humans (that’s a thing), don’t get obese from eating at home and at the neighbor’s and as long as you make sure they have toys and windows to look through they don’t mind. My cat has killed maybe four mice in the 8 years I have her, tops. It’s unfortunate that cats must eat meat to survive but the canned food is pretty much the only meat we buy which is a fraction of what most people consume. That cat was abandoned and we took her in. In conclusion, yes, focusing on the wrong thing is diminishing your impact. But I’d bet that for most people it’s not choosing between high impact and lower impact actions, but rather between nothing at all and anything at all. In that case I still believe anything at all is better than nothing at all. And doing anything at all might raise your awareness to do more and more on top of it.