Animal Cruelty

Paedantic Basterd · 12-01-2010, 11:19 PM

It's not the actual eating of the animals that I think is a problem, it's the treatment of them up until and including the manner in which they are slaughtered. We can do better.

EDIT: Actually, in some cultures, dogs are food. Similarly, cows are sacred. It's all relative.

Guybrush · 12-02-2010, 02:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dirty

Like I've said... people are confusing their own feelings with animals feelings. millions of animals are killed by other animals all the time. It's how the food chain works. I don't really understand why people are so sensitive towards killing and eating animals. The most powerful use their power. If somehow bears could lead an uprising and start attacking and killing tons of people, then they would.

And before someone jumps in with comparisons, pets are a different story. Some animals are treated differently than others. Dogs are not the saw as cows. That's just the way it is

In a very general sense, I agree. Life supports other life and even autotrophs that don't rely directly on other organisms for sustenance can be fairly "nasty" to each other, for example a vine slowly killing a tree.

We're heterotrophs and our lives are part of the great cycles and our lives must be supported by other lives. Being a vegan or vegetarian doesn't change that. Although there are solid arguments why we should eat more from the lowest trophic levels (f.ex you can feed more people on plants), to infer morality of the kind "killing is wrong" and feel bad about a situation which is natural and inescapable just makes no sense to me. The only way to not "kill" seems to be to die so that your life can support other life rather than be supported by it.

I'm generally against animal cruelty, but I'm not a fan of the basic assumption that killing animals is simply wrong.

**Scarlett O'Hara** · 12-02-2010, 12:31 PM

Yes animals are used for meat, I'm not deny it, infact I eat meat. But the fact is, these animals DO NOT get killed humanely.

GeddyBass2112 · 12-02-2010, 03:31 PM

I find it very odd that a society which treats some animals almost as equal with humans can also do such terrible things to them as well.

Although my hands aren't exactly clean:I DID try and cut off my cat's tail with a pair of scissors once (I was 7 and wanted one of those tailless cats).

s_k · 12-02-2010, 07:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

It's not the actual eating of the animals that I think is a problem, it's the treatment of them up until and including the manner in which they are slaughtered. We can do better.

That's exactly the way I think about it

Zaqarbal · 12-16-2010, 09:40 PM

To eat or not to eat. That seems to be a good rational criterion. If you're not gonna eat them, don't kill them. And of course, causing unnecessary suffering and sadism are morally unacceptable. Those are signs of an immoral character, and not only regarding treatment to animals, but also regarding ethics in general terms. As the great Arthur Schopenhauer said:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Schopenhauer

Compassion for animals is intimately connected with goodness of character; and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.

However, if we look at their mere existence, there are also certain logical inconsistencies in our attitude towards the animals. Sometimes we accept killing animals as inviduals whereas we think that saving the endangered species of the planet is a moral duty. To be or not be. Or, being more precise: to be "as an individual" or to be "as a species". That question isn't clear. Perhaps we must conclude that we humans aren't 100% rational beings. Sometimes it looks as if the will to "save a species" was a kind of "metaphysical concern" to certain people. Why to save a species, if then we kill specimens (perhaps belonging to that species)?

Sometimes those two aspects (individuals and species) are related. One example has come to mind right now: rabbits and lynxes. Myxomatosis was intentionally introduced in some countries, to reduce rabbit overpopulation. But the disease spread throughout the world, so there've been "collateral damages" in the trophic chain. For example, the Iberian Lynx is critically endangered, mainly because of lack of prey (rabbits). About to become extinct (only circa 150 individuals in 2005). Fortunately, lynxes are being bred in captivity by biologists now.

OK, I guess now we (almost) all humans want to save this species of beautiful wildcats (only a few hundreds of specimens for the moment), but we didn't mind killing hundreds of millions of rabbits with myxomatosis before.

Conclusion: It seems it's impossible for us (I mean at a global scale) to establish a 100%-logical criterion on this matter.

Guybrush · 12-17-2010, 02:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zaqarbal

Conclusion: It seems it's impossible for us (I mean at a global scale) to establish a 100%-logical criterion on this matter.

Your argument seems to be based on a few assumptions which might be wrong, though. You kind of treat the lynx and the rabbit as the same, both are animals and so should recieve the same kind of moralistic consideration. But that's a moral argument, not a rational one and failure to follow it does not necessarily equal irrationality.

There are some differences between rabbits and lynxes and you could say in those differences lie the rational basis for treating them differently. F.ex, the lynx is a threatened species, the rabbit is not and number in the millions. The rabbit is causing ecological problems and may be a competitor with us for resources (nibble in your vegetable garden) while the lynx is generally not.

So, killing lynxes hardly seems rational. They're not around to bother us and there are few of them. However, rabbits are often considered a pest and so they get killed. Is that really so irrational?

**Scarlett O'Hara** · 12-17-2010, 04:47 AM

Rabbits are a damn pest. Just like Possums. However, I would prefer they were killed instantly rather than tortured, which is the point of my discussion. There is a difference between killing and mutilating, I think some people here are forgetting this.

Zaqarbal · 12-17-2010, 07:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tore

Your argument seems to be based on a few assumptions which might be wrong, though. You kind of treat the lynx and the rabbit as the same, both are animals and so should recieve the same kind of moralistic consideration. But that's a moral argument, not a rational one and failure to follow it does not necessarily equal irrationality.

There are some differences between rabbits and lynxes and you could say in those differences lie the rational basis for treating them differently. F.ex, the lynx is a threatened species, the rabbit is not and number in the millions. The rabbit is causing ecological problems and may be a competitor with us for resources (nibble in your vegetable garden) while the lynx is generally not.

So, killing lynxes hardly seems rational. They're not around to bother us and there are few of them. However, rabbits are often considered a pest and so they get killed. Is that really so irrational?

No, I didn't mean that. On the contrary, I was trying to refute the carnophobic "essentialist" argument. I say that I agree with this:

Quote:

Originally Posted by tore

I'm generally against animal cruelty, but I'm not a fan of the basic assumption that killing animals is simply wrong.

And also with this:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

Actually, in some cultures, dogs are food. Similarly, cows are sacred. It's all relative.

It's all relative. That's what I'm saying. I reject the idea that we can solve the "to kill or not to kill" dilemma by bearing in mind only the animals' INTRINSIC characteristics. Or in other words, I disagree with the following (from other thread):

Quote:

Originally Posted by VEGANGELICA

I feel most meat-eaters are very arbitrary (wishy-washy) in making decisions about whom to eat. Most meat-eaters don't seem to even develop a rational reason for the line they draw. They will concoct some excuse to feel good about eating pigs but bad about eating dogs, even though dogs and pigs have very similar intelligence levels, playfulness, and other attributes (including tastiness).

For example, consider your reason for valuing human lives the most. I have never read any modern science study proving that only humans think about thinking. Also, I'd be very surprised if babies and young children think about thinking. So it isn't even clear that people always think about thinking. And why should the ability to think about thinking be more important than an animal's ability to love, feel friendship, feel playfulness and pleasure?

You wrote that you feel insects, "on a psychologically evolutionary scale," are "on the same playing field as the aforementioned meats" (cows, pigs, chickens), but I don't agree with that at all.

I see humans and other animals as often being on a continuum according to mental abilities, rather than there being sharp divides between species. If an animal appears to have a greater mental capacity to enjoy and appreciate being alive, then I feel a stronger need to avoid killing that animal. A pig has a much more developed emotional life and intellectual interaction with its environment than an invertebrate like an ant does, so I feel more concern about the pig's life than the ant's life.

But I try to give animals the benefit of the doubt. If I know the animal has a brain, I know it is thinking or experiencing *something* and so I try to avoid killing it, even if it is an invertebrate animal whose life I value much less than the life of a pig because the pig is so much more mentally aware and capable. I rarely go out of my way to kill creepy-crawlies. Even as a little child I'd rescue worms from sidewalks so they wouldn't get stepped on.

If, to save time for myself, I vacuum up a spider rather than do catch-and-release, I feel bad about that because I know I'm valuing a minute of my time more than that spider's little life. And yes, the spider's life may be little, and the spider may be only dimly aware of the experience of life, but it is still probably aware so I feel selfish to have killed it.

So, how *do* you decide the value of someone else's life? I feel it is best to try to figure out what the life experience is like for that being, and then make ethical decisions about how to treat that animal from there. Simply saying "only humans matter" isn't a convincing argument to me, because it ignores or trivializes the ability of many other animals to have a wide range or emotions and thoughts.

When I know that animals have strong emotional attachments to their family and friends, and they like to play, and they enjoy basking in the sun...I don't want to end that for an animal.

For instance....millions of rabbits with strong emotional attachments to their family and friends... approaching to crops.

As I said, humans don't make the decision (to kill the animals or not) according to a perfect logical method of discrimination. No. It's impossible. It's the CIRCUMSTANCES that determine the decission. Both rabbits and insects may cause devastating damages to agriculture. Very different species, but farmers have to kill them anyway.

It's all relative. Killing lynxes "hardly seems rational"? IT DEPENDS. When? 100 years ago they were considered to be vermin by farmers.

Are rabbits "a damn pest"? It depends. Where? Here, it's the opposite thing. Scientists are trying to save them from death, and they've developed a vaccine against myxomatosis.

Rabbits... more resistant?

noise · 12-17-2010, 07:33 AM

an appeal to the nastiness of animal cruelty is a terrible excuse to be a vegetarian. i don't think any living thing that dies in the jaws and claws of a predator experiences a particularly pleasant death.

i understand that kids bashing cats with bats is an intentional act of malice, and is therefore very different than a chimp knocking a monkey out of a tree with its fist then picking its broken body off of the forest floor and eating it alive. but that's my very point. animals eat other animals, and there's really no polite way to do it...

12-02-2010, 12:31 PM	#63 (permalink)
Scarlett O'Hara Make it so Join Date: Oct 2005 Posts: 6,181	Yes animals are used for meat, I'm not deny it, infact I eat meat. But the fact is, these animals DO NOT get killed humanely. __________________ "Elph is truly an enfant terrible of the forum, bless and curse him" - Marie, Queen of Thots

12-17-2010, 04:47 AM	#68 (permalink)
Scarlett O'Hara Make it so Join Date: Oct 2005 Posts: 6,181	Rabbits are a damn pest. Just like Possums. However, I would prefer they were killed instantly rather than tortured, which is the point of my discussion. There is a difference between killing and mutilating, I think some people here are forgetting this. __________________ "Elph is truly an enfant terrible of the forum, bless and curse him" - Marie, Queen of Thots

12-17-2010, 07:33 AM	#70 (permalink)
noise thirsty ears Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: Boulder Posts: 742	an appeal to the nastiness of animal cruelty is a terrible excuse to be a vegetarian. i don't think any living thing that dies in the jaws and claws of a predator experiences a particularly pleasant death. i understand that kids bashing cats with bats is an intentional act of malice, and is therefore very different than a chimp knocking a monkey out of a tree with its fist then picking its broken body off of the forest floor and eating it alive. but that's my very point. animals eat other animals, and there's really no polite way to do it... __________________ my flac collection

12-01-2010, 11:19 PM	#61 (permalink)
Paedantic Basterd Music Addict Join Date: Sep 2010 Posts: 5,184	It's not the actual eating of the animals that I think is a problem, it's the treatment of them up until and including the manner in which they are slaughtered. We can do better. EDIT: Actually, in some cultures, dogs are food. Similarly, cows are sacred. It's all relative.

12-02-2010, 03:31 PM	#64 (permalink)
GeddyBass2112 Music Addict Join Date: Dec 2010 Location: Newcastle upon Tyne, UK Posts: 165	I find it very odd that a society which treats some animals almost as equal with humans can also do such terrible things to them as well. Although my hands aren't exactly clean:I DID try and cut off my cat's tail with a pair of scissors once (I was 7 and wanted one of those tailless cats).