Trigger words: Basic Animals Basic animals basic animals basic animal
Indicator sentences: Define basic animal.
Negotiation parts: Cows, pigs and dolphins are much more intelligent then a crab or herring. What about shellfish? Do they feel pain? Let's say that a hamster would be a basic animal and anything above that would be more advanced cognitive function. Even still, I don't think intelligence should come into question. You wouldn't be pardoned if you killed someone with an IQ of 40 What I meant by intelligence is the capacity to feel pain and emotion, intelligence probably wasn't the right word for that. A cow is mentally more devolped then a clam.
Trigger words: intelligence
Indicator sentences: What I meant by intelligence is the capacity to feel pain and emotion, intelligence probably wasn't the right word for that.
Trigger words: Basic Animals Basic animals basic animals basic animal
Indicator sentences: For one thing, how do you define "basic animal". Is an ant a basic animal? Does an ant feel pain or pleasure? I dunno.
Negotiation parts: We justify eating meat by our higher intelligence. But we wouldnt want an alien species of a higher intelligence to murder us for their pleasure, that would seem terribly unethical to us. Thats the point theyre making. For #4 for the sake of this argument, lets say that a hamster and below are basic animals. I'm not as worried about bugs as they don't subscribe to [K type reproduction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory)
Indicator sentences: For one thing, "alien life" is arguably even less well defined than "basic animal" from #2. Are we talking about giant space worms that devour entire planets? What about crazy inter-dimensional beings that exist on such an advanced level that they don't even notice us? Or are we just talking about the classic little green men, where we basically assume that they're exactly like us except they look funny and have space ships?
Negotiation parts: We justify eating meat by our higher intelligence. But we wouldnt want an alien species of a higher intelligence to murder us for their pleasure, that would seem terribly unethical to us. Thats the point theyre making. I think the shape of an alien is less important. The intelligence is far more important. If you can agree to assumption 3 based on logic, then so should an alien. If you can also agree that humans are capable of consciousness, pain, and pleasure then clearly it isn't ethical to kill humans, even from an alien's point of view
Trigger words: pain (2)
Indicator sentences: define pain.
Negotiation parts: I don't know how to define pain, but given what we know about the world, there are requirements to feel pain. A nervous system and a brain. Seeing that plants don't have what it takes to feel pain, I don't believe they can feel pain. ....Ok, let's set aside the fact that you're making conclusions about something you have admitted you don't have a definition for for now. Nervous systems have responses to strong stimuli classified as pain. Plants have responses to damage classified as, I don't know, let's call it zyx. What makes pain more deserving of prevention than zyx, besides the fact that you personally have never experienced and don't understand zyx? In other words, why should we work to stop pain and not zyx? Because suffering is bad and we have no reason to think zyx is bad. What makes zyx not bad? What reason do i have to think it is? It's a response to the same stimuli that bring forth a bad reaction in organisms with a central nervous system. The function of the response is similar to pain: aid in defense. Finally, reactions to damage to organisms in those organisms are almost always negative because it is meant to discourage them from seeking it. What reason do you have to think that it's good?
Trigger words: sentience (2) Sentience
Indicator sentences: [I think that the ability to feel pain or pleasure is a baseline for sentience]
Negotiation parts: (https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=define%20sentient) The ability to feel pain and pleasure SUBJECTIVELY is a baseline for sentience. Arguably, and in many philosophical definitions, the ability to reason is also a requirement. The ethical nature of killing young children with under developed brains and/or people that have disabilities that effect their internal processes in a way that disallows them from putting their sentience to use or full use is not the question. A complete lack of sentience and reasoning capabilities in a group of organisms is different than singular members of a group being damaged in a way and raising a ethical concern about destroying those vast minority members. That being said, the fact that we are talking about ethics, whereas animals kill for instinctive reasons based in no ethics, is a great example of sentience vs non-sentience.
Trigger words: normal
Indicator sentences: Depending on what you define as "normal circumstances" this is either wrong or entirely speculation.
Negotiation parts: What is true is that human to human violence has been prevalent throughout all of our history and has only relatively recently declined. It is only since the rise of globalization and the concept of looking at the entire human species as our in-group has the possibility of completely removing human violence seemed even possible. I would not call that the normal human operating condition, but rather humans attempting to improve on what is normal.
Trigger words: life
Indicator sentences: You argue that an animal may also have the right to "life," but what is "life" for that animal, and how is that animals life any different than the life of a plant, which you are willing to kill?
Trigger words: valued
Indicator sentences: What do you mean by this? Animals evolve to suit a particular environmental niche. Their reproductive strategies are going to be designed for the role they live in. I'm not sure why that means, to you, that they are "genetically not valued"
Negotiation parts: Human life is inheriently valued because lots of resources are pumped into one child. On the other hand, insects are not valued because a few resources are pumped into lots of children. This means that they expect most to die, meaning their ability to detect pain will be very basic, if it exists at all. They are not genetically valued because they're using a shotgun. They expect that a very large portion of the population is going to die