On Wed, 1 Nov 2006, ravi wrote:
> Miles,
>
> So let me ask you a question that may help
> us get a grip on this: I assume you feel less queasy about kicking a
> leaf (or even better: a rock) rather than a dog. Do you think that is
> just a programmed response or aesthetic issue? Or do you think you are
> acting based on some considered position (apart from pragmatism/logistics)?
The assumption of the question is that we can just intuitively "know" whether or not something suffers. My "queasiness" about doing something is determined by a complex array of sociohistorical, psychological, and biological processes (did I leave anything out?). For instance, I'm grossed out by the idea of french kissing my first cousin who's about my age. That's not because there is some natural or intuitive aversion to kissing first cousins (indeed, in some cultures, you're expected to marry a first cousin!); rather, incest is defined in my culture as including first cousins, so that makes me queasy.
--And just so with kicking a living thing: if I experience more queasiness kicking a dog than a plant, it's not necessarily because I have some a priori knowledge that the dog suffers; it could just be that I have learned that kicking dogs is icky.
I guess your implied argument is that all people just "know" what suffers at what does not, so the line between what to eat and what not to eat is self-evident. In contrast, I treat these as interesting questions: does a cabbage suffer when you cut off its head? Does a shrimp suffer when it suffocates in a net? --And most important: how can we verify our claims about what suffers and what does not?
Miles