guest_of_logic wrote:I think that you're making the resolution of this dialogue to be more black-and-white than it actually is. Let me give you an example of why I think that your reasoning that just because we don't save rabbits from hawks, it is inconsistent for us to care about what is of value to animals in general, is faulty. When we allow human beings to drive around in cars, we are accepting a certain amount of individual deaths. And yet we don't jump in and intervene to save those people by preventing people from driving cars, do we? And why not? Because we accept that for all humans the benefits of transport are worth the acceptance of a certain level of death.
But we also
try to minimize these deaths -- and we do nothing of the sort for rabbits, nor would we even seriously consider doing so.
Bad analogy. if anything, it demonstrates exactly that we
don't care about rabbits in themselves, because we don't try to minimize their violent, painful deaths, the way we do with humans.
Then why aren't we looking for better alternatives?
I'm not sure that any exist. "Leave the ecosystem to its natural functioning" and "Intervene as humans to prevent deaths in the ecosystem" when it comes to our moral obligations re animal death pretty much seem to cover it as far as I can see. Am I missing something?
No, your #2 is exactly the alternative i was speaking about. The question is, why aren't we even
trying to find a way to protect the rabbits without unbalancing the ecosystem?
But you already know the answer, right? Anyone who suggested that we should try to protect rabbits from hawks would be laughed out of town, for a good reason.
As I wrote earlier, things aren't perfect. That doesn't change the fact that in general, and despite the imperfections of prejudice, animal cruelty laws exist primarily out of concern for animals, although I take your point that human concerns obviously do come into it. I mean, if you want to play a QRS-like game you could reduce it all down to concern for humans: we are only concerned for animals because their suffering causes us to feel bad, and our real concern is for humans to not feel bad, but that would be a disingenuous manipulation of what it means to be "concerned"
There is a qualitative difference. We make laws to protect all people, regardless of how we feel about them individually or collectively. We emphatically do
not do that for animals. in fact, animal cruelty laws protect only a tiny minority of animals --
and only from suffering inflicted by humans.
So which hypothesis do you think fits this fact better -- the supposition that we try to minimize animal suffering, or the supposition that we try to minimize
our pangs conscience and
our corruption by cruelty?
Remember, the number of cases where animals suffer greatly without malicious human intent vastly outnumber the animals who suffer greatly through malicious human intent. Hell, the agricultural combines kill something around ten rodents per acre when harvesting various grains.
Do we give a fuck? I mean, seriously, find me someone who is as concerned about dead field rodents as they are about Fluffy the Cat being abused. Even vegetarians like you -- humane! no animal suffering! -- cause with their industrially farmed diet more deaths than would be caused by someone who only ate range-grazed beef (I ran the number once, the latter would cause about 15 times fewer deaths than the former IIRC).
Nobody gives a fuck, because we aren't there when the helpless field mice flee from the giant whirring blades, and then get painfully sliced into a messy blood-and-guts soup.
No, it's not the point. The point is that exceptions don't deny the generalisation.
No, it means that those 'exceptions' aren't in fact exceptions at all, and instead support my point. We haven't even started extending universal moral concern to
humans until recently.
As I wrote above, I accept that human concerns come into it, I just deny that it's all about us.
yes, you do. Without any evidence other than hollow proclamations by people of course; but you do deny it.
Yeah, just like we oppose certain forms of human-protecting intervention (e.g. banning all cars) because, uhhh, because we don't feel like it! No, we don't just do it because we don't feel like it, we do it because we deem it best (not just for us, but for all animals) to let nature run its course, except where it gets out of balance.
Right.
Which animals is it better for, to die a painful criel death?
We don't
really care about whether the rabbits suffer. We could at least
try to minimize their suffering, but we think it better that the rabbits die at the claws and beaks and teeth of predators, screaming in desperate agony as their blood leaks out onto the cold earth.
So tell me, what value is more important than the suffering of all those countless animals? What is it about nature running its course that matters so much? Are you now going to claim that the
ecosystem has intrinsic valuation, apart from all the animals which comprise it?
Still furthermore, we don't even care about the deaths of some humans we like (like Princess Diana) as long as it's not us who is crashing her car.
Hmmm. You aren't doing too well on analogies. You are getting desperate, dude, grasping at random straws.
You haven't convinced me that I have any.
No, indeed I haven't. :)
vicdan wrote:As Quine had demonstrated, the excuses never run out -- you can always introduce yet another modification, no matter how ridiculous, to make your desired conclusion mesh with the surrounding conceptual framework.
Yes, and how will we ever know which of us is doing that?
Oh, we could simply compare the two hypotheses, as I did above. The comparison is quite telling. A clean, concise, coherent explanation, vs. a convoluted mess of exceptions and special clauses.
Do you know how I usually explain Quine-Duhem Thesis?
Imagine that you get on your bathroom scale, and -- horror! -- it shows you to be 10lbs heavier. However, you don't have to believe it. You can instead postulate that you gained no weight, but that the gravity field in your bathroom is distorted. You are trying in the living room, with the same result? Why, the distortion field follows your scales around! etc.
The point of QDT is that evidence never
compels any specific conclusion. You can always grab some other conclusion, and with enough twisting and turning and spinning, make it fit. An epistemic system can only be judged holistically, on its systemic merit.