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Rats free each other from cages (2011)

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Re: Rats free each other from cages (2011)

#81

Post by justratsinacoat »

>Did we ask the animals too? Maybe the pig consensus is different

Most mammals react to painful stimuli (which we can provide a baseline for by testing it on other humans, whom you luckily consider to be reliable enough) with aversion and fear. We 'ask' this question of many animals quite frequently, and have throughout history. The answers are reliable and consistent.

>If most people agree they do not want to pay taxes, do taxes become evil? There is no objective reason to consider 'most people agree on x' as some kind of objective moral imperative. There is no moral quality to caring what people want. I don't think this is a very sound basis for an objective morality

starts to construct argument

sees sophistry in re 'suffering' downthread

Equivocating physical and emotional and social 'suffering'? Nope!

As to your edit, your perspective on other people's perspective is familiar and disturbing. I think you should reexamine your eagerness to throw around the word 'objective', your penchant for jumping to conclusions regarding your interlocutors, and your self-described thresholds for othering members of your social circle. Or, because you're right and you know it, ignore the entirety of this post.

Re: Rats free each other from cages (2011)

#82

Post by Pxtl »

6stringmerc wrote: post #34
grecy wrote: post #9

I feel certain that in the near future we will discover animals are a lot smarter and more emotionally developed than we currently realize, and future generations will look back on our treatment of them with disgust.

...and then we'll all take a look at the animal kingdom and see that Chimps and Dolphins and all sorts of species treat each other - and other species - with innate brutality, and realize this planet is simply one giant cage match.

We have the technology and wealth to be more ethical than callous nature, we just choose not to be.

Re: Rats free each other from cages (2011)

#83

Post by projektir »

grecy wrote: post #9

I feel certain that in the near future we will discover animals are a lot smarter and more emotionally developed than we currently realize, and future generations will look back on our treatment of them with disgust.

I don't see why animals need to be smart or emotionally developed for our treatment of them to evoke disgust.

Re: Rats free each other from cages (2011)

#84

Post by [deleted] »

senand wrote: post #54
Amezarak wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have, and it's not really a big deal. Humans and many other great apes are opportunistic carnivores. The idea that we should have moral compunctions about biological reality seems absurd to me, and I have yet heard any argument than "suffering is evil; animals experience suffering; killing animals necessitates their suffering; therefore eating animals is evil." I don't deny the second proposition, I deny the first,…

So if suffering isn't ethically inacceptable, then torture of human beings is also OK for you? To me it seems that what you're saying essentially means that you just don't have any morality at all.

[deleted]

Re: Rats free each other from cages (2011)

#85

Post by senand »

Amezarak wrote: post #60
senand wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if suffering isn't ethically inacceptable, then torture of human beings is also OK for you? To me it seems that what you're saying essentially means that you just don't have any morality at all.

I take the view that morality is herd instinct in the individual, and that it is more productive to look at it as a sociological phenomenon instead of resurrecting platonic idealism. Whatever the herd deems good is Good, whatever the herd deems evil is Evil. There is no objective morality written on stone tablets that we can consult to determine that torture is Evil or that killing animals is wrong. That's why we hav…

You gave an interesting explanation of what morality is and where it originates (in your opinion). However, that's besides the point.

Even if morality was just herd instinct, what you were saying previously is that suffering for you is not immoral. And even though, many intelligent people saw absolutely nothing wrong with torture, what about you, right now?

What I'm getting at is that your original statement which basically said "suffering is OK" (you didn't indicate any restrictions or conditions) is just bullshit.

Re: Rats free each other from cages (2011)

#86

Post by projektir »

Amezarak wrote: post #74
projektir wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do we, in practice? Can you go into more detail? Treating diseases, reducing violence, caring about the rights of the disenfranchised, sitting here on HN talking about how we treat animals. > There is no objective reason to consider 'most people agree on x' as some kind of objective moral imperative. I didn't say "most people agree" to imply that something is "objectively" true because most people agree with it. I…

> Treating diseases, reducing violence, caring about the rights of the disenfranchised, sitting here on HN talking about how we treat animals. Diseases are not regarded as a moral problem; violence considering morally acceptable in pursuit of the right socially-approved causes, the 'rights of the disenfranchised' have nothing to do with the intersection of morality and biological reality, and the same for HN. > I did…

Diseases are very much a moral problem relative to biology. We're keeping the "weak" a live, prolonging life, disturbing the natural order of things. In our society, we consider it pretty immoral to leave someone to die of a curable disease, and we work to cure more. Clearly we're more interested in keeping those around alive and happy than having them die so the next generation will become "stronger". That's very contrary to evolution's preference for everyone just being disposable fodder to make better and better organisms.

If violence needs the right socially-approved causes, that is further evidence that we really don't like it at the end of the day.

Rights of the disenfranchised has nothing to do with it? It's related the same way diseases are - the disenfranchised should be mistreated and thrown out according to evolution. We seem to continually decide otherwise.

Discussions on HN relate to what people are considering and thinking. In a properly naturalistic society, nobody would ever worry about the feelings of animals, we would think this entire discussion is silly.

> It isn't tautologically true at all. Anyone can look around and see plenty of people that want to suffer.

Your examples and arguments here are so shallow I'm skeptical that you're actually arguing in good faith.

Surely there's a difference between someone undergoing a painful medical treatment that they believe will help them in the long run vs someone being tortured for another's enjoyment? And for the case of one undergoing painful medical treatment, is it really _wanting_ to suffer if they'd much rather have a non-painful version of the same treatment? Or is it more that they weren't really given a choice?

Re: Rats free each other from cages (2011)

#87

Post by harshreality »

andai wrote: post #39
y4mi wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hah, as if the abuse would stop with that acknowledgement. its beyond unlikely that we, as the human race, become vegetarian. as such, we'll never stop abusing other animals beside us. on that note: i'm not a vegetarian either, nor am i planning to become one.

I'm curious, could you kill an animal and cut it up? Do you realize you pay people to do this every time you buy meat? Are you cool with that?

Our primate cousins tend to eat a lot of insects. We (except for those with belief systems like Jainism) have no innate moral compunction about killing insects, yet people in western societies rarely eat them, preferring to eat stuff that we do have moral compunctions about killing. For some reason, the western high-tech solution to this is to focus on developing lab-grown mammal meat (and then no doubt seafood and fowl). Is there any chance this vat-grown meat will be cheaper or more sustainable than raising mealworms and crickets?

Re: Rats free each other from cages (2011)

#88

Post by thevardanian »

6stringmerc wrote: post #34
grecy wrote: post #9

I feel certain that in the near future we will discover animals are a lot smarter and more emotionally developed than we currently realize, and future generations will look back on our treatment of them with disgust.

...and then we'll all take a look at the animal kingdom and see that Chimps and Dolphins and all sorts of species treat each other - and other species - with innate brutality, and realize this planet is simply one giant cage match.

..and then we'll take a look at each other and realize that perhaps we humans have choice to act humanely, or to act no differently and start a cage fight on a global scale. The latter is true today anyways.

The point isn't how they treat each other necessarily, but how we treat them in light of the knowledge of their "individual" characteristics, not unlike human beings. So we humans then extend the gift of life to other species.

Those animals treat each other as a matter of survival, is it necessary for us to do the same?

Re: Rats free each other from cages (2011)

#89

Post by nilved »

Pxtl wrote: post #82
6stringmerc wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and then we'll all take a look at the animal kingdom and see that Chimps and Dolphins and all sorts of species treat each other - and other species - with innate brutality, and realize this planet is simply one giant cage match.

We have the technology and wealth to be more ethical than callous nature, we just choose not to be.

Who is to say that callousness is more or less ethical?

Re: Rats free each other from cages (2011)

#90

Post by maroonblazer »

goldenkey wrote: post #79
Amezarak wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why? We seem to have plenty of moral compunctions about lots of other biological realities. Do we, in practice? Can you go into more detail? > Most people agree that they do not want to suffer. That's what makes it evil. It's not a difficult concept. Did we ask the animals too? Maybe the pig consensus is different. If most people agree they do not want to pay taxes, do taxes become evil? There is no objective reaso…

Its pretty moronic to assume that a feeling every animal with a nervous system avoids, is somehow not proven to be a deplorable state to put sentient life into. You can play coy semantics but its quite apparent that even primitive mammals avoid pain. You can go ahead and spout off arguments about us being biological primal carnivores but that isn't very persuasive considering that the defining aspect of intellect has…

I agree with everything you've written except, I think, this last sentence:

>Death is not the enemy of moral virtue but cruel and unusual life surely is.

Are you saying that it's ok to kill animals for food as long as they are not made to suffer in the process?

If so, I'd argue that depriving them of subjective experience - which is what death entails - is also morally wrong.

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