Here here! I agree with ANTIcarrot entirely.
Humans are not superior because they are just innately so. They apply the label of superiority to themselves on the grounds that other species are not humans. Humans cannot comprehend other animals' social behaviors in many cases, and so we explain our ignorance as their lack of intelligence.
The truth is, we aren't intelligent enough to define intelligence.
----- Original Message -----
From: ANTIcarrot
To: SkunkworksAMA_at_yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2007 11:52 AM
Subject: RE: [SkunkworksAMA] *OT* Re: Who You Calling An Animal?
Between them, Newton and Einstein wrote the book on gravity. (Ignoring for
the moment the nagging little details like dark matter that cosmologists
like to worry about.) Their theories of gravity apply to everything. To
every particle of matter, whether it be star, rock, plant, or animal. Their
rules even apply to humans.
Ideally, I believe, rules of ethics should similarly be as universal as
possible. In my opinion, if a proposed rule of ethics can produce a result
which is logically foolish (if it for example 'proves' that no human before
3000BC was a person for example) is flawed.
> From: Brandon Payne
> When was the last time an animal created cures
> and treatments for various diseases? Or even created a gun or bomb
> for that matter?
When was the last time a severely mentally retarded person did these things?
Or any of the other things you list here. If you use that standard to define
what is a person then you have to use exactly the same standard to define
what isn't a person. If your criteria produces results that *you* don't like
(eg: some mentally disabled humans aren't people) then you should have the
foresight to realise it's not valid.
> We can harness ideas into benevolent or malevolent
> acts. Animals cannot do this sort of thing. The malice of animals
> may be grossly stunted, but so is benevolence too.
Animals can turn ideas into malevolent acts. Many predator species toy with
their prey. Some might argue that they do this for educational reasons, to
teach their young how to live, and hence it's not evil. But then there are
the ones who do it when there are no kids around to teach. And the problem
that there are a large number of mullahs, martyrs, and knapsack bombers
world wide who are also trying to teach (for any given definition of
'teach') the next generation how to live. Would that make their actions
moral?
> The things about us humans is that we have the ability to reshape
> our environments to suit our needs. Animals do not.
Yes they do. Flightless ants swarm out of their nests to flatten the ground
with their feet so the wings ones don't tear a wing. Wolves, foxes, badgers
and many other species reshape their environment from one which doesn't have
a den/borrow to one that does.
> We can improve
> out lot in life, keep aiming for something better and better.
> Animals cannot. We can understand that something is wrong and should
> not be done, even object to it enmass with complex thoughts and a
> complex verbal or manual communication that can be made sense of.
> Animals do not possess this capacity.
You are arguing based upon complexity. This is the mentality behind the
African Slave Trade. Europeans had achieved a more complex understand of the
world and tool-construction than African natives - which *obviously* gave
them the right to enslave/conquer them.
Imagine aliens coming to Earth tomorrow; ones ten thousand years in advance
of us. Their technology might be almost unrecognisable to us. If they used
*your* criteria (but from their point of view) would they judge *you* to be
a person, or an animal? "Why this species doesn't even have fusion reactors!
Fusion reactors I tell you! It's not as if a great big example doesn't
appear over their horizon every day! They can't possibly be sapient!"
> As for babies and the mentally handicap in the grand scheme of
> things? A baby will advance mentally and a mentally handicapped
> person is a human being who is not supposed to be that way. But even
> they can understand the significance of right and wrong.
You can't argue based upon potential. Any other car on the road can
potentially hit your car and write it off. But you can't file a claim until
it actually happens. A blank canvas can be a beautiful picture the next day,
but it's not worth significantly more today before that happens.
Nor does 'supposed to' have much meaning. An object is what an object is. It
doesn't matter if it was supposed to be something else, or if you hoped it
would be something else. "Hi! I wrecked your $2000 computer when I tried to
fix it, but it was supposed to have gone well. So pay me!" Other species on
the planet may one day evolve intelligence. Applying your argument we should
avoid harming any species because of what might become.
Right and wrong are relative terms keyed to group prosperity. Most social
species have concepts of right and wrong.
Hitler (or some other individual of our choice) was an evil man. But would
you say he was not sapient because of what he did?
> Then again, there are those who would read this post and throw it
> all back in my face. There is one thing that we can all agree upon.
> This argument will go on forevermore. Even one hundred or even one
> thousand years from now. Humanity will NEVER see itselves as
> animals. That is a profound certainty.
There are those who once said men will never fly. They will never land on
the moon. That no will ever credit the world is round, or that we evolved
from apes, or that the world is older than ten thousand years, or that
society could not function without slaves. Usually these people had
substantial flaws in their education. Usually they were religious; though
others were also merely politicians. All of them were wrong. And even
decades later, such views, and the people who held them, were not thought of
very highly.
People want (point of note: not need, want) to eat meant, wear leather, and
have new cures for diseases. At present most people believe the only way to
obtain these things is to slaughter animals by the billions each year.
Therefore they believe they must keep humanity and the animal kingdom;
otherwise they'd feel terrible guilt, or have to go without something they
don't really need, but want anyway.
In a hundreds of years time however, invetro meat might be cheaper and
healthier and less prone to health scares than the real thing. Leather can
be made using similar procedures, and computer or cellular testing, and
better surgery might end the need for animals in medical research. At that
point they need to keep humanity and animals ethically separate will
evaporate. In that situation it is possible there will be a social change in
how animals are viewed; and how humanity sees itself in the animals kingdom.
Though I'm sure there will still be plenty of back sliders who continue to
believe in creationism, intelligent design, or whatever they're calling it
by then.
Compare and contrast US foreign policy regarding the middle east when they
thought importing oil was a necessity, to how they are acting now, when
there are realistic alternatives.
> And to those same people: Do you really believe that you are
> accomplished in hating your own species? Would you truly want the
> entire human race to go extinct?
People asked the same questions in the years leading up to the American
Civil War. "You want to free slaves? Why do you hate your own race that
much?" The people asking that question were really missing the point of the
whole exercise, and were really asking the wrong questions. Though by
interesting coincidence, such questions usually served to distract from the
shocking things such people committed in the privacy of their own
plantations.
Are you really so ashamed or insecure in your species' real achievements
that you need to invent mistruths just to make yourself feel better about
your self-proclaimed superiority? What do you really think you are achieving
in distorting measurable truth?
ANTIcarrot.
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Received on Tue Feb 20 2007 - 11:36:15 CST