Queen bans fox hunting!

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Since the fox's have no remaining natural preditors what's going to keep their population in check now? It will just go through boom and bust cycles as they over bred then starve then over bred then starve.

Which is actually the natural order of things anyway. Nothing in nature is truly stable, it's all oscillations around an average.

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Yes it is. There is an exact, qualitative difference between a self-aware being and a non-self-aware being. There is no "degree" of self-awareness.

Besides the fact that the general consensus in biology is that there are "degrees" of self-awareness, I'd be interested to know on what basis you can be so certain about which organisms are and are not self aware. It's practically impossible to test empirically.

[MikeH]

If Fox Hunting's banned here what's Ted Striker going to do in the bars of Britain?

[Dis]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


That's completely disingenuous, and you know it (or if you don't, you haven't been reading my posts).

I could build a robot that writhed and howled in what looked like pain when you started breaking it. I could make it so fantastically complicated that it even looked like a person. It would not, however, actually be feeling pain; it would be triggering motors and speakers whenever certain electrical sensors were triggered. It's exactly the same way with foxes. With humans, however, our thoughts are so complex that they actually give rise to self-awareness. This is obvious, since you know you are self-aware, and that your brain is practically similar to other humans' brains, so other humans ought to be self-aware too. In addition, there are other people who have spoken of the concept of self-awareness without you telling them about it first, and the most reasonable conclusion is that they have actually experienced it, to know of it.*

There is no difference between the fox's pain and a plant growing towards the light. Neither involve consciousness, all are just fantastically complicated but NOT self-aware machines responding to stimuli.

(* Turing proposed the "polite convention" that anything that claims it is self-aware, is actually self-aware, since all evidence for sentience in another being, even another person, is by nature circumstantial.)

you could say the same thing about me breaking all your bones. It's just a response to phsyical stimuli. The fox feels the same pain you do. It fears the same thing you do when being chased by dogs.

As for self awareness. Some of the more complex primates (orangutanes ore chimpanzees I beleive) are caple of self awareness. They are able to recognize their own reflection in a mirror (something lesser primates cannot do).

And new evidence is coming out that even fish feel pain.

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by MikeH
If Fox Hunting's banned here what's Ted Striker going to do in the bars of Britain?

Join you hunting dogs?

[MikeH]

Touché - you ****er.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
Besides the fact that the general consensus in biology is that there are "degrees" of self-awareness, I'd be interested to know on what basis you can be so certain about which organisms are and are not self aware. It's practically impossible to test empirically.

You obviously haven't been reading my posts. For one, it's not really a biological question at all, it's a philisophical one (and I'd love you to find a cite for a biologist claiming degrees of sentience - it seems perfectly clear to me that either you actually are aware, or you are not). For another, I said that all evidence for the sentience of another being is circumstantial, but that we have the polite convention of believing anything that claims it is self-aware (and that you can extrapolate from your own sentience to other humans' sentience, because we have practically similar brains).

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Spiffor
Newsflash: pain is the response to a stimulus happening to our nervous system. The human people who have a dysfunctional nervous system will sometimes not feel the pain of a skin-burn, or of a rampant disease.

Newsflash: pain is the feeling - the awareness - of certain nerves firing.

What distinguishes the "pain" of a fox from the "pain" of a tree?

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Dissident
you could say the same thing about me breaking all your bones. It's just a response to phsyical stimuli. The fox feels the same pain you do. It fears the same thing you do when being chased by dogs.

*snip*

And new evidence is coming out that even fish feel pain.

We already know fish feel pain like foxes do. What's different between the pain of a fish or a fox and the pain of a tree? The fact that a tree's pain is not conveyed in the form of electrical impulses?

What's the difference between the "pain" of a fox and the "pain" of the robot I mentioned earlier, that howls and writhes on the ground when certain inputs are detected (like when the casing breaks)?

The *snipped* part:

As for self awareness. Some of the more complex primates (orangutanes ore chimpanzees I beleive) are caple of self awareness. They are able to recognize their own reflection in a mirror (something lesser primates cannot do).

That has nothing to do with self-awareness. Recognizing yourself in the mirror is not a test of sentience.

[Dis]

there is no difference.

the point is pain hurts.

you don't like being hurt. and I doubt the fox likes being hurt.

[General Ludd]

Newsflash: pain is the feeling - the awareness - of certain nerves firing.

What distinguishes the "pain" of a fox from the "pain" of a tree?

A brain that feels it, or is aware of it.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
What distinguishes the "pain" of a fox from the "pain" of a tree?

That a fox has sensitive nerves and a brain to interpret their signals?

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by General Ludd
A brain that feels it, or is aware of it.

Foxes aren't aware of pain. Their brains sense it as an input, but is your basis or morality now defined based solely on the chemical mechanism by which the organism processes information? If I created a brain with five neurons, would it be equally protected? And by the way, fetuses have a brain. Are you absolutely against abortion as soon as any nervous tissue develops?

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Spiffor
That a fox has sensitive nerves and a brain to interpret their signals?

See above wrt chemistry.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Dissident
there is no difference.

the point is pain hurts.

you don't like being hurt. and I doubt the fox likes being hurt.

Trees don't like being hurt either, then. No plant does. Therefore, eating plants is evil too. We should starve ourselves to death.