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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted November 30, 2012 05:19 PM |
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It's in fact a bit ridiculous to say non-human beings have no empathy considering how powerful an evolutionary trait it is
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'd imagine that some level of empathy would be evolutionarily beneficial for social pack animals.
Don't take it out of context, Seraphim said there is no scientific study showing they have empathy at all among each other or at least towards humans. I objected and linked a video (a very interesting one i recommend you to watch by the way, bottom of page 3)in which a primatologist named Robert Sapolsky questions what is unique about humans. On the part about empathy, he speaks that a basic level of empathy is observed among primates like chimps and others. Yet empathy for another specie is unheard of except us humans. That makes perfect sense because to be able to empathize with a human you got to be at his/her level of sophistication. That is why the definition of empathy is very different for us, it consists of abstraction too. A dog feeling empathy for a human is like us feeling empathy for a creature with 450 IQ. They just don't have the basic mind set to do that, think of them like a 4 year-old. If a 4 year-old wants to do something with you, say play ball, yet you don't or can't at that time, he can understand and accept that you wont play. Yet, he wont think like "well, he's been to work all day, guess he's too tired at this hour, if I was him, i'd want to sit and watch TV too."
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OhforfSake
Promising
Legendary Hero
Initiate
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posted November 30, 2012 05:36 PM |
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It wasn't a response to anything anyone had written in specific. Only general thoughts on the subject.
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Living time backwards
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted November 30, 2012 05:44 PM |
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Edited by Corribus at 18:10, 30 Nov 2012.
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There is a lot of particularly bad information in this thread about the capacity of animals to feel empathy or emotions. In fact, despite the classic resistance of people to accept the idea that creatures other than us feel emotions and possess the capacity to react to impulses other than basic biological needs (probably for the same reason people have rejected and STILL reject evidence of evolution), there are volumes of data available to show that animals do in fact exhibit complex emotional behavior and do feel emotions like compassion, empathy, etc. If you have access to it, a very nice article written in laymans terms about this subject can be found here:
http://www.sciamdigital.com/index.cfm?fa=Products.ViewIssuePreview&ARTICLEID_CHAR=83163305-3048-8A5E-10B22C0435904AED
Here is one part of the article I thought was worth quoting:
"A more rigorous and particularly revealing study of animal empathy came last year from psychology graduate student Dale J. Langford and her colleagues at McGill University in a paper entitled “Social Modulation of Pain as Evidence for Empathy in Mice,” published in Science June 30, 2006. (Note that this time the word “empathy” is free of quotation marks; this absence reflects the growing consensus that emotional linkage between individuals probably has the same biological origin in humans and other animals.) This study was inspired by a puzzle that Langford and her laboratory’s director, pain geneticist Jeffrey S. Mogil, found intriguing: when they tested mice from the same home cage in experiments that involved light shocks to the feet, the researchers noticed that the order in which the mice were tested seemed to affect their pain response. The first mouse would always show fewer signs of pain than the last. Was the last mouse being sensitized to pain by seeing others in pain? Or was something else at work?
To find out, Langford, Mogil and their colleagues devised an experiment in which pairs of mice were put through a so-called writhing test. In each trial, two mice were placed in two transparent Plexiglas tubes so that they could see each other. Either one or both mice were injected with diluted acetic acid, which is known to cause a mild stomachache. Mice respond to this discomfort with characteristic stretching movements. (This is less a “writhe,” really, than a sort of discomfited restlessness.) The researchers found that an injected mouse would show more of this movement if its partner displayed the same behavior than it would if its partner had not been injected. Significantly, this increased display occurred only in mouse pairs who were cage mates. Male (and not female) mice showed an additional interesting phenomenon when witnessing a strange male mouse in pain: its own pain sensitivity would actually drop. This counter empathetic reaction occurred only in male pairs that did not know each other, which are probably the pairs with the greatest degree of rivalry. Was the rivalry suppressing their reaction, or did they feel less empathy for a strange mouse?
(This gender effect reminds me of a wonderful study of human schadenfreude that Tania Singer, now at the University of Zurich, and her colleagues published in Nature in early 2006. The researchers found that in both men and women, seeing the pain of a person one has just cooperated with activates pain-related brain areas. But if a man felt he had been treated unfairly by another man in a previous exchange, his brain’s pleasure centers would light up at seeing the other’s pain. Such male antipathy toward rivals may be a mammalian universal.)
Finally, Langford and her colleagues also exposed pairs of mice to different sources of pain—the acetic acid as before and a radiant heat source that would cause pain if a mouse did not move away. Mice observing a cage mate suffering a stomachache withdrew more quickly from the heat source. In other words, the reactions of mice cannot be attributed to mere imitation, because a mouse seeing a companion in pain appears to be sensitized to any pain.
Foundation of Empathy I admire this study greatly. It is not the kind of manipulation we would nowadays apply to primates, but it goes a long way toward confi rming the tentative conclusions of the 1960s, with the benefits of more subjects and more rigorous controls. Although it does not prove that the mice feel vicarious emotions, it demonstrates that they experience a vicarious intensification of their own experience.
This demonstration justifies speaking of “empathy” outside of humanity—at least in some instances. Here we find an interesting division between psychologists, who tend to think in terms of top-down processes, and biologists, who tend to think from the bottom up. The topdown view considers the most advanced forms of empathy, such as putting yourself into another’s “shoes” and imagining his or her situation, and wonders how this ability arises; the inevitable answer is advanced cognition, perhaps even language. Yet merely imagining someone else’s situation is not empathy. Such imagination can be a cold affair, not unlike understanding how airplanes fly. Empathy requires emotional involvement.
Here the bottom-up view offers a better perspective. When we react to seeing someone display emotion and construct an advanced understanding of the other’s situation, this process indeed involves—in humans and in some other large-brained animals—a great deal of cognition. But the emotional connection comes first; understanding and imagination follow. The mouse experiment suggests that the emotional component of this process is at least as old as our early mammalian ancestors and runs deep within us."
The article concludes: "[The] mouse study bosters evidence that even rodents exhibit something akin to empathy—and strengthens the argument that empathy arises from basic neural mechanisms that human evolution has elaborated on."
In short, if there is no absolute, discreet biological difference between human and animal cognitive and emotional (that is, if humans and animals both exhibit the same kinds of emotional responses, just in different degrees of development and scales), there's no real reason to believe that humans deserve unique treatment. We can talk about property and ownership ad infinitum, but when you get down to it, the basic fact is that animals have feelings and emotions just as we do. They feel pain, certainly of the physical type and likely of the of emotional type as well. Does that mean animals should be protected from torture AND consumption as food? That's a moral and practical argument more than one of logic or rationality. It might smack of hypocrisy to speak of treating animals kindly at the same time we serve them at the dinner table, but it's an inescapable reality that consuming meat is ingrained in human culture to such an extent that doing so is almost a necessity - or, at least, it establishes an incredible kinetic barrier toward changing this behavior. Causing animals undue pain and suffering isn't part of human culture at all and serves absolutely no defensible purpose, so I find no persuasive justification of it whatsoever. Thus while I agree there's a logical disconnect between the way we SHOULD treat animals and the way we do in practice, the fact that humans indulge in a small hypocrisy by killing and eating animals they claim they would not otherwise maltreat, this isn't to my mind a good reason to abandon all sense and practice whatever sadism we feel like on the spur of the moment just to prove a point. In other words, pointing out the hypocrisy might be fun as a thought exercise but it's not particularly useful when it comes to prescribing moral behavior.
In the end, while I don't fret over the fact I'm eating a hamburger for lunch - especially because I am comfortable in the knowledge that the meat I buy comes from producers that treat their animals as humanely as is possible, at least up until the point where they're getting a bolt through the head - I do fret when I see people trying to justify torturing or raping animals using the spurious logic that animals and humans have some profound anatomic, physiologic or psychologic difference stark enough and well understood enough to allow them to be considered subject to different standards of treatment. And I certainly don't see the value in calling my choice to eat animals but not sanction their sexual or physical abuse hypocritical. Human behaviors and laws are full of all kinds of hypocrisies and arbritrarily drawn lines. In this case I draw the line between recognizing that humans do and will continue to kill animals for food as a matter of cultural, economical and nutritional habit, and recognizing that there's no need to cause said animals any more pain or indignity than necessary in doing this.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted November 30, 2012 07:52 PM |
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That must be one of the worst and most ridiculous posts I've ever read here, and that is telling something. What a load of bigotted bull. SMALL hypocrisy to EAT LIVING, FEELING beings?
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when you get down to it, the basic fact is that animals have feelings and emotions just as we do. They feel pain, certainly of the physical type and likely of the of emotional type as well. Does that mean animals should be protected from torture AND consumption as food? That's a moral and practical argument more than one of logic or rationality. It might smack of hypocrisy to speak of treating animals kindly at the same time we serve them at the dinner table, but it's an inescapable reality that consuming meat is ingrained in human culture to such an extent that doing so is almost a necessity - or, at least, it establishes an incredible kinetic barrier toward changing this behavior. Causing animals undue pain and suffering isn't part of human culture at all and serves absolutely no defensible purpose, so I find no persuasive justification of it whatsoever.
Fact is we DO cause animals ALL kinds of undue pain BESIDES eating them. Zoos, food farms ... EXPERIMENTS (the virtual lab rat that often is a monkey...), Religious practices; bull fights; dog fights; rooster fgights. Animals are killed for HIDES, PELTS, for ivory, even to heighten sexual potency, hunting for hunting's sake... YOU NAME IT. EATING them is just the tip of the iceberg.
Causing animals undue pain and suffering is part of human culture ALRIGHT.Causing HUMANS undue pain and suffering is part of human culture as well. It's an inescapable reality, that SLAVERY has been ingrained to such an extent into human culture that it had a renaissance not so long ago in YOUR country (and treatment of women in some islamic states would make me think that it still is). It has been ingraned also, that WOMEN are inferior.
So is the logical consequence that we accept women being inferior slaves - but make sure they are not unduly suffering while we ordering them around?
Either something has free will and can say no, in which case we cannot own that something, or it can't in which case it hasn't free will, and in that case we can't rape it.
Lastly this has nothing to do with society and their history. It's as with religion. It's a PERSONAL DECISION. You either accept animals as sentient, feeling beings that feel pain and joy and so on justz as humans, and if you do - how can you STILL eat them? It's like with slaves: you couldn't have the opinion that blacks were normal human beings like everyone else, just with a different color AND at the same time have slaves. If you did - it was lip service, a bigotted hypocrisy, because TALK IS CHEAP. Same thing with women's equal rights. Oh sure, everyone in favor, right - but how many people find it a matter of course that women do the dish, the laundry and the cleaning - even if BOTH have a job? STILL.
In my opinion everyone who starts making a fuss about how animals feel like humans and so on and so forth, and does NOT stop eating them is kidding themselves.
I even tend to thing that people who EAT animals have not even the moral RIGHT to say something bad about people who treat animals, let's say roughly. Society is no excuse - it's QUITE personal a decision.
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted November 30, 2012 07:58 PM |
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I happily didn't read past your insulting and disrespectful first sentence, JJ. I thought you weren't posting in this forum any more. Frankly if you can't learn to control you're bilious disposition, then I view that as a good thing.
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xerox
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
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posted November 30, 2012 08:03 PM |
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Edited by xerox at 20:32, 30 Nov 2012.
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Of course it's all about personal decisions in the end. But personal decisions are VERY much influenced by societal changes, laws and from those, values and norms. In Sweden, it wasn't like 80% of the population suddenly made a personal decision to stop believing in God. That shift was very much influenced by changes in society, changes in legislation (the church becoming separated from the state) and changes in norms and values.
It is my opinion, that in this case, legislation and education should be used to promote values and norms that highlight the rights of those that feel but are unable to speak for themselves. A hundred years ago, people in Europe and America didn't really care for the rights of black minorities. Just like we look back on those values now, much of 22th century humanity might do the same thing regarding the lacking values of animal rights in the beginning of the 21th century.
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Over himself, over his own
body and
mind, the individual is
sovereign.
- John Stuart Mill
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Ghost
Undefeatable Hero
Therefore I am
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posted November 30, 2012 08:08 PM |
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When in forest haven't a food, animals come city.. One plant have all for species, example of carrot have carrot fly, carrot larva, carrot spider etc.. If one lose then animals eat of start. Hm ok means next generation etc
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted November 30, 2012 08:10 PM |
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If a post smells like crap, looks like crap and feels like crap it must be allowed to call it so - whether you like that or not.
You have a high opinion of yourself - but shouldn't you start to distrust your judgement when you suddenly start to excuse and belittle things, because they have been part of human history?
You are right - I didn't want to post here anymore, and for good reason. Respect has to be earned and that post of yours doesn't deserve it. It's politician bla.
If you cannot stand the truth - not my problem.
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blizzardboy
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Nerf Herder
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posted November 30, 2012 08:13 PM |
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JJ: I'm not sure who you're expecting to convince. Your argument smells of stinky winky poopy diapers. Plus you're like 80-years-old or something, why do you even care about anything even remotely related to sex?
The central basis of your defense of bestiality is that there are (allegedly) greater injustices occurring against animals, therefore, in order to be consistent, we must also allow lesser injustices. Even if you did convince somebody that slaughtering animals for food is worse than having sex with them, your argument is still moot. You don't just write off something because greater injustices are occurring, and therefore when you're presented with the opportunity to stop a lesser injustice, you just let it slide, all for the sake of trying to avoid hypocrisy at all costs. In fact, whether it is with personal habits or on a macro scale with societies, it is often times only through small steps and correcting more minor problems that one is eventually able to successfully tackle the greater, more challenging issues.
Mvass actually presents a defensible argument, even though I don't consider it satisfactory. Your defense is more of a cop out than anything else.
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"Folks, I don't trust children. They're here to replace us."
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted November 30, 2012 08:21 PM |
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Edited by Corribus at 20:27, 30 Nov 2012.
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If a post smells like crap, looks like crap and feels like crap it must be allowed to call it so - whether you like that or not
Actually it must not. You can post here and you can even disagree with people but you can't insult other members or what they write. If you can't learn to control your behavior or your temper, then you can't post here, and I can help you out with that if you have trouble resisting the urge.
@Blizz
Yes, this is essentially what I was trying to say.
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I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're goin', and hook up with them later. -Mitch Hedberg
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted November 30, 2012 08:26 PM |
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I won't convince anyone.
It's just that YOU are all disqialifying yourselves as desk poopers.
It's not often I point to Elodin - but look at HIM. HE is VEGETARIAN, ALTHOUGH the Bible says something about humans being the masters of the earth and the animals and so on and so forth.
No one forced him, not society, not his belief - nothing. STILL, it seems he has such a high respect when it comes to life, that he isn't eating meat.
THAT is something I have HIGH respect of (even though I disagree often with Elodin). Consequently ELODIN is in a position to defend creature's rights, but I suppose he wouldn't do it and leave it at PERSONAL level. It's everyyone's personal decision. Here, however, we talk about LAW.
For the same reason you have deserved no respect at all. Also, you miss the point. Animal cruelty or not - the law says animals are PROPERTY. Property cannot be raped (or tortured), because it has no free will, because if it HAD free will it couldn't be property.
Which means the whole discussion is completely beside the point, because legally you are debating about THINGS. FIRST you must give animals a status DIFFERENT from property. THEN everything else follows, Capiche? Oh well, probably not, but hey, you must be 8 years old, so why do you even care?
A last word on my "bilious" answer to Corribus. That's simply because I'd expected MORE from him than such BS. Because BS it is. So I'm DISAPPOINTED, which means, I'm pissed, which means, I say so.
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blizzardboy
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Nerf Herder
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posted November 30, 2012 08:36 PM |
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Again, the central theme of your argument is: society is flawed in other areas, therefore we must also condone ourselves with being flawed in other areas. That's just outright insensible. The only way any human being or society has ever improved is by taking one step at a time. You don't just drink a potion and metamorphasize into a paragon of perfection overnight. Can the process of improvement involve being hypocritical to a certain extent? Yes, it can and it often times does. Too bad. That's usually the only way that anything gets better.
And what does the law have to do with anything? We're talking about changing the law. That's kind of the whole point of the thread discussion. Animals are already treated as a unique form of property, because even though you can buy and sell them, you're still not allowed to strap them to a rack and slowly burn them to death in Germany. That's already illegal.
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"Folks, I don't trust children. They're here to replace us."
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted November 30, 2012 08:46 PM |
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To finish this - you are all wrong. 
You see, if you give animals, let's call it "human-like" status, because we accept all those things that are brought here by the "animals friends" - what follows?
We have to treat them differently. We would have to LEGALLY check and decise whather we could eat animals, under which conditions, which animals, whether we can breed them and so on. Zoos were out. Exüperimenting was out. Cruel killings? Hunting? Bad crimes.
So we just don't. Too many people love to eat them, hunt them, don't respect them, and so on.
That's why animals are legally OBJECTS in general (with a couple of exceptions depending on country and religion).
CLEARLY this is a REALLY BAD (and not slight) case of double morales.
For example - why would you stop at eating dogs? I mean, people have rabbits as pets as well, geese can have very close relationships to humans...
My honest opinion is, this BS doesn't help animals in general in any way. It's just BAD conscience.
As long as animals are considered objects legally that are owned, there is no foundation WHATSOEVER to argue on the basis that they are NOT ( of COURSE they are not, but I point again to slavery: you either abolish it or not, but you don't start a fuss about how it is not correct to rape them as long as you accept that they are still slaves and can be owned - you either accept that they are not, and then you cannot rape them, or they ARE owned and then you have the right to do it.
Laws MUST reflect the moral belief of the majority of the population, otherwise they make no sense. Also laws DO reflect the moral belief of the majority sooner or later, and our laws simply say one thing:
Lots of animals are really cute and don't ever dare to hurt them - but a steak is a steak, especially if I don't have to kill the meat myself and only see the final product.
That is not something I can respect.
JJ over and out.
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xerox
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
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posted November 30, 2012 08:49 PM |
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I think you need to start thinking outside of polar opposites.
Why must animals EITHER be nothing more than property OR have human status?
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Over himself, over his own
body and
mind, the individual is
sovereign.
- John Stuart Mill
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blizzardboy
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Nerf Herder
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posted November 30, 2012 08:53 PM |
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Because the laws of physics dictate that if we aren't legally consistent and absolute about everything, gravity will reverse and everybody will die.
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"Folks, I don't trust children. They're here to replace us."
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted November 30, 2012 09:00 PM |
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Why must animals EITHER be nothing more than property OR have human status?
Because in polemics there is no middle ground.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted November 30, 2012 09:02 PM |
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I think you need to start thinking outside of polar opposites.
Why must animals EITHER be nothing more than property OR have human status?
That's not what I say. It's property or non-property, actually (human-similar, sentient, whatever you call it). AND you ignore that property is the current status.
Don't you think it strange that "property" is ever more recognized as something that has all the earmarks of NOT being property - but STILL IS property?
Think slaves. Imagine there were still slaves. Now imagine, always more laws would be made: how you must not do this to them, and how you do have to allow that, and so on... Wouldn't there be a time where you would just stop and say, "Heck, if they are property then why do we have to be so careful how we treat them? Maybe they should get another status..." But, hey, it's so darn convenient to have them, right?
Lastly, Blizzard, you are wrong. That's true only for animals with vertebrae. Lobsters and so on we can all legally do with what we like. Think sharks - they catch them, cut off their fins, and throw them back into the water.
Over and out again - why do I even bother?
Oh, and Corribus, what's your last post if not - polemic?
You are also pretty selective in your arguments and completely ignore that EATING animals is just ONE thing. I repeat: Zoos, Experiments, hunting, killing for hides, pelts, horns, valuables ... BREEDING them for these kinds of things.
This sholw crap about animal protection is BAD BAD HYPOCRYSY, simply because animals are done every cruelty with, as long as you can make a dollar with it, and the law we are talking about in this thread is JUST A POLITICAL BOON.
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xerox
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
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posted November 30, 2012 09:12 PM |
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Edited by xerox at 21:12, 30 Nov 2012.
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My conclusion is that we need a new word that describes a kind of property that you are obligated to take care of.
____________
Over himself, over his own
body and
mind, the individual is
sovereign.
- John Stuart Mill
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Seraphim
Supreme Hero
Knowledge Reaper
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posted November 30, 2012 09:12 PM |
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...You do know why dogs stick to their "owners" right? Not because of love or compassion or cakes but because there are "Free" meals from the owner. The dog "Protects" the "owner" in return from the free food....
Seraphim...you are so wrong with this statement, I just can't find words for it.
So, tell me then? How do some none primate animals display sophisticated or none sophisticated versions of love?
Its ok if dogs or other animals display rudimentary or underdeveloped versions of empathy but we know that that empathy CANNOT be directed to humans. In essence, dont tell me some doggie does X or Y because it "FEELs" OK? I find it insulting.
What about all those cases where dog owner were attacked and or murdered by their Dogs?
Does this case ring bells? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabelle_Dinoire
Actually, this thread is insulting to Human dignity. Equating human empathy with genetically castrated Wolves is really the epitome of arrogance.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted November 30, 2012 09:17 PM |
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Quote:
My conclusion is that we need a new word that describes a kind of property that you are obligated to take care of.
We have that already, It's called "children".
Meat is currently "grown". It won't take that long, until we can grow meat and there won't be any reason anymore to kill animals for food.
Still, all the other reasons I named will STILL be valid...
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This thread is pages long: 
