Well, I guess that answers my question. According to Jamie it is impossible
to subscribe to any of the AR agenda unless you are a vegetarian.

Anyone else care to comment, I've got to go fix my range raised, hormone
free, happy as a clam, chicken.
sb


-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask]
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of VeggieBiggs
Sent: Wednesday, November 17, 1999 9:06 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [RE: [Re: Animal Rights as Anti-Pleasure]]


Steven,
You might make a case if you had said that you hold most of the concepts of
animal liberation but you did not eat meat or hunt.  Even if you said that
you
only ate the meat that you hunted I might accept that.  However, eating meat
is so antithecal to animal liberations,(i.e. "animal rights") that I can't
take that too seriously.  You say you have no ethical problem, although you
realize that you don't need to eat meat to be healthy, and in fact could be
healthier without it, and you must know the horrible autrocities committed
in
slaughterhouses and the way these animals are confined and transported.  To
be
comfortable with your indirect causing of this much suffering, makes you an
opponent of animal rights, and on a level more than the average person
because
you seem to be armed with all of the facts.  Hunting may cause less
suffering
in terms of that resulting from confinement and transportation, but you do
this for shear enjoyment, causing certain suffering and death to an animal
you
realize runs in terror, and suffers immensely from the bullets.  You
wouldn't
hunt human beings nor eat them, mainly because you would be prosecuted.
There
surely is negligible difference from the acute terror of a fleeing deer and
the pain of a gunshot wound of a deer, from a human being.  Intellectual
opponents of animal rights bother me the most because I know that they are
aware of the cruelty, they know that the cruelty is not necessary, and yet
they flippantly profess to not care.  I feel that you are immoral, and
simply
lack compassion despite your intellect.

Peace for All Beings
Jamey Lee West

"Steven Bissell" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Jamie, have you ever thought that it is possible to endorse *most* of the
goals of AR, and *not* be vegetarian? I think you assume that AR=Vegetarian
at times. I, for example, support many, not all mind you, of the AR goals,
especially as articulated by David Pearson and others on this list. But, I
hunt and I eat meat. Not a lot mind you, but I still do it and have no
ethical problems with it at all.

By the way, I was just reading an article about the endangered Pacific White
Abalone. It may be extinct in the next year as they are unable to find any
in the wild at the moment. The abalone is a monovalve mollusc by the way.
One of the statements made by the researcher on this was the sadness at
seeing ". . .a sentient animal" driven to extinction. What do you think? Is
a mollusc sentient? According to Peter Singer and other AR thinkers, they
are not because they do not have self awareness nor are they capable of
suffering.

Just some nagging questions.
Steven

-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask]
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of VeggieBiggs
Sent: Wednesday, November 17, 1999 6:37 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [Re: Animal Rights as Anti-Pleasure]


Jim wrote:
>When Mill refers to "other-regarding" conduct, the "others" have to be
>other selves--capable of self-reflection and possessing the essential
>characteristics and capabilities of personhood.  We don't speak of
>"other-regarding" conduct as applying to, say, bricks.  Bricks are not
>"others" in the morally relevant sense.  Bricks do not possess a sense of
>self; nor are bricks persons.  The reason slavery is wrong is because the
>"other" is a human person, another "self."  Do animals >constitute "selves"
>in this sense?  I doubt it, although I am prepared to accept that the
>great
>apes and other primates may come close and thus may warrant special
>consideration.

Jim,
You go right past the major point of those who believe in animal liberation.
That is that a brick is not an "other" because it has no brain, no feelings
and no interests whatsoever.  A dog may not be the complex mind that most
human beings possess, but he or she is a lot closer to a human being than he
or she is to a brick.  By your reasoning morality should be doled out by
intelligence.  I know a lot of human beings that do not think about
thinking,
or think about thinking about thinking. (Or at least when I try discuss such
abstract thoughts, I get blank looks) They pretty much live, but they have
feelings. They know when they are happy and don't like being sad.  If you
identified these people, would you kick them out of the club of humanity?
The
quality that should define moral consideration is does a being have
feelings,
does that being feel pain.  Most people experience the same type happinesses
and sadnesses and angers that any vertebrate would feel.  Like pigs or
chickens, they love their mothers and like being with them.  How much they
self-introspect about it is variable, and I believe pretty irrelevant.
Would
you give extra moral consideration to someone who constantly thinks about
himself and his feelings? Thinking about happiness, about pain, about
suffering isn't as acute as actually experiencing the feelings themselves,
which all vertebrates and many invertebrates do.

Yet intellectuals like you are willing to deny animals the most basic
considerations, (you do if you eat chicken or any form of meat, since the
animals are denied even the most rudimentary considerations for their
feelings).  If the moral consideration for the kind of mind you describe as
the "essence of humanity" is given a numerical worth of 1.0 then surely the
chimpanzee should be 0.98, (yet a Dr. White makes quite a lot of money
cutting
heads off of one and trying to sew them on another), and a pig would be 0.9,
(yet they are batted around in slaughterhouses as if they were baseballs).
You really need to become more humble Jim.  You view animal liberationists
with the smug paternalism that a father would his teenage daughter who is
showing off a fad hair style.  Consider, minds light years above our own,
such
as Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw, (who by the way
lived
well into his eighties without and was strict vegetarian), and Leonardo
DeVinci, all ethical vegetarians. Have you read Peter Singer? We aren't
zealous idiots, but we do tend to become vexed when our ideas and our
movement
is dismissed as irrational sentiment.

Peace for All Beings
Jamey Lee West

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