Ok, how about insects, say you don't even kill insects, what about if you accidentally step on a worm on a rainy day? Should we create "insect free zones" that keep bugs out (somehow) so that insects don't get needlessly killed on sidewalks or roads?
What about rats? Rats and house mice carry harmful diseases, and arguably, extermination is merely depriving these animals of their right to self-determination (to getting food and shelter, in your adobe.) Of course, they aren't mindful they are spreading illness and disease to you, but you're the more aware being who is in a power differential with them, and thus need to realize your responsibility in the interaction.
We can keep going down this rabbit hole. Someone already suggested not killing lobsters. Do they have significantly larger brains than mice or rats? It sounds like the answer is no[0]. In fact, their brains are the size of grasshoppers'...which means if we help respect the sentience of lobsters we probably have to respect the sentience of insects in general.
I consider myself a socialist, but some people are taking the "exploitation" talk of Marx too far and applying it to animals who are not sentient. I can understand drawing a line at Orcas, Dolphins, may be some primates or elephants, etc. But not all animals are the same and to treat them as sentient beings requires a large ignorance of reality of differences between the species.
There are other bases—very intuitive ones among them, like capacity to suffer or to anticipate the future—by which you could decide in a principled manner how much ethical consideration a certain organism is due.
My point is that noobermin suggests that there are only two "bundles of rights" that we may give to organisms: those that we have traditionally given to humans and to non-human animals. Noobermin says that we must "draw a line" between organisms that we may exploit and organisms that we must regard as human-like. (That traditionally we have indeed used nothing more nuanced than a binary distinction is not important: we are talking about possible, not actual, ethical frameworks.)
This is wrong in principle because you can choose to assign individual rights on an individual basis. E.g., in one system of animal rights, I might say that everything with at least as much capacity to feel pain as a crustacean must be put under anesthesia before any surgical operations are performed on it, but I might also say that any animal with the ability to use tools may not be raised and killed for food. What's important here is not the particulars of my hypothetical animal rights framework. It's just that different animals would have different rights: chimpanzees and pigs would both not be permitted to be operated on without anesthesia, but pigs (and not chimpanzees) would be allowed to be eaten. Thus if we accept that you can make graded decisions in how you assign animals rights, you are not put on the slippery slope that ultimately claims you are committing genocide every time you use soap.
The commenter I was replying too shared links that suggest that nearly all mammals should have their life respected and their interests "cannot be considered to have less weight than humans' interests[0]", which is an extreme position most people won't take.
[0] http://www.animal-ethics.org/sentience-section/relevance-of-...
"Capacity to suffer" is no better defined than "rationality" is. Everything alive has the capacity to suffer, in that there are some states it seeks to avoid. If you try to imbue "suffering" with more metaphysical meaning than that... then you're relying on "rationality" to make your argument.
My line in the sand is sentience (the ability to suffer). What's yours?
From a mere "observation" stand point along the lines "behaviorism," well almost all animals including insects "suffer" and "feel pain" because they react to violent stimuli. So, that means we probably can't from your line in the sand hurt almost any mammal or insect. That seems a little extreme doesn't lead to a very pleasant life for more aware species like you and your friends. If you want to live like that, go ahead, but I don't think you have the right to impose that on other humans, who would find living like that extremely difficult.
I personally don't have definite line in the sand. I love rabbits (for I raised rabbits when I was a kid) and most rodents and wouldn't want to see them get hurt, but I used to have rat issues in my apartment, I had to kill them otherwise I'd be constantly sick, and that would impact people who I love and I need to be there for. I owe love to people I know before rodents. And for humans I don't know, would I fight for children on the east side of my city getting sick due to lead in the water? Yes, and before crying for the suffering of rats, cows, chickens, etc.
I think you might be conflating "pain" with "suffering". Pain is simply a reaction to a negative stimuli. Pain response has been shown in plants and insects, for instance. But I don't place any value on pain that doesn't lead to a negative subjective experience. That's what I think is actually bad. Suffering has not been shown in plants or insects.
But there has been a lot of research showing that many non-human mammalian animals do suffer. Here's some research on chickens, for instance: https://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10071-016-1064-4
And I've found this to be a good resource for navigating the sentience debate: http://www.animal-ethics.org/sentience-section/
Likewise, the ability to communicate doesn't imply a need to. Conversely, the ability to communicate doesn't define consciousness. Precisely, the ability to refrain from communication is likewise important. So if an animal can't even shut the fuck up, that's where I draw a line. And I should take that into consideration more often when posting online. Further, action can be involuntary communication. So "A lot can be inferred from how enemies are treated". Concerning invasive surgery, the practical need for analgesics is a smooth procedure, not the suffering of the patient.
Corollary: If something cannot rationalize it's suffering that's another line in the sand. E.g. children vs a society of fish missing a sibling.
This is the same argument as "What's a planet", my definition ensures that we still have nine!
I'll give you another one: "Which people keeps the Temple Mount", my solution says the Jews!
Lines need to be drawn somewhere, and people will be upset no matter where the line is drawn. Sometimes we need to accept that we got one line drawn to far to the left for our liking, another drawn too far to the right for our liking, but the choice is to either accept imperfect lines or spend our whole lives arguing or fighting.
I'll let you have eight planets, but that Temple Mount is mine!
So we can certainly aim to recognize the status of all animals and still keep on functioning. It might involve some degree of unease in certain situations (e.g., a bad feeling when stepping on an ant) but simply ignoring the sentience of other beings because of this unease seems like a lazy way out.
No resource should ever be "exploited". For a clear cut example, take asteroid mining. Assuming we had the technology, there do not seem to be any obvious ethical concerns with mining asteroids beyond necessity, to our hearts' wildest content. Right?
Wrong. The most straightforward counterargument relies on noting that humans tend to be bad at planning for the future AND also tend to be bad at imagining how necessity requirements might scale up in the future. In other words, the asteroid belt at the moment may hold far more than enough mineral resources for our civilization at present, but there may come a future (perhaps some generations down) when there may be so many humans, that the asteroid belt may be too small a pool to even maintain basic necessities for everyone.
But there are better, perhaps less obvious counterarguments. Usually, the people "exploiting" the resources don't tend to be the ones doing the labour needed to harvest/refine the resource to a point where it is usable: instead, there tends to be a sub-group of people who usually only get to see a fraction of the benefit gained from that resource. I am not going to get into this, because it's a topic that has been discussed to death. Let's look at it instead from a different angle: assuming that everyone is participating in the harvesting/refinement of the resource equally---is it really the best use of our time to be continuously harvesting/refining the resource? We may also want to give everyone the chance to explore art, exercise, socialize, explore the world for the sake of exploring (e.g. doing science/mathematics for fun!)---you know, living a balanced lifestyle?
More importantly, limitations inspire creativity and innovation, while mindless use of abundant surpluses lead to epidemics of complacency. Instead of waiting for the environment to place hard limitations on us, and then dealing with them, we could also put soft limitations on ourselves, merely to help us think outside the box in terms of how we tackle problems. Note that I use "mindless" in the beginning of this paragraph on purpose: there are strong connections between this philosophy, and the more general philosophy of mindfulness, but I won't get into that right now.
Summarizing: we should never think in terms of "exploiting", but instead we should think in terms of "what do we need right now", and "how can we manage the resources we harvest so that we can benefit from them sustainably" (hint: recycling/reuse should be an integral part of whatever we design).
With this attitude, we move our attention to living beings that can be resources. We should ask the questions: do we really need to harvest this living being? Are there better ways of getting what we need? Once this being is harvested, how can we make sure to reduce wastage? Paying attention to these question also allows us to make hard decisions with some level of inner peace (e.g. think of how indigeneous people harvested animals for resources). It also puts us in a positive mindset for dealing with a situation where it turns out that a living being we harvested had far more sentience than we gave it credit for: we have contingency plans, and we rest easy knowing that we minimized damage.
> What about rats? Rats and house mice carry harmful diseases, and arguably, extermination is merely depriving these animals of their right to self-determination (to getting food and shelter, in your adobe.) Of course, they aren't mindful they are spreading illness and disease to you, but you're the more aware being who is in a power differential with them, and thus need to realize your responsibility in the interactions.
Pests usually come into being because we're either displacing their natural environments, or they have grown used to feeding off our waste. Thus, better waste management allows for control of pest-borne diseases, and urban planning which includes natural spaces within the fabric of the city allows "pests" some of their old habitat.
Exterminating pests tends to also have a domino effect on the ecological network they are a part of, with unforeseen consequences.
It is up to us to be creative about how we manage pests. Here's some inspiration: http://www.crowdedcities.com/ (crows being trained to pick up cigarette butt litter in cities, which they can exchange for food at special collectors/dispensers)
> We can keep going down this rabbit hole. Someone already suggested not killing lobsters. Do they have significantly larger brains than mice or rats? It sounds like the answer is no[0]. In fact, their brains are the size of grasshoppers'...which means if we help respect the sentience of lobsters we probably have to respect the sentience of insects in general.
I am sure there are people who suggest that we shouldn't be killing lobsters at all, but recent concerns regarding lobsters and crabs stems from the absolutely terrible living conditions these animals are made to endure after they are harvested (their pincers may be removed, so that they can be "stored" better, in highly crowded storage units, while alive). Furthermore, some "culinary techniques" also seem to require unnecessary suffering on the part of the animal (e.g. boiling lobsters alive).
Also, I think current science is pretty clear about the massive difference in sentience between something like a grasshopper, and something like a rat. Here's a youtube video for fun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HY_1-wC0Fg
> I consider myself a socialist, but some people are taking the "exploitation" talk of Marx too far and applying it to animals who are not sentient. I can understand drawing a line at Orcas, Dolphins, may be some primates or elephants, etc. But not all animals are the same and to treat them as sentient beings requires a large ignorance of reality of differences between the species.
I am not a capital S socialist, and I have serious reservations about Marx (in particular, he is prone to making over-general statements taken as fact, since he believes he is taking a "scientific approach"). I think, I am simply a community-ist. I believe in the power of communities: human ones, animal ones, and human-animal-plant hybrid ones. All life is to be valued, and in particular, network interactions are to be respected for their power.
Remember, most philosophies have to start from a set of axioms. I mean, fundamentally, no logical system can be complete anyway (Godel of course, althought philosophy is often leagues of abstraction beyond a set theory). I am comfortable setting the axiom at "sentience matters".
Why is sentience an objective good or something to be valued?
Imo, morals and values are always relative and never absolute. As a result, there's no objective answer to where this line in the sand should be drawn.
You can say sentience is the measuring stick. I can say that life itself is the measuring stick. Neither position has an objective basis.
I'm guessing you'd choose the latter as would everyone else which suggests there's an objective basis for sentience.
I had thought that that was the generally accepted method, so I'm surprised that live boiling is still done.
Yes, this is known to kill the crab.
Means, body feels pain, the consciousness can tell "I fell pain" - not necessarily in words but on a similar "language".
here spend some time on https://www.reddit.com/r/natureismetal/
There's also no need to tell people to calm down. The discussion in this thread appears quite calm to me.
It all depends on how you define "advantage":
Being integrated into the ecosystem, instead of acting outside of it like it doesn't exist or matter at all to our survival, and thus being able to survive long-term is a rather big advantage. Otherwise, we might become victims of our own "success" [0].
Now, if you define advantage very narrowly, as in "What's in it for ME?" then you might have a point, tho it's a very shortsighted and egoistical point which leads back to [0].
[0] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journa...
I don't see how treating animals well removes us from the ecosystem. We have already drastically changed the ecosystem of the Earth - might as well do some positive things for it.
Wouldn't you just come back to the conclusion of "What's good for nature must be natural or else it can't be part of nature?"
Imho it's that logic which most "appeals to nature" are built upon.
We, as a species, don't even see other human beings in that light. That's quite a dream you've got.
If you meant not exploited for food, that is obviously different. I'm not aware of any humans that do that anymore.
Now tell me how you judge sentience?
Like the wonders of capitalism don't kill anybody or like there are only those two choices between capitalism and some Soviet-style centrally planned communism.
Which begs the question: Do these people really think we've reached the end of the line in terms of economic systems? I'm asking this question in all seriousness because I'm utterly confused by this lack of imagination/curiosity behind such a mindset.
Supposed alternatives to capitalism tend to ignore that. Bad economics of all stripes tends to assume some form betrayal theory as the only issue.
Agreed
> Supposed alternatives to capitalism tend to ignore that.
Disagreed, capitalism ignores the finite nature of resources, while treating some of them, which are actually infinite, as finite (time).
Also, I'd argue that nothing about the resource allocation, the way capitalism does it, is in any way optimal, at least in regards to our actual finite resources.
Most of it boils down to hoarding "money", which isn't a finite resource (can be printed at will) nor is it an actually useful resource on its own (can't do much with it except burn it if it's paper). It's supposed to be a tool, but at this point, it feels like the tool has been declared the goal: Just hoard more of the money and you've "won" the game like it's the ultimate solution to all problems.
This dynamic also influences the allocation of resources to most "profitable" of individual entities, it's a dynamic that rewards hostile competition over friendly cooperation.
Which is a dangerous reward system considering we are all stuck on the same piece of rock, drifting through infinity, sharing the very same finite resources. Wasting so much energy, and resources on how to "screw each other" over for those finite resources, and increasingly bigger "profits", seems quite wasteful and ultimately a very petty way to go about our existence.
I'm not saying I know the ultimate fool-proof solution, I just want to point out the flaws with what we've currently got going and imho these flaws are massive and will come bite us in the back-end sooner or later [0].
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: this account has been using HN primarily for ideological battle. As the site guidelines say, we ban accounts that do that, so I'm banning this one. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
Except if one can't think of any other alternative or starting point from which to criticize capitalism but communism (and even more so, how some specific regimes practiced it).
From anarcho-syndicalism and social democracy, to more obscure religious, environmental and so on approaches.