Hi again,

>Chris Perley wrote:>
>> Sorry, I know that is somewhat of a red herring, but I think all this
>> obsession with the motivation and (by association) the morality of hunters
>> has the scent of a red-tinted kipper about it as well.  If a hunter gets a
>> kick out of being a predator, couldn't this be some genetic urge, some
>> deeper yearning to leave the supermarket aisles and get back to roots.  It
>> doesn't mean he is bad or mean.  The moral issue is not death, but sadistic
>> pain - and we ALL AGREE that if a person (I won't call them "hunters", to
>> avoid association) takes sadistic pleasure in prolonged pain of another
>> animal then any moral code will condemn him.
>
>Dreamer:  I'm not sure sadistic pain is the only moral issue.  I'd like
>to return to the "play" concept I spoke of earlier, and suggest that a
>special set of play-morals may be relevant.  I'd mentioned that the
>capacity for "play" might be an indicator of self-conciousness or some
>other quality which might be recognized as meriting a special level of
>moral standing for animals.  The idea has special relevance in a
>discussion of hunting, which is typically justified (and which has been
>justified on this list) as a sort of sacred, primordial form of play.
>The objects of the hunt are referred to as "game."  The animals hunted
>are those which have special advantages which give them a "sporting"
>chance of eluding the hunter.  The British are much clearer on these
>aspects of the hunt than Americans; the game laws (rules of the game)
>are very elaborate around fox hunting for instance, and used to be even
>more elaborate (see Blackstone's commentaries on the law).

Tantillo,
Just a brief comment: although I think overall you are basically correct
about the British being "clearer" about their sporting code or ethic, I
think it's too easy to assume most Americans pay no attention to such a
code/ethic.  Historically the British were responsible for developing the
very idea of a highly refined "sporting ethic," and this was exported to
other countries over time.  (Of course a cynical view which can be
developed sees this as simply another manifestation of British cultural
imperialism, etc. etc.  Others have developed that interpretation. I don't
necessarily want to get into that but simply note it in passing.)  But I
think the claim, "The British are much clearer on these aspects of the hunt
than Americans" is a bit of an overstatement that needs a lot of further
qualifying.


>Dreamer:
>To the extent that hunting is a sanctified, primordial ritual or game,
>it should be governed by the ethics of play.  These ethics have evolved
>over the millenia.  One concept is the "level playing field."  Deer,
>geese, etc. were designated as "game" in an era pre-dating modern
>weaponry.  When people were hunting with spears and arrows, the "game"
>animals really did have a reasonable chance of escape.  As Bryan and
>others have noted, modern weaponry has seriously diminished the sporting
>element in hunting.  It's rather like having two boxers go at one
>another in the ring, but allowing one of them to be furnished with a
>machete.

Well, I don't think it's like that at all.  Bryan's fascination with bigger
and better pyrotechnics as they pertain to "hunting" has no basis at all in
"hunting reality."  Likewise, machetes have no place in boxing, as we know
it.  The thesis Bryan is trying to develop, that "modern weaponry has
seriously diminished the sporting element in hunting," could be *either*
true or false, depending on what you are talking about.  As a
generalization it is a GROSS generalization.

For example, one of the standard items in any typical, run-of-the-mill,
generic, "ye olde" code of sporting ethics, is the moral injunction: "Thou
shalt try for a quick clean kill."  This "law" is *necessarily* balanced in
tension with the opposite play-theory commandment of: "Thou shalt seek to
limit and/or otherwise voluntarily reduce your advantage."  Using a high
powered rifle with a scope is not inevitably _ prima facie _ evidence that
a hunter has some sort of a psychological Rambo complex, but rather is a
genuine attempt to honor the spirit of that first commandment.  A hunter's
seeing the point of aim more clearly, with a scope or whatever else, can
help *ensure* (but not guarantee) that the shot goes where the hunter most
sincerely hopes it goes--into the "killing zone" (my apologies to the
squeamish here, but there isn't really a better term coming into my mind at
the moment)--rather than into some other nonlethal area of the prey
animal's anatomy.  Now a rifle may look to nonhunters like a sure sign of
*advantage* over the prey, but I'm not so sure it *automatically* is.   (If
rifle shooting were so easy, wouldn't everyone score 100-10x--that's ten
bulls-eyes--everytime?) I am pretty sure that the choice of appropriate
"firepower" is a reflection of the trade-off between the two conflicting
rules of the hunting "game" mentioned above.

>(By way of contrast, the passage in Abbey's "Desert Solitaire"
>in which he hunts a rabbit with a rock is worth a read.)

And this is why we don't hunt (generally) with rocks: too much chance of
crippling losses.  Bare hands is obviously the ultimate in voluntary
reduction of technological advantage. . . . but then that would "give the
game away" to the animal. <s>  And, besides, how would you ever mount a
scope to a rock? :)

>Dreamer:
>Another concept is that of voluntariness.   If two people voluntarily
>choose to meet in a boxing ring, it might be considered sport.  But when
>someone sneaks up behind me in an alley without a prior understanding
>between us and starts hammering me with blows, it is not considered a
>sport, it is battery.  When two people mutually caress one another
>(fore"play") and go on to make love, a beautiful primordial ritual, or
>play, is re-enacted.  But when one side has not consented to the play,
>it is called rape, and is condemned.
>
>Because animals have not volunteered for the contest, and because the
>contest has become so one-sided and risk-free for the human hunter, all
>the sanctimonious justifications of hunting in terms of "sport,"
>primordial "identification" etc. ring a little hollow.

Well, well, Dreamer. . . . "sanctimonious"?  Ouch.  :-)  But ok, I'll let
you have that one.

Despite the risk of sanctimony, however, I would add that the labeling of
sport hunting as "sport" is at one level simply an empirical or
definitional claim.  If organized play constitutes a game, and a physical
game is a sport, then it merely follows that hunting is a sport.  The
further justification of hunting then is a separate issue to be worked out,
either in terms of utilitarianism, virtue ethics, or whatever. . . .  But
it is possible to build upon your fundamental insight that play is
important to people and reason from there (somehow) that hunting is
important to people.  The moral *significance* of hunting's importance to
people is something that people of good will can still continue to disagree
about.

With regard to voluntariness of the prey: I think that is a good, and
troubling, issue to raise.  You're exactly right that what differentiates
hunting from other games is that the "opponent" here (and I don't mean
opponent in an adversarial, war-like sense, but in a play-like sense of
"contestant") does not *choose* to play.

But of course <smile>, that *could* simply be an anthropomorphic projection
of our best guess about what the animal is thinking.  If it is true that
the ruffed grouse is conscious and cognitively self-aware, and thus
rationally thinking, then maybe it's the most parsimonious interpretation
of his behavior to consider his flight away from the hunter as an emphatic
statement of "Got you that time, sucka. . . ."  <s>  Thus in this sense,
maybe the grouse *does* "choose" to play: otherwise why wouldn't he just
sit still on the ground? Where, I might add, no sporting hunter worth his
code of ethics would simply pot him.  I'm being somewhat facetious here,
and I don't have a quick response to the voluntariness issue, except to
note that what makes prey, prey, is that they are in the business full-time
of eluding predation.  Evolution has made them pretty good at it.  [And as
an aside to Bryan who thinks sitting in a tree stand makes it an unfair
contest over the deer--watch the deer use its nose sometime. . . . ]

[interesting civil disobedience stuff from a former lawyer deleted]
>
>Perley:  But to judge the act of
>> killing (and therefore hunters) is a little too precious, and too fraught
>> with hypocrisy and myth for my blood, especially if we take a perspective
>> out to the way this universe and its life support systems have been working
>> for the past 4 billion odd year.
>
>Dreamer:  Too "precious?"  Why then not allow the hunting and killing of
>people?  It is worth noting that the organized killing of other humans
>(war) has traditionally been justified in the same way as animal
>hunting, as violence somehow "sanctified" by layers of ritual, as the
>ultimately solemn, high-stakes form of play.

Hmmmm. . . . seems to me it's one thing to "interpret" war as a highly
ritualized, even aesthetic (at times) activity, and another thing to
justify particular war(s).  Wars are an evil--yes.  The act of causing that
known evil to come about needs a very specific explanation about how (a)
the actual cost in lives lost will bring about (b) benefits that outweigh
the cost. (Ahah, utilitarian just war theory).  Or, a different kind of
justification that says we need to prevent a greater evil via the lesser
evil of war--e.g. the Hitler example--i.e. deontological just war theory.
War theory is not my specialty either; but I think the slide from sport
hunting to war is too disingenuous to let pass without comment.

And in closing I just want to echo what Chris Lees wrote:

>As an aside, I would like to compliment the various participants in this
>debate for a rare degree of civility and courtesy whilst discussing what
>can be a very emotive topic.
>
>Chris.

Agreed.  Respectfully,
Jim Tantillo