4 ms·

- I personally find this idea of "the closer your `intelligence` is to man the more rights you get" hard to understand. If a chimp has "some human rights" then

- I personally find this idea of "the closer your `intelligence` is to man the more rights you get" hard to understand. If a chimp has "some human rights" then why not a dog, or a cow can get "some" too. - Also, I find this whole thing distracting, if you have any energy to put into "rights", there are billions of humans in need of help for very basic things (including rights). Am I overlooking something?

skj 12y ago
Dogs do have more rights than other animals. If you take a dog to the zoo and feed it to a lion, you're going to have a problem. If you take a mouse to the zoo, and feed it to a snake, no problem. Cows have no rights because they're tasty and boring.
- longlivegnu 12y ago
  I don't understand this either. What objectively makes an animal any less animal. I mean a mouse feels the pain of being eaten and so does a dog.
  - skj 12y ago
    Given that at the end of the process they're both dead, the amount of pain felt ends up being irrelevant. What matters is the amount of empathy we feel with the creature. With dogs, we often think of them as our friends and companions. With mice, we often think of them as vermin and a problem. Though, I'm sure if you took George's mouse Milo and fed it to a snake George would be extremely upset.
    - repsilat 12y ago
      > Given that at the end of the process they're both dead, the amount of pain felt ends up being irrelevant. That's pretty far outside the mainstream -- lots of jurisdictions have laws about the humane slaughter of animals. For obvious reasons, people tend not to restrict their moral consideration of pain to those beings that will never die.
      - skj 12y ago
        > That's pretty far outside the mainstream -- lots of jurisdictions have laws about the humane slaughter of animals. The vast majority of people don't care at all. But the people who do care care a lot, and make a lot of racket. > For obvious reasons, people tend not to restrict their moral consideration of pain to those beings that will never die. I honestly have no idea what you could possibly be talking about. Can you rephrase? Specifically, since the set of "those beings that will never die" has size zero, the sentence seems like a truism.
        repsilat 12y ago
        >> Given that at the end of the process they're both dead, the amount of pain felt ends up being irrelevant. If I understand this correctly, you were saying that the animals' deaths essentially render their suffering irrelevant. It seems to logically follow that if everything is dead "at the end of the process" then there's no suffering that we need ever care about. I don't honestly think you hold that position, but it's at least consistent with your earlier post, so it'd be nice to know where your logic breaks from mine.
- daniel-cussen 12y ago
  I see this attitude in vegetarians too. Vegetarians who make exceptions for fish should be more accurately be called ugly-atarians if they answer "no" to the question, "Would you eat a sea-horse?"
  - tinkerrr 12y ago
    I think you mean pescatarians and not vegetarians. By definition, vegetarians don't eat fish.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  I'm not sure you're right about this. You're not allowed to be cruel to animals, which I think would apply equally well to a dog and a cow. Likewise there's no prohibition against killing animals per se, it is OK for you to shoot your dog if you do it in a humane fashion. At least in the US, our animal laws seem to be derived from property rights, which is natural enough given the existence of livestock. Your example of the mouse fed to a snake is a good one; I find that very ethically troubling. It's also different depending on whether it's being done in a scientific context (for study of snakes as predators) or in a domestic one. On the whole I'm against it, but shouldn't I thus also be against the use of feeder fish or insects to lizards and so on? I find it increasingly hard to draw a bright-line distinction. One day a couple of years ago I found one of my cats had trapped a dragonfly, more of curiosity than malice (so the cat didn't mind when I moved his paw out of the way). The dragonfly was a bit stunned and one of its eyes was bashed inward like a piece of plastic, so I thought it was a goner. But I picked up to take a look because I'd never seen such a large specimen before. Now, dragonflies are interesting, as a photographer friend of mine who specialize din insects explained many years ago. They are the lions of the insect world, ie large and predatory, and cannibalistic. They live for up to 2-3 years as flightless nymphs, hunting in both water and on land, and for about 6 months as adults. They are somewhat territorial, and there are also far more males than females so mating is highly competitive (for the males) and usually involuntary (for the females). By the end of the summer it's very common to see dragonflies going around with missing limbs, damaged eyes, and so on. I learned about them in England, where you see ones that are 2 or 3 inches long, but here in Northern California where I live now it's common to see ones that measure 4-5 inches - which bring me back to the one my cat caught. I picked the thing up and it sat on my hand, and fortunately I had a camera with me so I got a bunch of photographs. I assumed it was just going to die, but to my surprise, after a few minutes of just sitting there, it perked up, checked itself over with its front legs, stretched itself out in a few different directions, and took off. Then it spent a minute or two flying around badly - remember on its eyes had been bent quite out of shape. Again, I assumed it was going to wobble along until it hit something or got grabbed by a bird, but it kept hovering and then darting over short distances with increasingly good control, until eventually it seemed satisfied and zipped off with confidence. It hung around the garden for a few minutes longer (I presume to feed on some tiny insects) and if I hadn't had it in my hand I wouldn't have known it had suffered any damage. Now I certainly don't think dragonflies are sentient or even intelligent - I think of most insects as being a bundle of hardwired reflexes. But watching the thing 'repair' its flight model was startling, and while it's not evidence of intelligence it suggests some sort of rudimentary self-concept. The very long lifespan of some dragonfly species presumably confers some sort of evolutionary advantage, so it seems reasonable to imagine they have some learning ability - fruit flies can be taught to navigate a maze [1] and dragonflies are known to have a capacity for selective attention [2], and insect brains are surprisngly complex [3] so I don't think I'm anthropomorphizing when I suggest the possibility that they have some sort of pre-conscious but nonetheless subjective life experience. 1. http://www.dnalc.org/view/1720-Training-Flies.html http://www.dnalc.org/view/1720-Training-Flies.html 2. http://ac.els-cdn.com/S0960982212013929/1-s2.0-S0960982212013929-main.pdf?_tid=92d74b10-8ad8-11e4-ab44-00000aab0f6b&acdnat=1419362530_7be08d8998f711e4a66105dff03b2fa0 http://ac.els-cdn.com/S0960982212013929/1-s2.0-S096098221201... 3. http://bioteaching.com/insect-brains-and-animal-intelligence/ http://bioteaching.com/insect-brains-and-animal-intelligence... BTW here's a picture if you're curious: https://plus.google.com/117583585506971591172/posts/8J7ZLgKkGkp https://plus.google.com/117583585506971591172/posts/8J7ZLgKk...
longlivegnu 12y ago
Maybe not everyone has the same motivation. Just like you might care more about football than I do, but I make up for it in passion about programming?
hawleyal 12y ago
Does the fact that some humans are suffering negate the need to help animals that are suffering?
thenmar 12y ago
I agree with your first point. Personally, I draw the line at the ability to suffer. It is well understood that dogs, pigs, cats, cows, orangutans, lambs, and many other animals feel pain the same way we humans do. Just like humans, I think they have a right not to be forced to suffer unnecessarily, by nature of being capable of it. For that reason I don't eat meat, nor do I go to zoos. As for the second, I think that's an unfair and paralyzing comment but I don't think you mean it in bad faith. We all have different capacities to help alleviate suffering in different ways, with different impacts. The fact that there are "bigger" injustices does not mean that small ones should be ignored, especially when they are within your community and you have the ability to fix them yourself. Or - if you're interested in stepping a little outside mainstream opinions - what makes animal suffering any less important than human suffering? Are we really special in some way that other animals aren't?

skj 12y ago

Dogs do have more rights than other animals. If you take a dog to the zoo and feed it to a lion, you're going to have a problem. If you take a mouse to the zoo, and feed it to a snake, no problem. Cows have no rights because they're tasty and boring.

longlivegnu 12y ago
I don't understand this either. What objectively makes an animal any less animal. I mean a mouse feels the pain of being eaten and so does a dog.
- skj 12y ago
  Given that at the end of the process they're both dead, the amount of pain felt ends up being irrelevant. What matters is the amount of empathy we feel with the creature. With dogs, we often think of them as our friends and companions. With mice, we often think of them as vermin and a problem. Though, I'm sure if you took George's mouse Milo and fed it to a snake George would be extremely upset.
  - repsilat 12y ago
    > Given that at the end of the process they're both dead, the amount of pain felt ends up being irrelevant. That's pretty far outside the mainstream -- lots of jurisdictions have laws about the humane slaughter of animals. For obvious reasons, people tend not to restrict their moral consideration of pain to those beings that will never die.
    - skj 12y ago
      > That's pretty far outside the mainstream -- lots of jurisdictions have laws about the humane slaughter of animals. The vast majority of people don't care at all. But the people who do care care a lot, and make a lot of racket. > For obvious reasons, people tend not to restrict their moral consideration of pain to those beings that will never die. I honestly have no idea what you could possibly be talking about. Can you rephrase? Specifically, since the set of "those beings that will never die" has size zero, the sentence seems like a truism.
      - repsilat 12y ago
        >> Given that at the end of the process they're both dead, the amount of pain felt ends up being irrelevant. If I understand this correctly, you were saying that the animals' deaths essentially render their suffering irrelevant. It seems to logically follow that if everything is dead "at the end of the process" then there's no suffering that we need ever care about. I don't honestly think you hold that position, but it's at least consistent with your earlier post, so it'd be nice to know where your logic breaks from mine.
daniel-cussen 12y ago
I see this attitude in vegetarians too. Vegetarians who make exceptions for fish should be more accurately be called ugly-atarians if they answer "no" to the question, "Would you eat a sea-horse?"
- tinkerrr 12y ago
  I think you mean pescatarians and not vegetarians. By definition, vegetarians don't eat fish.
anigbrowl 12y ago
I'm not sure you're right about this. You're not allowed to be cruel to animals, which I think would apply equally well to a dog and a cow. Likewise there's no prohibition against killing animals per se, it is OK for you to shoot your dog if you do it in a humane fashion. At least in the US, our animal laws seem to be derived from property rights, which is natural enough given the existence of livestock. Your example of the mouse fed to a snake is a good one; I find that very ethically troubling. It's also different depending on whether it's being done in a scientific context (for study of snakes as predators) or in a domestic one. On the whole I'm against it, but shouldn't I thus also be against the use of feeder fish or insects to lizards and so on? I find it increasingly hard to draw a bright-line distinction. One day a couple of years ago I found one of my cats had trapped a dragonfly, more of curiosity than malice (so the cat didn't mind when I moved his paw out of the way). The dragonfly was a bit stunned and one of its eyes was bashed inward like a piece of plastic, so I thought it was a goner. But I picked up to take a look because I'd never seen such a large specimen before. Now, dragonflies are interesting, as a photographer friend of mine who specialize din insects explained many years ago. They are the lions of the insect world, ie large and predatory, and cannibalistic. They live for up to 2-3 years as flightless nymphs, hunting in both water and on land, and for about 6 months as adults. They are somewhat territorial, and there are also far more males than females so mating is highly competitive (for the males) and usually involuntary (for the females). By the end of the summer it's very common to see dragonflies going around with missing limbs, damaged eyes, and so on. I learned about them in England, where you see ones that are 2 or 3 inches long, but here in Northern California where I live now it's common to see ones that measure 4-5 inches - which bring me back to the one my cat caught. I picked the thing up and it sat on my hand, and fortunately I had a camera with me so I got a bunch of photographs. I assumed it was just going to die, but to my surprise, after a few minutes of just sitting there, it perked up, checked itself over with its front legs, stretched itself out in a few different directions, and took off. Then it spent a minute or two flying around badly - remember on its eyes had been bent quite out of shape. Again, I assumed it was going to wobble along until it hit something or got grabbed by a bird, but it kept hovering and then darting over short distances with increasingly good control, until eventually it seemed satisfied and zipped off with confidence. It hung around the garden for a few minutes longer (I presume to feed on some tiny insects) and if I hadn't had it in my hand I wouldn't have known it had suffered any damage. Now I certainly don't think dragonflies are sentient or even intelligent - I think of most insects as being a bundle of hardwired reflexes. But watching the thing 'repair' its flight model was startling, and while it's not evidence of intelligence it suggests some sort of rudimentary self-concept. The very long lifespan of some dragonfly species presumably confers some sort of evolutionary advantage, so it seems reasonable to imagine they have some learning ability - fruit flies can be taught to navigate a maze [1] and dragonflies are known to have a capacity for selective attention [2], and insect brains are surprisngly complex [3] so I don't think I'm anthropomorphizing when I suggest the possibility that they have some sort of pre-conscious but nonetheless subjective life experience. 1. http://www.dnalc.org/view/1720-Training-Flies.html http://www.dnalc.org/view/1720-Training-Flies.html 2. http://ac.els-cdn.com/S0960982212013929/1-s2.0-S0960982212013929-main.pdf?_tid=92d74b10-8ad8-11e4-ab44-00000aab0f6b&acdnat=1419362530_7be08d8998f711e4a66105dff03b2fa0 http://ac.els-cdn.com/S0960982212013929/1-s2.0-S096098221201... 3. http://bioteaching.com/insect-brains-and-animal-intelligence/ http://bioteaching.com/insect-brains-and-animal-intelligence... BTW here's a picture if you're curious: https://plus.google.com/117583585506971591172/posts/8J7ZLgKkGkp https://plus.google.com/117583585506971591172/posts/8J7ZLgKk...

longlivegnu 12y ago

Maybe not everyone has the same motivation. Just like you might care more about football than I do, but I make up for it in passion about programming?

hawleyal 12y ago

Does the fact that some humans are suffering negate the need to help animals that are suffering?

thenmar 12y ago

I agree with your first point. Personally, I draw the line at the ability to suffer. It is well understood that dogs, pigs, cats, cows, orangutans, lambs, and many other animals feel pain the same way we humans do. Just like humans, I think they have a right not to be forced to suffer unnecessarily, by nature of being capable of it. For that reason I don't eat meat, nor do I go to zoos. As for the second, I think that's an unfair and paralyzing comment but I don't think you mean it in bad faith. We all have different capacities to help alleviate suffering in different ways, with different impacts. The fact that there are "bigger" injustices does not mean that small ones should be ignored, especially when they are within your community and you have the ability to fix them yourself. Or - if you're interested in stepping a little outside mainstream opinions - what makes animal suffering any less important than human suffering? Are we really special in some way that other animals aren't?