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I think Ronnie the questions you raise are pretty significant. I am of the belieft that they point to a conscience. In C. S. Lewis "Study on Words" he points to what 'conscience' means. He says that conscience is a form of awareness calling it by the ancient Greek name <suneidos> which also means 'awareness' or a 'privity to an awareness'. The conscience is not really known as the 'lawgiver' as it is in some modern english context, but more specifically an awareness. Secondly conscience is related to ethics, but ethics is more like 'practice' or 'habit' than is conscience. Since conscience is also related obviously to conscience, it is correct to say that the latin meaning is more like the ancient Greek 'to have knowledge with' or 'among'. The correct way of referring to the conscience thus to my thinking is 'what is in your conscience', et cetera. Lewis contrasts conscience with 'synteresis'... "...for the most part the imperatives of the lawgiving synteresis are conditioned by the indicatives of each man's belief or 'convictions'. The two together make up what would now perhaps be called an 'ideology'.(Studies in Words, p. 201, Conscience and Conscious. Cambridge University Press). If that is the case, then obviously there is something wrong with extinction because some persons have the knowledge in their conscience or a privity of awareness that the species is to become extinct. Summary "This inner witness, one's own conscientia, or privity, to oneself, is already a sufficiently formidable idea. Quintillian (v, xi) quotes as a proverb 'conscientia mille testes; one's own consciring is (as bad as) a thousand (external) witnesses....It bears witness to the fact, say, that we committed a murder." (Studies in Words) "The only faculty involved is knowing by memory. Suneidos or conscientia is rather 'a state of affairs'; knowing about your own past actions what others, or most others, do not know." (Studies in Words). Perhaps then ethics is really more about synteresis than is conscience. The process of lawmaking, rendering a conflictual situation resolved is an ethic. Doing good is an ethic or habit that must be practiced in moderation <sophrosyne> which is the essence of wisedom (moderation in all things based on the knowledge of causes and principles). Therefore it may also be summed up that almost all ethical delimnas can be resolved if we know in advance that the issues stem from one of two basic fundamental problems: (a) allocation, and/or (b) technology. >Who is responsible? I think we all are, as members of the human species. >Do these other beings have "economic importance"--read do we accord their >body parts a certain monetary value in the game our species plays? No >doubt. Is that where the ethical issue is located? Not quite. Why say >reduction to a "resource" should stop with "the Gorilla," John? Because >gorillas are so much like us?< I think the ethical issue is not exactly what starving people should be eating per se, but what causes these people to eat wildlife that are endangered in the first place. Let me provide an example. In the US, and in Canada where I live, most people don’t think about what goes into their gas tanks. They think first and foremost where they can get the cheapest gas or who to vote for that will reduce the taxes on gas. Rarely if ever do they think about some starving person in Africa when they fill up at the gas pump. But if they knew that the ‘ethanol’ that is now being added to gasoline and marketed as ‘environmentally friendly’ came in large part from corn, would they make the connection that food was used to make the ethanol and thus to starving people in Africa? Not likely in my opinion. However the fact is that corn ethanol is being burned in giant RVs. This food could be sold to countries to feed people during droughts and after disasterous rainfalls that ruins crops. Another solution is for countries to have bilateral trade agreements that result in a two way trade in food items. For instance Mozambique could sell pineapples and coconuts to Canada, and Canada could sell Mozambique wheat and barley. It is a fact however that many poorer nations are net negative food exporters (eg. Peru) but rely on imports of staple foods if, and that is a big if, they have the cash left over after paying off debts, funding military expenditures, etc. Said another way, these countries have malnutrition, but export more food than they import. I don’t agree that we should be supporting any kind of trade in endangered wildlife. But for ourselves being in a position to do anything constructive about limiting the trade in endangered wildlife, we will have to do something economically beneficial for nations which allow trade in endangered wildlife. I have read many of the reports on the trade in ‘bush meats’, etc., and I am alarmed and worried. The solution to this problem will be resolved only if the trade in bush meats, and endangered animals, is restricted in law. But to have effective laws that are being enforced means that the nations that trade with nations (like Canada) that permit exploitation of endangered wildlife will require funds to hire law enforcement agencies. In BC here we still have poachers who kill black bears for their gall bladders. They leave the carcass on the roadside to rot. Since the province enacted laws restricting the killing of bears and stiff penalties for poaching, the actual numbers of illegally killed black bears has dropped dramatically. >What about chimpanzees, bonobos and, in >Asia, orangutans--also being devastated by the bushmeat trade as well as >by habitat destruction? For that matter, what about elephants, already >being viewed as a "harvestable resource," and whales, soon to be again so >considered? There is one population of indigenous peoples on a small island in the Pacific that has no other source of meat than whales. Apparently this nation has been granted an exemption from the existing whaling ban in the region. Incidentally there is a total ban in the Atlantic and in the Indian Ocean but not anywhere else. The island is not Japan. The island consists of volcanic rocks for the most part and whaling has been a traditional method of subsistence. I agree that the whales should not be harvested except in this one case. Of course the issue of sustainability is paramount. Easter Island people were wiped out because of the failure to sustain the forest on this island and as a result could not make fishing boats. They all starved because they could not raise any protein on the island. Carving statues to honour the dead took precedence over ‘common sense’. >On what basis, precisely, do members of our species believe >that we are ethically justified in consigning all other forms of life to >being nothing more than commodities we trade in the marketplace?--so long >as we can do it "sustainably," of course, which given our exploding >population-times-consumption is probably the biggest self-conceit of all. >Ronnie Hawkins If I take a picture or study the Kermode bear, the bear is a commodity. I don’ need to have it my plate to be able to say that it is a commodity for trade. Ecotourism and scientific research are economically important alternatives. Simply preserving habitat to protect new opportunities for ecotourism is great in my opinion. I also agree with Ed Abbey that we also need ‘absolute wilderness’ where no man nor horse can go. Maybe 40 % of the earth’s remaining forests should be ‘absolute wilderness’ …I am more afraid of people than I am of Grizzly bears. I have lived around them at times and they always respected me. The dam black bears are a problem though if they get a taste of human compost. Simply do not put compost on your terrace or porch…they’ll be into it leaving paw marks on the kitchen window at night. I know first hand…I also pick my apples before they get too ripe… John Foster _______________________________________________________________________ Free Unlimited Internet Access! Try it now! http://www.zdnet.com/downloads/altavista/index.html _______________________________________________________________________ %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%