Subject:
|
Re: Killing (was: Re: Voluntary, private discrimination (Was: Disparicies in Sentencing))
|
Newsgroups:
|
lugnet.off-topic.debate
|
Date:
|
Mon, 13 Sep 1999 03:25:05 GMT
|
Viewed:
|
2170 times
|
| |
|
|
"Moz (Chris Moseley)" wrote:
>
> 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.
As you note below, your standard is that happiness is central to your
philosophy. For those who disagree, their conclusions would be different.
> 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.
Don't be silly, no 'animals' can experience unhappiness. God put them
on this earth for us to use and abuse. At least that's what I've been
told by several Christians and a couple of Muslims.
> Case three: other animals. Anything that can feel happiness to some
> degree should be encouraged. Exeptions generally based on greatest
> happiness.
Measured how? Is the cow getting to live happier, or is Mike eating
sixty steaks (presumably not in one sitting)?
> > Wondering if he means for food (which I'm willing to accept - it IS
> > hard to defend in a lot of cases
I had assumed that Mike meant hunters going for food, but that's more
reasonable IMHO than grocery store meat. It seams that you're taking
his comment as referring to industrial agriculture.
> 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.
And others that don't.
> > 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.
:-)
Wait, I know, we gun-toting American lunatics who don't want to pay
taxes to feed the poor, could set up a lottery where by the poor who
participate get fed on the dole but they risk being the quarry (sp?) in
_The Most Dangerous Game_ or some such.
> > 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
Agreed. Property rights is difficult to apply because of relative value.
> 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?
In part it depends on what you mean by bad. I'm against folks shooting
Golden Eagles, but I would take it much more personally if they killed
one of my cats. Killing my pet is MUCH worse than stealing my
television. I might shoot to kill someone attempting to heist my TV in
the heat of the moment, but I'm certain that I wouldn't hunt them down
after the fact were they successful.
> 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.
Depends on the 50M and the 10 as far as I'm concerned.
> 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.
I like that phrase..."scientific ship-sinking."
So now it sounds like you agree with me about killing abortion doctors.
_IF_ you thought that abortion was similar in degree to murder (as we
generally think of it) and believed that you could terrorize doctors
into ceasing performance with a few killings, you would consider it. Right?
later,
Chris
|
|
Message has 2 Replies:
Message is in Reply To:
276 Messages in This Thread:
(Inline display suppressed due to large size. Click Dots below to view.)
- Entire Thread on One Page:
- Nested:
All | Brief | Compact | Dots
Linear:
All | Brief | Compact
This Message and its Replies on One Page:
- Nested:
All | Brief | Compact | Dots
Linear:
All | Brief | Compact
|
|
|
|
