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Messages - Pendulate
451
« on: May 01, 2015, 06:54:36 PM »
Why does it matter whether the animal is endangered or not? It seems to illustrate that people are only concerned about animal welfare if it stands to benefit them in some way, rather than genuinely caring about the animal's interests.
Extinction is bad, mkay? Unless we're talking about Jews, Slavs, gays, blacks, gypsies, Arabs, and the French.
Why is it bad, though?
Man made extinction has a tendency to jack up local ecosystems a decent bit. We should try and avoid that.
Again, why is ecological imbalance an undesirable thing?
I'm trying to get at whether these concerns are genuinely for the animals themselves, or if they are merely means to an end and people are really just worried about how they stand to be affected.
For me? Mostly the later. The group as a whole is far easier to care about than any individual when you're not essentially living with that being.
And I mean, if you've got a slowly regenerative but still finite resource that grows on a parabolic curve, wouldn't it make sense to leave it alone for a while until it's more self-sustaining and you're able to cull some of the population with minimal effects on it's existence?
Okay. That's what I said from the beginning, though -- peoples' concerns for endangered animals are ultimately self-serving and are not the noble, compassionate qualities they are paraded as being.
I'd reckon for the average person it's like that.
Okay, but that doesn't make it any more acceptable. It just means the average person needs to be criticized for their views.
452
« on: May 01, 2015, 06:52:57 PM »
Okay, but that wasn't what I meant. I don't deny that our moral intuitions have an emotional bedrock, but it has nothing to do with recognizing a practice as moral or immoral on strictly rational grounds. You can acknowledge something as immoral without having any emotional attachment to it, and can proceed to oppose it based solely on your desire to be rational.
If we merely let our emotions dictate ethics, then it wouldn't be the subject of intellectual inquiry that it is.
I don't mean to imply that emotions are the entire basis for ethics. What I mean to convey is that empathy is involved in their conditioning along with everything else that is so it shouldn't just be ignored.
Oh, absolutely not. Empathy can invigorate our desire to act morally and is thus a great asset, but it can also make us behave patently immorally simply because we have an emotional attachment to something -- nepotism comes to mind, but I'm sure there are better examples. The point is, we should always think critically about something first, regardless of where our emotions lie. And if emotion and logic line up, it's just an added bonus.
453
« on: May 01, 2015, 06:45:20 PM »
Why does it matter whether the animal is endangered or not? It seems to illustrate that people are only concerned about animal welfare if it stands to benefit them in some way, rather than genuinely caring about the animal's interests.
Extinction is bad, mkay? Unless we're talking about Jews, Slavs, gays, blacks, gypsies, Arabs, and the French.
Why is it bad, though?
Man made extinction has a tendency to jack up local ecosystems a decent bit. We should try and avoid that.
Again, why is ecological imbalance an undesirable thing?
I'm trying to get at whether these concerns are genuinely for the animals themselves, or if they are merely means to an end and people are really just worried about how they stand to be affected.
For me? Mostly the later. The group as a whole is far easier to care about than any individual when you're not essentially living with that being.
And I mean, if you've got a slowly regenerative but still finite resource that grows on a parabolic curve, wouldn't it make sense to leave it alone for a while until it's more self-sustaining and you're able to cull some of the population with minimal effects on it's existence?
Okay. That's what I said from the beginning, though -- peoples' concerns for endangered animals are ultimately self-serving and are not the noble, compassionate qualities they are paraded as being.
454
« on: May 01, 2015, 06:40:57 PM »
You say you oppose it, but if you aren't actively taking measures to prevent it, are you really opposing it, or do you merely just disagree with it? If you disagree with something and choose not to support it, you are opposing it. This is especially true in a supply/demand economy where speaking with your wallet is the single most effective way to elicit change in the production chain. And since you actually have to be quite discerning with your purchases (there are a lot of things that contain animal skins these days) it is absolutely an active form of opposition rather than merely a passive one. Empathy has a lot to do with it, actually, as making a conscious decision to oppose killing of any kind is often the result of ideals and ethics rooted in the emotions felt as a result of empathy for those being killed. It's an integral part of the interdependent system that is your personality/identity.
Okay, but that wasn't what I meant. I don't deny that our moral intuitions have an emotional bedrock, but it has nothing to do with recognizing a practice as moral or immoral on strictly rational grounds. You can acknowledge something as immoral without having any emotional attachment to it, and can proceed to oppose it based solely on your desire to be rational. If we merely let our emotions dictate ethics, then it wouldn't be the subject of intellectual inquiry that it is.
455
« on: May 01, 2015, 06:27:34 PM »
Well, yeah, that's pretty much what I was getting at. People only care about animals because they are benefiting from their role in the ecosystem, or at the very least are just scared of what might happen if they went extinct. It has nothing to do with recognizing the animal as an individual.
That's true, but then again we barely recognise other people as individuals as it is.
We generally recognize it in humans to a far greater extent than animals. This is true even for dogs and other animals that have been accepted into our culture. We extend affection toward them based on their cuteness and our ability to project humanlike thoughts and behaviour onto them.
456
« on: May 01, 2015, 06:21:01 PM »
Why does it matter whether the animal is endangered or not? It seems to illustrate that people are only concerned about animal welfare if it stands to benefit them in some way, rather than genuinely caring about the animal's interests.
Extinction is bad, mkay? Unless we're talking about Jews, Slavs, gays, blacks, gypsies, Arabs, and the French.
Why is it bad, though?
Man made extinction has a tendency to jack up local ecosystems a decent bit. We should try and avoid that.
Again, why is ecological imbalance an undesirable thing? I'm trying to get at whether these concerns are genuinely for the animals themselves, or if they are merely means to an end and people are really just worried about how they, personally, stand to be affected.
457
« on: May 01, 2015, 06:17:29 PM »
Why does it matter whether the animal is endangered or not? It seems to illustrate that people are only concerned about animal welfare if it stands to benefit them in some way, rather than genuinely caring about the animal's interests.
Not everyone cares about an animal's interests or well-being in a specific sense. Maybe they don't want an entire species to disappear but they might not necessarily care about a single animal.
Human's only have to capacity to care for so many beings, and have varying degrees of empathy.
I remember seeing a vid recently about animals being frozen solid in ice in flash freezes. It showed a few foxes as well as a moose. I felt more for the foxes because they're one of my favorite animals, however even though I realize the moose suffered through the same experience, I didn't feel nearly as much for it. I have a fairly good degree of empathy but it doesn't always apply towards everything and everyone, I'm not a flowing well of it, and I'm not afraid to admit that.
I get that. But I'm talking about the issues that we can actively choose to support or oppose. Losing sleep over things I have no power to change is fruitless, but when I'm presented with the option to either support or oppose something (such as killing animals for their skin) I will oppose it, to little detriment of my own. This has nothing to do with some theoretical "empathy limit" that we have. It's about making rational, ethical choices in my life, regardless of how it makes me feel emotionally.
458
« on: May 01, 2015, 06:10:21 PM »
Why does it matter whether the animal is endangered or not? It seems to illustrate that people are only concerned about animal welfare if it stands to benefit them in some way, rather than genuinely caring about the animal's interests.
Extinction is bad, mkay? Unless we're talking about Jews, Slavs, gays, blacks, gypsies, Arabs, and the French.
Why is it bad, though?
459
« on: May 01, 2015, 06:09:56 PM »
Why does it matter whether the animal is endangered or not?
Well if you kill them all, there's no way to get it back. at least if you stop hunting animals to extinction, you let them grow back to a point where you can hunt them again, but manageable.
OT: I'm generally against it unless you go get it yourself, or at least very involved in it. Synthetic furs are fine though, and they seem to be everywhere.
Well, yeah, that's pretty much what I was getting at. People only care about animals because they are benefiting from their role in the ecosystem, or at the very least are just scared of what might happen if they went extinct. It has nothing to do with recognizing the animal as an individual.
460
« on: May 01, 2015, 05:49:49 PM »
Why does it matter whether the animal is endangered or not? It seems to indicate that people are only concerned about animal welfare if it stands to benefit them in some way, rather than genuinely caring about the animal's interests.
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