I know about natural defense mechanisms among plants, but they tend to use it in a way that does not cause mass extinction in their surroundings. Especially bee (or any other pollinator) extinction. There are arguments made that all domesticated species - animal or vegetal - are a case of evolutionary success (I think it revolves around the Selfish Gene theory) but it is only from the POV of one species (and more often than not, a rather poor sample of individuals among these species, diversity-wise) and not from the POV of an ecosystem.
In the absence of humans, it is very rare to see natural ecosystems with a genetic diversity as poor as most of our crops. So while it might be argued that there is a symbiosis between humanity and cultivated/domesticated species, it only became possible by destroying many other species in the process. While most of the "natural" symbiotic relationships are mutually beneficial but not as violently detrimental to their environment.
As for the domesticated animals, the issue often stems from people who stop seeing them as animals and see them as tools. Which might be a defense mechanism if you work in a slaughterhouse, for example.
That's not "tool", that's "thing that I am going to eat". Tool would be more appropriate to oxen you use to plow the field. In which case you're interested in keeping the ox alive and well for quite some time. There's not a specific end date to its usefulness; you want a tool to be useful for as long as possible, which gives you more time to develop affection for that animal and isn't necessarily detrimental to your livelihood. And animal you're raising specifically for food is what you don't want to develop an attachment too.
Generally, animals raised for food and animals raised for labor are distinct stock anyway: you don't kill and eat your milk cow or your plow ox.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"http://neurosciencenews.com/bird-environment-cognition-3894/
I think this is relevant to the thread???
Emm, no you don't. Anyone who kills a calf for a little more milk is seriously failing farm economics. Looking even outside factory farms that engineer ways to artificially extend the time that the cow produces milk, a cow can produce milk to feed around 3 calves so even in a small scale setting you'll still have plenty of milk to share. With the price of meat always on the rise it's way more profitable to keep the excess calves around for more meat.
Being unnecessarily cruel to a slave/child/woman in one's care is a moral and/or ethical issue only from the point of view of our self-image: do we want to be the kind of people that would act that way? It can also have empirical consequences, such as a mistreated slave/woman/child possibly harming others out of fear or anger. But saying that you do it out of concern for the sapience of the beings in question smacks of self-deception and/or wishful thinking. It's not a great way to build a personal ethos, since it has untestable hypotheses.
When was the last time a cow was able to communicate intelligibly with you to protest its treatment? If you want to run this to absurdity, then sure, we can't know for certain that anyone other than ourselves is an independent, sapient being with any moral or ethical value.
I have no interest in this conversation if you're going to play pseudo-solipsistic word games to avoid discussing the observation that there are differences in terms of agency and cognition between humans and animals.
I will not abuse my cat for giggles. I will not, however, ask its opinion about its state of ownership and/or freedom. Nor am I concerned for the feelings of the cow that was killed to provide my hamburger.
edited 7th Apr '16 12:41:23 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I'm just saying, that the same arguments were used against humans before. Blacks are only partially human, women lack a soul etc.
So I can understand if someone prefers to follow a "better safe than sorry" approach regarding animals.
I mean, if lacking agency and cognition, instead of pain are key for moral treatment, is it okay to kill severely mentally handicapped people?
We ascribe them sentimental value; one of the hallmarks of a civilized society is that it can and does devote resources to the care of people who are not and can never be productive. Heck, isn't that half of the rationale behind pets? It's not like those [hypothetical] fish in my aquarium are doing anything useful.
Taking a purely utilitarian approach, one might determine that we should cull our cripples to conserve resources for the people who can use them better. Obviously, we don't do that (well, most don't), which means we have moral values as a society that transcend mere calculations of utility.
But this is a trite observation; it is patently true. There is quite a leap between the basic principle of humanitarianism and, "We should treat all animals as fellow sapients, just in case."
edited 7th Apr '16 1:28:24 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"There is nothing wrong with sentiment unless it leads you to empirically false conclusions, such as, "Animals are fellow sapients and should be accorded the same rights as human beings."
You may choose not to eat meat for any reason that suits you, but telling me that I should not do so because that cow might be a person is silly. I might as well tell you that my personal affinity for the color green means you are committing a moral offense if you don't paint your house my favorite hue of lime.
edited 7th Apr '16 1:47:26 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Except thouse groups were able to ask for a say. My dog gets to decide its state of ownership the day it says it wants such a say.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranI'm not sure I think being able to speak should be the absolute decider of sapience or not. Still, I'd agree that, yeah, the vast majority of animals don't qualify.
That doesn't mean we should disregard the discussion for ones that show serious signs of, for lack a better term, "human-like behavior", on that basis.
Doesn't have to be speech, if Koko the gorilla were to sign "let me out" to someone I'd be totally up for her being awarded legal personhood. Now she'd probably need a legal guardian but I'd say she'd be entitled to the same rights as any human that suffered from a disability that limited their abilities to a similar level.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranGreat apes are a definite gray area because they show distinct signs of sapience, if not to the same level of intelligence as [most] humans. I certainly wouldn't keep one as a pet, nor would I kill it for food. Emancipating one is a bit much, though, since it is not equipped to function in a human society and would almost certainly hurt itself or someone else without a legal guardian.
I can see the day when we apply uplifting techniques to bring them closer to human intelligence, at which point I would most certainly support emancipation if it is merited by evidence.
As an aside, there are also some people whose legal agency I would like to remove given unfavorable comparisons of their behavior with said apes.
edited 7th Apr '16 2:17:23 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Yeah any that was emancipated would probably have to immediately be placed effectively in care, but I'd say there's a strong argument that if one ever manages to ask to be emancipated we kinda have to give it to them, even if we then place it in care.
edited 7th Apr '16 2:18:56 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranRight, although we have to make it clear that there's a distinction between asking to be emancipated in full understanding of what that means and the kind of "asking" that my cat does when he meows to be let outside.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Oh totally, that's why I said asking for emancipation, not freedom, to ask for emancipation one would have to understand what it is, while asking for freedom can be as simple as a dog wanting to go outside so as to run around.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranDolphins have very high level communication skills, including a discernible language of clicks and whistles. It's not a very complex one, but their environment is kind of against them in this regard: they have no capacity to develop tool use, which is widely regarded as a prerequisite for language development.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Also if they ask us to set them free we're probably going to ask them to stop raping their children for fun, then we hit a weird impass where if we grant the dolphins emancipation we may also have to start putting them in special dolphin jails.
You can tell a great ape not to kill a fellow ape, but dolphins? How do we explain to them that they can't just go round raping each other?
edited 7th Apr '16 3:36:03 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranWe can't stop them but we punish them when they do it, I'm pretty sure we don't currently punish dolphins for raping others dolphins. But if we granted them rights then they'd also have the right of protection from each other.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

Pesticides are natural self-defense on the part of the plants though. We use artificial ones to help defend our crops, but it's a natural things plants already do. Plants are actually surprisingly intelligent and have complex communication networks in order to defend themselves and will send nutrients to other plants in their community if they're having a rough time due to weather or such.
As far as our crops at least, it's a symbiotic relationship. Both parties benefit. In fact, there's some evidence that our crops might have "manipulated" human behavior to an extent.
As far as domesticated animals go, it's a natural thing for humans to worry about their suffering to an extent, though not to the point of self-sacrifice. But also, it's completely natural for various religions or secular ethics to emerge which nurture that slight tendency into a lifestyle of self-denial or active avoidance of causing the slightest harm to plants and such. Again, perfectly natural and nothing wrong with that.
edited 29th Mar '16 11:25:53 AM by CassidyTheDevil