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: Fri, 4 Sep 92 15:17:31 GMT

In <Bu0q2w.D9H@wpg.com>, Russell Lawrence writes:
>
>From article <1992Sep3.123453.25156@pixel.kodak.com>, by young@serum.kodak.com:
>ry> 1.  What is this "meaning" that you seem to think conveys some 
>ry> magical "status" to living creatures and which makes it 
>ry> acceptable to kill and eat one but not another?  
>
>I didn't say that meaning conveys magical status.  What I said 
>was that meaningful existence is impossible without sentience and 
>sapience and that we ought to take sentience and sapience into 
>account when we're evaluating the consequences of our actions on
>other individuals.  

	The question asked you to define "meaning" as you've used it in
	this context.  You have not yet complied.  You have, instead,
	continued to resort to using the term without defining it.  You've
	said that a "meaningful existence" isn't possible without sentience/
	sapience but you have yet to tell us exactly what constitutes a
	"meaningful existence."

	Now that this failure has been pointed out, do you suppose we
	might actually get an answer to the question posed above?

>ry> 2.By what authority do you presume to assign "status" to non-human
>ry>   species based on sentience/sapience?
>
>You're the one who's been assigning "status", Rich.  Not me.

	[...irrelevant examples deleted for brevity...]

	The question, Russell, did not ask what you think is moral or
	immoral, ethical or unethical; rather, it asks by what presumption
	of authority you make these decisions for other species, based on
	certain criteria.

	Once again, now that the failure to answer the question has been
	pointed out, do you think we might have an answer to the question
	posed above?

>ry> 3.Why is your criterion of "sentience" any more valid than a criterion
>ry>   of "life," or "ability to jump sideways," or "ability to 
>ry>   synthesize glucose?"
>
>Without the qualities of sentience and sapience, an action would
>have no meaning whatsoever.  And without meaning, an action could
>hardly be "good" or "bad".  As an example, the notion of "torture"
>would be meaningless if the object of our actions were incapable
>of feeling pain.  If you choose, you're free to point out that the
>object in question may be a living bacterium or a self-propelled pogo 
>stick capable of jumping sideways, or a lab machine capable of 
>synthesizing glucose, but the fact will remain that the "torture"
>of such an entity would be a meaningless concept.

	And once again, we have a retreat into the undefined "meaning".
	Might I humbly suggest that you re-read the section of your book
	on logic that describes circular reasoning?  You've just said that
	without sapience, there is no "meaning" (whatever THAT is), but
	without "meaning" (whatever THAT is) there is no sapience (as in
	understanding the concepts of "good" and "bad").

	And yet again, you've tried to neatly sidestep the question; allow
	me to illustrate.  You've said that sentience is necessary to feel
	pain, and therefore sentience is a valid criterion.  Of course, this
	was never really under discussion, since the question was whether
	"life," etc. could be equally useful criteria.  I suggest that,
	since sentience cannot exist without "life," that "life" is at
	least as valid a criterion as "sentience."

	Please answer the question above, Russell, instead of tiptoeing
	around it.

-Rich Young (These are not Kodak's opinions.)