No ? Wow. What an amazing remark. You mean dogs are not human and vice-versa ? They belong to different species ? I think I’ve learnt something today…
And yes, the ‘amoralists’ have solutions for moral problems…just like witch doctors know how to run a chip foundry.
When some eschews animals rights, but embraces human rights purely on axiomatic grounds, then that is speciesism. Sure, some argue that rationality guarantees rights, but this is laughable. There’s nothing intrinsic in rationality that promotes “rights.” From a utilitarian perspective, rights are determined by the ability to feel pain, physical or psychic. From an amoralist point of view, rights do not exist or are a function of power. From a Kantian view, rights are arbitrarily drawn according to rationality. What is it about rationality that implies rights?
the amoralist has no concern about the topic at hand. therefore he has a solution: to do something else.
I can use the same technique and just ignore the nonsense you spew.
Not according to Wolfgang Kohler…
So finding commonality between the pain of another species and the abstraction of one’s own pain is not empathy?
Alright, then.
You really had to reach for that Godwin’s law, didn’t you?
What is your metric for pain? Why is pain a valid foundation for “morality” (why isn’t this just claim as ‘arbitrary’ as rationality)? Some people have conditions that prevent their brain from interpreting pain correctly, are they not granted rights? etc., etc.
I assume you’re referring to Bentham’s form of Utilitarianism, because Mill made exceptions to deriving the “right actions” through pain/pleasure. I recognize that there have been more recent establishments of Utilitarian ethics, but they predominantly derive from the aforementioned philosophers. For one, you’re perverting Utilitarianism in your description of it. Utilitarianism is built on a pain/pleasure dichotomy and the right action is determined by how much pain/pleasure it evokes (pleasure being positive, pain being negative). You’ve merely stated that pain is what determines “rightness” in which case you rule out all actions that cause pain, which is in essence any action which stimulates the nervous system.
Evaluating this scenario with utilitarian ethics would require you to account for all parties: If the pleasure the man felt by mutilating the dog was greater than the pain the dog felt, It would be morally permissible for the man to mutilate the dog. You’ve done no such thing and instead asserted that because the man caused pain to someone else, his action is impermissable.
Anyways, utilitarianism is logically bankrupt, a priori. The only way of deriving a “right” or “virtuous” action is through evaluating actions by utilitarian calculus. However, evaluation is, itself, an action, so it requires evaluation too, which requires evaluation, which requires evaluation, etc., etc. ad infinitum. Utilitarians only solve this by assuming it is correct to act in evaluating actions, but this is not a valid assumption to make within their moral philosophy.
Well, according to me, and according to the scientific method, it is.
Did I say that? No.
Why not? It was a relevent analogy.
You are correct, my description of utilitarianism was overly simplified to the point of possible butchering. I figured that since I was on an intellectual forum, people would get the gist of it. Your description of Utilitarianism is correct.
(All parties considered would also include any bystanders who may or may not derive pleasure or pain for witnessing the action.)
Why is it wrong to assume outcomes and therefore determine morality? If I opposed a minimum wage increases on utilitarian grounds because of its high probability of causing undesired unemployment, then I have act before evaluating an actual effect. I have used logic to determine action in the desire of reducing pain and maximizing pleasure.
Rationality is a far more ephemeral standard than the tangibility of pain. Furthermore, pain (and pleasure) causes rationality, since pain must exist before knowledge of pain may exist before rational avoidance of pain must exist.
I don’t advocate quantification of pain since it would be impossible, but logical assumptions are in order.
Animals can’t follow natural rights of humans. They are not rational enough, and the natural rights of humans are “of” humans, “of” the individual naturally. Natural rights are not “for” any creature and animals are not acting these natural rights “of” themselves. If there are animals rights that humans can recognize, then these rights would be “for” animals and not naturally “of” the animal. Animals can’t recognize a humans right of life, liberty, and property in any reasonable way.
Considering Kohler was one of the first pioneers in animal psychology, it’s funny you say this.
Um… Yes.
Well if you avoid the obvious reply that the Nazis directly involved in extermination of Jews, Romani, and so many others were a perfect example of a group lacking empathy, then I suppose you could call it an analogy.
Let’s back up. Permitting natural law exists which appears objectively so, if God does not exist, then morality cannot exist. The “is” of natural law doesn’t imply an “ought” to follow it. People may form contractual relationships to form law, but this cannot be called morality, because there is no existence of an ought. This is called amorality. If this is the case, then proceed with animal torture. Even if god exists, this is still a possibility.
Let’s now assume god exists and morality exists, then god must give clues as to what is and is not moral. In order to DO what one ought to do, he must KNOW what he ought to do. This clue could be pleasure and pain. If the clue were rationality, then morality could only arise with rationality which had to been a feature evolved into. The evolution of rationality would have been the RESULT of pleasure and pain perception as action leads to stimuli leads to knowledge leads to the ability to reason. So, pleasure and pain begat rationality. So rationality was begat of utilitarian inputs and not the other way around. Therefore reason demonstrates right and wrong from the perspective of pain and pleasure. So a rationally moral person should resist the causing of pain. Which is utilitarian.
A noble, courageous person may endure pain thus may cause knowing pain to themselves as such a person doesn’t back down while feeling pain.
Edit: Also you are talking about pleasure/pain - the sense of touch, but what about being cognizant of a situation without needing the touch of pleasure or pain to inform you of such a situation? What about smell or even sight to be able to understand and judge an event? Why are you stating you or a person needs to touch an object to understand what to do? But yet to even understand and judge, thus, to know pleasure/pain in a human is to point out intellect.
If Köhler believed that because it is concievable for instinctual creatures to not adapt well within a naturally selective environment, creatures must be sentient, and such a supposition was ‘verifiably’ true by its own virtue, he would be wrong. I highly doubt this to be the case. In fact, to my understanding (limited), he studied monkeys and the effects environments had on the actions they made, and made various psychological findings through close testing and observation.
Well it’s not my fault if you make no categorical distinction between a value and a process by which values are understood/expressed. The value of “animal kindness” is not the same thing as the process of understanding and evaluating things outside the ego: empathy.
Empathy is not ‘valuative’, it is a process by which values are constructed and considered. So no, I didn’t. You’ve just refused to understand this quote or understand what it was in reference to (a categorical distinction between value and process).
You’ve missed the analogy.
You said:
"In all actuality, I think emathy [sic] (read “kindness towards animals”) is indeed a necessary - though not the only necessary - requirement for human beings; at least for human beings that I think most people want to see continue living. "
I said:
“So, given this, I suppose Anti-semitism was necessary requirement for human beings in Nazi Germany?”
You’ve postulated a value that people ought follow, and supported this by claiming that they ought to follow it if they want to continue living. While my analogy was hyperbolic, it was not invalid.
If you’d like me to spell it out for you, here:
""In all actuality, I think anti-semitism is indeed a necessary - though not the only necessary - requirement for human beings; at least for human beings that I think most people want to see continue living. “”
There was no indication of this in the article. All it said is that the dog was found some time after it was mutilated.
This isn’t my critique. I understand that utilitarianism relies entirely upon the assumption of future consequences and that the rightness of actions are determined by these assumptions through utilitarian calculus. They are “evaluated”. Utilitarian evaluation is an action, so it too must be evaluated, but making that evaluation entails an evaluative action, so that too must be evaluated. My critique is, utilitarians must make the arbitrary assumption that utilitarian evaluation is a permissable act without reguard to the central thrust of utilitarianism (that is, actions are deemed right or wrong by their consequences through utilitarian calculus), because if they accept that the act of evaluation must be evaluated, they are left in an infinite regress.
There’s no evidence of this. Sensory information is handled by a different part of the cerebral cortex than memory, communication, and decision making and people who have no sensory perception of pain/temperature are not often retarded (in the conventional sense).
Right or wrong for what purpose? It seems utilitarianism evaluates right and wrong by looking at net pleasure. “If net pleasure to myself is positive, the action is OK.” How does the adherent of utilitarianism know if maximizing personal happiness is a good thing? Seems self-evident enough. But really why would we call this utilitarianism? Why not just being logical?
Oh, OK.
[8-)]
Really now? Now I see two options for you. You’ll either play semantics or you’ll move onto the easier argument to make, which is that I am simply being too harsh on people to suggest justification for violence for the use of violence against animals.
No, I got the analogy, it was just careless and made no sense.
How can you simply switch the word empathy for anti-semitism? One is a fundamental part of cognition necessary to live in society and the other is a philosophy of scape goating. Empathy is about caring for others and being able to feel their pain and anti-semitism is an idea that Jews are less than human.
Empathy and anti-semitism are on a polar opposite. Like I said, you were just reaching to fulfill Godwin’s law. You got too excited and pulled the Nazi card out as soon as you thought of it.
And I suppose you think that demonstrates your claim was a valid proof, no? Or are you backtracking and trying to supply scientific evidence (in the form of a news article) as hypotheses are not self-verifying.
Did you even bother to read that link? Seriously?
Looks like I don’t have two options anymore.
Because you weren’t using empathy that way. All through your statement you were equivocating it with animal charity. You were ascribing a postive value to others, claiming that if they didn’t follow it, they should, in your eyes, expect to be killed. Precisely what the Third Reich did.
No, because empathy is not valuative. It is a cognitive process by which someone “puts themselves in another’s shoes”, and derive a value within that abstraction. You hinted at this earlier in this post, and quickly went back to equivocating.
Maximizing pleasure.
This is not how it works. It is a global ethic, not a ‘subjective’ one.
It’s not about personal happiness though. Bentham argued for, for lack of a better term, ‘neurological pleasure’. He was only interested in ‘carnal’ stimulation.
Mill constructed a more qualitative analysis of pleasure which allowed for more high end or ‘spiritual’ pleasures. But classic utilitarian calculus, for the most part, is at odds with subjective choice and doesn’t permit a very free way in which individuals pursue individual pleasures. It seems to me to be democracy’s ethical equivalent.
Well you weren’t really describing classical utilitarianism. I would say that you more described a variant of egoism.
The news article points out that the evidence is increasingly supporting the idea that some animals other than human beings do indeed possess sentience.
As far as a valid proof, proof is virtually impossible, but reasonable people tend to classify something as proven when the evidence is mostly supportive of one side or the other.
No, you resorted to semantics as the wikipedia article does - though outside of that it seems mostly correct. Most people define empathy as being synonymous with empathic concern and compassion. I’m using the term as defined by most people - people that don’t seem to have a vested interest in defining it otherwise, people like you.
So using that term like a normal person, animals do possess empathy.
Yes I was. All throughout my statement I was “equivocating” empathy with… well… empathy as defined by almost everyone other than you and the author that added that bit into the wikipedia article - an article that, again, isn’t bad other than that bit.
Again, the use of the Nazi card here just does not fit. You used it incorrectly. I was ascribing empathy as being a necessary part of human nature that most people should have and that those who do not are people that almost everyone else does not care to see live. This is almost exactly what I said. No mention of them expecting to be killed, just that those who possess no compassion are typically not those who most people would mourn for.
Again you insist on saying equivocation when empathy is the ability to see the side of others - to feel their pain and emotions. It has nothing to do with valuative or not valuative.
Honestly, I don’t know why you continue to defend people that beat and torture animals and then call me the Nazi… Though I think I know another person who might do the same in a debate if the subject were brought up… It just makes you wonder who else is really on the internet.
i’m not sure what you’re talking about with regards to a courageous person.
That’s incorrect. I specified that I am referring to physical pleasure and pain and also psychic pleasure and pain.