All animals should start with protected status until wwe can prove they don't feel anything
Species count put at 8.7 million: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-14616161
So, we will have what do in next few hundreds years..
Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law
501–510 of 704 posts
Re: Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law
#502Earlier quoted context omitted.
The theory I hear from people who do it is that the animals die instantly in thermal shock. Would be great if someone in the know could comment; I'm certainly not endorsing this view!
My family does this, I remember watching them try to crawl out of the pot for the first few minutes so it's not true
Just picturing that makes me feel terrible
Re: Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law
#503Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 carnivore…
Fruits (as in from fruiting plants, not fruits in the culinary sense) I assume would still be fair game as they are designed to separate from the parent plant, often falling off without any intervention even.
Well, given that seeds inside the fruit sense their environment and start germinating only in specific conditions, even this would be debatable. Hopefully, if the cells of the fruit body itself are not sentient (if they do not react to their environment in some meaningful way), then eating the fruiting body is probably ok, provided you euthanize the seeds or let them live on.
Re: Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law
#504Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s still enough to feel being boiled alive.
Maybe. More broadly the issue here is that crabs and lobsters (and in East Asia often fish and all seafood) are sold alive because of freshness and quality considerations. So, IMHO the only way to enforce a ban on boiling lobsters alive is to ban selling lobsters alive and to create a whole raft of requirements similar to the slaughter of animals. In the article that's the proposal: " It recommends against ... the sa…
You can pith the animal prior to boiling it and probably decrease the amount of total noxious stimuli it experiences, no real reason not to
Re: Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law
#505Octopi I understand, but lobsters? They have less than half the nervous system of an ant [1]. Are individual ants sentient and worthy of legislating over? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of...
From the original report [1]
There is no dramatic difference in the quality or volume of evidence regarding cephalopods as opposed to decapods. There is more evidence for sentience in octopods than in true crabs, but the difference is not vast, and the evidence for sentience in true crabs is slightly more substantial than the evidence for sentience in other, less- studied cephalopods. This leads us to recommend that, if cephalopods are to be included in the scope of animal welfare laws, decapods should also be included.
[1] https://www.lse.ac.uk/News/News-Assets/PDFs/2021/Sentience-i... (PDF)
Re: Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law
#506Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't the teaching of Buddhism that one should learn to let go of attachments such as love, because they will bring you pain?
All attachments, yes. But I am neither a Bodhisattva or fully enlightened. In addition, the core crisis I am experiencing is whether it is ok to watch a being suffer greatly in its torment by other beings without intervention. If the only act which may stop the other being from their act of torment is an act that results in their death (medicine to the afflicted), is it blameworthy?
The way I learned is that you try not to meddle unless you have wisdom (meaning you have some kind of enlightenment). My opinion is that unless I was the one tormenting other beings, I wouldn't meddle in other person's affairs, specially by killing. This is a good example on the importance of finding a teacher, a Good Knowing Advisor, someone that can dispel these doubts for you.
There's the obvious self-defense exceptions, if a lion or a person would attack me or my family I would shoot him, but an enlightened being may act differently because they may understand something we don't.
Re: Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law
#507Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is very common for Science Fiction to use "sentient" where "sapient" is the correct word. Star Trek is no exception. Calling trees sentient isn't nonsense; your understanding of what the word means is simply incorrect.
Traditionally, "sentience" includes consciousness, though. The OED defines it as "The condition or quality of being sentient, consciousness, susceptibility to sensation". It's actually science fiction that invented the concept of "sapient" in the sense you mean it -- the OED just refers to it as an old word for "wise" like Milton writing of "a sapient prince"
Well, that definition, like most dictionary definitions of complex philosophical or scientific concepts, is circular or too vague. The quality of being sentient is obviously circular, Consciousness is even more vague a concept than sentience, and Susceptibility to sensation is either circular (if we seek to define sensation narrowly) or too vague (if we define sensation broadly - after all, rocks are susceptible to sensation in some sense, as they immediately move when you kick them). This is not a critique of the OED: dictionaries are meant to explain to humans what other humans mean when they use a word, not give an exhaustive understanding of its deeper meanings and implications (encyclopedias aim for that).
When actually trying to rigorously define the word "sentience" we currently have settled on a very basic but measurable criterion: does the living thing we are discussing react to stimuli in its environment, and does it do so in a manner which suggests some kind of memory or other information processing power?
Conversely, consciousness has no similar even slightly rigorous definition, but it is still used as a "higher level" of sentience, sentience + some other stuff that bring you closer to how humans experience the world. Sapience seems to fit somewhere in between.
Re: Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law
#508Earlier quoted context omitted.
So according to your philosophy; you wouldn't object to being tortured, after all, it's just signals being registered by a biological computer in your head.
That's not their philosophy, it's the opposite of it. Their point is more in line with something like "the ability to sense pain is not related to sentience and is not special", not "if something can sense pain, it is therefore not sentient and is not special".
Uh, actually, it seems from their later posts that that is precisely their philosophy.
Re: Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law
#509while crabs and others will receive more welfare protections, people (as citizens, workers and consumers) are getting your protections slowly removed, one by one, bill after bill, staying at the mercy of corrupt politicians, ruthless employers and greedy corporations.
How long to a human being is worth less than an animal?
Re: Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law
#510Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Plastic has memory doesn't it? Sounds like the sentience tests need to be rewritten
Plastic has memory, but not feeling/sensation nor interaction with the environment. It is also not living by other standards (self-sustaining, reproductive).