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Post by jerryspringer on Jul 15, 2008 12:47:33 GMT -5
Do you think it's fair for you to mock every topic that I find interesting and invest time in holding a serious discussion? At the end of the day, those who choose to spare most animals from their diet contribute more to animal welfare than those who take a cynical stand on the issue and decide to not care because nature decided it this way. You're not even a bridge.
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Post by c0gnate on Jul 15, 2008 13:43:16 GMT -5
I'm not mocking you, Anittas. I agree that concern for other creatures is a good thing, as long as it's done on a voluntary basis. I'm not in favor of torturing any animal, including humans.
As to the morality of killing in order to survive, I think it is a difficult question. Who has the greater right to life: the lion or the zebra? If the lion doesn't kill the zebra, he will die. Nature --or God-- made the world that way. We can make it better, through science, technology and investment, but it takes time.
But to get back to the issue of pain, that doesn't change my opinion on the level of suffering inflicted on any creature when taking its life.
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Post by Dragos Voda on Jul 15, 2008 14:49:19 GMT -5
What a polemic argument this is turning out to be.
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Post by jerryspringer on Jul 15, 2008 15:05:53 GMT -5
The lion cannot diggest plants and convert it to enough energy in order to survive. For the lion, hunting is about survival. We, on the other hand, can survive without consuming meat. We can even stay fit by just consuming seafood, so in our case it's not so much about survival, as it is about personal choice. As for the pain and how different animals interpret it: it is not a moral issue, it is a scientifical question. And who are best qualified to answer to this question if not the scientists who have worked to answer these questions? Basically, you are contradicting scientists who have worked to provide indications and proof to prove their case. You have nothing, except your stubborn opinion to lean on; and I suspect that this stubborny of yours is a defense mechanism. Some animals just don't have the means to interpret pain. It's that simple. Or, if they do, they interpret it differently.
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Post by c0gnate on Jul 15, 2008 15:33:21 GMT -5
So it depends on the definition of pain? No central nervous system --no pain? Why not define pain as "If I personally or someone like me doesn't feel it, it doesn't exist"?
As to defense mechanisms, I suspect it's operative in those people who want to eat but can't stand the idea that killing their meal causes it to suffer.
In a related area, many people, including doctors, have long held that newborn babies (and especially embryos and fetuses) are incapable of feeling pain. The desire to deny pain has to do with making it easier to accept abortion and surgery performed without anesthesia. Yet the more they look at the physiological reactions of such babies and fetuses subjected to cuts, excessive temperature, the harder it is to deny their pain.
And if you have read up on the scientific literature (not some philosophical aprioristic musings) on how pain is defined and measured across the animal spectrum, why not give us the links?
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Post by diurpaneus on Jul 15, 2008 15:42:42 GMT -5
At the end of the day, those who choose to spare most animals from their diet contribute more to animal welfare I remember you saying on the old forums that you eat kebab when some greek said kebab is "a turkish barbarism" or some nonsense like that. How do you contribute to animal welfare?
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Post by jerryspringer on Jul 15, 2008 17:46:52 GMT -5
Diur, stop trying to impress c0gnate by acting stupid. Obviously, since I'm now a pescatarian, I no longer eat kebab.
C0gnate, I haven't read any literature on the topic of pain. My knowledge comes from articles and scientific journals. It's not enough to claim an expertise on the subject, but suffienct to understand what it's about. I haven't read any literature on global warming, either, but I understand that it's real. Now that I think about it, I haven't read any literature on most topics that I'm aware of, yet I understand the basics. I think it's called general knowledge.
Because that's how physical pain is defined. How else would it be defined? It relates to the body and from my limited knowledge, only a nerval system and a enough developed brain can indulge physical pain. What other kind of pain did you think of? Perhaps the stress that these animals experience as their survival are put in jeopardy?
c0gnate, let me ask you something: do you think that a horse has the ability to suffer more than a mosquido? Or better yet, do you think that a mosquido has the ability to suffer? If you do, could you please explain to us how the mosquido suffers? I would love for you to edify us.
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Post by c0gnate on Jul 15, 2008 18:33:37 GMT -5
Because that's how physical pain is defined. How else would it be defined? It relates to the body and from my limited knowledge, only a nerval system and a developed brain can indulge physical pain. What other kind of pain did you think of? Perhaps the stress that these animals pay experience as their survival are put in jeopardy? c0gnate, let me ask you something: do you think that a horse has the ability to suffer more than a mosquido? Or better yet, do you think that a mosquido has the ability to suffer? If you do, could you please explain to us how the mosquido suffers? I would love for you to edify us. These are good questions, Anittas. For people, pain is defined entirely in terms of the subjective evaluation of the person in question. It can't be measured quantitatively: some people with a broken arm report unbearable pain, others say they barely feel it. There are accompanying physiological effects, such as the presence of adrenaline and other shock-related hormones in the blood, an elevated blood pressure, increased heart rate, sweating, or sometimes fainting. But many of these are also present for emotions such as fear or rage. When there is physical damage there are also physiological changes and activities aimed at minimizing and repairing the damage. When dealing with animals, the more they differ from us, the more difficult it is to appreciate their life experience. We can't ask them to rate their pain on a scale from one to ten, as we do for people. Yet we can see physiological changes that correspond to the ones experienced by humans in pain. So I infer that the animals too suffer pain. I would define pain (for any living creature) as the experience (physiological but not only physiological) induced by physical damage: a bruise, a cut, broken wing or leg, a plucked scale or a torn membrane. Or burned or frozen skin, and so on. Plants show some of the same physiological responses. The experience of damage induces the creature to try to take measures for self-preservation. This is true for all life. I agree that the mosquito is a simpler creature than a horse, but I regard the reaction of the mosquito to a torn leg to be of the same general nature as that of the horse. The building blocks of life, i.e., the DNA and RNA molecules, amino acids, sugars, lipids, etc are the same, all have the same basic structure for all forms of life. This is why eat each other, and have been doing so for much longer than the appearance of vertebrates.
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Post by jerryspringer on Jul 15, 2008 18:52:42 GMT -5
I don't quite agree. The definition of pain, as I understand it, are not mere injuries to your body and your organism reacting to them, but an entity that has an enough developed nerval system and a brain that can convert the signals to understand that its status is under distress and is thus aware of its suffering. Otherwise, as you've said: plants would then qualify for experiencing pain, too. What you described there is not pain, but stress and reactionary measures taken by the organism. These reactions can occur in humans that are braindead, yet I doubt you could argue that they're in pain.
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Post by c0gnate on Jul 15, 2008 19:24:27 GMT -5
Brain dead people or, more generally, severely damaged creatures are not my standard.
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Post by c0gnate on Jul 15, 2008 19:42:08 GMT -5
I don't quite agree. The definition of pain, as I understand it, are not mere injuries to your body and your organism reacting to them, but an entity that has an enough developed nerval system and a brain that can convert the signals to understand that its status is under distress and is thus aware of its suffering. Otherwise, as you've said: plants would then qualify for experiencing pain, too. What you described there is not pain, but stress and reactionary measures taken by the organism. These reactions can occur in humans that are braindead, yet I doubt you could argue that they're in pain. Let's cut to the chase. Do the animals (fish you say) that you eat come willingly to be slaughtered? Do they acquiesce to being torn into pieces? If not, you can be sure you are taking something that doesn't belong to you.
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Post by jerryspringer on Jul 15, 2008 19:45:46 GMT -5
That's a redherring and I'm willing to discuss that, as a seperate topic, if we can just come to terms with the current topic. Unless you can make a connection between what we discussed and the thing you raised up now.
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Post by c0gnate on Jul 15, 2008 19:48:10 GMT -5
I'm not interested in hair-splitting differences between pain and stress.
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Post by jerryspringer on Jul 15, 2008 20:12:52 GMT -5
You should try to finish what you take on to do, but okay. Fish, like all living things--including plants--have an urge for survival. But that urge is not a part of their conscious mind. I would agree with the notion that fish are an entity that due to their inability to experience pain and add it to a context, become pray to us; and I would agree that we find it morally right to make that choice for them. There's nothing peculiar about animals fighting for survival and that we enforce a different option on them.
Being a pescatarian is, on a moral level, a compromise between sparring the animals that show some signs of self-interest and the ability to suffer, and gaining the nutritions that you want. I'm not arguing that fish don't have any value or that they don't have a mechanism that makes them feel that they should strive for certain things. Perhaps it's there, but whatever is there, must be minimal--and that's what makes me sleep at night. Except for tonight, because I'm arguing with you.
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Post by c0gnate on Jul 15, 2008 22:03:01 GMT -5
You should try to finish what you take on to do, but okay. Fish, like all living things--including plants--have an urge for survival. But that urge is not a part of their conscious mind. I would agree with the notion that fish are an entity that due to their inability to experience pain and add it to a context, become pray to us; and I would agree that we find it morally right to make that choice for them. There's nothing peculiar about animals fighting for survival and that we enforce a different option on them. Being a pescatarian is, on a moral level, a compromise between sparring the animals that show some signs of self-interest and the ability to suffer, and gaining the nutritions that you want. I'm not arguing that fish don't have any value or that they don't have a mechanism that makes them feel that they should strive for certain things. Perhaps it's there, but whatever is there, must be minimal--and that's what makes me sleep at night. Except for tonight, because I'm arguing with you. Have you ever killed a fish? I mean not one that is already half dead after transport and storage in a fish market, but one that you yourself pulled out of the water. One that weighs a few kilos. Have you held that fish down while you struggled to slice its gut open? If you have, you know the experience is not very different from slaughtering a chicken or a lamb or pig.
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Post by jerryspringer on Jul 16, 2008 7:30:26 GMT -5
Man c0gnate, I thought you smarter than that. I've already said that reflexes and the will to survival are a part of the mechanism of the organism and not a part of intelligence. A spider has it, too. Why the hell do you repeat yourself?
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Post by c0gnate on Jul 16, 2008 8:42:02 GMT -5
You didn't answer the question.
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Post by jerryspringer on Jul 16, 2008 9:24:59 GMT -5
The question is irrelevant to the subject. I've already answered a question that had nothing to do with the topic.
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Post by c0gnate on Jul 16, 2008 9:39:44 GMT -5
The relevance of the question is that its answer shows you have no real-life experience.
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Post by jerryspringer on Jul 16, 2008 10:02:22 GMT -5
c0gnate, nice try, but only Kanaris can provoke me with that topic. When you try, it just makes you look silly. It is below your standard. Why have you given up on the topic? Just because you made a mistake confusing pain with stress? It happens to the best, so no worries!
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