411–420 of 704 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Octopi is not the correct plural. Octopi is not the most common plural, true. > Octopus is of greek origin, not latin. Octopus entered English from scientific Latin. In which the Greek plural was not used. (Lots of words in English fron languages other than their language of origin and have irregular English forms from their immediate source rather than their remote origin.) “Octopi” appears to be the earliest Engl…
Is the American pronunciation of “processes” (as in, rhymes with bees) also a hypercorrection?
Though, in either case, it has the danger of suggesting the plural form of the hypothetical word “processee” (from processor, and by analogy to pairs like lessor/lessee), so, “things that are processed”.
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?
A counter argument is that absolutely everything in nature at some point dies and it tends to be unpleasant. Dying of old age, surrounded by and cared for by loved ones is kind of really unusual for most things that live. Being mauled to death by some inconsiderate predator is much more common. Whether that's us or some other predator does not really matter all that much. The end result is the same.
Lobsters don't generally die of old age; they get nibbled on by predators as soon as they stop being able to defend themselves against that sort of thing (hence the claws). Same with most other things we eat. Most grazing cattle descends from animals that move around in herds that will have the weaker/older animals picked off by predators. Nature can be cruel and we're part of nature.
So, my admittedly simplistic reasoning is that if you eat meat and have some respect for what you are eating and how it lived and was killed, it's fine. The animal you are eating would have died no matter what at some point and probably not in a way that is appreciably better and potentially much worse. Additionally with most farm animals you can make the point that it would not even have existed if it wasn't for the fact that we were going to eat the animal. We've literally created species and subspecies of animals that are optimal for breeding and farming that would not stand much chance surviving in the wild. These species would likely go extinct if we'd stop breeding them. A consequence of us being less cruel by not eating certain animals might cause that entire species to stop existing. There's some food for thought.
So catching a lobster in the wild and then eating it is fine. But maybe give it a quick stab with a knife through the brain stem before you throw them in the boiling water. Also, keeping them in the fridge shuts down a lot of their brain activity. It's a decent thing to do. A quick death and a tasty meal. Nothing wrong with that.
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?
The essay "Consider the Lobster" by David Foster Wallace came to my mind. In that essay he describes how extraordinary the nervous system of a lobster is and how mindlessly and cruelly we boil them live. If David were still alive, he would definitely welcome this development. I really miss David. I am awestruck by his other essay "This is Water". I am amazed at his deep insights into human nature and how well he desc…
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.
What about crabs I wonder? IIUC coup de grace js fairly straightforward for a lobster but not so for a crab.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Human fetuses become sentient sometime between 8-30 weeks (depending on who you ask and how they define sentience).
> 30 weeks 30 weeks?? Obviously these people never experienced pregnancy. It's ridiculous that we argue about lobster intelligence when most people don't even know the basic facts about their own human biology. (Another common and ridiculous meme is the "pregnancy after having sex once" idea.)
It's the high end, so that's the threshold if you're using a particularly picky definition of 'sentience'. It seems like a defensible position to me, that if you stopped brain development around 30 weeks you wouldn't see much self-awareness.