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I appreciate the fact that you're trying to be the voice of reason, but I disagree completely with what you're saying. For starters, it's very common for crimi

by bambax 4y ago

I appreciate the fact that you're trying to be the voice of reason, but I disagree completely with what you're saying. For starters, it's very common for criminals to have a different "opinion" about their crimes than the victims. Society doesn't just stop fighting crime because a consensus is hard to find with the perpetrators. Secondly, in the case of that specific "research", the reason why they're using monkeys and not, say, fruit flies, is because they are studying "empathy" and they feel, rightly, that there is a lot of similarity between empathy and feelings in monkeys as in humans. It's that sameness that they're after, but because those beings are called "monkeys" then it's suddenly ok to torture them. The sole purpose of the idea that we're of a different essence from the non-humans, is to relieve us of any moral burden and responsibility. In concentration camps and in many psychiatric hospitals, inmates weren't considered humans, and therefore one could do anything to them. (This is still the case in many prisons today.) How we treat non-humans, we eventually, always, treat humans.

civilized 4y ago
> For starters, it's very common for criminals to have a different "opinion" about their crimes than the victims. Society doesn't just stop fighting crime because a consensus is hard to find with the perpetrators. There's a bit of begging the question going on here. My whole point is that we shouldn't take all of our moral intuitions and call those who violate them criminals. And the question of which "crimes" have "victims" is sometimes ambiguous, e.g. with abortion and medical experimentation. Some of our moral intuitions should be enforced. Others shouldn't. We have a responsibility to think about which is which. It doesn't mean there has to be universal agreement. But there does have to be some pragmatism, otherwise we just fight forever because we can't agree on everything and no progress gets made - or worse, the world is consumed with violence, one of the main outcomes we were trying to avoid. > How we treat non-humans, we eventually, always, treat humans. This is simply not true. People who work in animal medical testing don't turn into worse people than the rest of us.

by bambax 4y ago

civilized 4y ago

> For starters, it's very common for criminals to have a different "opinion" about their crimes than the victims. Society doesn't just stop fighting crime because a consensus is hard to find with the perpetrators. There's a bit of begging the question going on here. My whole point is that we shouldn't take all of our moral intuitions and call those who violate them criminals. And the question of which "crimes" have "victims" is sometimes ambiguous, e.g. with abortion and medical experimentation. Some of our moral intuitions should be enforced. Others shouldn't. We have a responsibility to think about which is which. It doesn't mean there has to be universal agreement. But there does have to be some pragmatism, otherwise we just fight forever because we can't agree on everything and no progress gets made - or worse, the world is consumed with violence, one of the main outcomes we were trying to avoid. > How we treat non-humans, we eventually, always, treat humans. This is simply not true. People who work in animal medical testing don't turn into worse people than the rest of us.