Peter Singer

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Ok, heres one I got from a philosophy forum. It’s basically Singer’s argument for specieism in a nutshell. It’s a weak argument, full of holes. So I want you to act like your taking a baseball bat to an old junk car and destroy this argument…

This is why it is immoral to kill and eat animals: despite obvious differences between human and nonhuman animals, we share a capacity to suffer, and this means that they, like us have interests in not suffering. If we ignore or discount their interests simply on the grounds that they are not of the same species, the logic of our position is similar to that of the racist or sexist - he who thinks that to be white or male is to be inherently superior in moral status, irrespective of other qualities and characteristics.

Some humans - infants and those with severe intellectual disabilities - have less ability to reason and less self-awareness than some nonhuman animals. So we cannot justifiably use these criteria to draw a distinction between all humans on the one hand and all nonhuman animals on the other.

If we wish to maintain the view that no conscious human beings, including those with profound, permanent intellectual disabilities, can be used in ways harmful to them solely as a means to another’s end, then we are going to have extend the boundaries of this principle beyond our own species to other animals that are conscious and able to be harmed. Otherwise we are drawing a moral circle around our own species, even when the members of our own species protected by that moral boundary are not superior in any morally relevant characteristics to many nonhuman animals who fall outside that moral circle.
 
Plants suffer too. I guess we can’t eat them either. So we can’t eat animals because they suffer and we can’t eat plants because they suffer. What the heck are we supposed to eat so WE don’t suffer? :hmmm:
 
Sabda said:
Plants suffer too. I guess we can’t eat them either. So we can’t eat animals because they suffer and we can’t eat plants because they suffer. What the heck are we supposed to eat so WE don’t suffer? :hmmm:
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A year or so ago, there was a Keating E-letter where he talked about going on an all-mineral diet, since minerals have no feelings. 😃
 
In high school a fellow classmate did a report on “screaming tomatoes”. Scientists had a roomful of tomato plants with little meters picking up their electromagnetic fields or whatever. Then one of the scientists went into the room and picked a tomato off one plant. The meters started going crazy. After that, whenever that one scientist would enter the room, all the plants would go nuts again. Any other scientist would not trigger such an effect. Sounds like we’re being insensitive to our green brothers, too, no?
 
Actually, even laboratory animal facilities are carefully regulated to minimize the stress placed on animals. For example, we are required to provide toys, monkeybars, and such for rats, and primates must have TV. It is not permitted to sacrifice experimental animals in the presence of other animals because of the stress it causes.

Science does not go as far as Dr. Singer in “equalizing” other species but it respects them for their role in helping to conquer human illness and every effort is made to minimize or prevent their suffering.

But if Singer is correct about self-awareness as needful for allowing human rights, then I suppose it’s OK to kill somebody when he is asleep or unconscious.
 
johnnycatholic said:
In high school a fellow classmate did a report on “screaming tomatoes”. Scientists had a roomful of tomato plants with little meters picking up their electromagnetic fields or whatever. Then one of the scientists went into the room and picked a tomato off one plant. The meters started going crazy. After that, whenever that one scientist would enter the room, all the plants would go nuts again. Any other scientist would not trigger such an effect. Sounds like we’re being insensitive to our green brothers, too, no?
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Where’s the source for this?
 
Predatory animals hunt and kill other animals. Why shouldn’t I be able to have the same "right’ to kill and eat other species the way a mountain lion does? If I am no better then an animal then why am I held to a higher standard when it comes to killing other species?
 
ribozyme said:
Where’s the source for this?
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brianoconnor.typepad.com/animal_crackers/2004/08/lobsters_plant_.html

My original source was a high school student doing a report, so i had to find an actual internet source. This seemed to be a good one. There is also a blurb from the guardian.uk something or other. There are some jokey articles on this subject, too, though, so if you research it, beware. Caveat emptor and all that.
Anyhoo, guess i’ll be eatin’ me some stone soup. Or Quarry. Better tastin’ 'cause it’s mined.
 
johnnycatholic said:
brianoconnor.typepad.com/animal_crackers/2004/08/lobsters_plant_.html

My original source was a high school student doing a report, so i had to find an actual internet source. This seemed to be a good one. There is also a blurb from the guardian.uk something or other. There are some jokey articles on this subject, too, though, so if you research it, beware. Caveat emptor and all that.
Anyhoo, guess i’ll be eatin’ me some stone soup. Or Quarry. Better tastin’ 'cause it’s mined.
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In your initial post, you mentioned something related to some electromagnetic fields emitted by the plant, and I interpreted that as some sort of pseudoscience… (see the wikipedia article on the stuff that Kevin Trudeau and his books advocate). I thought the you meant that “their electromagnetic fields or whatever” was some ambiguous reference to a mysterious aura… Indeed plants do respond to light, for example, some plants open their stomates in response to light.

This link (provided from your link) provides a satisfactory mechanism for this phenomenon… I thought it was more related to pseudoscience. I remember seeing something on television a few years back about some plant that “witnessed” a murder, and it went crazy when it saw the murder.
 
johnnycatholic said:
Ok, heres one I got from a philosophy forum. It’s basically Singer’s argument for specieism in a nutshell. It’s a weak argument, full of holes. So I want you to act like your taking a baseball bat to an old junk car and destroy this argument…

This is why it is immoral to kill and eat animals: despite obvious differences between human and nonhuman animals, we share a capacity to suffer, and this means that they, like us have interests in not suffering. If we ignore or discount their interests simply on the grounds that they are not of the same species, the logic of our position is similar to that of the racist or sexist - he who thinks that to be white or male is to be inherently superior in moral status, irrespective of other qualities and characteristics.

Some humans - infants and those with severe intellectual disabilities - have less ability to reason and less self-awareness than some nonhuman animals. So we cannot justifiably use these criteria to draw a distinction between all humans on the one hand and all nonhuman animals on the other.

If we wish to maintain the view that no conscious human beings, including those with profound, permanent intellectual disabilities, can be used in ways harmful to them solely as a means to another’s end, then we are going to have extend the boundaries of this principle beyond our own species to other animals that are conscious and able to be harmed. Otherwise we are drawing a moral circle around our own species, even when the members of our own species protected by that moral boundary are not superior in any morally relevant characteristics to many nonhuman animals who fall outside that moral circle.
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He says we share a capacity to suffer. Do we share a capacity to show mercy, and to help relieve suffering? Funny, I have never heard of an animal hospital run by animals.
 
Courtneyjo said:
He says we share a capacity to suffer. Do we share a capacity to show mercy, and to help relieve suffering? Funny, I have never heard of an animal hospital run by animals.
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I saw a nature documentary in which two male lions chased out the biological father of the cubs in a pride. The two new male leaders then preceeded to kill the baby lions. Once they did that the female lionesses went into heat and the new males were able to mate.

I don’t think that anyone of us want to see human stepfathers begin to exhibit this behavior.
 
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