Subject:
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Re: Responsible Hunting (was Re: We are what we eat. Or is that "whom we eat?")
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Mon, 31 Jul 2000 16:43:38 GMT
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Viewed:
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2598 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Christopher L. Weeks writes:
> > > > Can it choose not to be prey?
> > >
> > > I think deer (like everything) choose this as often as possible.
> >
> > I disagree. They are prey regardless of what they choose, but sometimes they
> > are eaten and sometimes they are not.
>
> But it would seem then that you remove meaning from the term 'prey.' By what
> I think you're saying, all organisms are prey. If so, what point is there in
> using the term?
I think you're referring to my earlier comment about "being prey to
bacteria," by which I was being (in retrospect) unclearly rhetorical. I would
say that prey can be defined as an animal consumed by a predator, while a
predator is an animal that hunts and/or consumes other animals. You're right
that a distinction can probably be drawn between micro- and macroscopic
predators.
> > > we can assume deer don't want
> > > to be hungry since they continue to eat)
> >
> > But is it a "want"? Their hearts keep beating, but not because they want
> > them to.
>
> I think that eating in response to hunger is very different than your heart
> beating as a function of the type of entity that you are. Would you claim
> that deer have no choice about eating? If so, doesn't that mean that deer eat
> always under some set of conditions (stomach empty to a certain degree, etc.)?
> I suspect that I could contrive of and create a situation in which that's not
> true.
Unless some force prevents it, an animal will eat when possible and when
driven by hunger to do so, but not necessarily because it "wants" to.
> > > WRT procreation, I find it hard to believe that the males want that. I
> > > suspect they just want to feel good during copulation, and so they do.
> >
> > Or, to look at it another way, the accumulation of testosterone and the
> > response to estrus urges them to copulate, and so they do, regardless of
> > their "wants."
>
> What about if they don't always when they've accumulated testosterone and
> responsive to estrus? What decides how they respond to multiple
> conflicting drives?
If I understand correctly, they become aggressive and combative, like rogue
bull elephants or drunken college kids. I suppose the stronger drive
generally wins out, though the manifestation of that drive could conceivably
be altered by other drives acting upon the animal.
> > In this light they do not choose to copulate; they are driven to it.
>
> Do you think that this is different with humans?
I go into this more deeply below.
> > > And I doubt that females associate copulation with mothering, but it strikes
> > > me as quite possible that mother deer remember from year to year being a
> > > mother fondly (for lack of a less human word).
> >
> > This is wholly conjectural and therefore not of particular value for this
> > debate. Even assuming that the doe remembers motherhood fondly, that's not
> > the same as "wanting to procreate" or even "wanting to be a mother."
>
> I see that fond remembrance is different than desire. But the two often
> coincide. If I remember how good my bowl of cereal was yesterday, I'm likely
> to _want_ another one for breakfast today. Why do you assume that's different
> for deer?
Because you are cognitively able to connect yesterday's bowl of cereal and
the one you'll have today, while I am not convinced that deer make that same
connection. Further, I'm not sure that cereal and motherhood make a good
analogy.
> > You're asserting that the doe associates procreation with motherhood,
> > or you're at least asserting that the doe connects fond memories with
> > wanting to be a mother.
>
> I am specifically not asserting the first thing when I wrote "I doubt that
> females associate copulation with mothering."
I couldn't possibly have misread you! You must have written that
retroactively a la that .96C travel you mentioned earlier! 8^0
> The second does seem like a logical conclusion; fond remembrance -- barring
> intervening variables -- leads to desire.
I wasn't going to mention it before, since you did, but now it becomes an
issue; what is "fond" remembrance, in other than human emotive terms? How do
you suppose an animal might remember something fondly, and how might that
animal connect the memory with a complex sequence of actions, such as
motherhood achieved by mating, gestation, and birth. I don't see how a desire
felt but unable to be acted upon because of failure to divine its source
counts as a want and not a simple drive. Desire/want implies to me cognitive
awareness of a source.
> > I don't see any way to draw this conclusion other than by a great
> > deal of speculation and presumption of the animal's drives.
>
> Some speculation to be sure, but I think to assume the opposite requires the
> same. It doesn't seem that assuming the deer are almost completely robotic in
> their response is any less conjectural.
>
> If you are asserting that all organisms are complex biochemical robots that do
> everything as a predictable result of stimuli, I can appreciate that, but you
> do seem to be segregating humans out of that loop.
Humans seem to have, for whatever reason, a level of free will unmatched in
the animal kingdom (though I'd love to hear an exception). Free will, for
purposes of this discussion, implies for me an ability to act in defiance of
one's drives, such as an ability to remain celibate despite high levels of
testosterone or a dieter's ability to resist tempting food despite hunger.
This ability to resist often comes about internally, without any harsh
external stimuli; I'm not aware of any other animal that can put up the same
resistance to its drives.
> > I would assert that they are driven to live rather than die. It's a fine
> > point of contention, but a significant one, and I'll stand by it.
>
> What is the cognitive requirement for desire instead of drive? Is it just a
> firmer grasp on the future than you believe deer have? Do you believe that
> 'want' exists at all, or just not in deer?
You've given a nice outline, but I don't think awareness of the future is
the end-all of desire. I assert that awareness of a desire's source and the
ability to resist that desire are among the fundamental differences between
desire and drive.
> > > > they do them out of hard-wired genetic programming.
> > >
> > > Like humans?
> >
> > I made a similar assertion in another post, and you rejected it as SciFi.
>
> Not exactly, but I may have misunderstood. Please clarify your thoughts on
> this as related to free will in humans and other organisms and I'll go from
> there.
As I mentioned above, I assert that the ability to resist one's drives
without any harsh external stimulus (such as a cattle prod or blast from a
hose) is a pretty fair indicator of free will, since it demonstrates a mind
acting in control of its body. I don't deny that humans, since we are
undeniably animals, possess and act upon many drives, but we are able to act
contrary to those drives, whereas an animal is not likewise able. A human
male is not irretrievably forced to mate when driven by testosterone, just as
a human female doesn't have to entice a male when she's at the height of
estrus, because humans are able to curtail their drives. Animals cannot do
the same (again, not without harsh external stimuli).
> > This is interesting to me, since you're asserting the same things about
> > animals that I recently asserted about plants, for the same reason, and (to
> > the opposing view) for similarly arbitrary reasons.
>
> I can't put this all together. You asserted that plants are sensory
> organisms, and my response was that they're just reacting biochemically. Is
> that what you mean?
I didn't clearly define what I meant here. Previously you indicated that
plants act only as governed by their autonomic biochemical stimuli, while
animals were not so exclusively autonomic. I asserted that the difference was
of degree, not kind, and you objected. Here, you assert a similar difference
of degree between the governing drives of animals and humans, which I assert
to be a difference of kind.
> I guess I do see what you mean. I'm asserting that there is something that
> magically different about organisms with a CNS and you're asserting that that
> magic only happens when you get to the level of humans (for whatever reason).
I'm not entirely comfortable with "magic", but I generally agree! 8^)
I think I come back to the question of free will, which again I define for
this discussion as the ability to act in contrast to one's drives. Animals do
not demonstrably exhibit this capacity, in that a caged buck will drive itself
against its cage again and again, to the point of injury, in response to the
mating drive, whereas humans (for good or ill) can actively, consciously, and
successfully resist such drives. An animal is in that way much more machine-
like than a human.
> Sorry if I'm missing something simple. (It kind of feels like it.)
Don't put yourself down; people have been debating this same sort of thing
for millennia. If it were simple, it would have been solved long ago.
Dave!
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