Protest/Demo/installation for animals

[Tsyal Makto]

Originally Posted by Raptor

As a side note, if we don't test on other animals, who do we test on? Other humans?

If there are people who consent, then yes. If someone wants to put themselves out there for the betterment of medical science, that is their right to do so. There's almost 7 billion people on this planet, I'm sure there would be plenty of takers, either because 1) The price is right, 2) They are already sick and have nothing to lose but things to gain, or 3) They just want to play a part in the advancement of medical science.

All as long as it's consensual. That's obviously the most important part.

Now onto the subject of nature - IMT (in my theory) we have a mechanically "soft Gaia," where the sum of all organisms acts as part of one full, global, living biosphere. It may not have consciousness like Eywa, but there is a sum balance of all organisms working in unison in their roles in the environment. Could this somehow be a basis for a global consciousness, like each brain cell together makes a working brain? Maybe, I can hope.

As for the spiritual side of things, do I believe there are living spirits in nature, that are there even if they don't work through the everyday mechanics of nature? Yes. Much like the paganism/pantheism of native religions.

[Moco Loco]

I guess I can agree with testing on people who want to be tested (altogether instead of animals). If they exist (and they probably do), I suppose we should use them.

[Marvellous Chester]

Originally Posted by Raptor

As a side note, if we don't test on other animals, who do we test on? Other humans?

Any organism on the planet that can sign a piece of paper then turn to the lab guy and say they agree to it

[auroraglacialis]

Originally Posted by Raptor

The problem is, because they are of a different species, they aren't our equal. Perhaps they take an equal role in the ecosystem, but they simply can't be treated equally. Comparing racism and speciesism is just too far.

Well to set racism and speciesism equal would be taking it too far. Nothing can be said about comparing them (that comparison could also conclude that they are different). I think there are many differences, but there are also some parallels, namely that some people mistreat animals out of hate, greed or simply a feeling of superiority. The same can be said for racism (or misogyny for tha tmatter).
The way I see it there is a relationship between all animals. That relationship may well be one of predator and prey, of symbiotic living, or eating and being eaten. Actually all animals have such a relationship that involves death as well as living. This is why I do not say that humans should exclude themselves from that, because that would be a grave mistake to seperate humans from the rest of the world (and it is already done in many respects).
What we as a species need to find is our place in these relationships. Right now, at least a large part of our species is behaving very different from what our place in Nature used to be. Instead of hunting, fishing and gathering or even of guarding sheep or cows, tending for plants in gardens or taking a portion of the eggs of birds at least many members of our species act like abusive partners in that relationship. And this is what is a dire problem - our relationship to nonhumans is no longer a balanced one. We don't even feed the soil with our manure, the minimal service predators do to their environment. And not only do we take much more than we need, we dont even give what we do not need to those who could use it. And keeping cows in feedlots, fur animals or chicken in small cages and all the other stuff is IMO a sign of a relationship gone horribly wrong. How do we relate to each other and to the nonhuman world, that is the issue for me, not that there should be no death in the world.
And such a relationship may start with a simple "Thank you" when killing an animal, with a sense of gratitude and with the consideration if what one gets for the killing of an animal is really worth the death of another being. In many cases I would say if one really thinks about this and considers oneself to be in a relationship to all the other animals around, in many such cases I would think that the answer would be "no". In some it is of course "yes" - for example if I get attacked by an animal I do consider this appropriate. And I even (sorry Eltu ) consider it approriate to kill a mosquito that tries to drink my blood and may infect me with some disease.

Originally Posted by Clarke

nature intending anything is, IMO, your own anthropomorphization; an "entity" that is not self-aware cannot intend anything.

Does intention require self-awareness?
What about a bug crawling up a leaf - does it not have an intention?

Originally Posted by Raptor

I treat it as a system that has a very fine balance to keep its inhabitants thriving.

I would not even say that the balance is so fine - Earth is pretty robust and very good in recovery. But it definitely has its weak points and pushing it too far will break her as well - or at least provoke "corrective measures" that are so strong as to pose real troubles for us.

Originally Posted by Tsyal Makto

I'm sure there would be plenty of takers, either because 1) The price is right, 2) They are already sick and have nothing to lose but things to gain, or 3) They just want to play a part in the advancement of medical science.

Well #1 I would not agree on, as this means that poverty is an incentive to become a "guinea pig" for medicine, but the other two yes.
Actually, the people who are most fond about scientific and medical progress, who want to see all this stuff happening should rightfully also be the ones who bear the consequences, would that not be fair?

Now onto the subject of nature - IMT (in my theory) we have a mechanically "soft Gaia," where the sum of all organisms acts as part of one full, global, living biosphere....Could this somehow be a basis for a global consciousness, like each brain cell together makes a working brain?

Hehe, I definitely think this is a possibility. In any case, that whole thing about "Gaia theory" does not even say that Gaia has to be intelligent, self-aware or anything like that. At least not in the definition we generally accept. Lets take a hamster - you would maybe not call it very much intelligent, but the hamster will have a constant body temperature, grow fur to a certain length, be host for bacteria and mites and react to other beings. Even if you give Gaia only that much similarity to a living being, it means that climate, ecosystems and species, individual animals and plants, water flows and nutrient cycles are all part of her and that she can also react on them, just like a hamster can react to you pinching him in the belly even if he has not the level or form of intelligence a scientist would demand to call something a "higher being".

[applejuice]

I think it is about how we feel towards animals. We eat meat and drink milk and other animal products but we don't get to know the animals from where that came from. It changes when we are shown the source of such things (a visit to a slaughterhouse must be a horrible experience). Most of us take that as necessary (however, the animals we are going to eat should not suffer a horrible death, but a fast and painless one). It is terribly difficult not to feel disgusted when seeing animal corpses disposed as garbage and it is even worse when that animal was raised and killed just for fashion purposes. Anyone who has a pet (cat, dog, spider or bird) feels the same.

[Clarke]

Originally Posted by Advent

And then what? We'll eventually be demonstrating about the ethics of that. Humans are generally senseless in the grand scheme of things. If you don't want animals slaughtered, don't eat them.

See later when I'm talking to aurora. In the direction I'm talking about, there won't be any demonstrations about ethics, because there won't be any ethical questions.

Originally Posted by auroraglacialis

our relationship to nonhumans is no longer a balanced one. We don't even feed the soil with our manure, the minimal service predators do to their environment. And not only do we take much more than we need, we dont even give what we do not need to those who could use it. And keeping cows in feedlots, fur animals or chicken in small cages and all the other stuff is IMO a sign of a relationship gone horribly wrong. How do we relate to each other and to the nonhuman world, that is the issue for me, not that there should be no death in the world.

This is, IMO, only a question of insufficiently advanced technology. Modern biotechnology has produced the concept, and soon the prototypes, of "synthetic meat;" meat grown directly in vats, no animal required. If this were sucessful, it would completely remove almost all ethical questions about meat-eating, since, literally, no animals were harmed in the making of this steak.

More generally, a "relationship with nonhumans" is only necessary to the extent that we take things from non-humans. From an engineering perspective, that is simply inefficient, and every attempt should be made to eliminate that inefficiency; thus, synthetic meat. The ideal is not to establish a relationship with nature, where we pay back for what we take; it is to take nothing from nature at all. (Or from the delicate parts of nature, anyway. Fusing seawater for fuel, for instance, rather than modifying the atmosphere in large amounts.)

Does intention require self-awareness?
What about a bug crawling up a leaf - does it not have an intention?

I don't think so; To intend to do something requires a concept of "I" to do the intending. IMO, the bug is just a computer running unknown software on neural nets rather than sillicon, and is merely using the same sort of problem solving techniques our own computers use: it has a goal state, (FOOD!) and a current state, and has worked out what steps are needed to turn the current state into the goal state. It can then mindlessly execute the steps. We, in contrast, recognise "I" as a human in the world, and when dealing with humans, we can extrapolate goals based on behaviour. (except in the case of "I", when we don't have to extrapolate at all; we just look into our "things to be done" list.)

(I'm finding this difficult to explain, so that was probably not really helpful, sorry. )

Even if you give Gaia only that much similarity to a living being, it means that climate, ecosystems and species, individual animals and plants, water flows and nutrient cycles are all part of her and that she can also react on them, just like a hamster can react to you pinching him in the belly even if he has not the level or form of intelligence a scientist would demand to call something a "higher being".

I think a more apt metaphor is that the hamster will "react" to being fed, or for that matter, being poisoned. The entity only superficially reacts as a whole; the behaviour we ascribe as a single reaction is actually many interconnected parts behaving in very different ways. (In the case of the poisoning exmaple, some proteins may collapse, some may malfunction, others may continue working.)

[Aquaplant]

Originally Posted by Clarke

This is, IMO, only a question of insufficiently advanced technology. Modern biotechnology has produced the concept, and soon the prototypes, of "synthetic meat;" meat grown directly in vats, no animal required. If this were sucessful, it would completely remove almost all ethical questions about meat-eating, since, literally, no animals were harmed in the making of this steak.

More generally, a "relationship with nonhumans" is only necessary to the extent that we take things from non-humans. From an engineering perspective, that is simply inefficient, and every attempt should be made to eliminate that inefficiency; thus, synthetic meat. The ideal is not to establish a relationship with nature, where we pay back for what we take; it is to take nothing from nature at all. (Or from the delicate parts of nature, anyway. Fusing seawater for fuel, for instance, rather than modifying the atmosphere in large amounts.)

Indeed

Technology must always solve these physical problems that are created out of necessity for food or other things that are simply required for human life to exist in such quantities that it does these days. It's great to have a functional and ethical solution at the same time, which is a rather rare combination when it comes to attaining sustainable functionality in general.

[applejuice]

^^I really hope for such a solution. It would be much easier to feed 7+ billion persons by those means.

[Tsyal Makto]

Originally Posted by Clarke

I don't think so; To intend to do something requires a concept of "I" to do the intending. IMO, the bug is just a computer running unknown software on neural nets rather than sillicon, and is merely using the same sort of problem solving techniques our own computers use: it has a goal state, (FOOD!) and a current state, and has worked out what steps are needed to turn the current state into the goal state. It can then mindlessly execute the steps. We, in contrast, recognise "I" as a human in the world, and when dealing with humans, we can extrapolate goals based on behaviour. (except in the case of "I", when we don't have to extrapolate at all; we just look into our "things to be done" list.)

This is an interesting case study for an extended definition of the philosophical zombie. When we get into the subject of animal consciousness, it's just as much about philosophy as it is about biology, because existentially, when do we define "I"? Obviously we can define "I" for ourselves because we our ourselves, and obviously we have the ability to self examine from a first-person perspective. We may be able to define other humans as conscious because they can self examine (and the very idea that something like the P-zombie exists is proof of our inherent doubt in second and third-person perspective). Further, how can we definitively say another species cannot have a concept of "I", when they cannot neither acknowledge nor dis-acknowledge their lack of self awareness. Really, how is our "things to be done list" any different than the "goal state" of computers/non-humans, as you see them? And really, your definition of the bug could easily be tailored to define human behavior and problem solving.

Interestingly enough, the same computational functions that bugs/hamsters run on might form the basis of our consciousness, and that consciousness wasn't just some hardline barrier that only humans passed, but was something that was evolutionarily advantageous and present much further down the evolutionary ladder. All animals might just run on the same primordial "programming," which is really a form of consciousness, it's just that some have the hubris to define "I" on themselves, and consider themselves to be the only ones holding "true consciousness". Maybe other animals have self awareness as well, they just can't cross the language barrier. It was easy for many an early traveler to consider native peoples "savages" or "animals" because of the language or behavioral barrier.

Are animals conscious too? - Telegraph

HowStuffWorks "Potential Consciousness in the Animal Kingdom"

Why Animals Are Biologically Conscious. | Psychology Today

The Aristotelian concept that only humans are conscious, and that non-humans are all unconscious "meat computers" separated from us by a hardline barrier of consciousness is a rapidly obsoleting idea.

*Maybe not the bug, per se, but definitely vertebrates. Though the information about the bee in HSW does present an interesting skew, doesn't it?

All IMO, too, of course. And tbh I don't know if this is taking the topic off course or not.

[Aquaplant]

Originally Posted by Tsyal Makto

Maybe other animals have self awareness as well, they just can't cross the language barrier. It was easy for many an early traveler to consider native peoples "savages" or "animals" because of the language or behavioral barrier.

There's also the species barrier to consider, seeing how for example dogs communicate amongst each other just fine, but we don't always understand the subtleties of their vocalizations.

Animals are sentient, but not usually as elaborate as we are.

[auroraglacialis]

Originally Posted by applejuice

It changes when we are shown the source of such things (a visit to a slaughterhouse must be a horrible experience).... It is terribly difficult not to feel disgusted when seeing animal corpses disposed as garbage and it is even worse when that animal was raised and killed just for fashion purposes.

Exactly! I think the detachment between "consumers" and "producers" - or in other words "what had to die to fill your plate" is a huge problem. The same is true in general. If humans are detached from the effect of their actions, i.e. if they only experience with all their physical senses the reality of the benefits of an action (eating a steak or eating pasta or wearing new shiny sports shoes or getting really fast from A to B) but are shielded from the negative consequences by a system of physical detachment, geographical distance, dilution of effects or even conscious manipulation (called advertisement and PR), they are able to commit atrocities much easier.
If you do not see the cow living on a feedlot and then being slaughtered, if you do not recognize that for the vast monocultures of wheat countless species had to loose their habitat and if you do not have lunch with the children that make the shoes and you do not smell the CO2 that comes from the Airplane exhaust. Its been demonstrated in countless experiments as well - if humans are completely detached from something, their behaviour becomes strange and antisocial and destructive. If you take a baby chimpanzee from her mother she will be a psychopath. If you allow her to have babies, she will be a monster mother. If you give 5 people a rifle with the command to shoot a prisoner to death, they will do it - if it is only one, he will in many cases not. In world war 1, 90% of the shots fired were aimed not to hit a person - only by the invention of breaking the personality of a soldier and create an antisocial new pseudopersona in "boot camps" it was managed to create killer soldiers. In totalitarian regimes or racist cultures, the "opponents" were simply defined as "others" and people were shielded from any reaction to the action they inflicted upon them, thus allowing people to treat them as slaves, kill them or torture them.
It is clear that being detached from something is making us insane and very much able to mistreat others.

Which brings me to this one:

Originally Posted by Clarke

Modern biotechnology has produced the concept, and soon the prototypes, of "synthetic meat;" meat grown directly in vats, no animal required. ...
More generally, a "relationship with nonhumans" is only necessary to the extent that we take things from non-humans. From an engineering perspective, that is simply inefficient, and every attempt should be made to eliminate that inefficiency; thus, synthetic meat. The ideal is not to establish a relationship with nature, where we pay back for what we take; it is to take nothing from nature at all.

And I think here is a grave problem waiting to happen. This "solution" promises even more separation. How is separation working out for us as a species so far - it has brought us to the brink of ecological and social calamity. And the solution is "more separation"?
I know the dream of techno-utopians is to somehow create a bubble for humans that only runs on a bit of water for the fusion reactors and otherwise is completely free of any contact to nature. To me, this is quite a horrible vision, because I see what detachment does. What if the last remnants of relationship and interdependence between humans and nonhumans vanish? Do you really think this will not have a very much catastrophic effect to the way people think of the world? What happened to ecosystems that we do not depend upon usually? They have been turned into "something useful". What about animals that we do not depend on? They go extinct. There are a few exceptions when the dependence is not a need but a want, if we want to keep cuddly panda bears and joyful dolphins alive because they are likeable. Or if we want to keep a patch of forest as a nature park to become a recreational zone for eco-tourists. I am not thinking so much about the generation now, but about future generations - if they loose the feeling of interconnectedness and relationship with the natural world, how can one expect them to actually understand and love it? Already, children who grow up in cities do not recognize goat, think soil is just dirt, wild blackberries are not edible and walking barefoot is dangerous. Some think that no one can seriously sleep in a tent or cook food over a fire, that protecting a forest means to clean up the forest floor of all that waste that is there - twigs and branches and such nuisances. And we are yet far away from the level of detachment that some seek.

I feel, philosophically, from reading and based on these experiences with present day city children that more detachment is not the solution. Instead I feel that we as a species have to realize and embrace being part of this world, of its buzzing and active living biosphere, feeling the connectedness to all living things because all of them do have a connection to us in some way.

Let me pull out another example. People. Which group do you think cares more deeply about each other - a group of people that live together in a village, have shared ownership over a company and all work in that company, having a nice long coffee break every day to talk about family and the village. They live together with their families. Some of them know how to garden, others how to fix cars and bikes and others how to cook, so the friend who knows how to fix a bike will do so if someone else breaks his bike and so on. Or the same number of people living in single person flats during the week, returning to the family on the weekends, all working in a company that is owned by a boss. Each has his own cubicle and even can put on earphones to solely concentrate on the task. Once the bell rings, they all go home to their flats and watch some TV with some other friends.
That example is not meant to stand by itself, it is menat in the context of this discussion - that if people are separated, they do not have a reason to care for each other. They care about who is next to them, who they have a relationship with and who they in some way (physically or emotionally) depend upon or vice versa.
Again in that context - do you think more separation from Nature is really the best course to take?

Avatar once again is having that kind of theme as well. The people at RDA are physically seperated from Pandora. There is a huge fence, massive machines, unbreakable windows and breathing masks. And they behave accordingly. The Avatar drivers penetrate that separation and start building a connection. Their Avatar bodies depend on the air of Pandora. Jake goes further than that and joins the NA'Vi who totally depend on their relationship with Pandora. And consequently the more Jake enters into a relationship with Pandora, the more he regards it as a home and partner to be protected.

(I'm finding this difficult to explain, so that was probably not really helpful, sorry. ) .... The entity only superficially reacts as a whole; the behaviour we ascribe as a single reaction is actually many interconnected parts behaving in very different ways

Indeed I do not understand what you mean, especially where you make that distinction in that paragraph. Animals are not really robots. If I walk with the dogs in the forest and walk over a log that crosses a small creek, she looks at the creek and the tree. She looks at how I get across and makes a decision if she can do the same. So one of the dogs makes the decision to rather jump into the creek and wade through while the other tries the log. I would pretty much say that the dog had the intention to get across the creek and that they then made a decision on how to get there.

The second part however is understandable but does not stand in opposition to the image of the world as "Gaia", as an entity that acts and reacts appropriately. It does not matter if a reaction or action comes from many interconnected parts - in fact we humans are many interconnected parts as well. Our reactions are the result of a multitude of body cells doing different things - brain cells, cells in thes eyes that see, skin cells and follicles that are touched and so on.

And the same happens in other animals as well - There are not many absolute and definitive characteristics that really make us as a species so special if one looks at the whole issue from the outside. We can find things that separate us from other animals, but to judge them as superior or as a justification to behave in a certain way is pretty arbitrary. Just like saying that we separate male humans from female humans because one has a dongle and then claim that only a person with a dongle is really intelligent and truely a higher being. (This of course happened and happens in human cultures). It is picking an arbitrary discerning property and turning it into a justification for a kind of separation that is not balanced by a relationship. And that way a relationship can be a loving and caring one between two different and separated beings, a man and a woman - or it can be discrimination based on the lack of that relationship and an emphasis on the differences and end up in a variety of misogynistic tendencies.

Greetings
Aurora

[Aquaplant]

Your first chapter is something I can agree on, but the rest ranges from just silly to outright... I don't even want to say it, but here goes.

Originally Posted by auroraglacialis

And I think here is a grave problem waiting to happen. This "solution" promises even more separation. How is separation working out for us as a species so far - it has brought us to the brink of ecological and social calamity. And the solution is "more separation"?
I know the dream of techno-utopians is to somehow create a bubble for humans that only runs on a bit of water for the fusion reactors and otherwise is completely free of any contact to nature. To me, this is quite a horrible vision, because I see what detachment does. What if the last remnants of relationship and interdependence between humans and nonhumans vanish?

There is no relationship, only humans using animals for their own personal gains. The animals don't depend on us, we depend on them, and that is an imbalance that must be fixed.

Do you really think this will not have a very much catastrophic effect to the way people think of the world? What happened to ecosystems that we do not depend upon usually? They have been turned into "something useful". What about animals that we do not depend on? They go extinct. There are a few exceptions when the dependence is not a need but a want, if we want to keep cuddly panda bears and joyful dolphins alive because they are likeable. Or if we want to keep a patch of forest as a nature park to become a recreational zone for eco-tourists. I am not thinking so much about the generation now, but about future generations - if they loose the feeling of interconnectedness and relationship with the natural world, how can one expect them to actually understand and love it? Already, children who grow up in cities do not recognize goat, think soil is just dirt, wild blackberries are not edible and walking barefoot is dangerous. Some think that no one can seriously sleep in a tent or cook food over a fire, that protecting a forest means to clean up the forest floor of all that waste that is there - twigs and branches and such nuisances. And we are yet far away from the level of detachment that some seek.

Just because we wouldn't be dependable of nature, doesn't mean that we would automatically stop appreciating it. There's a difference between observing nature and living in an unstable relationship with nature. The latter is what we are currently doing, and the only reasonable course of action at this time is to pursue transparency.

That example is not meant to stand by itself, it is menat in the context of this discussion - that if people are separated, they do not have a reason to care for each other. They care about who is next to them, who they have a relationship with and who they in some way (physically or emotionally) depend upon or vice versa.
Again in that context - do you think more separation from Nature is really the best course to take?

I care for nature, but my presence is inherently disruptive, and even destructive at times. Maybe the kind of low impact super eco-behaviour that you have adopted isn't that much of a strain on nature, but you must understand that we are not all that selfless. Not to mention we are far too numerous.

Avatar once again is having that kind of theme as well. The people at RDA are physically seperated from Pandora. There is a huge fence, massive machines, unbreakable windows and breathing masks. And they behave accordingly. The Avatar drivers penetrate that separation and start building a connection. Their Avatar bodies depend on the air of Pandora. Jake goes further than that and joins the NA'Vi who totally depend on their relationship with Pandora. And consequently the more Jake enters into a relationship with Pandora, the more he regards it as a home and partner to be protected.

That's because one would kind of die if one weren't physically separated from Pandora. Just like if I go to a safari, I would probably get eaten by an angry lioness or something. The best thing to do is to observe nature from a safe distance without disturbing it too much.

And the same happens in other animals as well - There are not many absolute and definitive characteristics that really make us as a species so special if one looks at the whole issue from the outside. We can find things that separate us from other animals, but to judge them as superior or as a justification to behave in a certain way is pretty arbitrary. Just like saying that we separate male humans from female humans because one has a dongle and then claim that only a person with a dongle is really intelligent and truely a higher being. (This of course happened and happens in human cultures). It is picking an arbitrary discerning property and turning it into a justification for a kind of separation that is not balanced by a relationship. And that way a relationship can be a loving and caring one between two different and separated beings, a man and a woman - or it can be discrimination based on the lack of that relationship and an emphasis on the differences and end up in a variety of misogynistic tendencies.

Please, for the love of all that is good in this world, do not, DO NOT go there.