General Purpose Animal Philosophy Thread

''I think the overall level of consensus when it comes to allowing others to indulge their sadistic pleasures is more or less OK''. In regards to humans as well? So could say those six guys that killed that girl and left the other one for dead justify it in anyway by saying the pleasure six people derive from the pain of two outweighs the suffering, and death, of one of these girls? Thats them indulging in sadistic pleasures. Shall we have a montly limit on how many people can be killed, no more than one a week?

''If you think angling is “bad” then it would be more honest to campaign against fishing rather than trying to hijack issues that are more to do with the specific species involved in vivisection than vivisection itself.'' I dont understand what you mean there. Throughout my posts on the issue I have looked at vivisection from various points and then criticised it in various ways. Indeed i'm sure I could expand more, but then it would be just philosophical indulgance.

''I mean if vivisectors exclusively used flies and fish for their experiments rather than cats and apes, your campaign would be laughable. It plays on people’s soppy emotions as cynically as capitalist advertising, which explains the enthusiasm of the pro-Test lobby.'' I don't intentionally hurt flies and I dont eat fish, but yes you do have a point- but saying an anti-vivisection campaign would be laughable if vivisectors used such animals is in itself laughable. The fact they dont use these creatures does not in any way limit the anti-viv point. Let me summarise what IMO is the anti-viv point:

To end animal based vivisection and to replace it with alternatives that do not use any animals. Also to work towards that goal using sound scientific methods and ethical arguements.

Now if fish were used in vivisection that summary would mean I would oppose it, flies I wouldn't pick to many bones over. Now, I think what you are getting it is when does an animal become sentiment? I see a sentimant animal as one that shows visible signs of feeling pain- i.e. by trying to move away from the source of pain or through using foreward thinking gained from past mishaps to avoid this pain. Now all mammels show this level of sentiment, as do some fish. I'm not to sure many insects do though, but the fact they could is a reason I wouldn't want to harm them (also I dont really like going around just killing things for the hell of it). Agreed, anti-viv plays on peoples emotions, it is peoples emotions that lead them to often want change and it is the knowledge and action that seeks to implement this change. One of the main philosophical texts (you'll probably stop reading here) is by Tom Regan. I dont agree with all of what he says but his book 'the case for animal rights' makes a powerful case against all forms of animal abuse. Now aside from reviewing the book in his intro to the first edition he says how he set out to write a book to justify animal usage in experiments, yet by the time he had finished a book it had turned into a anti-viv arguement. A few of the medical professinals who write from an anti-viv perspective say they wouldn't if it was actually worth anything medically. Also it is worth noting the emotive language vivisectors use i.e. 'vivisection means we dont need to test on babies' or 'its between your baby or a mouse'.

Also does anyone know the size of the march through Oxford for world lab animals day on the 24th April?

As for consciousness, I don't believe we have any souls, not in any religious form at least. What we do have is a rational understanding of the ability for animals to feel pain and they do not like that pain being caused, why cause it? Or LR do you think that all this is true but that we can still hurt other living creatures for a minimal outcome?

But it dosent matter if they were caught or punished or not, the implications of alloweing someone to cause harm/death to another being just for minimal pleasure negates any concern for that being. What if someone from the Animal rights milita killed a vivisector, that would be fine as well? I do not place such a sanctity on personal life that I would always think death is wrong in cases of self defence or extreme political circumstances forms of death are ok, but to just say killing someone is fine basically 'for the hell' of it is

''Which was a waste of time, seeing as you think something as innocuous as angling is bad is obvious you’re going to have issues with gorier pursuits. '' Yeah i'm not to fond of angling, but my feelings on that were set before my feelings on vivisection or even meat. If you think my posts are crap, criticise the points in them, dont just brush them to one side saying they are a waste of time.

If you really wanted to spend your time catching and eating flies, then that is up to you.

''So it’s things that can be scanned for pain now? That makes much more sense than consciousness. Do you think the capacity for pain is the trait that confers an object’s “rights”?'' Well I know your views on rights from other times we have talked, but the concept of limiting an animals freedom through imprisoning it (which a laboratory is, as is a factory farm) is something I would challenge. Does the creature have rights not to be imprisoned? Well it depends on the concept of rights but I feel no it dosent, but when the freedom of it is limited, then it has a 'right' not to be imprisoned.

''I’m afraid so.'' I dont know if you do, or your just picking the extremes of a philosophical arguement to argue for argues sake.

thats a bit of a crude value assignement. I mean, my sister/wife would be invaluable, some random dude could go for 500k, Nick Griffin could go for free, Lazy Riser for £8 (dont be shocked by the low value, its just measured against the price of a cow) etc.

pretty useless

I agree that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with killing a conscious being, because i'm a moral relativist and so see that everything, including the killing of other humans against their will, is morally neutral objectively. Subjectively it's a different matter, but that's a completely different area of morality.

Social acceptability however has nothing at all to do with morality. And a free society cannot remain free for long without the removal of those who create hierarchies within it by removing choice from entities. I.e, a free society cannot remain free if it finds murder/rape/etc to be socially acceptable behaviours and permits individuals who (finally free of the coercive forces of social morality and authoritarian law) freely choose to partake in these behaviours. They're not wrong, because morality is a property of the individual, but they're not being socially acceptable.

The argument is not whether killing/torturing/testing on animals is wrong, but whether a free society can find it acceptable to test on animals.

We should, as anarchists, all be agreeing that the forced and involuntary testing of drugs on conscious animals, I.E humans, should not be encouraged as being socially acceptable. But should we extend this thought to animals?

Not being one to even attempt to force my view on the anarchist movement, i'm not going to declare "yes we should". But i'm predicting "yes we will", and i'm predicting this because I believe the points i've previously made to be accurate.

I'm sorry, did I stumble back into the 14th century?

The concept of any species being objectively inferior or superior to another was thrown out of the window by Scientific progress a long time ago.

Subjective opinions may differ, from the view of humans being inferior to that of them being superior, with most people resting comfortably in the middle. But subjective opinions should have no place in the discussion of how society, a body of individuals who (whilst capable and free to behave and think irrationally) should be organising along rational lines to prevent enormous social problems arising, should organise itself.

It certainly doesn't! That's why the working class is currently having such a hard time despite being conscious. Having consciousness doesn't give some inherent protection againt exploitation, rather it gives the individual a chance to ask why it is occurring, instead of simply reacting to it as instinct dictates like an non-conscious entity will.

The only thing that separates the human species from the other animals is consciousness, a capacity for self-reference. "Innocence" is the opposite of "guilt", and comes from the idea that morality can be judged against an objective moral system (in history usually put forward by a God), and is fundamentally an authoritarian concept.

Indeed. And consciousness is a result of one such effect, which permits the evaluation of desire and the evaluation of the outer world from the point of view of the subjective individual. In short, it permits the questioning of instinct, and so it permits an individual to actually *choose* something under non-extreme circumstances, rather than only obeying instinct.

It's a genetic mutation which creates the super-ego, and this super-ego which makes both anarchism and capitalism possible forms of social organisation, instead of the rule of instinct being the only one.

Would have got back to this sooner - been busy

As Norm says below, 'lesser' species isn't a term to be using. It leads back to the purely quantitative evaluation that you suggest above (X amount of ants = Y amount of dogs, etc.). Animals have different forms, but each contains a similar content: a degree of consciousness. This of course is to be distinguished from human consciousness; where animals have a simple sense of themselves and their environment, humans are possessed of self-consciousness: they reflect upon themselves, their environment and actions.

Such self-consciousness and understanding is the basis for rational, social interactions - the essence of which is that the individual subject relates its intrerest to that of others. This is a case of recognising other subjects as subjects. There's no great and mystical leap from such a position to a recognition of animals as creatures also possessed of a degree of consciousness. If anything, there's something rather mystical involved in absolutely distinguishing human beings from animals.

Recognising something as being capable of experiencing pain and distress demands some degree of compassion - just as is required by recognising a human subject as such. In the absence of the latter one would be pretty much psychopathic. And while I have absolutely no intention of claiming that anyone who kills an animal is psychopathic, I have no problems with labelling someone who subjects that animal to an unnecessary amount of pain and distress as cruel.

...and I don't think its acceptable to then say 'fine - but why shouldn't I be cruel?' as recognising something as cruel means that one understands and accepots the term and the value judgements that it entails.

...and if that's the case (and I may very well be wrong), your argument would then seem to be as to the validity of the term 'cruelty,' or simply its application to animals. Is cruelty a meaningless expression?

We (humans and animals) are nothing but very sophisticated biological machines created by our genes in order to promote their self-replication. The capacity for feelings such as pain and pleasure is nothing but adaptations that have evolved because they help us to survive and reproduce. There is no inherent point to surviving, reproducing or feeling pain, they are just things that we have evolved to do. There is no inherent reason not to cause pain and 'cruelty' to another person or animal, indeed there is no real point to anything at all. But we can make our own point. I suppose I'm against unecessary crualty to animals because I can imagine what they are going through, and I don't like that thought, but I wouldn't say I had any philosophical backing for this. I don't see how your value system with regard to animals is any more valid than mine or anyone else's Lazy.

Hitler loved his dog

This isn't a conversation about politics, its about ethics that can be found within any political formation.

Granted, these same ethics can be used to criticise given social formation (loved his dog, not so keen on Jews) - although to reduce this to a conversation about socialism is a mistake.

This is why the question as to how one can criticise a social consensus is important - as without such a means of critique all that could be achieved is a comparison between different formations, and without any means of evaluating them such a comparison would be meaningless.

Consequently, a basis in ethics is pretty much fundamental

But you don't appear to be able to stand outside your personal dislike of those less tolerant of cruelty than yourself, and accept that they are as rational (whatever that means in this context) as you and that they behave completely appropriately. What's the difference?

Are you saying that arguing in favour of unncecessary cruelty is 'rational' and 'appropriate' whereas arguing against it is not?

You generally seem to me to be highly contemptuous of anyone arguing against cruelty to animals, and say things deliberately OTT just to annoy them, which you appear to do less to those you disagree with on other subjects. This is where I got 'intolerance' from, not your inquiry. The 'conceptual basis' of my opposition to animal cruelty is that it bothers me, as I explained a few posts back. I see this as a perfectly valid reason to argue against it.

it does bother me when people ignore her beauty!

No - attempting to undermine an ethical basis for compassion towards animals is an argument against something, just as is attempts to justify that compasson. This isn't a case of moral relativism, i.e. 'its better to be less cruel than it is to be more cruel' as that would be tautological and pointless. Establishing some kind of ethics enables on the one hand a conception of cruelty, and on the other a critique of accepted ideas about cruelty.

No. This is not what we're arguing.

I'm arguing against a systematic support of crul treatment of animals, because it's irrational and unjustifiable to perform it simply becase we can, and simply because we always have.

What is the justification for the social support, not even the argument against social disdain, but the justification for support of domestication and selective breeding of sentient slaves, to inflict pain upon in the name of scientific progress?

And the dehumanisation of the enemy is precisely the reason why he's able to do that, despite also being conditioned to treat humans with respect.

Why are you an anarchist, again? The working class are sentient beings, why bother freeing them from authoritarian coercion?

lazy is being his typical obtuse self again, he views the world in crude utilitarian parameters, enjoyment and pleasure are what define everything for him, thankfully humanity is alot more complex than that and enjoyment and pleasure take place on a much higher plane than the reductionist one lazy embraces.

The fact that someone takes pleasure in the beating of another is fucked, and is viewed as such by the mass of humanity (infact i'm sure even the laughing squaddie was rather disgusted with himself when he sat back and watched that after the moment).

Hedonism is counter-revolutionary.

@revol68
'animals aren't fucking likely to start demanding their own liberation.'

P1: Humans are animals
P2: Humans do demand their own liberation
C: Therefore, animals do demand their own liberation.

Linguistic issues aside, I haven't heard such a speciesistic argument from anyone outside the anarcho-capitalists, or capitalists in general. Nevertheless, just because one is incapable of demanding liberation, doesn't mean they shouldn't have it.