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Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law

lse.ac.uk

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Re: Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law

#391

Post by kataklasm »

bikamonki wrote: post #267

Will there be a law prohibiting other predators, not humans, from hunting these animals?

That is absolutely not comparable and equates to FUD. In a healthy and normally operating ecosystem hierarchies of animals exist and make sure the ecosystem stays in balance. Yes, there are predators killing octopuses and crabs out there in the wild, but it's not to sell them in underwater restaurants and boutiques for a hefty markup to finance the underwater economy. Every animal that kills other animals, apart from humans, does so either for nutritional or recreational reasons. If it's the latter, it is never out of proportion. You don't see a wolf population completely eliminating a population of [animal in a lower hierarchy], they will reduce their population but never endanger the species themselves. What humans are doing is exactly that: we are killing such huge amounts of different species, tagt we are often enda

Re: Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law

#393

Post by alex_smart »

nemo44x wrote: post #156
Mikeb85 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, we know cattle, sheep, chickens and pigs are sentient yet we consume them. Why would we make an exception for octopods and shellfish?

1) Find animals (behaviors) some people eat (do) but most don’t. 2) Make an appeal to some emotion to politically limit their harvest (acceptability). 3) Expand this program to the next least popular animal (behavior), repeat, etc. 4) Congrats, you’ve changed public opinion on what animal to eat (behavior) is moral and ethical. This is the formula of progressivism.

> This is the formula of progressivism.

The process seems identical to majoritarianism.

Re: Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law

#395

Post by woolion »

emptysongglass wrote: post #307
tagrun wrote: post #288

Not trying to argue it's OK to subject animals to unnecessary pain (it shouldn't be!), but from a pure logical consistency standpoint, are there many non-sentient animals? Why is it OK to not recognize mosquitos, rats, termites, deers, ants, etc etc which meet painful demise by humans as sentient animals while making exceptions for a few?

According to the Buddha, one should not kill any sentient being, sentient being defined as made up of the five skandhas: matter, sensation, perception, mental formations and consciousness. I had a very easy time following this rule until my houseplants were attacked by spider mites and almost simultaneously my rats attacked by a different species of mites. How does one watch the beings (I don't apply "being" to the p…

You are trying to find an answer through logical means. This means you need to find a framework with a clearly defined set of axioms and clear reduction rules that bring you to the correct answer. The world does not work like this. All concepts that seem well-defined break when you look at them too close or too far.

Does the dog has the Buddha nature? The answer to that is neither 'yes' or 'no', because neither will lead you where you want.

Re: Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law

#396

Post by tim333 »

shakna wrote: post #337
tsimionescu wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the bar for sentience is actually so low I am quite sure bacteria and even individual cells in multi-cellular organisms pass it - almost every living cell detects aspects of and reacts to its environment.

It is indeed incredibly low. Slime molds [0] can pass it. There is a memory component, which would prevent single cells from passing it, but it's not a metric that is all that useful in determining the intelligence of a species. [0] http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.15891.43041

Even some single cells maybe https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-11677-w

Re: Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law

#397

Post by eterm »

rich_sasha wrote: post #392

What does this mean in practice? By this definition, surely normal farm animals are sentient, but they are eaten, experimented on and frightfully frequently abused, so... what’s the change?

One significant change is that the practice of boiling live lobsters is now illegal.

Re: Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law

#398

Post by tenderfault »

gorgoiler wrote: post #351
tenderfault wrote: post #305

so, the dispute with France over post-Brexit fishing rights didn't go too well then? innit?

Can you be more explicit? What you hint at sounds really interesting. I think you are suggesting that the Animal Welfare Bill has an intended side effect of tipping the balance of cross channel cooked shellfish trade in favour of the UK? Or I didn’t get the joke.

you didn't get the joke because you are living it. the real question is, what would monty python say?

** The Brit who longed for lobster, beholds with pain

The tempting clusters were too high to gain;

Grieved in his heart he forced a careless smile,

And cried, ‘They’re sharp and hardly worth my while.

**

Re: Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law

#399

Post by efitz »

grose wrote: post #275
twhb wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I don’t believe in “plural”. If there’s more than one of something I just say it: “I went to the aquarium and saw octopus octopus octopus. I’d tell you what I saw around the anthill outside, but I’m not sure you have the time.” :)

I know this is a joke, but this is an actual thing in linguistics called reduplication. For example, hito (人) in Japanese means person, and hitobito (人人) means people, more or less. Japanese isn't the best example since they don't have "real" plurals but I think it's a fascinating phenomenon.

Same in Thai. “Child” is “dek”, children is “dek dek”.
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