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Reading 'Animals Like Us' by Mark Rowlands made me realize that it is utterly reasonable to abstain from harming animals. There is a string of logic, starting f
by Luc 12y ago
Reading 'Animals Like Us' by Mark Rowlands made me realize that it is utterly reasonable to abstain from harming animals. There is a string of logic, starting from very basic principles of ethics, that makes it the rational thing to do (if you accept the basic principles).
It's a sort of ethical math. Most people don't do the math because it's not obvious that some thought is needed, instead going with their gut feeling.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1859843867/ http://www.amazon.com/dp/1859843867/
- MrDosu 12y agoYou are not going to get a vaccination against HIV for example without animal experimentation at the current state of science. My parents work in the field and I have worked at a few labs where they do animal experimentation. It's not as bad as the press makes it out to be. People don't work around animals their entire lives without caring about them.
- Luc 12y agoRowlands does a good job of dealing with these two arguments in his book. Like I said, I think it takes careful thinking, and a book is a good conduit for that.
- philwelch 12y agoSorry, but starting from reasonable-sounding principles of ethics and following their logical consequences is how I became an anarcho-capitalist in my early 20's. Ethics can't be reduced to math.
- Luc 12y agoI don't think caring for the well being of animals is that far out of the mainstream of ethical thinking. Besides, it's my own take on the book, and perhaps Mark Rowlands wouldn't even recognise it from my description. Perhaps I didn't do it justice.
- philwelch 12y ago> I don't think caring for the well being of animals is that far out of the mainstream of ethical thinking. You can care for the well being of animals without completely ruling out animal experimentation. For instance, you could say, "the well being of animals is important, but less important than saving human lives".
- Luc 12y agoIf only we took that as a measure ('is this so important that it can save human lives'), we'd stop the vast majority of testing on animals. So that would be an easy win. But the lowest hanging fruit is killing animals for meat. Mainly for the joy of having a nice taste in their mouth people who don't really need it eat vast quantities of clever, sentient animals who lead miserable, short lives. The trade off seems easy to me.
- philwelch 12y agoMy point was more that logically deriving your moral beliefs from reasonable-sounding principles isn't a very reliable method of ethics because you end up at very strange consequences, and if you maintain them because of the logical validity of your chain of reasoning, you quickly become a crackpot: example, anarcho-capitalists, or people who really like Ayn Rand. I wasn't really looking for an argument about animal rights, though if you really want to get into it, my foundational moral principles are that morality is fundamentally reciprocal in nature, and since animals are incapable of reciprocation, morality doesn't apply to them; a dog isn't immoral for biting a toddler to death (though it may very well be poorly trained), nor am I immoral for eating a delicious double bacon cheeseburger; regardless of the "cleverness" or "sentience" of the cattle and pigs I'm eating, they are fundamentally incapable of morality and so there is no moral significance to anything they experience.
- Luc 12y agoI got your point about the logic sequence, and I meant to convey that while that is something that I found appealing in the book, it is not by far the only foundation for its conclusions. As for your second paragraph, I don't think it stands up to scrutiny.