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Researchers are keeping pig brains alive outside the body

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Re: Researchers are keeping pig brains alive outside the body

#81

Post by wvlia5 »

matz1 wrote: post #78
wvlia5 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure there is, but in your view we couldn't say that those people are evil, because in the end it's just preference of where to draw the line, correct? Nazis chose to draw a line excluding jews, and that was their preference

Evil or not is relative. You can say nazis is evil but to the nazis they might not think its evil. To me evil or not is irrelevant. If you dont like Nazi action, then you have to force them to stop regardless.

Ok, so by that same rationale we could say: "Evil or not is irrelevant, but if you don't like animal-exploiters action, you have to force them to stop regardless"

Re: Researchers are keeping pig brains alive outside the body

#82

Post by mr_overalls »

wvlia5 wrote: post #68
matz1 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, I drew the line at human and non human. I'm okay to do anything to non human.

Isn't that kind of arbitrary? What if I said "for me, I drew the line at white people and non white people. I'm okay to do anything to non white"

Our lives and laws are necessarily filled with quasi-arbitrary lines and conventions. What is the age of consent for marriage? What threshold of blood-alcohol is too much to drive a motor vehicle? When is someone considered dead?

Comparing the acknowledgement of such lines with racism is ridiculous.

Re: Researchers are keeping pig brains alive outside the body

#83

Post by bumby »

wvlia5 wrote: post #68
matz1 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, I drew the line at human and non human. I'm okay to do anything to non human.

Isn't that kind of arbitrary? What if I said "for me, I drew the line at white people and non white people. I'm okay to do anything to non white"

Where do you personally draw the line? I'm not trying to be adversarial, just trying to understand how cogent your argument is.

I think the race argument is a bit reductio ad adsurdum. Why is that any different than if you decide to only eat plants? That draws the line at the kingdom classification which is just another human convention. Drawing the line between species seems to have some logic to it at least, given there is a stronger biological definition rather than a contrived race argument. (e.g., we can strictly define a species, in part, by their ability to produce viable offspring)

Re: Researchers are keeping pig brains alive outside the body

#84

Post by matz1 »

wvlia5 wrote: post #81
matz1 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evil or not is relative. You can say nazis is evil but to the nazis they might not think its evil. To me evil or not is irrelevant. If you dont like Nazi action, then you have to force them to stop regardless.

Ok, so by that same rationale we could say: "Evil or not is irrelevant, but if you don't like animal-exploiters action, you have to force them to stop regardless"

Yes

Re: Researchers are keeping pig brains alive outside the body

#85

Post by wvlia5- »

bumby wrote: post #83
wvlia5 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that kind of arbitrary? What if I said "for me, I drew the line at white people and non white people. I'm okay to do anything to non white"

Where do you personally draw the line? I'm not trying to be adversarial, just trying to understand how cogent your argument is. I think the race argument is a bit reductio ad adsurdum. Why is that any different than if you decide to only eat plants? That draws the line at the kingdom classification which is just another human convention. Drawing the line between species seems to have some logic to it at least, given…

I do not draw a line in kingdom either, that would be every bit as absurd and arbitrary as drawing a line on species or race. In practice, I end up eating only members of plant kingdom, but that is just a fortuitous artifact, not the result of drawing a line at 'kingdom'.

I seek to avoid causing suffering (I'm an utilitarian, but you don't necessarily have to be utilitarian to try to prevent suffering). Q: What entities can suffer? A: Sentient beings, by definition of sentience. In particular, animals that we usually kill, do suffer (but not necessarily every individual belonging to that kingdom does). Carrots do not (but if in the future we discovered an individual of another kingdom that suffered as much as a pig on a slaughterhouse, I wouldn't eat him either, being there so many other options).

Richard Dawkins and Peter Singer had a chat explaining well this issue: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GYYNY2oKVWU

Re: Researchers are keeping pig brains alive outside the body

#86

Post by wvlia5- »

mr_overalls wrote: post #82
wvlia5 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that kind of arbitrary? What if I said "for me, I drew the line at white people and non white people. I'm okay to do anything to non white"

Our lives and laws are necessarily filled with quasi-arbitrary lines and conventions. What is the age of consent for marriage? What threshold of blood-alcohol is too much to drive a motor vehicle? When is someone considered dead? Comparing the acknowledgement of such lines with racism is ridiculous.

Ok, so let's propose another quasi-arbitrary line and convention: black people can be enslaved, white people cannot. So, this rule would be just as arbitrary and valid as any other. Or is there a ethical justification against it?

Re: Researchers are keeping pig brains alive outside the body

#87

Post by hutzlibu »

kyriakos wrote: post #23
deytempo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize that there are governments out there that probably wouldn’t think twice about trying this on a human

Sadly they may have already tried it and hopefully failed.

Or continuesly are trying it.

Re: Researchers are keeping pig brains alive outside the body

#89

Post by wvlia5- »

taneq wrote: post #11
everdev wrote: post #5

> Sestan acknowledged that surgeons at Yale had already asked him if the brain-preserving technology could have medical uses. Disembodied human brains, he said, could become guinea pigs for testing exotic cancer cures and speculative Alzheimer’s treatments too dangerous to try on the living. > The setup, jokingly dubbed the “brain in a bucket,” would quickly raise serious ethical and legal questions if it were tried…

This has always dumbfounded me about animal experimentation - it's perfectly OK to decapitate a pig to make bacon but it's somehow horribly inhuman to do so to potentially save millions of lives?

You got it, stared straight at the cognitive dissonance produced by the incoherent values of our culture. Time to move forwards to showing compassion coherently.

Re: Researchers are keeping pig brains alive outside the body

#90

Post by bumby »

wvlia5- wrote: post #85
bumby wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you personally draw the line? I'm not trying to be adversarial, just trying to understand how cogent your argument is. I think the race argument is a bit reductio ad adsurdum. Why is that any different than if you decide to only eat plants? That draws the line at the kingdom classification which is just another human convention. Drawing the line between species seems to have some logic to it at least, given…

I do not draw a line in kingdom either, that would be every bit as absurd and arbitrary as drawing a line on species or race. In practice, I end up eating only members of plant kingdom, but that is just a fortuitous artifact, not the result of drawing a line at 'kingdom'. I seek to avoid causing suffering (I'm an utilitarian, but you don't necessarily have to be utilitarian to try to prevent suffering). Q: What entit…

Thanks for the clarification on your stance and for sharing the link. Although I know a lot of people think Dawkins worships on the alter of rationality, I think some of his stances on this issue need to be taken with a grain of salt because he openly admits that he occasionally makes emotional arguments when it comes to (non-human) animal rights.

I think the assumptions that need to be called out in Singer's argument (and possibly yours, given the little bit in your post above) are 1) we know how to define sentience and 2) we understand the link between sentience and suffering. These points may be a departure from Singer in part because he's making a philosophical argument and not necessarily a scientific one. The science part being relevant to this thread because I think part of the discussion is how strict definitions are necessary to avoid the moral relativism aspect of the conversation.

There doesn't appear to be any scientific consensus on how to define consciousness or sentience. Some, like Sam Harris, define it simply in terms of information processing. In that case, what suffers can get murky fast. Are mollusks more conscious than, say, a venus fly trap? I don't know, but as a layman, I haven't come across a good definition to parse that question effectively.

Even if we have an understanding of sentience, there doesn't seem to be a definition on how this translates to suffering. You seem to imply it is a given that sentience leads directly to the ability to suffer, but I haven't found a good consensus on this either. Some people like Gerald Edelman take the stance that suffering is dependent on complexity of the nervous system, so there's nothing morally wrong with killing lobsters and less complex animals. There's others like Vilayanur Ramachandran who go further and don't think more complex animals like cows suffer because they don't introspectively experience pain the way humans do.

The above is a just a long-winded way of saying that I think we need strict scientific definitions to make some sense of the topic or we'll just be endlessly entangled in relativistic arguments. I'm not convinced we have made sense enough of the problem to define it this thoroughly.

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