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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

#421

Post by mping »

obedm wrote: post #371
koonsolo wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“What happens when you tune your instrument too tightly?” the Buddha asked. “The strings break,” the musician replied. “And what happens when you string it too loosely?” “When it’s too loose, no sound comes out,” the musician answered. “The string that produces a tuneful sound is not too tight and not too loose.” “That,” said the Buddha, “is how to practice: not too tight and not too loose.”

Gorgeous. I'm a strong atheist but Buddhism has always been the religion I've respected the most. At least the philosophical aspect of it. I used to struggle with this too. To this day I use a box to pick up spiders or mosquitoes and take then outside instead of killing them. But I wouldn't doubt killing termites to save my plants. We kill everyday. When we walk, or drive the car. We're powerful giants. But we can be…

This is correct; the "no kill" rule is something you aim for, it doesn't mean you necessarily achieve it. In Mahayana Buddhism there's a story about the Buddha's prior lives, where he decided to kill someone out of compassion: the victim wanted to murder a lot of people, but the future-Buddha killed him to avoid his suffering [1]. Likewise, the Buddhist precepts are training rules, not necessarily commandments that will take you to hell if you break them.

[1] http://venyifa.blogspot.com/2008/09/story-of-compassionate-s...

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

#422

Post by emptysongglass »

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #383
emptysongglass wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Can you see the mites, though? The monks had a kind of sieve to filter out small animals from drinking water. There is a famous story when some of them developed extrasensory perception and realized the water they had been drinking contains millions of tiny beings invisible to the naked eye. They went to the Buddha and asked what they should do. The Buddha answered, if you cannot see them, that is fine. I like this s…

On the rats, no.

Thank you for this story. I wasn't able to find it myself. Do you have a link?

I did find the story of Thera Cakkhupala, a blind monk who was observed treading on insects [1] but because he was blind and could not see them was blameless. Could this be the story you were thinking of?

[1] http://www.tipitaka.net/tipitaka/dhp/verseload.php?verse=001

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

#423

Post by jacquesm »

imgabe wrote: post #283
jallen_dot_dev wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't need to live in mud huts, I'm pretty sure houses can be vegan. Also it doesn't need to be all or nothing, we can simply reduce suffering. I don't understand the logic of "we can't eliminate suffering, so might as well maximize suffering by boiling animals to death."

If someone actually cared about reducing suffering, there are far more egregious sources of it in the world that could be addressed. Worrying about lobsters suffering in boiling water for 2 seconds before they die is the plastic straw ban of reducing suffering. If you don't want to boil lobsters, then don't boil lobsters. Just don't kid yourself into thinking that introducing a ban on it is some kind of great victory…

This is a fallacy of thinking that many people suffer from: because you are taking care of one bad thing doesn't mean you are immediately responsible for taking all bad things, conversely, that you are not able to take care of all bad things does not mean that you can ignore the one bad thing that you can take care of.

I'm surprised this is so persistent, it seems pretty obvious. If five houses are on fire and you decide to take care of one of them that's fine, even if one or two of the others are bigger and a couple are smaller. At least you're doing something rather than nothing.

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

#424

Post by blitzar »

1270018080 wrote: post #33
thablackbull wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Random thought: Give every child one as a pet so they get emotionally attached and over time, society will grow to associate these creatures as man's friend.

My grandma lived on a farm and loved playing with the cows. Once she was old enough to connect the dots on what happened to them, and later saw the butchering process, she became vegetarian for life. The layer of separation 99% of the population has between the dark evils of the mass livestock industry and eating meat is an issue.

My grandma lived on a farm and loved playing with the cows. Once she was old enough to connect the dots on what happened to them, and later saw the butchering process.

To the day she died, she would thank the amimal (cow) by name, for the cow skin rug on the floor and give thanks by name again to the cow whos steak we were eating that day.

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

#425

Post by bodge5000 »

zivkovicp wrote: post #414

There are already too many laws, it's unfortunate that the bureaucracy continues to grow with so little resistance.

I don't know, I'm not a huge fan of government overreach but banning the boiling alive of animals that can demonstrably feel the pain and distress of it purely because its either easier or it marginally improves the taste (truth be told I have no idea why we do it, I assume its one of those two) is something Im willing to let slide

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

#426

Post by blitzar »

LouisSayers wrote: post #273
phonypc wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nearly everyone has recent ancestors that lived on a farm and loved playing with the animals. Once they were old enough to connect the dots and later saw the butchering process, they remained omnivores for the rest of their lives.

Like my Gran tells us, when she was a girl her mother asked her if she'd like some chicken for dinner. "Oh yes" my gran said enthusiastically; she pointed out the window and said "which one"? "Then I went and wrung its neck".

Not unlike how a significant portion of the world would buy a chicken now.

"I would like a chicken", "dead or alive, feathers on or feathers off?".

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

#427

Post by wiz21c »

eterm wrote: post #397
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.

the issue is that killing lobster without boiling them is not clear cut either. The animal happens to have numerous brains all over its body, so when is it actually dead ?

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

#428

Post by stickfigure »

omnicognate wrote: post #335
jjcon wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lobsters have essentially the same number of neurons in their entire nervous system (including the “brian”) as a fruit fly does. Complex yes? Interestingly complex? Not even close. A cockroach has 10x more.

Not sure what you mean by "interestingly complex". To say we are nowhere near understanding the nervous systems of fruit flies would be a massive understatement. Even for C.Elegans, for which we know the complete connectome and much more besides (and which has a thousandth of the number of neurons a fruit fly does), we're not close to explaining (or simulating) the behaviour of the animal in terms of the properties o…

Are you suggesting I should feel bad about squishing fruit flies?

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

#430

Post by simiones »

jkepler wrote: post #362
shakna wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't really answer you clearly without knowing what definition of sentience you expect to be correct. Especially as I've already noted most people think of sentience as sapience, which it isn't. Trees respond to both negative and positive stimuli, and relay that information to other plants around them, exchanging information about them. They take both reactive and proactive stances in regards to both negative and…

Couldn't a robot be programmed to respond to stimuli, and to communicate with other robots? Would that then be a form of sentience?

Yes, they could be, though the question usually arises about whether a living thing is sentient, and it's fairly natural and easy to define life such that robots are not living beings.

Overall the point here is that sentience isn't a very useful measure of anything. If there were an explicit law recognizing the rights of all living things to a decent death, we would essentially be forced to become exclusive carnivores, as its almost impossible to euthanize a plant or fungus.

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