On Thu, 1 Sep 2005, Chris Doss wrote:
> --- Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> wrote:
>>>
>> --How would I decide? Collaborative decision making
>> among the
>> affected parties.
>
> Animals cannot engage in collaborative decision
> making. Neither can retarded people.
I'm not saying that the participants only argue for their own self-interest; people can collaborate and make decisions that benefit the ecosystem, infants, baby ducks, etc. However, it's unavoidably true that the moral decisions have to be made by somebody. I'm fond of cooperation and collaboration when possible.
> BTW why is it that the life of a cow, that can walk
> around, recognize others, moo when it is happy and bay
> in agony when it is killed, less valuable than that a
> human (in terms of composition of amino acids, layout
> of DNA, and body shape) born with nothing but a
> brainstem? This makes no sense at all.
You could lay out thousands of ways in which people are like cows and thousands of ways in which they are not. I just want to emphasize that the answer to the question "are cows like people?" is socially contingent. There are cultures in which the answer is obviously yes; others (say, Texans at a BBQ) in which the answer is obviously no. Within each culture, the answer is coherent and meaningful.
> This whole conversation strikes me as nuts. Who but a
> sociopath says that feeling pain is not a central
> element of selfhood? Miles, is torture of animals
> morally neutral?
Animal sacrifice is common in religious rituals in numerous societies: it would be sacreligious not to harm animals! So I guess I'd say no, harm to animals is not morally neutral: it could be ostracized or wholeheartedly accepted, depending of local religious and political standards.
Miles