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Are you missing the fundamental fact that animals are sentient creatures with feelings, etc? Do you only refrain from harming other humans because of the potent

by ss108 4y ago

Are you missing the fundamental fact that animals are sentient creatures with feelings, etc? Do you only refrain from harming other humans because of the potential social and legal consequences attendant thereto? Otherwise, I'm not sure what the "logical" reason for not harming them are either. TBH, your post comes across as rather a bit...robotic, to put it generously. In any event, I have a paper being forthcoming in the Columbia Journal of Environmental Law in a couple weeks on animal rights under Jewish and Islamic Law as compared to American law. Too bad it's not published yet, or I could plug myself here lol

alchemister 4y ago
>Are you missing the fundamental fact that animals are sentient creatures with feelings, etc? Do you only refrain from harming other humans because of the potential social and legal consequences attendant thereto? I'm asking for factual reasoning, not emotional justification. There's a major difference between what I believe is correct and what is objectively logical, or beneficial to humanity.
- ceras 4y ago
  Caring about anything is inherently emotional. Take human suffering. There's no logical reason to care about it. You can't take someone with sociopathic tendencies and logic them into caring about humans - it simply doesn't make sense. Either that empathetic circuitry exists in someone's brain or it doesn't, which manifests as emotions when it does exist. I think you're starting from a flawed premise that logic is a motivating force. Logic is a slave to the passions, not the other way around. Logic is a tool we use to manage our emotional state more effectively by helping us choose actions that we believe are more likely yield net positive emotional states. Logic just computes results; it has no innate motivation of any kind, it takes motivations and emotions as inputs. Take this for example: > beneficial to humanity. You're implying a preference for humanity, which has some emotional foundation. Maybe you care about humans as a whole for some abstract emotional reason; or maybe it's purely self-interest since you're a human (so what benefits humans hopefully benefits you, even if you don't care about other humans) which is also an emotional reason. There's no objective, inarguable truth that you should care about humanity. The root of your confusion on animal rights stems here. Ultimately, animal rights is about taking the empathy that most humans innately have to at least a limited extent, and expanding that to apply to more entities. If you experience no empathy in general in life, it makes no sense. If you experience some empathy, it makes some sense. If you experience a lot of empathy, it makes a lot of sense.
- GPerson 4y ago
  Perhaps you could explain why animals being sentient creatures only counts as emotional justification? It’s a profound fact that human beings evolved from non-human animals. It would be very strange to me if none of them are sentient. I believe killing humans is wrong precisely because they are sentient. Therefore killing animals is also wrong.
- ss108 4y ago
  > objectively logical, or beneficial to humanity. Well those are two separate things. Anyways, the gist of the "logical" argument (which is a myopic way of looking at things to say the least) goes something along the lines of "at least x subset of animals has cognitive and emotional capacity analogous to mentally handicapped humans and/or human children, and thus should be given rights coextensive with such humans". Obviously, there's more meat to it than that, but that's basically what it is. There's no "logic" to it either way, really; opponents of that argument counter with arguments that often boil down to "no the children and mentally handicapped should get more rights because they are humans". This is largely about value judgments and morality, not "logic". A lot of political, philosophical, and legal things require reference to subjective factors and assumptions, and, unsurprisingly, a lot of people on Hacker News discount that realm of these conversations. I think it's a matter of competence; I've noticed when I talk to some engineers about these sorts of assumptions, they get confused and would rather discount that realm as inferior to "logic" than grapple with the stuff or learn how to become conversant in it (some engineers certainly already are). Obviously, there are lots of issues where a an almost purely pragmatic, logical approach may be more than sufficient, but even drawing that kind of line involves making a kind of value judgment.
qiskit 4y ago
> Are you missing the fundamental fact that animals are sentient creatures with feelings, etc? So if a cat kills a bird, what should we do to the cat? A bear kills a deer. What should we do to the bear? > Do you only refrain from harming other humans because of the potential social and legal consequences attendant thereto? It's why social and legal consequences exist. If humans weren't harming each other, we wouldn't have such social customs and laws. Drunk driving laws exist because people were drinking and driving and harming others. The customs and laws are a reaction to reality. > TBH, your post comes across as rather a bit...robotic, to put it generously. Would it be better if he were uncontrollably emotional?
- necovek 4y ago
  Well, like most "solutions" in the civilized world, laws simply come in to prevent the worst outcome. Which is that humans would revenge any harm done to their peers. This would lead to disproportionallity and constant "turf wars". Because of this human nature, we introduce laws to let you know in advance what the rules are, and establish an entire system of people determining the fairness of it all. So while I am saying that laws are a simple formalization of the general retaliation, risk of retaliation is an inherent incentive for humans not to harm another (laws or no laws). Compassion and development of empathy are another matter, and evolutionary, they help in getting more people (and animals) on your side, though having animals on your side is not as important as it may have been a few millenia ago. Empathy towards other beings is an extrapolation of civilisational developments. Basically, showing empathy towards animals signals you would be empathetic to people too, which makes you a more desireable peer today. So, stretching it, it's logical you'd want that for participation in the society. Another logical explanation is that without developing empathy for animals, majority of the people would not care for the disruption to the ecosystem (since many people are emotional more than rational). But while there is a logical component to empathy, it's not all logical, just like most of the feelings are. We don't discount love or happiness on rationality grounds either.
  - ss108 4y ago
    "Basically, showing empathy towards animals signals you would be empathetic to people too, which makes you a more desireable peer today." Pointing this out not against you (because I know this is rhetorical on your part), but to highlight the issue for those who scoff at using anything other than "logic" to decide things: There's also no logical reason why empathy to humans is desirable. People might say "but what about an orderly society" or something, but then you can always keep asking the basic question of why x is desirable. If you follow it down the chain, it will always come down to subjective normative judgments. "Logically", human society need not exist. Logically, the earth is harmed by humans. Logically, the earth doesn't matter either. Logically, neither the happiness or safety of any individual human nor of human societies as a whole matter. Logically, maybe only math exists, but if nothing else existed, would math even really be said to exist? Is there any "logical" argument for that math and logic matter even though they are logical?

by ss108 4y ago

alchemister 4y ago

>Are you missing the fundamental fact that animals are sentient creatures with feelings, etc? Do you only refrain from harming other humans because of the potential social and legal consequences attendant thereto? I'm asking for factual reasoning, not emotional justification. There's a major difference between what I believe is correct and what is objectively logical, or beneficial to humanity.

ceras 4y ago
Caring about anything is inherently emotional. Take human suffering. There's no logical reason to care about it. You can't take someone with sociopathic tendencies and logic them into caring about humans - it simply doesn't make sense. Either that empathetic circuitry exists in someone's brain or it doesn't, which manifests as emotions when it does exist. I think you're starting from a flawed premise that logic is a motivating force. Logic is a slave to the passions, not the other way around. Logic is a tool we use to manage our emotional state more effectively by helping us choose actions that we believe are more likely yield net positive emotional states. Logic just computes results; it has no innate motivation of any kind, it takes motivations and emotions as inputs. Take this for example: > beneficial to humanity. You're implying a preference for humanity, which has some emotional foundation. Maybe you care about humans as a whole for some abstract emotional reason; or maybe it's purely self-interest since you're a human (so what benefits humans hopefully benefits you, even if you don't care about other humans) which is also an emotional reason. There's no objective, inarguable truth that you should care about humanity. The root of your confusion on animal rights stems here. Ultimately, animal rights is about taking the empathy that most humans innately have to at least a limited extent, and expanding that to apply to more entities. If you experience no empathy in general in life, it makes no sense. If you experience some empathy, it makes some sense. If you experience a lot of empathy, it makes a lot of sense.
GPerson 4y ago
Perhaps you could explain why animals being sentient creatures only counts as emotional justification? It’s a profound fact that human beings evolved from non-human animals. It would be very strange to me if none of them are sentient. I believe killing humans is wrong precisely because they are sentient. Therefore killing animals is also wrong.
ss108 4y ago
> objectively logical, or beneficial to humanity. Well those are two separate things. Anyways, the gist of the "logical" argument (which is a myopic way of looking at things to say the least) goes something along the lines of "at least x subset of animals has cognitive and emotional capacity analogous to mentally handicapped humans and/or human children, and thus should be given rights coextensive with such humans". Obviously, there's more meat to it than that, but that's basically what it is. There's no "logic" to it either way, really; opponents of that argument counter with arguments that often boil down to "no the children and mentally handicapped should get more rights because they are humans". This is largely about value judgments and morality, not "logic". A lot of political, philosophical, and legal things require reference to subjective factors and assumptions, and, unsurprisingly, a lot of people on Hacker News discount that realm of these conversations. I think it's a matter of competence; I've noticed when I talk to some engineers about these sorts of assumptions, they get confused and would rather discount that realm as inferior to "logic" than grapple with the stuff or learn how to become conversant in it (some engineers certainly already are). Obviously, there are lots of issues where a an almost purely pragmatic, logical approach may be more than sufficient, but even drawing that kind of line involves making a kind of value judgment.

qiskit 4y ago

> Are you missing the fundamental fact that animals are sentient creatures with feelings, etc? So if a cat kills a bird, what should we do to the cat? A bear kills a deer. What should we do to the bear? > Do you only refrain from harming other humans because of the potential social and legal consequences attendant thereto? It's why social and legal consequences exist. If humans weren't harming each other, we wouldn't have such social customs and laws. Drunk driving laws exist because people were drinking and driving and harming others. The customs and laws are a reaction to reality. > TBH, your post comes across as rather a bit...robotic, to put it generously. Would it be better if he were uncontrollably emotional?

necovek 4y ago
Well, like most "solutions" in the civilized world, laws simply come in to prevent the worst outcome. Which is that humans would revenge any harm done to their peers. This would lead to disproportionallity and constant "turf wars". Because of this human nature, we introduce laws to let you know in advance what the rules are, and establish an entire system of people determining the fairness of it all. So while I am saying that laws are a simple formalization of the general retaliation, risk of retaliation is an inherent incentive for humans not to harm another (laws or no laws). Compassion and development of empathy are another matter, and evolutionary, they help in getting more people (and animals) on your side, though having animals on your side is not as important as it may have been a few millenia ago. Empathy towards other beings is an extrapolation of civilisational developments. Basically, showing empathy towards animals signals you would be empathetic to people too, which makes you a more desireable peer today. So, stretching it, it's logical you'd want that for participation in the society. Another logical explanation is that without developing empathy for animals, majority of the people would not care for the disruption to the ecosystem (since many people are emotional more than rational). But while there is a logical component to empathy, it's not all logical, just like most of the feelings are. We don't discount love or happiness on rationality grounds either.
- ss108 4y ago
  "Basically, showing empathy towards animals signals you would be empathetic to people too, which makes you a more desireable peer today." Pointing this out not against you (because I know this is rhetorical on your part), but to highlight the issue for those who scoff at using anything other than "logic" to decide things: There's also no logical reason why empathy to humans is desirable. People might say "but what about an orderly society" or something, but then you can always keep asking the basic question of why x is desirable. If you follow it down the chain, it will always come down to subjective normative judgments. "Logically", human society need not exist. Logically, the earth is harmed by humans. Logically, the earth doesn't matter either. Logically, neither the happiness or safety of any individual human nor of human societies as a whole matter. Logically, maybe only math exists, but if nothing else existed, would math even really be said to exist? Is there any "logical" argument for that math and logic matter even though they are logical?