According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Dynamics, we may already be making love right now...
Written by: 87wt2gxq7Written by: jeff(fake)
As I've mention before, there is absolutely no way anyone can ever know what the internal subjective state of a thing is. Mabey plants think and feel, mabey they don't, mabey rocks can. You simply can't ever truely know definitively.
Yeah sure, but you can make informed guesses based on past observation and inference, especially when you contextualise it in a self-consistent theory.
And c'mon, if you're going to say you can't ever know the subjective state of something, some smart-asre is going to turn around and say aha, but what can you know about anything exept your own subjective state? Descarte's demon and all that.
According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Dynamics, we may already be making love right now...
A couple of balls short of a full cascade... or maybe a few cards short of a deck... we'll see how this all fans out.
According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Dynamics, we may already be making love right now...
Written by: Jeff
we might infer similar feelings on dogs or chimps or dolphins because of their similarities. But once you get to plants or fungi (why does noone care about fungi feelings? ), extending that branch of reasoning becomes absurd.
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
Nietzsche
Getting to the other side
Idolized by Aurinoko
Take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind....
Bob Dylan
Idolized by Aurinoko
Take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind....
Bob Dylan
Written by: The Tea Fairy
What about the really simple organisms with simple, or absent, nervous systems? (shrimps, insects, crabs etc)
Written by: The tea fairy
where do we draw the line?
Written by: The tea fairy
And what about coral? Isn't coral somewhere in between a plant and an animal?
According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Dynamics, we may already be making love right now...
Written by: 87wt2gxq7
IFAIK no animal is without some kind of nervous system.
According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Dynamics, we may already be making love right now...
"vices are like genitals - most are ugly to behold, and yet we find that our own are dear to us."
(G.W. Dahlquist)
Owner of Dragosani's left half
Written by: 87wt2gxq7Written by: jeff(fake)
*cough*
Oh yeah, forgot about them. Who chows down on delicious sponge then?
According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Dynamics, we may already be making love right now...
Written by: The Tea Fairy
What about the really simple organisms with simple, or absent, nervous systems? (shrimps, insects, crabs etc)
I understand where Dream is coming from, where do we draw the line? (yay for anthropology!! )
"You can't outrun Death forever.
But you can make the Bastard work for it."
--MAJOR KORGO KORGAR,
"Last of The Lancers"
AFC 32
Educate your self in the Hazards of Fire Breathing STAY SAFE!
Written by: 87wt2gxq7
Wait a minute... did my housemate tell you that?!
Written by: that website there
Conventional ethical vegan, code name HX, notes that eating vegetables seems to be 'violent' as it requires killing innocent vegetables. HX thinks that eating fruit does not involve killing, hence is preferable. Thus HX thinks that fruitarianism is the ultimate diet.
(...)
Further, by questioning consumption of vegetables, HX appears to be considering fruitarianism in its most extreme form - 100% fruit, no veggies, and presumably no seeds either, as they are life forms as well.
"vices are like genitals - most are ugly to behold, and yet we find that our own are dear to us."
(G.W. Dahlquist)
Owner of Dragosani's left half
Written by: owd
It's impossible to say exactly where the line is drawn, but it definitly lies between cows/pigs/chickens and plants
Written by:
even if plants were capable of suffering in anything the way an animal is, vegetarianism would still be more compassionate than meat eating because-
animal production requires plant deaths (for animal feed) and, the amount of plants that have to die to feed a human on meat is considerably (around x 10 I believe) more than the number of plants that have to die to feed the human in a vegatarian way.
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
Nietzsche
Hoppers are angels who lift us to our feet when our wings have trouble remembering how to fly.
Written by: dreamWritten by: owd
It's impossible to say exactly where the line is drawn, but it definitly lies between cows/pigs/chickens and plants
My point is that the line is arbitrary as we don't know what it 'feels like' to be either a cow or a tree. Lines are drawn on this issue in many different places by many different people.
Drawing a single line, and saying that cows/pigs chickens are on the sufficiently similar to human to not eat side would suggest that you cast moral aspersions at tribal herdsmen and hunters.
Written by: dreamWritten by: OWD
even if plants were capable of suffering in anything the way an animal is, vegetarianism would still be more compassionate than meat eating because-
animal production requires plant deaths (for animal feed) and, the amount of plants that have to die to feed a human on meat is considerably (around x 10 I believe) more than the number of plants that have to die to feed the human in a vegatarian way.
How many plants does it take to feed an oyster?
Furthermore - there are areas of land where the soil is unsuitable for arable crops, but will sustain patchy grasses with which humans can feed animals but not themselves.
Making universal assertions on these matters is fairly muddy... While many ideas apply well to the UK, abstract them to a global level and they have problems.
According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Dynamics, we may already be making love right now...
Written by: Jeff
It would take a very large number of plants to feed an oyster, as the food it requires required plankton whilst alive. Basic ecology.
Written by: wiki
phytoplankton encompass all autotrophic microorganisms in aquatic foodwebs. They serve as the base of the marine food chain, providing an essential ecological function for all aquatic life. However, unlike the situation on land, where most autotrophs are plants, phytoplankton are a diverse group, incorporating protistan eukaryotes and both eubacterial and archaebacterial prokaryotes.
In terms of numbers, the most important groups of phytoplankton include the diatoms, cyanobacteria and dinoflagellates, although many other groups of algae are represented. One group, the coccolithophorids, is responsible (in part) for the release of significant amounts of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) into the atmosphere. DMS is converted to sulfate and these sulfate molecules act as cloud condensation nuclei, increasing general cloud cover. In oligotrophic oceanic regions such as the Sargasso Sea or the South Pacific, phytoplankton is dominated by the small sized cells, called picoplankton, mostly composed of cyanobacteria (Prochlorococcus, Synechococcus) and picoeucaryotes such as Micromonas
Written by: Jeff
The sheep would eat the grass themselves, resulting in a morally inefficent system compared to a hypothetical strictly aggrigultural one, which would be OWD's point. The fact that arable crops can't live every where is pretty much irrelevent to his argument since you could grow enough in different regions
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
Nietzsche
Written by: jo_rhymes
Sy, you should be prime minister.
Getting to the other side
Written by: dreamWritten by: Jeff
It would take a very large number of plants to feed an oyster, as the food it requires required plankton whilst alive. Basic ecology.
Indeed Jeff. Basic Ecology. Unfortunately unless bacteria are now classified as plants you're wrong. Perhaps you were misled by the taxon phytoplankton - from Greek: plankton meaning wanderer and phyton meaning plant.
Written by: dreamWritten by: Jeff
The sheep would eat the grass themselves, resulting in a morally inefficent system compared to a hypothetical strictly aggrigultural one, which would be OWD's point. The fact that arable crops can't live every where is pretty much irrelevent to his argument since you could grow enough in different regions
No you seem to have misunderstood me. Claiming that you could hypothetically feed everyone arable crops if there existed a universal global transportation system (to get the food to people where arable crops cannot grow) is well and good but makes little difference to the situation of a Mongolian nomadic herdsmen. A universal set of morals which looks down on said herdsman for not living in your fantasy world seems a touch unfair on him. You become a morally superior person to him because you live in an affluent country.
According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Dynamics, we may already be making love right now...
Written by: my last post
, unlike the situation on land, where most autotrophs are plants, phytoplankton are a diverse group
Written by: Jeff
A significant part of the diet of oysters is detritus composed of, or originally fed by green algae, a member of the plant kingdom, and a constitutive part of plankton
Written by: jeff
That a moral code seems "unfair" for being easier to apply in affluent contries is irrelevent to it's validity
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
Nietzsche
Written by: dreamWritten by: owd
It's impossible to say exactly where the line is drawn, but it definitly lies between cows/pigs/chickens and plants
My point is that the line is arbitrary as we don't know what it 'feels like' to be either a cow or a tree. Lines are drawn on this issue in many different places by many different people.
Drawing a single line, and saying that cows/pigs chickens are on the sufficiently similar to human to not eat side would suggest that you cast moral aspersions at tribal herdsmen and hunters.
Written by:
How many plants does it take to feed an oyster?
"You can't outrun Death forever.
But you can make the Bastard work for it."
--MAJOR KORGO KORGAR,
"Last of The Lancers"
AFC 32
Educate your self in the Hazards of Fire Breathing STAY SAFE!
Written by: OWD
modern methods of meat production cause immensely greater amounts of animal suffering than anything found in the wild
Written by: OWD
The line is easily drawn between those things that are capable of experiencing pain,suffering, loss etc i.e. humans and animals; and those which aren't i.e. stones and plants.
Written by: OWD
where the majority of us in the modern west are concerned, meat production is an inneficient waste of land that could be better used to grow human-edible crops directly, cutting out the inefficient 'middle-man' (cow, pig etc)
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
Nietzsche
Written by: dream
Dave, while I agree with most of what you say there a couple of bits I'm not sure about...Written by: OWD
modern methods of meat production cause immensely greater amounts of animal suffering than anything found in the wild
Intensive factory farming... Almost definitely yes. Modern methods of organic farming... Not convinced. I think an argument can be made for animals which are reared outdoors, have a plentiful supply of organic food (not bits of reconstituted dead animal)and clean water, and have any illness/injuries treated could be said to suffer less than a creature in the wild who has a short supply of food/water, can pick up painful ailments/injuries from which it can suffer for years and is not protected from attack by predators.
But then most meat consumption in the West is factory farmed...
But organic farming is a less efficient method of meat production... If everyone ate organic meant, people in the west would (on average) have to eat a lot less meat
Written by:Written by: OWD
The line is easily drawn between those things that are capable of experiencing pain,suffering, loss etc i.e. humans and animals; and those which aren't i.e. stones and plants.
Which side of the line do sponges, oysters, shrimp, coral, fish etc live on? If an oyster is feeling loss, how do you tell? How do you know you're not simply projecting your own emotions onto it?
Written by:Written by: OWD
where the majority of us in the modern west are concerned, meat production is an inneficient waste of land that could be better used to grow human-edible crops directly, cutting out the inefficient 'middle-man' (cow, pig etc)
The problem as far as feeding people is not so much about a lack of food (there is still a global grain surplus - for example UK farmers currently produce 3.5million tonnes more grain than they can sell annually) as a lack of political will and the logistical problems of getting food to the most remote areas.
Written by:
"The problem as far as feeding people is not so much about a lack of food (there is still a global grain surplus - for example UK....."
"You can't outrun Death forever.
But you can make the Bastard work for it."
--MAJOR KORGO KORGAR,
"Last of The Lancers"
AFC 32
Educate your self in the Hazards of Fire Breathing STAY SAFE!
... simplify ...
the best smiles are the ones you lead to