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Advice to City Council: Don’t Ask for It
You claimed on April 11th that the next day would be the 13th?— September 1, 2012 1:42 a.m.
Letters
There have surely been repeated changes in who's actually writing the column. The real issue is whether the person writing it maintains a sufficient level of quality.— August 30, 2012 1:23 a.m.
Letters
Note that the claim allowed for the same legal person — demented or deranged — to be writing the column. In that case, there weren't two people existing at the same time, though perhaps a Ms Hyde who could be restored to Dr Jekyl.— August 30, 2012 1:11 a.m.
Doing the Deed on a Pig Farm
Presenting and refuting (or attempting to refute) a somewhat different argument does not address the argument that I have made. My claim was not that we are bound not to slaughter something simply because it does not and cannot tell us that it wishes to die. Moral variables in general don't present themselves to the retinae, so I don't see that we should dismiss one particular hypothetical moral variable for being invisible. I'd like to know what you mean by “instinct”, as under the original definition plants do not have instincts, nor is there good evidence that human beings do. If you're talking about things such as compound reflexes, these are plainly aside from the attributes that were originally in question. The fact that most cultures and most people are rather arbitrary and emotional in drawing the lines doesn't make the drawing _intrinsically_ so. Indeed, most people draw most lines about most things somewhat irrationally. For example, cannibalism has been rejected for largely irrational, emotional reasons, but that doesn't mean that _only_ emotional reasons can be found for doing so.— December 31, 2011 4:07 a.m.
Doing the Deed on a Pig Farm
The issue isn't of whether it may be reasonable to object to any slaughter, but whether it may be reasonable to differentiate, and object to some slaughter and not others. It is also not of whether some things deserve to be slaughtered (a positive claim), but of whether some thing do not deserve to be protected against slaughter (a negative claim) while others do. As to whether there is a better case for protecting cows than for protecting horses, I don't know (since I don't eat either, this does not seem a critical problem for me). I quite agree that the issue of what gets what rights should be determined based on something beyond emotional reactions. But, again, the difference between how people react to the slaughter of fish versus the slaughter of pigs isn't _simply_ an emotional reaction; it is a response to a theory of the psychological qualities of the two sorts of creatures.— December 31, 2011 3:52 a.m.
Doing the Deed on a Pig Farm
There are animals that exhibit all of the essential behaviors that we use to identify love and empathy in human beings. One may as well solipsistically insist that other H. sapiens are really just "robots" as claim that these animals do not feel love or empathy. On the other hand, H. sapiens raised under some sorts of conditions exhibit no empathy; likewise other animals. One may look upon the results with some disgust, but that doesn't imply that the animals (human or otherwise) have lost claim to be treated as something not to be slaughtered.— December 31, 2011 1:55 a.m.
Doing the Deed on a Pig Farm
The relevant issues are not whether it is legal nor whether it is merely _considered_ immoral, but whether, objectively, is is wrong; and, of so, why. If one admits that there is a case against killing some living things that cannot be made for others, then it is perfectly reasonable for people to be far more bothered by the killing of some than of others.— December 31, 2011 1:47 a.m.
Doing the Deed on a Pig Farm
One could likewise assert that it were amusing that some people were bothered by the butchering of human beings but not of the killing of fish. The degree to which most people are bothered is a function of their awareness of the mentality of what is killed. In some cases, they are unaware because they avoid discovery; in other cases, there is little to discover.— December 30, 2011 10:57 p.m.
Doing the Deed on a Pig Farm
The “com-” in “compassion” is not there arbitrarily. There is no meaningful evidence that plants have any sort of mind, whereas pigs have a psychological sophistication comparable to that of dogs. A pig could have loved you — whether it did or not being a matter of how it were treated — a stalk of wheat or an oak could not.— December 30, 2011 10:53 p.m.
Doing the Deed on a Pig Farm
Most people who eat pigs do so in simple ignorance of want sort of creature they are consuming. They are perhaps unenlightened, but not typically wicked. Hank is entirely another matter. He postures about "really dreading" his unnecessary killing of two pigs, but he does it anyway. He claims to feel "guilty that I didn’t feel worse", but the simple fact is that he doesn't feel worse. He claims to be "radically compassionate" and "disruptively compassionate", but in the event he isn't at all compassionate. God help anything or anyone with whom Hank wants an "authentic relationship". He represents neither mental health nor honesty, but hypocrisy and dissociation brought to a higher level.— December 29, 2011 9:53 p.m.