From: markwc@barney.esl.com (Mark Christiansen)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals
Subject: Re: steaming lobsters
Date: 23 Nov 92 11:07:22 GMT
Organization: ESL Inc., Sunnyvale, CA

In article <By57Hy.2ss@wpg.com>
russ@wpg.com (Russell Lawrence) writes:
|
|Ethical decisions involve discriminating choices between 
|alternative courses of action that may be expected to produce 
|outcomes that are "good" or "bad" in various degrees.  As such, 
|it seems to me that ethical thinking requires quite a bit of 
|empirical fact finding, rather than mere definitions.
|
|To illustrate, we could say that it's "good" to brutally kill 
|strangers at random, and with suitable brain-washing, I suppose 
|we could convince some of our descendents that this "definition 
|of good" comes from one of the gods and ought to be accepted 
|without any further scrutiny.  In spite of such definitions, 
|however, our random killings would still have a profoundly "bad" 
|effect on our victims, on the victim's friends and business 
|associates, and on society at large.

So you are suggesting that ethical justification can be defined in
terms of "good" and "bad" from a human perspective?

|mc> Perhaps we could discuss what the general principles of
|mc> ethical living "should" be given our present day knowledge of how
|mc> we affect the world around us.
|
|Fair enough.  I'd like to begin by exploring the methods that we're
|going to use to determine whether an action is "good".   You raised
|one question that caught my eye:
|
|     "Is it justifiable to kill the earth?"
|
|This prompts me to ask several related questions:
|
|    "Would the earth care if we abuse it in some way?"
|    "Would a mountain care if we abuse it in some way?"
|    "Would a carrot care if we abuse it in some way?"
|    "Would a dog care if we abuse it in some way?"

You appear to suggest that our definition of ethical justification of
abuse should be from the perspective if the one being abused, where we
are put in its place (This idea sounds a lot like "do unto others as you
would have them do unto you.").  Since the Earth is not "living" we
could assume that it doesn't care if we abuse it.  Likewise, the
mountain doesn't care.  The carrot I don't know about, and the dog
definitely cares.

I suggest that ethical justification needs to extend beyond the
"caring" of those being abused.  As in your random killing example
above, abusing the Earth does effect other inhabitants, and thus
ethical justification should apply to our abuse of everything, due to
the effects on other (caring) living.

Note that so far, our ethical justification applies to human abusive
actions and not that of other creatures or objects.  I don't believe
that it should apply to the abusive actions of non-humans, but I get
the feeling you do.  Would you clarify this for me?

Note, also, that we are still free to "painlessly" kill domestic
creatures (animals and plants) where we have eliminated the impact of
their disappearance on other animals and plants.  So chickens, cows,
mink, and trees are okay to kill.

Mark
-- 
   I want to reach that state of condensation of sensations which
constitute a picture.
   -- Henri Matisse
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals