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How it is possible to have 861 peaple that think eat dog is ok? Sad day
I tought that new generation was more modern.
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JingleHell and dmfg:
Thanks for the debate. I am vegan and going to stay that way the rest of my life. I have no regrets and feel I am going the right thing. I hope you had fun in this discussion, and keep open minds to veganism and being vegan in the future!
I need to go to work now 
VEGAN 2012!!!
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Dog meat cat meat cow meat horse meat
I would not eat my cat but I would eat a tiger. Where is the difference though?
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On April 16 2012 01:14 SolonTLG wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2012 01:06 dmfg wrote:On April 16 2012 00:40 SolonTLG wrote:On April 16 2012 00:29 dmfg wrote:On April 15 2012 23:24 SolonTLG wrote:On April 15 2012 23:17 Nevermind86 wrote:On April 15 2012 08:52 Redox wrote:
Dogs are highly social animals. They have not been bred to live under the conditions of mass livestock farming. They just go mad if kept under certain conditions, it is animal cruelty.
One just has to look up certain videos from China to know what is the problem with farming dogs.
Really, now society cares about the feelings of the animals we eat?, it's total nonsense you either care about ALL of them or none of them and since nobody really cares about chicken's or pig's feelings, then why would dogs be any different? Chickens are social animals too man but at the end of the day it's just meat, period. Dogs don't care about the feelings of the animals they eat, why would we care for their feelings? I agree, and argue the we SHOULD care about the feeling of all animals and thus NOT EAT ANY ANIMALS!!!! Furthermore, if you really care about animals, then don't eat eggs or dairy! These industries keep animals alive and torture them to feed humans! Example: Egg Laying Hens Suffer in Filth on Kreider Farms Go VEGAN 2012! There's no good reason to believe that animals of any kind "feel" anything, including pain. They are capable of sensing and producing stereotyped responses to damaging stimuli, but so are insects and I don't know of anyone who argues that insects should enjoy the same level of protection as other animals. They are capable of being trained to produce certain (potentially complex) responses to certain types of stimuli (such as dogs wagging their tails in response to recognising a certain person such their owner), but there is no evidence that there is consciousness involved, rather than a simply re-wiring of their brains in response to Pavlovian conditioning (on a similar level to a simple reflex) The only species we have reason to believe is capable of "conscious" thought, and hence feeling, is humans. And even then it's only because each individual person believes they are conscious, and is capable of directly and unambigiously communicating this fact to other humans. Serious question: have you ever lived with an animal (dog/cat/etc.)? If so, I think you would notice that each animal has its own personality. A personality based on nature and nurture, just like humans! I have seen my dogs do crazy smart things. They have figured out, WITHOUT training, how to open doors, steal food, and even try to disguise their stealing of food! Animals absolutely have conscious thought! My mother kept a lot of cats, dogs and chickens, though I wasn't particularly attached to them. My view of this subject is mostly based on neurobiology rather than my interpretations of what my mum's menagerie were doing. Thing is, there's a separation between "consciousness" and "problem solving ability", and one does not necessarily imply the other. You could write a computer program that could solve incredibly complex problems, even in ways that seem innovative to an observer who is unaware of how it works, but a computer program doesn't have "consciousness". Here's the thing - what you really want to do, is to be able to ask your dog "are you conscious of self?" "do you feel pain?" "do you love your owner?" etc. The problem is, we are not able to teach dogs concepts at this level - we're only really able to train them that if they receive X stimulus, and perform Y action, they are rewarded. So we're not able to communicate with animals on a (scientifically) meaningful level, and instead we're forced to interpret their responses through our own expectations of what those responses mean. This is a pretty reasonable thing to do for humans communicating with humans, since you can put yourself in the other person's shoes and think "if I did that, it would mean ...", and reasonably expect it to be true since our brains are sufficiently similar. The problem is when we're forced to do that with animals. Then we're forcing human thinking onto an animal's actions - "if I were my dog doing X, that means I'd be thinking Y". It's not necessarily a valid step to take. Animal nervous systems are wired up rather differently to ours, with proportionally much more of their actions dependent on simple reflexes compared to humans whose brains can directly control limb actions. You've probably heard about the chicken that had its head and most of its brain cut off and survived for 9 months, able to carry out most activities of living such as walking, running, digestion, pooing, etc. Experiments on decerebrate cats shows that cats are also able to walk and adjust their speed without the part of the brain thought to be important for conscious thought. In essence, don't underestimate just how much is possible without conscious thought - even complex, coordinated movements in response to a changing stimulus are possible. Now that's not evidence that animals lack consciousness. It's just a caution against what evidence there is to suggest they do have consciousness. I appreciate your well written and thoughtful reply, but I just disagree. It seems to me the problem is that you cannot prove that animals are NOT consciousness. I have to think (from my experiences) and believe (from what I've read) that animals are conscious, and thus I don't want to kill them for food. You can disagree, but it appears that no one can "conclusively" prove it either way. Wouldn't you want to error on the side of caution and not eat animals? Despite no "proof"?
Should religion be enforced for the same reason?
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On April 16 2012 01:27 StickyFlower wrote:
A dog has personality. A cow lack it.
Hence I have no problem eating a cow but would never eat a dog. (Never say never but I would prefer not to.) Humans have domesticided some animals for their talants as living beings, and some for their talants of providing food.
By simplifying it and say "It is either okay to eat animals--dogs included. Or it's not okay to eat animals." Is an error for me, because Humans are animals too. So what you are then saying is "We cant eat meat because we are made of meat ourselves and what would stop us from feasting on eachother?!?!?"
You might call me a racist for favouring some animals to live a long and prosperous life while others are made to make sure the favoured animals will live their long and prosperous life.
Many people that owns cows, horses, pigs and so on would disagree that they don't have personalities. How much time have you spent with a cow? It seems very arbitrary to base your belief that one animal is ok to eat and one not on that reason.
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On April 16 2012 00:51 JingleHell wrote:
As for "pets vs slaves", if you're keeping it against it's will, regardless of how much you take care of it, or your use, it's still a slave. Back when human slavery was legal, slaves were treated as livestock, with the owner responsible for the medical well-being of their valuable property. If someone treated their slaves better, with decent food and medicine, to make them more productive, did that change the nature of them being kept?
I really don't see what the difference would be in keeping a pet compared to keeping a child then? It's not like my dog runs away if I open the door, lol.
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On April 16 2012 01:29 SolonTLG wrote:JingleHell and dmfg: Thanks for the debate. I am vegan and going to stay that way the rest of my life. I have no regrets and feel I am going the right thing. I hope you had fun in this discussion, and keep open minds to veganism and being vegan in the future! I need to go to work now VEGAN 2012!!!
I'm not trying to change your mind either, hope I didn't give that impression. I just don't like the arguments used. For me, it's like religion. Do what you want, but don't expect others to agree without something objective.
For the record, I'm against cruelty to animals, and don't mind having pets at all. I'm just also a realist with a bizarre sort of worldview.
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On April 16 2012 01:32 Sneakyz wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2012 00:51 JingleHell wrote:
As for "pets vs slaves", if you're keeping it against it's will, regardless of how much you take care of it, or your use, it's still a slave. Back when human slavery was legal, slaves were treated as livestock, with the owner responsible for the medical well-being of their valuable property. If someone treated their slaves better, with decent food and medicine, to make them more productive, did that change the nature of them being kept? I really don't see what the difference would be in keeping a pet compared to keeping a child then? It's not like my dog runs away if I open the door, lol.
My toddler does, there's a difference. Also, the child gains legal rights after reaching the point decided by law that they can also have legal responsibility for those rights. The animal never can attain legal responsibility within the law.
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On April 16 2012 01:20 JingleHell wrote:I'm NOT saying they're conscious. You are. You're the one saying they care and we have an ethical responsibility to treat them better than plants, but turning around and justifying slavery. Show nested quote +On April 16 2012 01:14 SolonTLG wrote:On April 16 2012 01:06 dmfg wrote:On April 16 2012 00:40 SolonTLG wrote:On April 16 2012 00:29 dmfg wrote:On April 15 2012 23:24 SolonTLG wrote:On April 15 2012 23:17 Nevermind86 wrote:On April 15 2012 08:52 Redox wrote:
Dogs are highly social animals. They have not been bred to live under the conditions of mass livestock farming. They just go mad if kept under certain conditions, it is animal cruelty.
One just has to look up certain videos from China to know what is the problem with farming dogs.
Really, now society cares about the feelings of the animals we eat?, it's total nonsense you either care about ALL of them or none of them and since nobody really cares about chicken's or pig's feelings, then why would dogs be any different? Chickens are social animals too man but at the end of the day it's just meat, period. Dogs don't care about the feelings of the animals they eat, why would we care for their feelings? I agree, and argue the we SHOULD care about the feeling of all animals and thus NOT EAT ANY ANIMALS!!!! Furthermore, if you really care about animals, then don't eat eggs or dairy! These industries keep animals alive and torture them to feed humans! Example: Egg Laying Hens Suffer in Filth on Kreider Farms Go VEGAN 2012! There's no good reason to believe that animals of any kind "feel" anything, including pain. They are capable of sensing and producing stereotyped responses to damaging stimuli, but so are insects and I don't know of anyone who argues that insects should enjoy the same level of protection as other animals. They are capable of being trained to produce certain (potentially complex) responses to certain types of stimuli (such as dogs wagging their tails in response to recognising a certain person such their owner), but there is no evidence that there is consciousness involved, rather than a simply re-wiring of their brains in response to Pavlovian conditioning (on a similar level to a simple reflex) The only species we have reason to believe is capable of "conscious" thought, and hence feeling, is humans. And even then it's only because each individual person believes they are conscious, and is capable of directly and unambigiously communicating this fact to other humans. Serious question: have you ever lived with an animal (dog/cat/etc.)? If so, I think you would notice that each animal has its own personality. A personality based on nature and nurture, just like humans! I have seen my dogs do crazy smart things. They have figured out, WITHOUT training, how to open doors, steal food, and even try to disguise their stealing of food! Animals absolutely have conscious thought! My mother kept a lot of cats, dogs and chickens, though I wasn't particularly attached to them. My view of this subject is mostly based on neurobiology rather than my interpretations of what my mum's menagerie were doing. Thing is, there's a separation between "consciousness" and "problem solving ability", and one does not necessarily imply the other. You could write a computer program that could solve incredibly complex problems, even in ways that seem innovative to an observer who is unaware of how it works, but a computer program doesn't have "consciousness". Here's the thing - what you really want to do, is to be able to ask your dog "are you conscious of self?" "do you feel pain?" "do you love your owner?" etc. The problem is, we are not able to teach dogs concepts at this level - we're only really able to train them that if they receive X stimulus, and perform Y action, they are rewarded. So we're not able to communicate with animals on a (scientifically) meaningful level, and instead we're forced to interpret their responses through our own expectations of what those responses mean. This is a pretty reasonable thing to do for humans communicating with humans, since you can put yourself in the other person's shoes and think "if I did that, it would mean ...", and reasonably expect it to be true since our brains are sufficiently similar. The problem is when we're forced to do that with animals. Then we're forcing human thinking onto an animal's actions - "if I were my dog doing X, that means I'd be thinking Y". It's not necessarily a valid step to take. Animal nervous systems are wired up rather differently to ours, with proportionally much more of their actions dependent on simple reflexes compared to humans whose brains can directly control limb actions. You've probably heard about the chicken that had its head and most of its brain cut off and survived for 9 months, able to carry out most activities of living such as walking, running, digestion, pooing, etc. Experiments on decerebrate cats shows that cats are also able to walk and adjust their speed without the part of the brain thought to be important for conscious thought. In essence, don't underestimate just how much is possible without conscious thought - even complex, coordinated movements in response to a changing stimulus are possible. Now that's not evidence that animals lack consciousness. It's just a caution against what evidence there is to suggest they do have consciousness. I appreciate your well written and thoughtful reply, but I just disagree. It seems to me the problem is that you cannot prove that animals are NOT consciousness. I have to think (from my experiences) and believe (from what I've read) that animals are conscious, and thus I don't want to kill them for food. You can disagree, but it appears that no one can "conclusively" prove it either way. Wouldn't you want to error on the side of caution and not eat animals? Despite no "proof"? And you saying this justifies my argument that you shouldn't exploit plants either. You can't prove THEY aren't conscious, so shouldn't you err on the side of caution and starve? My whole point is that the arguments used to try and push the "ethics" of a vegan lifestyle on other people are grounded in nothing but sentiment, and you can use the same arguments to suggest that starvation is the only ethical choice.
I think you'd have a hard time arguing that plants are "sentient" or "conscious" or whichever word you want to use to that effect.
Although consciousness/sentience isn't well defined, I think most people would say that the key factor is the idea of a "subjective experience" - in other words, the idea that there exists a "self". I don't particularly like the definition you quoted, because "perceive" merely implies that there is a "self" that does the perceiving, rather than explicitly stating so.
I don't know of any plants that even have the biological mechanisms to monitor all (or even some) parts of the plant for damage. Without such a mechanism, the plant cannot recognise "self", and so cannot be conscious or sentient.
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On April 16 2012 01:27 StickyFlower wrote:
A dog has personality. A cow lack it.
Hence I have no problem eating a cow but would never eat a dog. (Never say never but I would prefer not to.) Humans have domesticided some animals for their talants as living beings, and some for their talants of providing food.
By simplifying it and say "It is either okay to eat animals--dogs included. Or it's not okay to eat animals." Is an error for me, because Humans are animals too. So what you are then saying is "We cant eat meat because we are made of meat ourselves and what would stop us from feasting on eachother?!?!?"
You might call me a racist for favouring some animals to live a long and prosperous life while others are made to make sure the favoured animals will live their long and prosperous life.
You don't eat humans for survival reasons.
A society that eats its own survives less than a society that doesn't. So we have evolved to be non-cannibalistic creatures because it improves our survival.
Favoritism amongst animals is a purely biased mindset and isn't something that is philosophically or morally sound.
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On April 16 2012 01:34 JingleHell wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2012 01:32 Sneakyz wrote:On April 16 2012 00:51 JingleHell wrote:
As for "pets vs slaves", if you're keeping it against it's will, regardless of how much you take care of it, or your use, it's still a slave. Back when human slavery was legal, slaves were treated as livestock, with the owner responsible for the medical well-being of their valuable property. If someone treated their slaves better, with decent food and medicine, to make them more productive, did that change the nature of them being kept? I really don't see what the difference would be in keeping a pet compared to keeping a child then? It's not like my dog runs away if I open the door, lol. My toddler does, there's a difference. Also, the child gains legal rights after reaching the point decided by law that they can also have legal responsibility for those rights. The animal never can attain legal responsibility within the law.
Sure, but my intention with that post was that most pets are not actually kept against their will, they want to be with their owner.
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On April 16 2012 01:31 nam nam wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2012 01:27 StickyFlower wrote:
A dog has personality. A cow lack it.
Hence I have no problem eating a cow but would never eat a dog. (Never say never but I would prefer not to.) Humans have domesticided some animals for their talants as living beings, and some for their talants of providing food.
By simplifying it and say "It is either okay to eat animals--dogs included. Or it's not okay to eat animals." Is an error for me, because Humans are animals too. So what you are then saying is "We cant eat meat because we are made of meat ourselves and what would stop us from feasting on eachother?!?!?"
You might call me a racist for favouring some animals to live a long and prosperous life while others are made to make sure the favoured animals will live their long and prosperous life.
Many people that owns cows, horses, pigs and so on would disagree that they don't have personalities. How much time have you spent with a cow? It seems very arbitrary to base your belief that one animal is ok to eat and one not on that reason.
Since Im born and raised on a farm. My neighbours have had cows and pigs all my life and I have had the pleasure to deal with them on a regular basis. I do say Cows dont have a charming personalities, because from my own experiance they realy dont. In all fairness pigs, can grow on you.
My uncle had 2 pigs that he took care for 2 years and they realy grew on him. He was almost reluctant to killing them and have a huge feast on them, luckely they tasted great.
Horses are in quite contrast to what some people thing, they do have souls. My sister have had horses for more then 20 years. I have myself ridden for a year and they are amazing animals. I wouldnt want to eat them, but then again they are not domesticided as food, they are domesticided as transportationdevices. Travelcompanions.
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On April 16 2012 01:34 dmfg wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2012 01:20 JingleHell wrote:I'm NOT saying they're conscious. You are. You're the one saying they care and we have an ethical responsibility to treat them better than plants, but turning around and justifying slavery. On April 16 2012 01:14 SolonTLG wrote:On April 16 2012 01:06 dmfg wrote:On April 16 2012 00:40 SolonTLG wrote:On April 16 2012 00:29 dmfg wrote:On April 15 2012 23:24 SolonTLG wrote:On April 15 2012 23:17 Nevermind86 wrote:On April 15 2012 08:52 Redox wrote:
Dogs are highly social animals. They have not been bred to live under the conditions of mass livestock farming. They just go mad if kept under certain conditions, it is animal cruelty.
One just has to look up certain videos from China to know what is the problem with farming dogs.
Really, now society cares about the feelings of the animals we eat?, it's total nonsense you either care about ALL of them or none of them and since nobody really cares about chicken's or pig's feelings, then why would dogs be any different? Chickens are social animals too man but at the end of the day it's just meat, period. Dogs don't care about the feelings of the animals they eat, why would we care for their feelings? I agree, and argue the we SHOULD care about the feeling of all animals and thus NOT EAT ANY ANIMALS!!!! Furthermore, if you really care about animals, then don't eat eggs or dairy! These industries keep animals alive and torture them to feed humans! Example: Egg Laying Hens Suffer in Filth on Kreider Farms Go VEGAN 2012! There's no good reason to believe that animals of any kind "feel" anything, including pain. They are capable of sensing and producing stereotyped responses to damaging stimuli, but so are insects and I don't know of anyone who argues that insects should enjoy the same level of protection as other animals. They are capable of being trained to produce certain (potentially complex) responses to certain types of stimuli (such as dogs wagging their tails in response to recognising a certain person such their owner), but there is no evidence that there is consciousness involved, rather than a simply re-wiring of their brains in response to Pavlovian conditioning (on a similar level to a simple reflex) The only species we have reason to believe is capable of "conscious" thought, and hence feeling, is humans. And even then it's only because each individual person believes they are conscious, and is capable of directly and unambigiously communicating this fact to other humans. Serious question: have you ever lived with an animal (dog/cat/etc.)? If so, I think you would notice that each animal has its own personality. A personality based on nature and nurture, just like humans! I have seen my dogs do crazy smart things. They have figured out, WITHOUT training, how to open doors, steal food, and even try to disguise their stealing of food! Animals absolutely have conscious thought! My mother kept a lot of cats, dogs and chickens, though I wasn't particularly attached to them. My view of this subject is mostly based on neurobiology rather than my interpretations of what my mum's menagerie were doing. Thing is, there's a separation between "consciousness" and "problem solving ability", and one does not necessarily imply the other. You could write a computer program that could solve incredibly complex problems, even in ways that seem innovative to an observer who is unaware of how it works, but a computer program doesn't have "consciousness". Here's the thing - what you really want to do, is to be able to ask your dog "are you conscious of self?" "do you feel pain?" "do you love your owner?" etc. The problem is, we are not able to teach dogs concepts at this level - we're only really able to train them that if they receive X stimulus, and perform Y action, they are rewarded. So we're not able to communicate with animals on a (scientifically) meaningful level, and instead we're forced to interpret their responses through our own expectations of what those responses mean. This is a pretty reasonable thing to do for humans communicating with humans, since you can put yourself in the other person's shoes and think "if I did that, it would mean ...", and reasonably expect it to be true since our brains are sufficiently similar. The problem is when we're forced to do that with animals. Then we're forcing human thinking onto an animal's actions - "if I were my dog doing X, that means I'd be thinking Y". It's not necessarily a valid step to take. Animal nervous systems are wired up rather differently to ours, with proportionally much more of their actions dependent on simple reflexes compared to humans whose brains can directly control limb actions. You've probably heard about the chicken that had its head and most of its brain cut off and survived for 9 months, able to carry out most activities of living such as walking, running, digestion, pooing, etc. Experiments on decerebrate cats shows that cats are also able to walk and adjust their speed without the part of the brain thought to be important for conscious thought. In essence, don't underestimate just how much is possible without conscious thought - even complex, coordinated movements in response to a changing stimulus are possible. Now that's not evidence that animals lack consciousness. It's just a caution against what evidence there is to suggest they do have consciousness. I appreciate your well written and thoughtful reply, but I just disagree. It seems to me the problem is that you cannot prove that animals are NOT consciousness. I have to think (from my experiences) and believe (from what I've read) that animals are conscious, and thus I don't want to kill them for food. You can disagree, but it appears that no one can "conclusively" prove it either way. Wouldn't you want to error on the side of caution and not eat animals? Despite no "proof"? And you saying this justifies my argument that you shouldn't exploit plants either. You can't prove THEY aren't conscious, so shouldn't you err on the side of caution and starve? My whole point is that the arguments used to try and push the "ethics" of a vegan lifestyle on other people are grounded in nothing but sentiment, and you can use the same arguments to suggest that starvation is the only ethical choice. I think you'd have a hard time arguing that plants are "sentient" or "conscious" or whichever word you want to use to that effect. Although consciousness/sentience isn't well defined, I think most people would say that the key factor is the idea of a "subjective experience" - in other words, the idea that there exists a "self". I don't particularly like the definition you quoted, because "perceive" merely implies that there is a "self" that does the perceiving, rather than explicitly stating so. I don't know of any plants that even have the biological mechanisms to monitor all (or even some) parts of the plant for damage. Without such a mechanism, the plant cannot recognise "self", and so cannot be conscious or sentient.
Luckily, I'm not trying to prove the plants are conscious. I'm turning the "prove they AREN'T conscious" argument back.
Also, many plants are capable of responding to damage. Just because their mechanisms work differently from ours doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
On April 16 2012 01:38 Sneakyz wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2012 01:34 JingleHell wrote:On April 16 2012 01:32 Sneakyz wrote:On April 16 2012 00:51 JingleHell wrote:
As for "pets vs slaves", if you're keeping it against it's will, regardless of how much you take care of it, or your use, it's still a slave. Back when human slavery was legal, slaves were treated as livestock, with the owner responsible for the medical well-being of their valuable property. If someone treated their slaves better, with decent food and medicine, to make them more productive, did that change the nature of them being kept? I really don't see what the difference would be in keeping a pet compared to keeping a child then? It's not like my dog runs away if I open the door, lol. My toddler does, there's a difference. Also, the child gains legal rights after reaching the point decided by law that they can also have legal responsibility for those rights. The animal never can attain legal responsibility within the law. Sure, but my intention with that post was that most pets are not actually kept against their will, they want to be with their owner.
Can you prove that? Maybe they're just afraid they'd starve if they didn't stay around. Plenty of slaves didn't try to run away because they didn't want to starve or die of exposure trying to escape. Was that ok?
Honestly, I don't consider it slavery, but if you give them rights and responsibilities within the law, it would be. Either they're forced to stay where we put them, or they become responsible for crimes that they don't even know they're comitting, like trespass and vandalism. We can't make them pay for plants they destroy, we can't confine them without their permission, what do we do? Incarcerate them for breaking the law? At tremendous expense and zero gain?
They can't be legal entities in a sane society, so they NEED to be property. And being property suggests strongly that we have the right to use them to our gain.
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On April 16 2012 01:28 misspo wrote:
How it is possible to have 861 peaple that think eat dog is ok? Sad day
I tought that new generation was more modern.
The modern generation is tolerand and rational, if you eat meat, there is no reason why you should discriminate what kind of meat. They're all animals, even tough some humans pet dogs, some dont, some humans pet cows and pigs, some don't.
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On April 16 2012 01:37 lorkac wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2012 01:27 StickyFlower wrote:
A dog has personality. A cow lack it.
Hence I have no problem eating a cow but would never eat a dog. (Never say never but I would prefer not to.) Humans have domesticided some animals for their talants as living beings, and some for their talants of providing food.
By simplifying it and say "It is either okay to eat animals--dogs included. Or it's not okay to eat animals." Is an error for me, because Humans are animals too. So what you are then saying is "We cant eat meat because we are made of meat ourselves and what would stop us from feasting on eachother?!?!?"
You might call me a racist for favouring some animals to live a long and prosperous life while others are made to make sure the favoured animals will live their long and prosperous life.
You don't eat humans for survival reasons. A society that eats its own survives less than a society that doesn't. So we have evolved to be non-cannibalistic creatures because it improves our survival. Favoritism amongst animals is a purely biased mindset and isn't something that is philosophically or morally sound.
Sure you do, there are many examples of this. One of the most famous ones were a plane crash in south america (I think, not 100 % sure) where they fed on the passengers who had died to survive. There's been movies and books about it, but it's not a unique event.
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On April 16 2012 01:39 StickyFlower wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2012 01:31 nam nam wrote:On April 16 2012 01:27 StickyFlower wrote:
A dog has personality. A cow lack it.
Hence I have no problem eating a cow but would never eat a dog. (Never say never but I would prefer not to.) Humans have domesticided some animals for their talants as living beings, and some for their talants of providing food.
By simplifying it and say "It is either okay to eat animals--dogs included. Or it's not okay to eat animals." Is an error for me, because Humans are animals too. So what you are then saying is "We cant eat meat because we are made of meat ourselves and what would stop us from feasting on eachother?!?!?"
You might call me a racist for favouring some animals to live a long and prosperous life while others are made to make sure the favoured animals will live their long and prosperous life.
Many people that owns cows, horses, pigs and so on would disagree that they don't have personalities. How much time have you spent with a cow? It seems very arbitrary to base your belief that one animal is ok to eat and one not on that reason. Since Im born and raised on a farm. My neighbours have had cows and pigs all my life and I have had the pleasure to deal with them on a regular basis. I do say Cows dont have a charming personalities, because from my own experiance they realy dont. In all fairness pigs, can grow on you. My uncle had 2 pigs that he took care for 2 years and they realy grew on him. He was almost reluctant to killing them and have a huge feast on them, luckely they tasted great. Horses are in quite contrast to what some people thing, they do have souls. My sister have had horses for more then 20 years. I have myself ridden for a year and they are amazing animals. I wouldnt want to eat them, but then again they are not domesticided as food, they are domesticided as transportationdevices. Travelcompanions.
Good for you. There still many people that I've heard or read saying such things about cows. Just because they don't have glowing personalities doesn't mean it isn't there and it's still and incredible arbitrary reason to use and it doesn't make much sense regardless.
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playing devil's advocate,
If you believe "sentience" and "consciousness" are the main and only reasons why we shouldn't eat dog meat, then just within this argument's limited parameters, taking these premises to the farthest edge, you'd be fine with eating brain dead people or anyone who's brain shows minimal activity and does not respond to outside stimulus. Stepping onto the very fine edge of reality and the hypothetical, and then taking a running leap, what if "sentience" was demonstrated only briefly in an entire organism's life? Or only twice? Ten times? Once every Feb 29th? How many units of "sentience" would you need before cooking you with garlic would become morally wrong?
Personally, i find the vegetarian argument (healthier, eco friendlier, morally justified ectect) very convincing, although i still eat meat out of selfish bigoted preference. That said, if you've already accepted eating beef/chicken/pork, then to arbitrarily give immunity to all dogs would be intellectually dishonest. Sentience and consciousness is trickier. I think most would recognize that on the spectrum of things, plants rank only a little past rocks. But in between plants and humans is a wide range. Where to draw the line? Plants that trap prey? Insects? Parasites? Mollusks? Starfish? Crabs? Lizards? Rodents?
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+ Show Spoiler +On April 16 2012 01:27 StickyFlower wrote:
A dog has personality. A cow lack it.
Hence I have no problem eating a cow but would never eat a dog. (Never say never but I would prefer not to.) Humans have domesticided some animals for their talants as living beings, and some for their talants of providing food.
By simplifying it and say "It is either okay to eat animals--dogs included. Or it's not okay to eat animals." Is an error for me, because Humans are animals too. So what you are then saying is "We cant eat meat because we are made of meat ourselves and what would stop us from feasting on eachother?!?!?"
You might call me a racist for favouring some animals to live a long and prosperous life while others are made to make sure the favoured animals will live their long and prosperous life.
On April 16 2012 01:37 lorkac wrote:
You don't eat humans for survival reasons.
A society that eats its own survives less than a society that doesn't. So we have evolved to be non-cannibalistic creatures because it improves our survival.
Favoritism amongst animals is a purely biased mindset and isn't something that is philosophically or morally sound.
Its not realy unsound to speak of what the use the creature have. Humans didnt randomly pick some animals to keep as pets and others to eat when they needed the meat. Obviously cats are great for catching vermin like rats and mice. Dogs are great at hunting and guarding a perimiter. While cows , just as pigs, are bread to be eaten, they where domesticized for the soul purpose to be slaughtered when there was no other food around. They were the old version of a refrigirator.
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On April 16 2012 01:34 dmfg wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2012 01:20 JingleHell wrote:I'm NOT saying they're conscious. You are. You're the one saying they care and we have an ethical responsibility to treat them better than plants, but turning around and justifying slavery. On April 16 2012 01:14 SolonTLG wrote:On April 16 2012 01:06 dmfg wrote:On April 16 2012 00:40 SolonTLG wrote:On April 16 2012 00:29 dmfg wrote:On April 15 2012 23:24 SolonTLG wrote:On April 15 2012 23:17 Nevermind86 wrote:On April 15 2012 08:52 Redox wrote:
Dogs are highly social animals. They have not been bred to live under the conditions of mass livestock farming. They just go mad if kept under certain conditions, it is animal cruelty.
One just has to look up certain videos from China to know what is the problem with farming dogs.
Really, now society cares about the feelings of the animals we eat?, it's total nonsense you either care about ALL of them or none of them and since nobody really cares about chicken's or pig's feelings, then why would dogs be any different? Chickens are social animals too man but at the end of the day it's just meat, period. Dogs don't care about the feelings of the animals they eat, why would we care for their feelings? I agree, and argue the we SHOULD care about the feeling of all animals and thus NOT EAT ANY ANIMALS!!!! Furthermore, if you really care about animals, then don't eat eggs or dairy! These industries keep animals alive and torture them to feed humans! Example: Egg Laying Hens Suffer in Filth on Kreider Farms Go VEGAN 2012! There's no good reason to believe that animals of any kind "feel" anything, including pain. They are capable of sensing and producing stereotyped responses to damaging stimuli, but so are insects and I don't know of anyone who argues that insects should enjoy the same level of protection as other animals. They are capable of being trained to produce certain (potentially complex) responses to certain types of stimuli (such as dogs wagging their tails in response to recognising a certain person such their owner), but there is no evidence that there is consciousness involved, rather than a simply re-wiring of their brains in response to Pavlovian conditioning (on a similar level to a simple reflex) The only species we have reason to believe is capable of "conscious" thought, and hence feeling, is humans. And even then it's only because each individual person believes they are conscious, and is capable of directly and unambigiously communicating this fact to other humans. Serious question: have you ever lived with an animal (dog/cat/etc.)? If so, I think you would notice that each animal has its own personality. A personality based on nature and nurture, just like humans! I have seen my dogs do crazy smart things. They have figured out, WITHOUT training, how to open doors, steal food, and even try to disguise their stealing of food! Animals absolutely have conscious thought! My mother kept a lot of cats, dogs and chickens, though I wasn't particularly attached to them. My view of this subject is mostly based on neurobiology rather than my interpretations of what my mum's menagerie were doing. Thing is, there's a separation between "consciousness" and "problem solving ability", and one does not necessarily imply the other. You could write a computer program that could solve incredibly complex problems, even in ways that seem innovative to an observer who is unaware of how it works, but a computer program doesn't have "consciousness". Here's the thing - what you really want to do, is to be able to ask your dog "are you conscious of self?" "do you feel pain?" "do you love your owner?" etc. The problem is, we are not able to teach dogs concepts at this level - we're only really able to train them that if they receive X stimulus, and perform Y action, they are rewarded. So we're not able to communicate with animals on a (scientifically) meaningful level, and instead we're forced to interpret their responses through our own expectations of what those responses mean. This is a pretty reasonable thing to do for humans communicating with humans, since you can put yourself in the other person's shoes and think "if I did that, it would mean ...", and reasonably expect it to be true since our brains are sufficiently similar. The problem is when we're forced to do that with animals. Then we're forcing human thinking onto an animal's actions - "if I were my dog doing X, that means I'd be thinking Y". It's not necessarily a valid step to take. Animal nervous systems are wired up rather differently to ours, with proportionally much more of their actions dependent on simple reflexes compared to humans whose brains can directly control limb actions. You've probably heard about the chicken that had its head and most of its brain cut off and survived for 9 months, able to carry out most activities of living such as walking, running, digestion, pooing, etc. Experiments on decerebrate cats shows that cats are also able to walk and adjust their speed without the part of the brain thought to be important for conscious thought. In essence, don't underestimate just how much is possible without conscious thought - even complex, coordinated movements in response to a changing stimulus are possible. Now that's not evidence that animals lack consciousness. It's just a caution against what evidence there is to suggest they do have consciousness. I appreciate your well written and thoughtful reply, but I just disagree. It seems to me the problem is that you cannot prove that animals are NOT consciousness. I have to think (from my experiences) and believe (from what I've read) that animals are conscious, and thus I don't want to kill them for food. You can disagree, but it appears that no one can "conclusively" prove it either way. Wouldn't you want to error on the side of caution and not eat animals? Despite no "proof"? And you saying this justifies my argument that you shouldn't exploit plants either. You can't prove THEY aren't conscious, so shouldn't you err on the side of caution and starve? My whole point is that the arguments used to try and push the "ethics" of a vegan lifestyle on other people are grounded in nothing but sentiment, and you can use the same arguments to suggest that starvation is the only ethical choice. I think you'd have a hard time arguing that plants are "sentient" or "conscious" or whichever word you want to use to that effect. Although consciousness/sentience isn't well defined, I think most people would say that the key factor is the idea of a "subjective experience" - in other words, the idea that there exists a "self". I don't particularly like the definition you quoted, because "perceive" merely implies that there is a "self" that does the perceiving, rather than explicitly stating so. I don't know of any plants that even have the biological mechanisms to monitor all (or even some) parts of the plant for damage. Without such a mechanism, the plant cannot recognise "self", and so cannot be conscious or sentient.
Roots and branches grow around objects that obstruct them--unless the objects seems weak enough or small enough, then the tree just breaks through it. Bark hardens when there is a fire, to preserve moisture, unlike cut up timber that simply ignites. Vines (and all plants actually) grow towards the sun. As in they'll climb towards a position that is near the sun as not simply try to travel te hypotenuse towards the sun. Most plants grow better when they listen to music. Some communicate to each other by way of pollen.
Plants are very much aware of themselves.
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no problems here.. although, it seems odd, since they are used commonly as pets. But we're humans, we eat whatever floats our boat.
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EPT
