Subject:
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Re: Killing (was: Re: Voluntary, private discrimination (Was: Disparicies in Sentencing))
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Sun, 12 Sep 1999 19:50:16 GMT
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Viewed:
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1898 times
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Mike Stanley <cjc@NOSPAMnewsguy.com> wrote
> <clweeks@eclipse.net> wrote:
> > > Moz wrote:
> > > Killing animals is ethically hard to defend in most cases
> > I would like to hear why killing animals is hard to defend.
Case one: humans. Should not be killed unless obsolutely necessary.
Reasons? Killing reduces happiness not just in the victim, but also
in their community. And can further reduce happiness in a wider
group by spreading fear of other deaths.
Case two: other "higher" animals that can have a time sense and memory
for friends, for similar reasons to case one. Examples being apes and
cetaceans, also many pet animals.
Case three: other animals. Anything that can feel happiness to some
degree should be encouraged. Exeptions generally based on greatest
happiness.
> Wondering if he means for food (which I'm willing to accept - it IS
> hard to defend in a lot of cases
Growing animals for food is hard to defend if you start with premises biased
toward maximising happiness as the ultimate good. Those are what I use, but
I image there are others that lead to similar conclusions, for instance
ones based on efficiency.
> for sport, as in the case of trophy hunters, which is impossible to defend,
One way to defend this is to use pests as the trophy animal. The most easily
defended trophy animal is another trophy hunter. You both have the same
goal and agree to the same conditions, taking the same risks. One of you
gets a trophy.
> the killing of say pets or something, which is also difficult to defend, since
> it is the destruction of the property of another person.
Killing of pets is generally tricky, because it affects their primary caregiver
a lot, regardless of nominal ownership. Anyone with a cat will understand the
difference between ownership and whose cat it is. But I don't buy the destruction
of property argument as being special to pets. Is killing a Golden Eagle less
bad than killing a cat because no-one owns the eagle? Is killing a pet better
or worse that stealing a television?
On a similar note, the harm in killing is also related to the relative size of
the population. Losing a hundred humans in auto wrecks is bad, but it's not
as if there's any shortage of humans. Losing 10 Right Whales to "scientific
whaling" is a tradgedy, because that's about 1% of the population. Not quite
as bad as losing 50 million humans, but much worse than losing 10 of them.
So the question for me becomes, how many people do I think it reasonable to
kill to stop whaling? Well, if I thought that any killing I could do would
stop it, then my feeling is somewhere between 100 and 10000. I have no qualms
for instance, advocating a program of scientific ship-sinking to see how
many whalers have to die before the Japanese stop sending them out.
Moz
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