From: rms@acsu.buffalo.edu (Robert M. Straubinger)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals
Subject: Re: Hunters: Legitimate concern?
Date: 27 Jul 92 04:19:06 GMT
Organization: SUNY/Buffalo Pharmaceutics

In article <Brtp2r.74G@wpg.com> russ@wpg.com (Russell Lawrence) writes:

>From article <xtdmraf@dixie.com>, by refrig@dixie.com (Todd Hedenstrom):
>th> It's not a great moral offense against the species that you're 
>th> killing, it's a great moral offense against all the OTHER species 
>th> (including man) that benefit from or are in some way reliant on 
>th> the extincted species.  
>
>Russell Lawrence writes:
>rl> Apart from man, which "OTHER" species would be offended by such 
>rl> extinctions?  If you can't offend an animal by using him in a 
>rl> medical experiment or by killing his companions prematurely, I 
>rl> don't understand how you could offend him by killing the last 
>rl> remaining members of a different species.  
>
>From article <Brrut3.F4y@acsu.buffalo.edu>, by rms@acsu.buffalo.edu (Robert M. Straubinger):
>rs> Maybe a clarification of the usage of 'offended' would be in 
>rs> order here;  there exist in nature very some tight, highly 
>rs> specific predator-prey relationships;  one could surmise that 
>rs> extinction of the prey could lead to extinction of the predator.  
>rs> With some twist of the word, such a happening might be considered 
>rs> to 'offend' the dependent species.  
>
RL >Only if you're willing to treat a class-construct as though it's
   >a thinking/feeling entity, endowed with some sort of personal agency.
   >
   >What sort of mental qualities would a given entity need to have
   >in order to take offense in some meaningful way?  Surely a car is
   >not "offended" if we smash it to bits, nor is a head of cabbage 
   >offended if we chop it into cole slaw.   To the extent that we
   >pretend otherwise, we're guilty of personifying impersonal things.
   >
   >I can understand why a thinking/feeling animal might be able to
   >take offense at our treatment of him/her, but I don't understand how
   >an abstract concept like a "species" is capable of taking such
   >offense.  
From your response, I take it that the word 'offense' is being used in 
the most common sense.

I understand better your point of view, which is (I think) that it is the 
experience of the individual (member of a species) that is most important
to the individual; 'species' is a human construct of no meaning to the
individual. Thus extinction of the species is no more important than
would be the death of the individual.

It would seem then that the 'biodiversity' argument is completely distinct
from this point of view. Many people would argue that when a species 
becomes extinct, something irreplaceable is lost -- the genetic heritage
of that species and its function in the ecological system it occupies.
Also lost, possibly, is any other life that may have evolved an
interdependence with that species. In this respect, extinction
would be something that could be a disaster to many life forms,
not just to the humans who have the sentience to worry about such things.

In a way, your point of view would almost seem to be that nothing
beyond the experience of the individual is of any import to the 
individual, thus is irrelevant?

    [deletions]
RL >As you know, many of the contributors to this newsgroup choose to 
   >treat non-human animals as mindless entities.  Yet, they'll turn 
   >around and treat a "species-as-a-whole" as though the "species" 
   >is a person with some sort of collective mind.  Do you consider 
   >such turnabouts to be reasonable?  

I'll consider this a rhetorical question that requires no response.
First, you created a series of conclusions to fit your thesis,
then you created a yes/no question that validates your conclusions
no matter how it is answered. On top of that, you ask me to
interpret the beliefs of an exceedingly diverse newsgroup readership,
and you ask me to do this in a way that presupposes as true
an unflattering characterization of people with whom you don't agree.
Let's not get into crap like this; nobody learns anything from it.

----------
Bob Straubinger
Pharmaceutics
SUNY / Buffalo     "above are opinions, and they're mine, not SUNY's"
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals