151–160 of 168 posts
> Last year, the team showed a group of parrots how to video call one another, finding that the birds both overwhelmingly enjoyed the activity and could make the calls themselves, when given the option. My heart! There's a separate article dedicated to it: https://news.northeastern.edu/2023/04/21/parrots-talking-vid...
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To "prove" is to derive from a set of consistent axioms. There is no set of universally agreed axioms for badness and in fact the vast majority of people do not even have a consistent set of moral beliefs. Simply changing how you phrase a question can get very different answers (e.g. "conscription" vs "murder slavery" vs "making people defend the country that defends them").
Yes. This doesn't mean that morality is subjective and divorced from reality, mind you. It just means that trying to hone an objective theory of morality will make you unpopular.
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Incredible! So much that is fascinating about non-human animals. I can't resist but think that there's a deep similarity between us, and them. One that we even don't suspect. Reminds me of Tom Regan's words: "Animals have a past, a story, a biography. They have histories. Mink and bears, elephants and dolphins, pigs and chickens, cats and dogs: each is a unique somebody, not a disposable something."
We can't prove or disprove that enslaving and exploiting animals is a bad thing. As a society we currently answer that with .. take a look at your supermarket. What if we are wrong?
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Its not a strong argument. Denying nature is what we do constantly. We teach our children to shit in a bowl that flushes water instead of shitting on the ground, we teach them to delay their gratification s, we tell them not to use violence, we teach them to ask for consent. All unnatural things to do. Are you saying these are not wise things to do?
You misunderstand what "natural" means. Nature doesn't care at all about those things. But as a social species, we evolved some "rules" which ensure our survival. In that sense, some of our morality has roots in nature and evolution. So I don't agree at all that by not using violence all the time we're going against our nature. But in the case of food, I believe we are, because evidently we require certain substances…
If it was the only way this would be more compelling. However it is just the easiest way.
Like arguably the best way to get money is to mug someone, but i don't think that makes it ethical when there are alternatives.
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Why does it matter that they are capable of suffering? This is a serious question. When it comes to morality invariably when you dig down deep enough, all of it is based on human made assumptions. That doesn't invalidate discussions about morality, we just have to be aware that it is built on a subjective foundation. And for the record, I personally suggest a vegan lifestyle, because I believe exploiting animals is m…
Hey, good for you for asking this question despite being on the animal rights side. I wish I could say something useful as an answer. I could snipe at Jeremy Bentham for kicking it off in 1780 with shoddy reasoning: not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? he says, but this is really a side effect of an argument against slavery and contains no discussion of why reducing suffering is desirable,…
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I do agree that animal "factories" are wrong. I think we disagree only on a minor point: I think that it's not wrong for humans to domesticate and "grow" animals if they do it in a "humane" (I don't know a better word here) way where the animals do not suffer and have ways to enjoy their lives, whatever that may be, while I believe you're saying that's also wrong and only hunting wild animals is acceptable? > We obse…
There is no version of animal farming that if you did the same with humans wouldn't constitute human rights violations. Why should we be special? "Hey, my slaves are well fed, happy and they are even allowed to sleep in the house, where's your problem man." > That's a weird questions to ask, I don't see any relation whatsoever with what is being discussed. I painted a false equivalence in a related field with the sam…
Look at the way cattle and sheep are farmed over moorlands in the UK, the animals are literally left alone on land hundreds of hectares large, they live in as "natural" environment as physically possible. We can argue that a human left in those conditions would be unhappy with the still limited space, but I don't think we can argue in good faith that any animal is "unhappy" in those circumstances.
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I do agree that animal "factories" are wrong. I think we disagree only on a minor point: I think that it's not wrong for humans to domesticate and "grow" animals if they do it in a "humane" (I don't know a better word here) way where the animals do not suffer and have ways to enjoy their lives, whatever that may be, while I believe you're saying that's also wrong and only hunting wild animals is acceptable? > We obse…
There is no version of animal farming that if you did the same with humans wouldn't constitute human rights violations. Why should we be special? "Hey, my slaves are well fed, happy and they are even allowed to sleep in the house, where's your problem man." > That's a weird questions to ask, I don't see any relation whatsoever with what is being discussed. I painted a false equivalence in a related field with the sam…
This is also true of vegetable farming.
If you are arguing that dividing humans from animals is arbitrary, the same is true of dividing the other kingdoms of life from Animalia.
It feels like increasingly, we're finding that humans are not quite as "uniquely intelligent" as we thought. Don't get me wrong, humans are still the smartest animal on earth obviously, but it does seem like we greatly underestimated the intelligence of a lot of others. Birds like parrots and crows in particular continue to impress me when I see them solving increasingly elaborate puzzles, and figuring out how to ope…
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There is no version of animal farming that if you did the same with humans wouldn't constitute human rights violations. Why should we be special? "Hey, my slaves are well fed, happy and they are even allowed to sleep in the house, where's your problem man." > That's a weird questions to ask, I don't see any relation whatsoever with what is being discussed. I painted a false equivalence in a related field with the sam…
>>There is no version of animal farming that if you did the same with humans wouldn't constitute human rights violations. Look at the way cattle and sheep are farmed over moorlands in the UK, the animals are literally left alone on land hundreds of hectares large, they live in as "natural" environment as physically possible. We can argue that a human left in those conditions would be unhappy with the still limited sp…
If we substitute your children into their lifestyle, would you be ok with that? Run around these free fields, but there are fences, and you will have to subject yourself to mandatory harvest long before the end of your natural lifespan. Ah and sometimes a dude will come around and shove a stick with a magnet down your throat to collect metal junk you've eaten because people carelessly throw away trash. I never talked about happiness, I talked about self determination. Yes it's not all equally bad, but saying humane farming is like saying humane torture. A dichotomy and a lie. I'm not saying farming equals torture, I'm saying self determination and farming are fundamentally incompatible.
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There is no version of animal farming that if you did the same with humans wouldn't constitute human rights violations. Why should we be special? "Hey, my slaves are well fed, happy and they are even allowed to sleep in the house, where's your problem man." > That's a weird questions to ask, I don't see any relation whatsoever with what is being discussed. I painted a false equivalence in a related field with the sam…
> There is no version of animal farming that if you did the same with humans wouldn't constitute human rights violations. This is also true of vegetable farming. If you are arguing that dividing humans from animals is arbitrary, the same is true of dividing the other kingdoms of life from Animalia.