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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Sat, 5 Aug 2000 10:28:14 GMT
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Viewed:
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2908 times
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Christopher Weeks wrote:
> 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.
Handled below...
> 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.
That's assuming deer HAVE that complex of a longterm memory (as opposed to spacial
memory maps of the best places to eat, and instinct for a certain breeding grounds
they've never been to before).
> OK, what about the desire for apple tree bark instead of grass or poison ivy?
Nope - that can be explained by the body's nutritional need for something - many
animals will find a specific food item when their bodies are low on a certain
element, that, amazingly enough, that food item contains.
> > > 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.
I don't think you're ever going to agree with most of us on this, Chris, because
you seem to insist on giving animals a level of free will that most of us agree
they simply don't have. How you can do this with the evidence at hand I have NO
idea.
> > 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?
You are taking a very small minority and trying to paint the brush over all of the
human race - if we did so, then we'd all be rutting beasts, and humans would be in
the tens or hundreds of billions now (or extinct from overpopulation). Show me a
SINGLE deer that has ignored mating season for reasons other than infirmity, age
(too young or too old), or incarceration. We have the free will to FOLLOW or
IGNORE our drives. Very few animals seem to.
> From where does your surity arise? I agree that humans have biochemical drives
> and sometimes do not act on them.
SOMETIMES?!? If I (or any male) acted on our drives all the time, EVERY female on
the planet with active sexual plumbing would be pregnant at all times. You have a
funny way of choosing when "sometimes, a little, seldom" means what they should,
and "almost always".
> And I agree that other animals have
> biochemical drives and at least typically act on them.
Almost always, I would tend to say.
> But I don't know, and
> don't know how you know, that nonhumans _never_ act contrary to their drives.
None of us do - proving a NEVER is extremely hard. But a Preponderance Of Evidence
suggests almost all animals do NOT act contrary to their drives, while humans can
and do A LOT.
> > 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.
Oh? So they threw every woman they ran into onto the ground, ripped their clothes
off, and raped them? Come on, now. Quit equating RECREATIONAL sex to sex drive -
one is for simple enjoyment, the other is hormonal, and they are quite different.
I would argue that a good 95% or more of male college sex is purely recreational
(and often more for bragging rights than anything else).
> > 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?
Only because female humans are able to procreate a large majority of the year,
rather than somewhat short to EXTREMELY short parts of the year.
You seem to think humans are more animal than they are - if human males were so
weak, strip clubs wouldn't exist, as the strippers would get tired of being raped
repeatedly on stage.
You must have a VERY low opinion of the human race.
> > 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.
BINGO!
> Maybe it is that there are more than two states (sentient and not) of
> life that account for the differences we see.
No, you just want to ignore free will in the definition of sentience, while many
others here do not.
> > 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.
And they are making a WILLFUL choice to continue the relationship - obvious thought
has gone into their choice, because if they were just rutting, they could just as
easily dump the person and find someone else to rut with.
> I see a great deal in common between those bucks and those people.
I don't, not by a long shot.
> > 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.
MOREso enough to me to make them steak for my dinner. And no amount of argument
will change my mind on that, even if the line is fuzzy for me (I define it on a
species-by-species basis - pigs are still on my hit list for now).
--
Tom Stangl
***http://www.vfaq.com/
***DSM Visual FAQ home
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