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 17:59:57 GMT
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Viewed:
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2873 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler writes:
> 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.
So humans (at least Bangladeshis) are prey too? Because they are hunted
sometimes by predators. How's this: In addition to being prey, deer are a
great many other things, and I don't think that their happenstance role as prey
in the food web is their most important attribute.
> > > > we can assume deer don't want
> > > > to be hungry since they continue to eat)
> > >
> > > But is it a "want"?
> > 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 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.
When my local deer travel through an acre of yummy grass and nettles to get to
my apple trees, raspberries, and fresh greens, I think the deer is expressing a
preference for those things over the otherwise appetizing fare that my extreme
back yard has to offer. By espressing such a preference, I think it is showing
desire. It remembers from yesterday where my fruit is, and seeks it out when
it could just eat whatever is around.
> > 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.
I just meant that the doe might remember the 'satisfaction' of mothering fawns
and in whatever way she can, she might want that feeling again. I think that
there is so little evidence, that my thinking this is every bit as valid as
thinking that it is impossible...and more so because I'm leaving a broader
possibility (the use of might rather than can't).
> > 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 can I answer? It's different, but not totally so than what our fond
rememberances are. At least that's what I guess.
> 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 doubt quite seriously that a deer can connect so many things. But it doesn't
seem like the same ballpark to connect motherhood memory from season to season.
> 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.
OK, what about the desire for apple tree bark instead of grass or poison ivy?
> > 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).
Their ability to exercise choice based on their free will is greater, but I'm
unconvinced that their free will is qualitatively different.
> 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.
What about when people fail to do so. There are many examples of humans
successfully defying their drives, to be sure. But many of the opposite as
well. Does that color your take on free will, or is the ability to
deny impulse, determined even just once, enough to put an organism over the
threshhold of self-deterministic?
> 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 can't argue wiht this, but it's just that I don't know. Maybe deer (or more
complex mamals) do deny their drives sometimes. How would one know?
> 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.
When you discuss the desire's source, what exactly do you mean?
> 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.
From where does your surity arise? I agree that humans have biochemical drives
and sometimes do not act on them. And I agree that other animals have
biochemical drives and at least typically act on them. But I don't know, and
don't know how you know, that nonhumans _never_ act contrary to their drives.
> A human
> male is not irretrievably forced to mate when driven by testosterone,
I knew some guys in college who seemed to have missed that day in the what it
means to be human class.
> 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.
Or is it because estrus is a much weaker drive in humans than in most species?
> 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.
Gotcha! I guess it seems equally clear to us, but we just don't agree. The
difference between the motivational capacity of carrots and mink seems
different in kind. The difference in motivational capacity of mink and humans
seems different in amount...but I'm thinking that this is a fuzzier claim on my
part. Maybe it is that there are more than two states (sentient and not) of
life that account for the differences we see.
> 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.
First, an example doesn't prove a rule, it merely provides support...at least
if you follow the scientific method as the primary (or best) way to gain/create
knowledge. Will every buck, if caged and presented with estrus scents etc. act
that way, or just som/many/most? What about the people who knowingly damage
themselves through sexuality. I know people who have had unprotected sex with
partner that they had every reason to expect were infected with a deadly virus.
A reader of this group has acknowledged a careful sexual relationship with an
HIV+ partner. But careful won't always work...it's still dangerous.
I see a great deal in common between those bucks and those people.
> An animal is in that way much more machine-like than a human.
I am even willing to agree that they are _more_ so, but not exclusively so.
Chris
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