Valid. It’s a very small circle inside a much larger one.

It's a feature of the philosophy.

The foetus is a special case because (unless you are a religious nut) it is not a human being but it can become a human being under most circumstances if you don't act against it, so the gradual value-scale makes sense for that special case.

Not sure taxes are the solution, i think the normal european approach to that is a good solution; abortion in the first weeks incredibly easy, second trimester needs some qualification, 3rd trimester exceptionally rare and almost only under severe health risks for the mother or similar rare occurrences.

But the cutoff is still "when it becomes a human being with intrisic value". The gradual scale is justified because we are not 100% sure when that happens.

In a hypothetical world where all fetuses could be grown outside a womb and become human beings at reasonable cost for society abortion should be illegal imho, provided that the removal from the womb and subsequent growing in artifical womb, and the cost of raising the child afterwards is payed for by the public.

//

But this still doesn't have anything to do with animal rights.

Animal though aren't human beings and can't become human beings so they have no similarities with the abortion problem.

Animal rights can be linked to human being intrinsic values only if, after the massive eugenetics we applied to domestic animals, we start to see humanity into animals. But that happens because we selected animals to be cute when puppies (and cuteness is selected by visual similarities to human babies, big eyes and so on), and we selected them for good behaviour around humans.

The fact that we manipulated the genetic pool of the animals we want to deal with in a massive way, in order for them to satisfy our requirements better, can't be used to then justify that they have intrisic value as human beings do, not even "partial" intrisic value.

It's actually proof of the fact that humans as a specie are in control of the rest of nature and in a strictly, well defined, position of intrisic superiority.

Wat if aliens come along and takeover for us, and we become pets?

We're not sure when it happens because there is no answer - not even within your own framework, because you don't have a clear idea of why you're assigning some things intrinsic value and others not. There's no information that we lack access to that would help clarify when "intrinsic value" is granted. Cutoff points are chosen for the sake of expediency, not because we lack certainty of when some "objective" life force is thrust into the fetus by god.

Similarly there isn't a clear point in our evolutionary past where we crossed over from beast to children of god.



You're missing the point. I'm not saying that animals are the same as humans. The analogue is the arbitrariness in choosing what you define as having "intrinsic value".

If control of your environment is the defining characteristic of intrinsic value it would follow that human beings for most of our history lacked intrinsic value despite being anatomically identical.

Interpreted more charitably I guess what you would mean is that value is determined by having the genetic potential to control your environment by some arbitrary standard that's congruent with what we're currently able to achieve. Which is, again, a meaningless litmus test that you chose for completely self serving purposes.

Abba, its futile.

Your just repeating the same obviously true observations, and Luciom will reply again with yea but humans open society objective.

Is he still trying to justify hurting animals? Talk about ****ing a chicken...

I doubt it’s futile, and there’s a lot at stake in curbing misguided attitudes that justify animal torture and may by extension lead to an antagonistic attitude towards groups of people he see as ‘less human’.

Of course its 100% futile.

You have basically repeated the same argument several times now, and he just repeats the same argument back.

Will there be another race to come along and take over for us? Maybe Martians can do better than we've done?

We'll make great pets! We will make great pets!

My opinion is that it's people who believe in animal having intrinsic value that undermine the value of human beings and so open the door for structural mistreatment of human subgroups, when compared to people that give full value to humans, but humans only.

Given that's there is a finite amount of effort and agency available, every ounce you spend toward animals you are explicitly not spending toward humans, thus decreasing the aggregate human welfare, in favor of animal welfare.

With decreasing human welfare antagonism increases among humans.

And then i have to read that it is surprising that people that don't live a great life abandon the left, even if it is purportedly the political side that is supposed to do their interests. Incredible how some1 struggling to find a job, or to have decent pay, or feel secure for his future doesn't appreciate all the efforts spent to preserve some boar species in rural appennines. Really, truly incredible.

When you abdicate morally in favor of animals, then people who don't have a good time go to the other side, which is full of racism and hatred. But it's your fault. Because the enemy is always ready to pick up the pieces, hatred is easy and powerful to use as a political tool, and when you , that are supposed to be the moral guidance for people looking for answers, decide that the topic of relevance is animal rights (and remember, every time you spend political capital on a political topic you are saying that in that moment all other greviances are LESS IMPORTANT FOR YOU).

In other words: as long as there is a single citizen suffering from something that politics could fix, it is a moral crime to dedicate even a single instant to animal rights.

Is he still arguing in favor of molesting puppies?

Not quite, he's arguing it's a moral crime to prevent the molestation of puppies! Poor old puppies.

That's a pretty small hole to thread a needle through to say he's not pro animal torture, he's anti-stopping animal torture. I'm not sure I see a difference between those distinctions.

One could even say it's a moral crime to see a distinction between those positions!

(Sorry for trying to be sarcastic on the internet, he's obviously pro animal torture.)

Just take it as a given that if there is anyone who is actually incapable of subsisting above the poverty line that their welfare is a higher priority.

You're not being intellectually honest though if you think that this is pitting the interests of the poor and needy against animals and that increasing the annual cost of groceries for the average person by $2 a year is going to in any meaningful way contribute to an upcoming race war. In practice it would likely be accompanied by increasing food stamps / stipends by $2.

The people out there "feeling the pain" would be those poor souls who'd have to work an extra 2 minutes a year to cover the costs in the name of limiting the most excruciating pain experienced by hundreds of millions of commercially farmed animals.

As for your boar example, we've already been through this - i'm all for valuing things like bio diversity purely in terms of how it benefits humans.

Do you see a difference between jailing people that don't read books, and being in favour of reading?

Bold is the problem. The moment you open animal rights, that moment, you can't stop at human benefits when deciding how many boars to cull if there are too many (for example). You can still maybe manage to make it legal to cull some boars in some occasions, but you will never reach the human-value optimal, you would cull less than optimal, because you are putting on the balance "some value" for the boar life in itself.

And it's not an hypothetical. It's what is already happening. Once animal rights (intrinsic animal value) is in the picture, then it becomes a matter of political will. So if too many leftist live in the city, people in the mountain have to deal with too many boars. Like in freaking italy right now.

Only if it is constitutionally clear that only human beings have intrisic value can the judiciary kill a law that decreases human welfare to favor animals, do you understand this?

The fact that they're both subject to political will doesn't mean that they're the same thing.

It's only a slippery slope if you have no actual underlying rationale for how you're valuing the suffering.

Why stop at wild boars? Let's just conflate it with a law that prohibits people from stepping on grass. You don't want THAT law to be on the books, do you? Well then to be consistent we also can't require that commercial farmers slit their livestocks throats before throwing them into the meat grinder. If that 5 seconds it takes to kill it cleanly adds even a penny to the marginal cost, well, i guess the only moral thing to do would be to have those cows tossed into the grinder while still alive, with half of it's body resembling a congealed meat paste before the head eventually gets clipped by a blade.

It's just cheap rhetoric. You can't take it too seriously

It's like saying that those against laws restricting hate speech are in favour of hate speech. Or those against banning drugs are in favour of using heroin.

Having said that, we do and should have laws against animal cruelty. your 'intrinsic value' argument is misconceived, value is what we place on things.

Holy ****, Chez won't stand up for animal torturers! Well, not all the way anyway, he still has to make a point supporting the stupid mother****ers point.

No it's the opposite. Is like saying that people who are against the war on drugs like it when people make use of heroine.

That's exactly the point. I don't like people ruining their life with heroine, but i think the war on drugs is terrible.

I don't like people torturing animals, but i think that the process you need to ban animal torture ruins society in the long run so i am against laws banning animal torture.

Point is that radical leftists in this thread denouced me as being in favour of animal torture, because i am against laws that ban animal torture.

Which would be identical to say that people that are against the war on drugs like people dying of overdose. That's the rethoric.

I think that no consideration to the suffering of the animal should ever be made unless it affects the quality of the meat produced. And if it does, only when human health risk is present then it can become a matter of regulation.

If putting live animals in the grinder made more sense for meat production we should be doing it (i dont think it does).

Which, btw, is what we already do with only radical leftist being against it when we boil lobsters alive, which is the only way to preserve its flavour fully and minimize health risks for human.

Did you know that? you thought your example was a reductio ad absurdum, but we have a real life example of something we have been doing for millennia with good results for human that radical nazi-environmentalists want to ban.

AND THEY MANAGED TO BAN THE PRACTICE already in new zealand and switzerland restaurants.

And given the recurring patterns we see on the radical left, after decades of prominence, we know for sure, we can bet our life on it, that they won't stop at lobsters being boiled alive.

Also about animal torture in the "real", OAK-like sense (buying an animal to torture it, as opposed as making it suffer in the process of becoming food, or in a zoo or in other human uses), there is another psychological argument that could make sense.

It's not impossible at all, actually it is plausible, that a human being so depraved as to buy an animal to torture it is a direct risk to the rest of society. But it's also possible that the risk is *REDUCED* if the depraved person can satisfy his urges on animals. Fewer of them will go to torture humans if they can get what they crave for animals.

So if you agree that people with animal-torture attraction are a risk to human welfare, unless you are willing to eliminate those people permanently from society (either incarcerating them forever, or killing them), then giving them a chance to satisfy their depraved need without harming human must be positive for the welfare of the other humans in the same society.

I do sort of enjoy this thread, that animal rights is the root of all RADICAL LEFTIST evil is at least a new one on me.

In the UK there's recently been mild controversy because a mysterious spate of cat deaths, which saw a lengthy investigation by the police, has officially been put down to foxes and cars but many seem to think it's a cover up. Probably just a sign of the conspiracy theory happy times we live in, but does anyone know Luciom's movements these past few years?