From: Keith Elis (hagbard@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Wed Apr 30 2003 - 15:11:07 MDT
Greg Jordan:
> My argument is pretty much entirely aesthetic. But that doesn't
> necessarily make it "personal preference", either. I have a feeling
> that
> aesthetic principles tend to be quite similar across large numbers of
> human beings.
If this aesthetic appreciation for animals is as widespread as you
claim, then based on the fact that most people are not vegetarians, we
can say at least the degree to which people appreciate animals differs
significantly. I can't fathom that one would be a vegetarian because
animals appear pleasant to the eye. If anything, you should want to eat
them more. Perhaps there is a special case of paleodiet theory which
says, eat what appears pleasing to the senses, as this is the default
diet of all successful species.
> Lots of people obviously have the ability to appreciate
> animals - one look at our culture tells us that. Many people just
> arbitrarily stop caring about animals when it interferes with an
> activity
> (eating meat) that is a nearly universal meme in the society and
> considered impossible to break (and the connection between
> store-packaged meats and real-live animals is heavily suppressed in
the
> minds of many people).
No doubt there is an evolved instinct to react negatively to the death
of an animate creature. Of course there is, because all the animals who
stuck around to watch other animals being eaten by predators became
seconds. But your reasoning from default insincts to a not-so-obvious
aesthetic conclusion which somehow implies a particular diet is a
muddle.
> The "anthropomorphizing" critique is flawed because nonhuman animals
> *do*
>have many characteristics in common with humans, not surprising given
> our
> common evolutionary history. But again, many people deny evolution,
and
> many people also deny that humans are a type of animal.
Ordinary animals and humans also have many characteristics unique to
themselves. Our far-from-ordinary brains do many intractable things, and
we sometimes invent words to facilitate discussion of them, such as
'happiness', 'reason', or 'thought'. To say an animal is 'happy' or
'sad' might help children and bad poets understand animal behavior a
little better. But it certainly doesn't help me, and it certainly
doesn't imply anything profound to me.
> It's not *too* mysterious to guess that getting shot or throat-slit is
> not
> in the top 10 of a deer or cow's daily activities, it seems to me the
> burden of proof is on those who argue that animals are just robots
that
> don't feel pain or care about what happens to themselves.
I gather that you feel pain and care about what happens to yourself. But
this does not imply anything about animals, or even me for that matter.
Keith
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