[1] No, as it is a logical falacy, you cannot prove a negative - can you prove dogs can’t fly? We live by our assumptions, we assume dogs cannot fly, but any amount of empirical evidence that backs this assumption will never prove it to be true.
[2] This was the point I was making when I spoke about Descartes, I cannot know what anyone else thinks, or even if they think at all. I have serious misgivings about you thinking. If you really want good answers to your questions, you should start reading as much as you can find about it. A message board will never come close to what some very intelligent people have aleady said.
[3] Introspection is not the definition of consciousness, but conscious is actually irrelavent
Animals cannot abide by our social contracts, most importantly the concept of private property. Therefor we must treat them like animals, and likewise they may treat us like animals in return, which of course they do. For us to be able to contract with them we would need to have a way of communicating with them. Until then we must treat them as non rational. I think communication is the main, possibly the only qualifier.
With humans we have a way to seek retribution if they violate our rights, through the legal system, so if an animal were to seek retribution I would say that he should be able to do so. Hence Rothbards comment that we will give animals rights when they petition for them.
And I think you can most certainly have rights without morality, if you start from a system based on private property, the individual being first soverign in the right to his own body and go from there.
You did not understand me. I am not promoting a moral ethic of utilitarianism. I am saying that whatever our relationship with animals may be, it cannot be said that they have rights. It would simply water down the definition of what a right is.
No, I cannot prove that dogs can’t fly. Nonetheless, I have observed dogs moving around a lot. Meanwhile, neither I nor anyone else has seen the mental processes behind a dog’s actions. Indeed, no one can observe the mind of another, at least in a way science currently accepts. Therefore, there is far less evidence to go on in trying to prove consciousness or introspection in any being, because these things have no objective presence, but only a subjective one.
The feeling is mutual.
While you have your misgivings, I consider myself a very intelligent person, and I don’t need other people telling me what to think. The number of people who think your opinions are spiffy does not in itself make your opinions have merit.
What social contracts? I never signed any “social contract”. Your “thinking” strays towards collectivism here.
So again, the severely retarded are SOL in your conception. As would be, say, Hellen Keller, if somebody hadn’t really put in a huge effort.
Why would I start from a system based on private property? Why is that the correct way? Since there need be no morals, why should I respect your private property? To keep us from conflict? Why is no conflict preferable to conflict. You MUST have a system of behavioral values, aka morals, in place before you can even start this conversation. All your shoulds are based on some notion of what is good and bad, right or wrong. You just like to shift definitions around to suit your convenience and justify your callousness towards other forms of life.
Not at all. Cats kill birds, at least in part, because they have an instinct to hunt, because in the wild they must hunt to survive. I do not fault any being what it does for survival’s sake. All life comes from death, that is the way of things.
Where do I want to go with this? I want people to acknowledge that animals are not property, at least not as inanimate objects can be property. People need to refrain from causing unnecessary suffering to other beings, even if they cannot expect such consideration in return. If an animal attacks you, kill it. Heck, even if an animal shows a special proclivity to attacking people, yet is attacking no one, kill it. If you need an animal’s flesh for food, kill it. However, do not abuse them, to not torment them. When you buy your eggs buy them free range, don’t buy freakin’ white veal or foie gras, don’t have dog fights or cock fights, etc. These things are monsterous, and all the property-rights rationalizations in the world don’t make them less so.
We don’t need to treat animals as if they’re human, but we shouldn’t treat them as property either. Sorry if it makes things difficult to introduce another type of being besides people and property, but there it is.
I’l say this: I don’t think animals have rights. I don’t think that it’s safe or useful to assume that everything is conscious until we prove otherwise.
That being said, I agree with your conclusion for the most part. Whether dogs are self-aware or a complex chain of chemical reactions, I could never bring myself to hurt one without it trying to attack someone. If I knew they didn’t have consciousness, I wouldn’t care at all (just like you and I wouldn’t care about stomping on a robotic dog).
How do you feel about farms, though? Or horses used for transportation? Should no one be allowed to fence animals in?
The human brain does not resemble a galaxy. Sure, they are both “complex” entities, but there are fundamental differences between the two things. The human brain and those of his ancestor’s have evovled over time to have consciousness. Humans possess the most complex and powerful of all the minds of all the animal kingdom. That is our evolutionary advantage. We were able to fight lions, bears and elephants etc using mainly our minds to overcome our physical limitations. Man’s rationality is a result of his evolution - a biological process.
Galaxies on the other hand are the result of physical processes. People would like to use the word evolution in describing the formation of galaxies. The evolution of the galaxy however gives an incorrect impression. Evolution as described in biology by the process of natural selection, is the result of natural tendencies of behaving organisms - similar to acting man. Why is it that biologists can study animal behaviour and understand it rationally? Does this not suggest that animals are capable of rational self-interest? Game theory is taught in evolutionary biology as well as economics. The formation of a galaxy is in no way approximate to a biological evolutionary force.
Even if we were to create a computer more complex than a human brain, you have to realize that there is a certain amount of evolutionary hard-coding in our brains. If we cannot determine what the coding is exactly then a realistic artificial mind, at least by our human standards, will be largely impossible. Eventually, in perhaps a 100 years or so, we may be able to achieve such a feat.
Jetblack, think about natural selection from a chemical standpoint.
Certain complex patterns of chemicals react with other and complex (and simple) patterns of chemicals in ways that lead to the formation of more of the original patterns of chemicals. It’s really nothing special! In fact, “autonomous” movement is really just a series of chemical reactions.
There is nothing about the human brain that should form consciousness. Why should the human brain have consciousness and not a star? And not a rock? And not a computer? And not a can of turpentine?
I don’t think that’s a good argument: if moths could speak, we certainly wouldn’t be able to understand them! I know that if a Chinese-speaker asked me to respect his rights, I wouldn’t understand that, either.
Keep in mind that I don’t believe animals have rights.
I don’t disagree with you completely. You are in fact correct in your analysis of biology as a series of complex chemical reactions. The message that I was trying to get across earlier was: To understand how an object/entity functions, it isimportant to know how it was created. The processes that resulted in the evolution of the human brain are most undoubtely different than those that created the rock. You listed computers which I find odd. I would have thought the concept of a computer would give more sway to my own argument. A computer is different than all the other objects you listed. Computers can perform computations far greater than the human mind can, but a computer can never think in the abstract. Our minds were not created in the same fashion but rather are the result of complex natural phenomena. Computers have been purposefully created to “think” to a lesser degree. A turpentine can was not designed to perform calculations and therefore does not, neither do stars or rocks. I should ask you, why is it that computers can calculate but not rocks? Does this not follow the same line of reasoning?
There is plenty in the human brain that gives rise to consciousness. I suggest you take a course in neurobiology for a more satisfactory explanation, but I can offer some evidence. For instance, there are parts of the brain that represent our entire visual field, our somatosensory inputs, our motor outputs, memory - both short and long term - the combination of all these elements and many, many more could quite easily give rise to the concept we call consciousness. Complexity theory in biology tells us that many inputs can result in outputs not predictable by analyzing the inputs alone.
I understand where youre coming from. I used that expression figuratavely, not literally. I meant that when animals have the power/mental ability to realize what rights are, and know when theres are being violated, then they deserve rights. Any human knows when theyre personal rights are being violated reguardless of nationality. Animals dont.
Well, the more I think about it, in the context of this conversation, the more I think that I may be making a mistake using an argument for rights here. In fact, I’ve never quite been sold on rights in a deontological, Lockean sense. Given my current leanings, I think a virtue-ethics argument would actually be more effective (and closer to my current train of thought), but I do not get the sense that virtue ethics are as well-represented within Austrian thought as deontological and consequentialist thought, and in any case my arguments for them are less developed.
As per farms, I don’t have a problem with them. Many animals could not survive outside of farming environments anyway. The relationship we have to our animals is truly unique in nature. Only ants approach it, and that at least shows us that it is not entirely unnatural. These issues are not set in stone for me. What I do know, though, is that half-mile lines of feces-covered layer hens with clipped beaks and feet grown around the bars of their cages is a truly hell-like level of horror, and a terrible crime against even the barest speck of awareness and emotion. That kinda sheiss needs to stop.
To put it as a virtue, we must behave with compassion.
Neurobiology contains no explanation of the quality and subjectivity of experience. Neurobiology has never established anything but correlations. The causative assumptions made by materialistic neuroscience are only necessitated by their materialistic assumptions going in. Classes in a subject can teach you no information not available outside those classes, and that information in a class will certainly be presented in a way most favorable to that professor’s and institution’s biases.
Welcome to the club! There are a few of us Aristotelian liberals here and I think the number is growing. I think the progressivist, modern left-liberal penchant for applying rights-language to every ethical issue is highly problematic: it has the effect of trivializing rights and impoverishing ethics. As moral agents we can have (non-legally-enforceable) moral obligations, demanded by virtue, to other animals without said animals themselves being moral agents and having rights. There are a number of threads in these forums listing books and essays (some online) in this burgeoning tradition of Aristotelian liberalism. A little searching ought to bring them up. Also, you can check out my website, as my dissertation and other work are in this subject.
Jetblack, what does “input” mean beyond the scope of a conscious being? It doesn’t anything. You could easily say that a polished stone has recieved the “input” of moving water. Or that a mountain has recieved the “input” of lightening. Or that a flag has recieved the “input” of wind. “Input” is simply a series of chemical reactions. Why don’t rocks, mountains and flags have any consciousness?
The mistake you are making is assuming that there is something special and unique about biology. Organisms are just complex bundles and patterns of chemicals that react, well, “chemically” with other chemicals – of course, that’s ignoring the human consciousness.
I will agree with you that majority of the commercial chicken industry behaves in a rather barbaric manner when it comes to their treatment of the chickens. While I absolutely deny animal rights in any way, shape or form, I cannot tolerate unnecessary suffering. Unfortunately, the poultry industry has been more resistant to pressure than the beef industry was. However, change IS coming to the poultry industry. Barbaric brood cages are slowly being abandoned in a small number of companies. Without the chickens crammed into these cages, it will no longer be necessary to engage in beak clipping and foot clipping.
The agent for the change in the poultry industry, as was the case earlier in the beef industry, is direct pressure brought against the END users <i.e. McDonalds, Burger King, etc.>. Under pressure from radical organizations, these companies in turn brought pressure on the beef slaughterhouses and forced them to modernize their facilities and submit to animal welfare audits. This has virtually ended cruelty in the beef industry . This same process is now occuring in the poultry industry and I think you will see massive changes in a few years.
The bottom line is that this change that has occured and that will occur, has not required so much as ONE piece of government regulation or involvement to bring about. It was all done using the force of consumer preference in the free market. Proof that the free market CAN and DOES bring about desired change.
Now don’t get me wrong. Neurobiology seeks to characterize, on a chemical/biological level, through anatomy and physiology, all biological systems involved in neural activity. That is its purpose - it generally tries to avoid “where does consciousness come from?” Although it can conduct experiments to show where consciousness doesn’t come from. It can also show that specific areas of the brain are devoted to specific functions. It actually offers lots of information about the subjectivity of experience - at least across differing species.
Without causative assumptions how does science work at all? Science is only possible because of predictability of outcomes. That events cause other events is a given. Otherwise how can anything be explained rationally? The human mind isn’t some mystical creation beyond the scope of rational science - it may be today but certainly not forever. The reason that “progress” has been slow in human neurobiology stems from largely ethical concerns. The gruesome nature of the science does not lend itself well to human studies.
Your concern about bias is an interesting one. Science strives to stay away from biases as strongly as it possibly can. My professor taught the class by examining experiment after experiment and discussing with the class the implications therein. The only sections not taught in this way were the anatomical lectures.
Rob, I feel silly now for not picking up on the sarcasm. Anyway, yes, his exposition of his thoughts on human nature (including the role of reason) takes place in Leviathan.
Indeed, events are causative in nature, but there are reasons to believe that the mind is the cause of activity in the brain, rather than the brain the cause of mental activity. Your statement that the human mind isn’t a mystical creation beyond the range of empiricism is justified only by the biases of the scientific establishment; namely, that science is the ultimate form of knowledge, and that all that is real must be encompassed by the methods it has available. If the mind were non-physical in nature, than that is indeed beyond the scope of science, but what that means is any scientific explanation for consciousness is incorrect.
Science is replete with biases. One professor comes up with a theory, then another bases their work on those theories, and so on and so forth, and the people who fund the research aren’t usually the ones to fund it, and they have their own biases which, if violated by new findings risk that funding. If a scientist concludes, after 20 years of research based on a certain model, that the model is untenable, that last 20 years, all the papers and accolades, are found to be based on error. Not only his or her research, indeed, but perhaps his professors’, and maybe even theirs as well.
A scientist who rocks the boat will face derision and resistance from his colleagues, for he threatens their work as well. In the specialized and detailed sciences of today, often the knowledge and experimentation is so specialized that only a few truly understand it, so outside support can be quite hard to find.
Probably the biggest and most ferocious of the viciously held biases in science today is the naturalism enabled by Darwin’s theory. Even before Darwin came along, scientists had just been begging for a way to cut teleology out of the picture of creation. Darwin, they thought, had finally killed God. Of course, back then people thought individual cells were baloons of structureless protoplasm, not the vastly complex structures we know them to be today. These days, in many universities, even Christian universities, a scientist who shows any sympathy towards the idea of design in nature can expect to be ridiculed, denied tenure, even let go. Meanwhile, to try to preserve their precious materialism despite the impossibility of our universe arising by chance “scientists” get so outlandish as to propose untestable models such as multiple or infinite universes.