From: linan@argon.berkeley.edu (Mike Linan)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals
Subject: Re: Closure on Sport Hunting.
Date: 13 Aug 1992 22:00:26 GMT
Organization: /etc/organization
NNTP-Posting-Host: argon.berkeley.edu

In article <BstBG1.242@wpg.com> russ@wpg.com (Russell Lawrence) writes:

>Russell Lawrence writes:
>rl> Does your belief that an action is good necessarily make it so?  

>From article <166aeqINNqlg@agate.berkeley.edu>, by linan@argon.berkeley.edu (Mike Linan):
>ml> It's "good" for me.  I do not follow the beliefs of the Russell Lawrences
>ml> of the world.  I follow my own.  

>Of course you do.  And you're welcome to believe that the earth was 
>created 6,000 years ago, and that life began in the Garden of 
>Eden, and that the sun stood still when Moses voiced his 
>commands, and a host of other things, but surely you recognize 
>that the mere act of believing a given idea doesn't necessarily 
>mean that it's true.  


It's true to me.  That's all that matters.


>As an example, just because quite a few anti-bellum clerics believed
>that the enslavement of blacks was "good" in the eyes of "god" didn't
>mean that blacks didn't suffer when they were kidnapped from their
>african homes and sent to the americas in the cargo holds of filthy
>ships, and henceforth work for free.  Right?


It might have to them.  It wouldn't have to me.


>rl> Is there any evidence to show that turnips are thinking/feeling 
>rl> individuals?   Is there any evidence to show that deer are thinking/
>rl> feeling individuals?

>ml> Can you PROVE deer are thinking and feeling animals?  

>Yes.  Assuming, of course, that you weren't preparing to introduce
>what philosophers call the "other minds" problem, in which case it
>would be impossible to prove that Mike Linan himself is a thinking/feeling
>being.


Exactly right.  You can't perceive what is in my mind or how a turnip can 
be deprived of anything just because you kill it.  Do you think that just
you can't imagine or perceive something that it must not be?  You CAN 
conceive or imagine a deer being just like a human in it's emotions and 
ability to feel pain.  But, there is no way to prove that a deer feels 
pain AS WE KNOW IT or feels emotions AS WE KNOW IT.  Just because you can
imagine it or there might be some evidence that might suggest it doesn't
make it so.  You have never been a deer or a turnip so you don't know.


>ml> Aren't both the deer and turnip alive before the omnivore and 
>ml> vegan kill them to eat them?  What makes you think that the 
>ml> "thinking/feeling" line you have drawn is any better than the 
>ml> lines others have drawn?  

>In a universe that's totally devoid of thoughts and feelings, how could
>there be a notion of "good" or "bad"?   Hence, it seems rather obvious
>that thoughts and feelings provide the essential foundation for our
>determination of good and bad outcomes.   Let's see if you agree:

>You've stated previously that you consider cruelty to dogs and 
>cats to be morally wrong.  If dogs and cats were mindless things, 
>like simple, windup toys, would it be possible to treat them 
>cruelly in any meaningful way?  


How could you.  They are not alive.


>Is it possible to treat turnips cruelly?  Please explain how.


I don't know.  The are alive so I assume that it MAY be possible.  Do you
know for sure that it is IMPOSSIBLE?  Besides, cruelty is a subjective term.
What is cruel to one is not to the other.  

Seems to me I remember something about a test being done where two cabbages
were taken and set next to each other.  Electrodes were connected to one 
cabbage so that they could measure some kind of activity (not sure if it was
electrical or chemical) in the cabbage.  The researchers then chopped the 
other cabbage in half and the signals from the wired cabbage went wild im-
mediately after the second cabbage was "chopped".  Is this what you would
call evidence?


Mike Linan

Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals