> Frankly the belief that animal life is worthless
> belongs to to the realm of psychopathology. Only
> sociopaths actually believe this. I don't know why
> anyone would want to follow a line of argument that is
> clearly insane. Given that Miles does not appear to be
> a sociopath, I am forced to conclude that he does not
> really believe what he is saying. If he does believe
> what he is saying, he is not somebody I would let
> within 50 feet of my apartment.
You're not reading carefully. I am trying to determine why you value and honor some forms of life (animal) over others (plant). I am not arguing that "animal life is worthless"; check the archives if you misremember. Rather, I am arguing that all forms of life try to avoid death and have evolved various defenses to discourage predation; all species--both plant and animal--are impressive and worthy of respect. In response, I've gotten a lot of handwaving and "everybody knows animals suffer" responses. Frankly, thus far the arguments have been pretty damn lazy.
Once more, with feeling: what's so fucking great about animal species compared to plant species? If I hear "animals have central nervous systems" again, I'm gonna bang my head against my computer monitor. What is intrinsically better about forms of life with a central nervous system? If you argue "well, they're more like humans who suffer", that leads me to:
"Why should humans be the measure of all things?"
It's ironic to me that people in favor of animal rights are blatantly using similarity to humans as the standard for whether or not it's okay to kill a living thing. What's so fucking great about humans? We're not a particular successful species on this plant, in terms of reproductive success and adaptation to diverse ecosystems (insects have us beat, by far, as do a number of plant species). It just seems species-centric to me to assume that we should only value and protect life if it reminds us of ourselves.
In sum: as far as I can see, the argument that it is moral to kill and eat plant species but immoral to kill and eat animal species is based on
the brazen, anthropomorphic assumption that life is only worthy of respect and protection if it is similar to human life. Please tell me I've got something wrong here; I really want to believe there's more to the argument than I've gotten so far in this thread.
Miles