h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Haha got there first !

My cats positively revel in torture and causing pain.

>>It is also better that animals day with minimal pain.


Can you give an objective reason why?

@Nose:
Fair enough. But since we're here...is it worse to eat a bonobo than a ?

@swl.
Indeed. Hence my question about recipricocity.

Kant's human ethics didn't really work for our treatment of animals. He concluded pragmatically that we wouldn't trust someone who could enjoy torturing a puppy.

Can we trust someone who can't identify with a fish's pain simply because they are different to us?

Tastes better.

Seriously, it does.

dammit

Nose:
>>>>It is also better that animals day with minimal pain.

quotes:
>>Can you give an objective reason why?


The point has been made ***IN ANOTHER THREAD*** that it might be a matter of sentimentality rather than objectivity. It's just how we feel.

It does raise the question of why people feel differently about different species, why attitudes vary across cultures and over time.

>>Tastes better.

>>Seriously, it does.

So how about non-food species. Should we bother whether rats die with or without pain?

Whddya mean? I've eaten rat.

>>It is also better that animals day with minimal pain.

Can you give an objective reason why?

Objectively, no. My cats (and presumably swl's) seem to think that mouse-adreneline tastes delicious.

Subjectively, yes. As Terry Pratchett ily suggests in Hograther, "wouldn't it be nice if everyone were nice".

Perhaps our ability to appreciate the "other" is like "us" and not like a tree or a rock is what makes us human; are we less human if we are less humane?

Jaysus! You *would* have to go and put it better than I did, Ben.


However...I'm not sure I agree. Does it follow, for instance, that non-vegetarians are less humane than vegetarians?

Oi! To quote the Great Man - "Vegetable Rights & Peace!"

#46 "Awareness of yourself as a being - it used to be done with a mirror, on the slightly odd logic that if you could recognise the thing in the mirror as you, that was awareness"

So we should shoot only those creatures that are not vain?

>>.../ it might be a matter of sentimentality rather than objectivity.

Yes, but also it might be a case of anthropocentrism to think that just because we have this big concern about what we call pain, animals do too. To them it might be no more of a big deal than the bleeping of parking sensors on a car.

Or it might just be that other things bother animals far more than pain; like, for example, the prospect of being killed and eaten...

>>Or it might just be that other things bother animals far more than pain; like, for example, the prospect of being killed and eaten...

So we might have a salmon that didn't feel the pain of the hook but wriggled because it was self-aware enough to know it was about to be eaten. Hmm.

Thing is...we can't measure pain objectively. We only ever have behavioural correlates. In humans, these include saying 'Ow! That hurts!'. In salmon, our best guess is that since all the wriggling is associated with the kind of damage you get from having a hook put through your mouth, its is roughly the same sort of metaphysical thing that we would experience if we had a hook put through our mouth.

Isn't it?

>>So we might have a salmon that didn't feel the pain of the hook but wriggled because it was self-aware enough to know it was about to be eaten. Hmm.

Having said that...that's possibly true of octopuses/octopi/octopodes which appear to be intelligent (and can possibly pass the Mirror Test) but which have a nervous system from Betelgeuse.

So isn't it better to err on the side of caution?

It used to be assumed that babies couldn't feel pain...

#59 "Animals don't care if they kill or cause pain ... "

Not sure if I can agree with you on that as a generalisation e.g. animals within hierarchic societies, mammalian and avian mothers for their offspring, animals in symbiotic relationships, commensal animals in commensal relationships.

A recently published book http://www.amazon.com/Animal-Grief-How-Animals-Mourn/dp/184584288X

Tut. I meant *some* animals don't care if they cause pain *at certain times*.



muttermutter 'kin pedant.

On mourning animals...there was a chimpanzee at Lair drummon safari park that mourned another last year (or was it 2010).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/apr/26/chimps-emotional-response-death-film

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wjWmkQnpZo

*However*...not everyone agrees:

http://www.heleneguldberg.co.uk/index.php/site/article/88/