From: dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska)
Subject: Re: Environmentalism is not Anti-Individualism
Organization: VEXCEL Corporation, Boulder CO
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 15:49:06 GMT

In article <1992Oct13.011248.19913@yang.earlham.edu> allens@yang.earlham.edu (Allen Smith) writes:
>In article <1992Oct12.144530.10735@vexcel.com>, dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska) writes:
>> 
>> Can you offer a suggestion for what the limit might be?  Its easier to
>> condemn the extreme than to suggest solutions.
>
>	My personal way for determining such things looks upon liberties 
>(or the ability to choose, another way of looking at it) as being in 
>conflict. Sure, you've got the right to shoot that gun. But someone else's 
>rights are kind of violated (choices are limited) when they die by the 
>bullet. Take the parties involved. See on each possible outcome whose 
>liberties are violated the most (whose choices are limited the most). 
>Select the outcome as best as the one in which that party's (the 
>most-choice-limited) liberties are violated the least.
>	Admittedly, this contains a considerable amount of subjectivism 
>and possible debate over extent of violation, etc. But all government has 
>that problem. And I'm not willing to trust human beings enough to let them 
>be without a government; anarchism is utopianism, and "utopia is not an 
>option". I favor limiting that government so as to limit the wrong that 
>can be done with it.

This is an adequate rule when the participants already have rights, but
application of it to the case when one does and one doesn't is difficult.
>> 
>>>	Certainly; I agree on the slave owners. Slaves were obviously 
>>>intelligent, no matter how much some (even some calling themselves 
>>>"scientists") tried to claim otherwise. Slave owners were harming others, 
>>>and should be at the minimum prevented from doing so further. 
>>>Unfortunately, the political situation at the time did not allow for 
>>>further punishment of the former slave owners.
>>>	I don't really care whether the majority wants something or not. 
>>>I'm interested in making sure that individual rights aren't trampled upon.
>>>
>> This parallels the discussion between Dietz and McGowen.  I think it is easy
>> _today_ to claim a qualitative difference between the morality involved in
>> slave ownership and the treatment of non-sentients but I would claim
>> that this is merely an artifact of the moral development of humans.
>> If we replaced the word "intelligent" in slave-owner arguments with
>> "sentient", the arguments, moral and economic, would be virtually
>> identical.
>
>	Uh-huh. Right. The difference between an animal and a true 
>individual (I do not limit true individuals to humans; in order to be safe 
>and not leave out any, I include chimpanzees, gorillas, dolphins, and 
>whales) is that the individual can make choices without those choices 
>being dictated by instinct and impulse; it can decide to do something and 
>know the consequences of its actions.

How can we define what animals actually use instinct versus intelligence?
I still don't accept that this is the right criteria but I also claim that
it is an ambiguous criteria.  Many of the animals you give credit of
intelligence to would not have gotten such credit just a couple of
decades ago.  Intelligence is not binary, it is relative.  Some animals
have more than others and others have less.

>	I would also point out that I, for instance, happen to like cats 
>very much. I would emotionally love it if anyone who harmed a cat was put 
>to death. But I have to admit that cats aren't intelligent (unfortunately) 
>and thus aren't true individuals with rights.

Your cat certainly has _some_ intelligence.  It is certainly sentient
(at least mine is).  Are all of its actions based on instinct?

>	There's also the difference that slave-owners had a lot of BS 
>about that slaves weren't sentient, and tried to back it up with 
>pseudoscience. The science this time around, insofar as we can judge 
>intelligence, is on the side of the humanists (indeed, many would say that 
>including whales, for instance, on the true individual list is incorrect; 
>I include them so as to not leave out any true possibilities).

Positively determining sentience requires knowing what an animal is
thinking within the framework of its perceptive abilities.  This is
impossible for humans to do.  Sentience is generally granted to cetacians
and mammals, but this is a recent development.  Is a bird aware of
its existence?  Do the many animals that vie for harems and the apprarent
status that goes with them have an ego?  

>	-Allen


-- 

		dingo in boulder	(dean@vexcel.com)
Newsgroups: alt.guitar