From: vanetten@unix.cie.rpi.edu (John S. Van Etten)
Subject: Re: Should humans assign "status"?
Organization: CIE, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 23:35:22 GMT

Russell Lawrence writes:

>In article <5ptzr2#@rpi.edu>, John S. Van Etten writes:
>jve> Since my definition of being is loosely "something which
>jve> is alive," there is no real "status" being defined while basing a
>jve> decision to kill something for food on whether or not it is indeed
>jve> alive.  All beings are equal...
>
>Would you kill and eat a human?   Or would you refrain from doing
>so because of your respect for the human's thoughts and feelings?

I really thought you understood that we are discussing non-humans.
Even though this is a tangential issue, let me ask you this.  If a
plane crashed in Alaska and the only people on board were you, Saddam
Hussein, and the Harlem Boys Choir, and you had a pistol, would you
shoot our friend from Iraq and eat him so that you and the boys could
survive, or would you just hang out and respect his thoughts and
feelings, and die of starvation waiting for help to arrive?  I used
Saddam as an example because Bob Black recently implied that he'd save
one of his dogs from drowning at the expense of our friend.


>jve> I will kill any of them for food.
>
>Does a cow care if you kill it?  [yes]
>Does a cabbage care if you kill it?  [probably not]

Russell, you normally have a very good command of the English
language, but you've managed to really confuse me here.  The rhetorcal
device you used, that of including answers to questions in editorial
brackets, is only supposed to be used for what are "obvious" and
"correct" answers.  A cow will not care in the slightest if I kill it.
It will be dead at that point.  Nor will a cabbage, as it will be
dead, too.
     The only thing either of these will care about is whether or not
I *try* to kill it.  And as we both know, that's not nearly the same
thing and causes your arguments below to fall apart.


>If the cow objects strenously to your actions while the cabbage 
>couldn't care less, then the impact that your actions have 
>on each of them would be vastly different regardless of your
>mental feat in reducing both "cow" and "cabbage" to the level of 
>something that you can stuff in your face, ie food.  

Russell, you truly missed something here, and you truly need to think
a little more about this issue.  *Both* beings will do everything they
can to avoid death.  If someone drags a cow out onto a slaughterhouse
floor and slits its throat in an effort to "get the blood out of the
meat," this cow is not going to enjoy the experience and will try to
get away and survive.  Likewise, if someone pulls a plant out and
throws it on the ground to die, it will send out roots like mad
because it, too, would prefer to be alive.  I'm afraid I can't let you
get away with your "naive" little game of trying to say that because
the carrot cannot perceive the immediate threat of being sliced up, it
therefore, in Russell Lawrence's and Peter Singer's minds, doesn't
prefer to remain alive.  No, I'm sorry, but that isn't the right
answer, so you get no prize. :-)  This case is no different than a cow
not trying to survive because it didn't perceive a threat from someone
200 yards away pointing a rifle at it, before being shot to death.
Both the cow and the carrot prefer life to death (so do Icky Things
like bugs and snakes, BTW) and are no different in that respect.  The
fact that you and other AR folks can better relate to animals because
they more closely resemble yourselves, and you are more willing to
kill plants because they aren't aware that you're going to do so (the
Big Brown Eyes Syndrome), strikes me as arbitrary in the extreme.
Still, I don't mind that you feel this way, and am fully tolerant of
it.  But the fact that you'd like to force everyone else to do the
same naturally bothers me.


>jve> If you want to say that I too am defining a status by saying that 
>jve> things which are alive are superior to things which are not 
>jve> alive, that is acceptable to me.  But I am not making any 
>jve> *arbitrary* ranking among those which are alive, as you are.  
>
>To be concerned about the thoughts and feelings of other beings is 
>hardly an arbitrary consideration.

It is most assuredly an arbitrary criterion for deciding which ones
are OK to kill.  Please try to remember that we're not talking about
treatment here.  No-one is poking anything in the eye with an icepick
(to borrow one of your imaginative examples).


>jve> In my opinion, sentience and sapience are valid (and there are many
>jve> others, of course) criterion on which to base our "treatment" of any
>jve> being.  
>
>Name some others.

Rich Young already did this, I won't bore you with any more.


>jve> They are, however, as Rich has expained to you ad nauseum,
>jve> arbitrary for considerations of life and death...
>
>Rich has claimed over and over again (ad nauseum) that such 
>criteria are arbitrary, but the presumably-now-abandoned 
>"explanation" that he offered up previously hinged on the 
>non-existence of a sentient/sapient "cosmos".  If I may 
>paraphrase, he said something to the effect that sentience and 
>sapience are arbitrary ideas because the "cosmos" doesn't share 
>them.  However, if the "arbitrariness" of any idea is measured by 
>the non-existence of a "thinking cosmos", we'd be obliged to 
>conclude that every idea is arbitrary... which flies in the
>face of empiricism and reason.  Is that what you had in mind?  

It will satisfy me if you can simply explain to us why sentience and
sapience are supposedly the only relevant criteria.  As I've said so
many times in the past, your standard "cuz Peter Singer sez so" line
doesn't work on me.  I'm an atheist, remember?  I take very little on
faith.  Perhaps if you answered some of Rich's questions it would help
us.


>jve> Please note that I consider "treatment" to
>jve> be orthogonal to life and death decisions, so what I'm saying in
>jve> essence is "Yes, if a being is sentient and sapient we should kill it
>jve> in a humane manner and avoid needless suffering."  But it's life or
>jve> death as such is no different than the life or death of a carrot or
>jve> cabbage.
>
>Is your life or death no different from the life or death of a 
>carrot?

Are you afraid of death, Russell?  Perhaps that is why you can't
understand my views.


John

--
******************************************************************************
               John S. Van Etten     vanetten@unix.cie.rpi.edu
       Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute  1000 MIPS GaAs F-RISC Project
       --"If sand didn't irritate oysters, there would be no pearls"--
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals