[StrongHeartsWin]

Quote by: Captain Chaos You have not convinced me that a quick and painless death causes suffering. Thus, for the moment, not all violations of an equal consideration of interest can be said to cause suffering.

Why do you think the "equal consideration of interest" includes only suffering? Whether I am killed painlessly without suffering, I still have an interest in beingn left to live my life unmolested or taken away from me. Animals, too, have an interest in keeping what is theirs and being unmolested.

It is within our nature to dislike the murder of other humans. That is why we dislike nurture. If you prefer that I not use the word 'instinct' then I can say that we an inborn tendency to dislike murder.

We most certanly have a tendency to dislike being the target of murder, and the fear of that is what prompts us to make laws against it. But the fear of it being directed at us is different from a tendency to dislike murder. Our species is well versed in it on small scale and large scale and we seem to like it enough to not have banished it.

I would also say that our desire to legislate against it is more dependent on living in large societies. Before man became settled in societies when great expanses of lands layed between people, it was probably more common to kill over grievances. But, that is just speculation and the use of instinct or tendency does not prove that man has an innate revulsion against killing our own. We do it all the time for things much less than survival.

I believe that tendency[aversion to killing one`s own member species] also extends to animals, but to a lesser degree.

Interesting, but I would disagree. Of the animals that do kill their own members, of which there are not many, most do it less often than humans, do not become serial killers in that practice, do not kill for pleasure, do not organize to wage wars of extinction on other groups of the same species, etc... Most same species killings done by animals are those that center on reproduction or immediate survival issues and in most cases where an animal is losing the fight, the stronger animal will not press the issue to death, but allow the animal to flee.

All our reasons for murder, desiring insurance money, desiring advancement, fullfilling pleasure, etc... are much more nuanced in variety, scope, and scale. Our species has made an art form out of it exploring the many different ways it can be accomplished. Our only aversion to it is that we may be the target of it, but if we can reasonably assume we could get away with it without retribution, many more may resort to it, as do those who already do. Often, the thought of getting caught is the last thing on the murderers mind as they indulge their passion to commit it.

Such hypothetical thought experiments are important for isolating root issues.

I don`t mind them as a means to support eating meat. Like I said, I am not against the fact of eating meat. If we can grow it in labs in the future, then fine. If someone wants to eat meat from a carcass they find on the forest floor, fine. All that is free of man caused suffering. But, meat raised and killed by man in this modern society as suffering free resides only in the hypothetical and hypothetically it, too, can be applied to human flesh. After all, there are those who eat people and they are a reality -- not hypothetical. So, lets apply reason without prejudice, for reason is a tool for all issues and philosophies that should not be made to play favorites -- especially to protect the status quo.

I still feel that empathy is the underlying drive here, and that more complex ethics are built upon it.

For Animal Welfarists, perhaps so, for Animal Rightists it is Reason. Though, like I said before, Animal Rightists do have empathy and most were originally Animal Welfarists and they may still put forth empathy as a support for proper treatment of animals. But, one's arguments for Rights is one mainly based on constructs of reason. I would say the two intermingle with one another just as surely as human rights came about based on empathy for the suffering and injustice of those who were exploited. But, like animal rights, human rights, to be won and codified had to have the groundwork of reasoning laid, because lawmakers were not going to only be convinced that their system should change just because someone felt sorry for someone`s plight.