From: vanetten@unix.cie.rpi.edu (John S. Van Etten)
Subject: Re: Hunters: Legitimate concern?
Organization: CIE, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 16:43:20 GMT

Russell Lawrence writes:

>In article <cfqxr9+@rpi.edu>, John S. Van Etten writes:
>jve> Amen, Todd.  It must really bother these AR-types to find out 
>jve> that a majority of hunters feel this way and are more concerned 
>jve> about protecting a species than killing it.  :-) 
>
>Does a "species" have a mind that would permit it to experience 
>thoughts and emotions that, in some mysterious way, might 
>transcend the thoughts and emotions of individual animals?  Is 
>there a single "ghost" entity of sorts that animates the 
>collective bodies of whale species or chicken species or deer 
>species or whatever, thereby allowing us to rationally consider 
>the "species" as though it were a single entity that deserves
>greater consideration than the individual animals?  

You must have gotten an A+ in all your Creative Writing classes in
school. :-)  I do not wish to see any species go the way of the
passenger pigeon simply because I feel that most (if not all) such
cases are caused by man either destroying habitat or screwing up the
environment in some other way (such as the deal with all the herring
gulls on the garbage dump on Staten Island which have taken over
almost all the nesting grounds of one of the species of plover and has
almost driven them to extinction).  You and I caused the problem,
Russell, and it's up to us to take the responsibility to fix it
(rather than bury our heads in the sand -- or other places -- and
pretend that all the other little animals have the same right to life
as the endangered species).  Is there some reason why you don't feel
an endangered species should be protected?


>It seems to me that a "species" is nothing more than an abstract 
>class construct invented by humans to label a particular genetic 
>niche.  As such, I think it's rather silly to treat a "species" as 
>though it were a thinking/feeling individual...  and especially 
>so for someone who's inclined to treat the individual members of 
>the species-class as mindless entities.   

Russell, I don't kill or not kill things because they are
"thinking/feeling," as I'd hoped you would have gleaned by now.
That's not the criterion I use, so your mention of it has no effect.


>I'm still waiting for you to explain to me why you think it might 
>be perfectly ok for you to kill a billion individuals that you've 
>classed together in a group, but a great moral offense against 
>the "species" if you were to kill the last living pair belonging 
>to that particular group.  

Patience, Russell.  I have the two messages I've not yet responded to
archived away.  I'll get around to them soon, but please don't do
anything like hold your breath.  It may take a day or two, and as
ever, I would fear for your safety during that time. :-)  But I
promise, I'll get to them soon...


John

--
******************************************************************************
               John S. Van Etten     vanetten@unix.cie.rpi.edu
       Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute  1000 MIPS GaAs F-RISC Project
       --"If sand didn't irritate oysters, there would be no pearls"--
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals