From: young@serum.kodak.com
Subject: Re: Should humans assign "status"?
Originator: young@sasquatch
Reply-To: young@serum.kodak.com
Organization: Clinical Diagnostics Division, Eastman Kodak Company
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 92 00:47:22 GMT

In <Bv5IqG.9BL@wpg.com>, Russell Lawrence writes:
>
>Russell Lawrence writes:
>rl> Again, you're the one who's assigning status.  Not Ted.  And not 
>rl> me.  
>
>From article <1992Sep25.010922.5239@pixel.kodak.com>, by young@serum.kodak.com:
>ry> You can argue this all day long, Russell, [and HAVE], but it is
>ry> no more true than it was when we started.  You have claimed that
>ry> it is OK to eat carrots but not cattle, although perhaps not in
>ry> those exact words.  Such a determination is an assignment of
>ry> relative rank, or "status."  
>
>Not really.

	If not assignment of "relative rank in a hierarchy of prestige,"
	then what?  Clearly, the cow is more valuable to you than the carrot:
	you are willing to protect the cow, but not the carrot.  You have
	assigned an ethical value, or status, to both carrot and cow and,
	not incidentally, to yourself, since you've usurped the right to
	make such a determination at all.  Even those other creatures which,
	you claim, are ALSO endowed with sentience and sapience (birds and
	mammals, wasn't it?), don't presume to assign ethical value to other
	species.

>ry> To put it on a less obvious basis,
>ry> what about a paramecium and a cow?  It is apparently OK to kill
>ry> the former, but not the latter.  And what is the basis for this
>ry> assignment of worth?  Why, the presence or absence of "sentience
>ry> and sapience," two characteristics which mean absolutely zilch
>ry> to any other species except Homo sapiens, which, in a fit of ego
>ry> referenced one of these characteristics in its own classification.
>
>You have it backwards, once again.  If anyone's engaged in a "fit 
>of ego" in this discussion, it's that subset of hypocritical 
>thinking/feeling individuals who've claimed that their personal 
>mental abilities have granted them exclusive rights to use and 
>abuse others of "lesser rank".  

	And what of the tiger?  There's an individual which "uses and abuses"
	(to use your colorful, but rather melodramatic, language).  Is the
	tiger a hypocrite?

	Food is food, Russell, not an ethical dilemma.  Why should I be
	more concerned with the putative "thoughts" of my lunch than the
	tiger?  Am I not simply another creature with an atavistic instinct
	to survive?  I kill to eat; so do you.  The big difference is that
	you feel guilty if it might look at you first.

	I, like the tiger, make no judgements of the worth of other species.
	If it's food, and I'm hungry, I eat it.  It is YOU who must agonize
	over the ability of said food to perceive the world, and its personal
	destiny within that world, in a way similar to the way in which we
	humans perceive it.

>Incidently, I'm surprised that you're still suggesting that the 
>truth or falsity of an idea can be determined by some external 
>authority, namely the thoughts of "other species".  Should we 
>test the rightfulness or wrongfulness of killing Rich Young by 
>asking a tiger for his views?  

	I'm not talking about "truth or falsity" here.  Nor have I suggested
	anything like that which you claim above.  The question at hand is
	whether humans have any inalienable right to decide that the death
	of one non-human species is ethically relevant while the death of
	another is not.  The answer, of course, is a resounding "NO!"  To
	decide such matters on the basis of arbitrary criteria such as
	sentience and sapience is an exercise of the human mind which has
	no significance to any but fellow members of the human species...and
	not even to all of THEM.  I, for one, do not subscribe to the tenet.

>ry> We can classify non-human species as much as we wish, but as soon
>ry> as we begin to make moral and ethical judgements based on the
>ry> presence or absence of certain characteristics, we have assigned
>ry> status, as in "relative rank in a hierarchy of prestige."  As
>ry> soon as you tell me, "It's WRONG to kill cattle for food, but it's
>ry> no big deal if you digest a few paramecia when you eat the cow,"
>ry> you've assigned status.
>
>To recognize that life has meaning for another being, be it a 
>human or a cow, isn't an "assignment of status", Rich.  In 
>making such a recognition, we're not endowing humans or cows with 
>the capacity to experience joy or suffering.  To the contrary, 
>we're recognizing capabilities that they already possess.  
>
>No offense, but you seem to lack the ability to make such a 
>recognition.  To that extent, I suppose you have much in common
>with tigers.

	"To recognize that life has meaning..."  There's that "M"-word again.
	Perhaps you'd care to define it for us, as you've used it here, in
	THIS go-round.  What, exactly, IS "meaning," Russell?  You've said
	that only the lives of those with sentience and sapience may HAVE
	it, but I, frankly, don't believe you.  I want to recognize "meaning"
	so that I can judge for myself whether sentience and sapience are
	really necessary.

	And you are in error once again: I do, indeed, have the ability to
	make the recognition to which you refer...I just don't think that
	that recognition is a basis for ethics.

>ry> My questions, as before, are, "Who gave you the right to make such
>ry> determinations, by what absolute, significant-to-all-species criteria
>ry> do you attach ethical importance to the death of some species and not
>ry> others, and why, if your criteria are not absolute, am I 'wrong' to
>ry> develop my ethics using some other criteria?"
>
>You're free to grant "rights" to bacteria and ball-bearings, if 
>you choose to do so, but I reserve the right to point out that 
>rights mean nothing in the absence of the mental wherewithal to 
>appreciate them.

	That's not what I asked, Russell.  I asked, "WHO gave YOU the right
	to make such determinations?"

	I also asked, "By what absolute, significant-to-all-species criteria
	do you attach ethical importance to the death of some species and not
	others?"

	And, "Why, if your criteria are not absolute, am I 'wrong' to develop
	my ethics [in this area] using some other criteria?"

[...]

>I'm still waiting for to to explain why it's ok for you to kill a 
>brain-dead man, but not ok for you to kill a kidney-dead man.   

	And I'm waiting for you to provide any evidence whatsoever that I
	have made this claim.

	In fact, in <1992Aug22.175923.25363@pixel.kodak.com>, I made it
	specifically clear that this was NOT my position.  That was back
	in AUGUST, Russell...were you hoping I'd forget?  I told you before,
	if you're going to pull this kind of intellectual chicanery, take it
	to e-mail.

	[Russell's tactic #105: misquote opponent and force constant correction
	of statements in order to distract from question at hand.]


-Rich Young (These are not Kodak's opinions.)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals