Queen bans fox hunting!

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
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).

Darwin claimed it actually, in The Descent of Man, and a quick google search brings up the Professor of Biology at Colorado University.
The trouble is that even if a fox were to claim it was self-aware, you wouldn't understand it, because it doesn't speak. Incidentally, according to your definition, a child up to the age of about 15 months is a valid target for hunting/torturing/aborting.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Spiffor
Please prove me, then, why the lack of self-awareness would be the same as thelack of sentience.

Because I'm using the terms interchangeably. I'm using them both to mean the quality of actually feeling sensations. It's impossible to describe more clearly, really; it's that you actually see the image projected onto your retina, that you actually hear the vibrations in your eardrum.

Remeber, you have defined self-awareness as such: any being that can say is aware of itself, is in fact self-aware.

In general. This is a polite convention, described by Turing. Obviously we would not count a program with it's only instruction being "print "I am self-aware"", it's more subtle than that. Anyway, I have to go now.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

Because humans are self-aware. We feel the pain.

As does a fox.


I'm still waiting for you to explain the differences.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Because I'm using the terms interchangeably. I'm using them both to mean the quality of actually feeling sensations. It's impossible to describe more clearly, really; it's that you actually see the image projected onto your retina, that you actually hear the vibrations in your eardrum.

Then please explain me, when you're back, how you can pretend animals are deprived of it. From the beginning, this is the bone of contention.

[Wezil]

I can't believe someone is seriously arguing animals don't feel fear or pain. Yeah, it's all some sort of elaborate fake on their part.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Wezil
I can't believe someone is seriously arguing animals don't feel fear or pain. Yeah, it's all some sort of elaborate fake on their part.

This argument was actuallly held by a mainstream French philosopher (René Descartes) ~300 years ago, who compared animals to elaborate watches IIRC. The argument was exactly the same, the animals are to react mechanically to stimuli, but they don't feel pain...

I have never seen someone with this philosophy explain why cows, before entering the slaughterhouse, crap themselves or even sometimes die of heart-attack before anything had been done to them.

Edit after Molly corrected my hideous blunder

[lightblue]

You seem to be going by the viewpoint that humans were designed to be more special than the rest of your creation. For us that do not follow the consequences of intelligent design and therefore do not truly differentiate at a base level between humans and other animals your entire argument relies on an anthrocentric fallacy right at the starting point, which makes it pretty impossible to argue with you.

I'd argue that there's different levels of sentience from no nervous system, to a primitive nervous system like insects, to a full central nervous nervous, to human like sentience and abilty to describe ethics etc. You can scare animals, animals that think they're going to do die will behave exactly the same as humans (freeze with panic, loosen bowels etc). I don't think we should not eat/kill animals, but avoidance of too much distress is an obvious thing to do, and hunting with hounds relies on causing distress for the entertainment of the hunters. if the fox was killed within ten minutes they wouldn't like it..

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Originally posted by Oerdin
The estate taxes put in place in the UK make being landed gentry pretty hard for more then a generation. More and more rural areas will be sold to developers if country folk aren't given the chance to preserve rural ways of life. Would you rather have a pretty English countryside or a big piece of urban sprawl?

You're wrong on just about every count.

Death duties are, in fact, absurdly easy to avoid. That's why we still have a landed gentry.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of Britain's countryside isn't used for hunting. You cannot hunt with hounds in areas where animals are grazing, crops are growing, or there are risky roads or railway crossings. You also can't hunt in forested, rocky, mountainous or marshy areas for practical areas. That's about 90- 95% of rural Britain out of the equation at any given time.

So are the vast majority of the countryside expanses where there's no hunting overrun with foxes? Nope. You see, there's a very large and efficient predator that controls their numbers nicely. It's called "the car".

Oh yes, on top of that our greenbelt laws would prevent undue sprawl.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Spiffor

This argument was actuallly held by a mainstream French philosopher (Blaise Pascal) ~300 years ago, who compared animals to elaborate watches IIRC. The argument was exactly the same, the animals are to react mechanically to stimuli, but they don't feel pain...

I have never seen someone with this philosophy explain why cows, before entering the slaughterhouse, crap themselves or even sometimes die of heart-attack before anything had been done to them.

"French philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes (1596-1650) taught that animals are simply machines, without souls, reason or feeling. The cry of a dog in pain, according to Descartes, is merely a mechanical noise, like the creak of a wheel. His beliefs found acceptance in ecclesiastical and scientific circles. Science was progressing quite rapidly in the 17th century; Descartes effectively removed all moral objections to animal experimentation."

http://www.all-creatures.org/murti/tsnhod-07.html

I believe when he flayed a dog alive he instructed his assistants to ignore the animal's cries.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

The fact is that this issue goes far beyond a question of how we treat animals. It's now a point of principle that determines whether we're a democracy or not?

It has to be banned now, because otherwise once again we will see our democratically-elected representatives overruled by an undemocratic body due to the actions of a tiny but powerful minority.

That and the fact that I'm sick of the lies the pro-hunting lobby keep spouting.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by molly bloom
"French philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

That was Descartes

[Gibsie]

@laz

Hopefully soon you'll be able to give them the same response you give to pro-lifers ("You lost, get over it")...

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Seeing as the alternative is to leave Britain an undemocratic nation, I'm quietly confident.

[Sprayber]

Originally posted by JimmyCracksCorn
Wouldn't top my agenda, but still

Well done.

And at Ming who thinks the US is sooooo PC...

Do you really read things or do you just let fly with whatever is flaoting around in that head of yours?

It's nice to see that other countries can be as silly at being PC as the good ole US of A...

That is what he said. Now how in the **** do you get him saying the US is better in this regard. Can you tell me that please. Enlighten all us please

[Sprayber]

As for the fox hunting. It doesn't bother me either way. It's entirely up to the Brits to fight over.