I like the idea of such a market-based solution, I really do. At the same time, if I come upon a man torturing a dog, I would feel entirely justified in stopping him, using whatever force was necessary. Frankly, I consider a man that would torture a dog to be worth rather less than the dog, which if treated well would desire naught but to love his master. I rather think most people would agree with me.
Input is a completely generic term. Its meaning varies with the context. In a physical system, input could simply mean one object colliding with another. In an electric circuit, input could mean current from a power source. In a human neurophysiological sense, inputs in neurons are understood as influx of cations(or sometimes anions) which eventually give rise to action potentials(or alternatively are inhibited from AP), because of changes in the membrane potential, which then travels along the length of the neuron and eventually results in the release of neurotransmitter into the synaptic cleft. What I described to you was an oversimplified version of the events for my ease. Nerves communicate in this way. Using this knowledge, scientists have determined vast neural circuits and have been able to conduct experiments demonstrated that certain types of mental activity correlate with increased neural activity in certain areas of the brain.
Nowadays we can mimic neural transmission well enough that prosthetics can operate from neural input from the brain.
There is something special and unique about biology. It seeks to explain how organisms operate using knowledge generated by empirical testing. Seeing that humans are organisms, we, and therefore our brains, should be explainable. I admit there are things well beyond our capacity. Your reasoning is lacking though. If our consciousness is the result of a series of different processes, then according to scientific logic only things created in a similar way, with similar intent, and with similar processes will result in something that resembles a human mind. A rock does not fit these criteria and therefore does not display anything resembling human consciousness. I can safely say no rock has intelligence and I wouldn’t have to spend my entire life looking at every rock to make sure that’s true. Science’s strength relies in its predictability. What defines a rock is how it was created. If a rock was created in the exact same way a brain was created, then it would not be a rock because it wouldn’t share any of the characteristics you would associate with a rock. It would be known as a brain.
Does it make any sense that arranging molecules in a certain way creates something as immaterial as consciousness? If we recreated all brain communication using computer software, would that program be conscious? If not, why not? What if we recreated all brain communication using a giant and complex system of rolling marbles? Would that be conscious? Or would it just be a huge system of pipes and rolling marbles? If it’s not conscious, why not?
I just killed a bird…for fun… So it better not have rights.[:D]
For me, it would depend on a couple of factors. Is the dog the man’s property, or is the dog the property of another person or a feral dog? Is the man on his private property or on a public right of way?
If the dog belongs to the man and they are on his own private property, as much as I would be repulsed by the man’s actions, I would be the aggressor if I intervened. My first aggression would be trespassing on the man’s property. My second aggression would be interfering with the man’s private property <i.e. the dog.> I would most certainly tell the man off and tell him what a piece of s*** scumbag he is and if possible I would videotape his actions so the rest of the community would also know the same and shun him. However, in a libertarian society that would be the permissible extent of my actions.
If the dog does NOT belong to the man and if the man was located on a public right of way, then it WOULD be permissible for me to intervene if safely possible to end the abuse, although I could not take any action beyond what was required to allow the animal to escape. HOWEVER, even though it would be POSSIBLE to intervene in this situation, it still may not be PRUDENT, in which case I would take the actions described in the first scenario.
In the alternative scenarios where 1. Dog is property of man/public right of way 2. Dog is not property of man/private property: I would respond as in the first scenario above.
Would I like to intervene in the other situations? Yes, of course. However, in a libertarian society such intervention would constitute aggression on my part.
Some of you have asked about the nature of consciousness and whether or not we can be sure that a given animal–or plant–has it. To paraphrase E. F. Schumacher, we could say that we can be sure that animals have consciousness if only because we know that we can knock them unconscious. You cannot knock your mother’s rose bush unconscious. A house cat knocked unconscious is not altogether different than that rose bush, as both are possessed of physical materials and life, but neither (at least at the moment) are conscious. They might both serve as peculiar forms of decoration–at least until the cat regains consciousness.
Another way to recognize consciousness is to see if you can get the given entity’s attention one way or another.
I highly recommend Schumacher’s book A Guide for the Perplexed, and you can find some interesting material regarding “ontological discontinuities” in Chapter 2 and the first several paragraphs in Chapter 3.
Here’s a PDF: http://www.mediafire.com/?221cugxlgbz
You can make ants go “unconscious” by freezing them, and you can make computers and toy-robots go “unconscious” by leaving them idle. None of that implies self-awareness.
I liked the Penn and Teller Bullshit! episode on PETA which I think explained this nicely. With rights come responsibilites. If animals in our society today were given rights we would have a bug problem. Animals would be arrested for attacking, murdering etc other animals and humans. They would be arrested for not paying taxes and we would have to have animal courts and animal prisons. Animals are property; period. I love animals, I have 2 cats actually. Just because I dont think they have rights doesn’t mean I abuse them. Rights and responsibilites are essential. If animals have rights, then no more meat for us humans to eat because killing animals would be illegal. Animals who attack other animals would have to be put in trial for violations against rights as well. Personaly I think animal rights is an obsured and rediculios concept. I think PETA and animal rights advocates are bored, misguided activists who just need to protest something. Besides most PETA/enviromentalist/animal rights people I see are pretty well off, rich white people who have too much time on their hands and can never form a coherant argument.
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Absolutely. When animals can truly be held responsible for their actions, then they can have rights. Conversely, ownership of animals by humans gives humans rights over them and responsibilities for them. Mistreating an animal you own could be considered irresponsible (depending upon the result of the mistreatment), while mistreating an animal that belongs to someone else is just a violation of the other person’s property.
There’s just no need to go to the extreme nonsense that PETA advocates.
And especially not the stuff they actually do, like slaughter animals by the thousands.
I completely agree with animal rights, now it’s time to go out and round up every last preditory animal and try them in court.
My cat’s on the phone to a defence attorney right this minute. [;)]
-Jon
Every statement can be expressed as a negative. Some statements are provable. Therefore, some negatives can be proven. The logical fallacy is not when one attempts to prove a negative, but rather, when one uses negative proof (i.e. “X is true because there is no proof that X is false,” or, “X is false because there is no proof that X is true.”) A lack of proof is not proof. I can, however, prove that my hair is not red, my car is not green and one plus one does not equal five. Even the example you give could easily be expressed as, “Can you prove dogs are land bound?” The fact that neither a dog’s ability nor inability to fly can be proven has nothing to do with a logical inability to prove a negative, but rather with a lack of evidence.
That’s a rather large assumption. Again, there is a lack of evidence one way or another regarding animals’ abilities to keep our social contracts. A human does not need a contract to expect his rights to remain unviolated - and indeed, a hermit may shun all contact with others. Still, no one else has the right to agress upon him or his property. Further, logically speaking, it is as absurd to assume non-rationality as it is to assume rationality. There is simply no evidence either way.
It is by morality that we assert our rights. Non-agression is nothing if not a moral code.
A tangential point: Deductive matters are provable. Inductive matters are subject to falsification at any time.
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.
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What I do know, though, is that half-mile lines of ***-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.
Two days ago I sprayed some nests of yellowjackets with poison, killing about 30 of them. They died horrible, agonizing deaths I am sure…curled up on the ground with their bodies twisted in weird shapes and crawling around trying vainly to escape.
Just the other day I did the same to a bunch of carpenter ants in an old stump in the yard. As I ripped bark off the stump and sprayed poison everywhere I watched in horror as they grabbed the larvae and tried to run. There were dozens of ants carrying their squirming young gently in their mandibles, hoping for some kind of escape. But I was mercilous, and they all died terribly…twitching for minutes afterwards.
The problem with most people is that they only care about the cute animals…the chickens, the cows. How can you be against poultry farms but also have no qualms about using horrible poisons to kill helpless bugs?
Someone said that they might physically try to stop a person abusing a dog. Would you physically restrain a young boy who was walking around kicking up anthills? Or putting out poison traps to kill squirrels?
You can’t have it both ways. If you are for animal rights then it’s for everything, not just the cute and fuzzy ones.
'Twas I that said I’d stop the person kicking the dog. A dog is far more similar to ourselves than an ant, thus, it is rather more reasonable to think that it may have some true consciousness of suffering. However, we need not use such a subjective measure:
In the case of the poisoning of insects, I can only assume you were doing so because these creatures had become pests. They were damaging you or your property. I never said you should lay down and die if a cougar decides you’re dinner. I will not hesitate to kill a mosquito.
The boy kicking anthills is another matter, more likely to produce incovenience to the ants than actual injury. In any case, the strength of my reaction will vary based on the strength of my conviction that the being involved can, indeed, experience suffering. I am not sure ants can. I am pretty darn sure dogs can. I still might say something to the boy.
I never said you should lay down and die if a cougar decides you’re dinner. I will not hesitate to kill a mosquito.
I agree, but you did comment on the level of suffering allowable when performing the act. I didn’t just kill those animals…I tortured them. I didn’t just squash them with a hammer…I subjected them to nasty horrible deaths. I didn’t just kill the cougar that wanted to eat me…I cut all it’s limbs off first. What’s the difference? Is a cougar cuter than a yellowjacket? Or an ant? Can the cougar feel more pain than an ant? Prove that.
In any case, the strength of my reaction will vary based on the strength of my conviction that the being involved can, indeed, experience suffering. I am not sure ants can. I am pretty darn sure dogs can.
This is your personal BELIEF, not proved by any logic or scientific data. You cannot base the laws and morals of a society just on the “strength of my conviction”. Why do you believe that dogs can experience suffering more than ants? Because Disney has made more talking dog movies than bug movies?
I’m not just being fascicious here…we all have a cultural bias. I once watched a documentary on animal cruelty, and there was a segment which showed cat farmers who were preparing a cage of cats for shipment to market. Yes, there are several countries where people eat cat. They were treating these cats as a farmer would treat any other livestock. As I sat there with my two cats on my lap, I could barely watch. I would not have had the same reaction if there were pigs in that cage. Or chickens.
Once you start creating subjective grey lines you enter a world of trouble. So cougars are more like us than ants, so cougars have rights. What about dolphins? Jellyfish? Rats? You enter into a never-ending loop of rationalization, and that is no way to run a society.
Hacking off the limbs of a cougar is not the most efficient method you have available for doing away with it. Spraying ants with poison is more efficient and effective than attempting to smash them individually with a hammer. In other words, hacking the limbs off a living cougar is cruel, because it is imposing unnecessary suffering. If the only way to be sure you’ve stopped the ants for a reasonable investment of your time (you are hardly obligated to make mercy your primary motivation in selecting methods to rid yourself of aggressors).
Pigs are at least as smart as dogs, and I tend to avoid eating them, though this is not a hard-and-fast rule with me. If people are killing and eating cats (you’re a cat person, that explains it!) that is okay. Using animals for food, any sort of animals, is one of our biological needs as omnivores.
Again, if you read back a bit, I’m backing off the whole “rights” bit. I think that most of the arguments people have presented against animal rights, which are often good, apply just as well to humans. Well, what of it? We can’t go around acting with cruel aggression towards our fellow man, now, can we? This discussion has done two things:
- Confirmed my suspicion that many libertarians (along with many others, make no mistake, and the libertarians are at least closer to intellectual correctness) are snarky little brats that like to think that their rights to act unmolested by other men somehow means that they have no moral obligation to act with compassion or have any consideration for those but the ones, in their callous and flawed reasoning, they have determined have “rights”. Note that I do not address you specifically with this characterization.
- Made me question even more (though I had already been shaky on it) the idea of rights, at least in the Lockean sense, as a firm philosophical basis for libertarianism and our conduct towards our fellow men (forgive me for the antiquated use of the masculine, any ladies who might be present).
Anyway, it is your personal BELIEF that animals have no rights, and this obligates you to stand by and watch as the most terrible abuses are visited upon a non-human animal, unless that animal be your own “property”. I started this thread speaking about rights, but really, I should have named it Animal Ownership, and I may start up another thread to do just that. I feel that this dissection of the language of “rights” has diluted my major points.
I agree that the concept of “rights” is icky. If your “snarky” comment was directed towards me, I certainly haven’t tried to come across like that!
If animals were essientially robots (non-self-aware) you would have no problem doing anything to them, correct?
No, certainly not you, Ego. More like the “I’d eat a bonobo” guy. I wasn’t really offended, but he was clearly trying to offend.
To your question, no, despite a robot’s ability to move, it is completely deterministic and has no subjective experience. It is the same as a rock, in terms of morality. So, if someone could somehow show that animals were essentially robots, I would have no problem doing anything to them, philosophically speaking.