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Comment by fnovd | Hacker News Reader

That's exactly what I said:

>Words like "warp" and "profit" are a symbol of a fundamentally different way of thinking about what a "reasonable" relationship with an animal should be.

It's not a "false" implication as there is no true and objective measure of "reasonable". I substituted "fundamentally different" because I think it's more accurate than "false" or "wrong".

Cows aren't "for" meat or dairy any more than Africans were "for" enslavement. It is a purpose bestowed upon them by an outside influence, for sure, but it is not an intrinsic property of the being him or herself.

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Edit: to clairify, I wasn't criticizing your post so much as criticizing the original assertion and answering (one possible reason) why people would object to it.

> It's not a "false" implication as there is no true and objective measure of "reasonable".

That's a reasonable [heh] position (though obviously not one I agree with), but that just changes the original assertion from false (there's a objective measure and it contradicts this) to meaningless and misleading (there's no objective measure by away from which their perspective can be said to be warped).

> Cows aren't "for" meat or dairy any more than Africans were "for" enslavement.

Africans, like most humans, are[0] (physical substrates containing) people; they're for doing whatever it is the person in question wants. Cows aren't[0]; they don't have any inside influence to bestow purpose upon them.

0: In both cases qualified by "assuming there isn't a nigh-Cartesian coincidence or conspirancy to falsify evidence of sapience or lack thereof", which admittedly isn't a possibility I've put much effort into falsifying.

>Africans, like most humans, are[0] (physical substrates containing) people; they're for doing whatever it is the person in question wants. Cows aren't[0]; they don't have any inside influence to bestow purpose upon them.

Putting aside the difference between sapience and sentience, are babies people? Are the mentally disabled people? As evidenced by law, we provide personhood even to beings that lack the mental capacity to bestow purpose upon themselves.

Even when we venture outside the "homo sapiens" sphere, we have different sets of laws governing what actions are acceptable when done to animals and what actions are acceptable when done to livestock. These distinctions are based upon our relationships with these animals and are not properties of the animal him or herself. Even within animals of the same species, the way in which we intend to use the animals governs what laws apply to our treatment of them. For example, in Alaska, dogs chosen for sled-pulling are no longer protected by animal cruelty laws and are in some cases legally considered livestock. [1] Are these dogs actually different than the ones living in our homes? Can we reasonably assert that intrinsic properties of these beings are the driving force behind the laws governing their treatment?

[1] https://helpsleddogs.org/iditarod-dog-kennel-horrors-no-anim...

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