Differnent based upon your POV
Generally linked in some way, however.
Even Mao (depsite his blatant hipocrisy) thought his laws were 'right' (and therefore moral or upstanding, or correct)
Well, my only point there was that morality and law can (and often should) be discussed separately. No biggie.
Only because of personal connection to another Homo Sapien.
You said it yourself, a stray (NOT connected to an HS) can be shot or at least you think that there's nothing wrong with it. However, shooting a pet directly connected to another HS is is "very wrong".
I think perhaps you misunderstand me.
Death
per se isn't so bad, so shoot that stray dog if you want to. I would consider
torturing it, however, very wrong also. Now you could quite reasonably argue that a stray dog with a litter of puppies waiting for it to bring home the bacon is a dog you shouldn't shoot, because you'd cause suffering by doing so. Again, my only point is that if no one misses the dog, and the dog doesn't suffer, there is no moral reason not to shoot it (although there may of course be personal or emotional ones).
Do you feel that shooting and killing wild whales is "wrong"? (and dont give me the "Yes it is because they're endangered" line because that is nothing more than an "argument of degrees")
I feel it's unfortunate for aesthetic and environmental reasons. I share with many others an aesthetic desire for natural biodiversity. I am also aware of the impact that considerable changes to biodiversity can have on the environment, which might be further detrimental to the aesthetics of the situation, and which may also negatively affect human beings more directly. I probably wouldn't go so far as to call it wrong, but I regard it as unwise.
FINALLY someone who gets the alien POV!
I try!
O no I get your point
Your point is "does an adult homo sapien place value on such life"?
You ignore the chicken bred for slaughter (as opposed to a pet chicken) by placing specifically Homo Sapien value on it (and thereby ignore the inherent struggle to survive by the chicken or any other creature)
IOW, you seem to be placing your Homo Sapien values above the values of any other creature on this planet.
Well, yes, I do, because to the best of my knowledge, only human beings have a concept of morality. If you can convincingly show me that some other creature (such as yourself) has moral sentiments, I will be very happy to include it within the sphere of beings whose opinions matter.
In any case, I do not think a chicken has
values. It has biology, sure, but that's a different kettle of fish. Can a chicken feel wronged?
Yes one can
The only thing one has to fear there is social taboos, plain and simple
You don't think chickens, or (by way of further exampe) rhinos, snakes, giraffes, turtles, and amoebas have a "desire: (read- 'drive') to live (exist)?
Are you willing to say that those organisms, which have demonstrated the paradigm of living/growing/procreating/etc are any different from a human embryo?
Quite frankly, Im waiting for everything to feed me, but I find this human hypocrisy quite intruiging.
They certainly have a biochemical drive for life, as does a cabbage. But merely having some selfish genes does not make one sentient and does not bestow upon one moral sentiments. Humans are, to the best of my knowledge, the only creatures on earth with moral sentiments. So we are quite entitled, I think, to apply those sentiments in a partisan way. We consider our sentience, our self-awareness, to be of paramount importance when measuring degrees of suffering - and we're making the rules. So it's likely that we as humans are always going to be willing to sacrifice animals in order to further our own ends.
And the fact that chickens, rhinos, snakes, giraffes, turtles, and amoebas are no different from human foetuses in this sense is precisely the point I am making them. I can't find a rational reason for why killing these things painlessly is not wrong, unless someone or something will suffer because of their death.
Like a household pet, right?
A favored cat or dog perhaps?
Pets do not have a 'right to life'. They are no different from wild animals, except that they have the good fortune of someone having affection for them, which affords them a special status in human society. Animals, like humans, in fact, do not have
natural rights; only human-given ones - which is why, in fact, they have certain rights that farm animals or wild animals do not. I don't think this is very hard to understand.
Foetuses don't feel pain? The pain receptors aren't there?
Are you so sure about that?
It is certainly likely that before a certain point, foetuses do not feel pain in the sense that we understand it. Either way, it seems to me that if as a society we're happy to execute animals in quite unpleasant and painful ways, the fact that it happens to be a human foetus under the knife should make little difference. I would have thought that it was worse to torture an adult chimpanzee than to abort a first trimester human foetus. The former has a much greater capacity for suffering. So species makes little difference in consideration of physical suffering.
Or does the pain and knowledge of death determine the right/wrong of the argument in your mind?
Now, you could say that both (lack of pain and desire for life) are needed in which case a foetus may not qualify (it can possibly feel pain, but most likely has no desire for life as we know it. But what about the octegenarian who is cranked up on morphine but wants to live?
In this case we have the opposite of the foetus that you talk about. To wit- one who has a desire to live but will most likely feel no pain upon euthanazia (sp?)
This is all rather confused. Let me state my case clearly.
Suffering should be minimised. (This is the basis of my ethics.)
Physical pain constitutes suffering.
Emotional pain, including fear of death and loss of someone or something beloved, constitutes suffering.
So in the case of your octogenarian, to threaten him with death would be to cause him suffering (and also, of course, all the other octogenarians about who don't want to die either). To kill him would also cause his loved ones suffering. So we have two good reasons not to kill him.
In the case of this foetus, we can certainly say that there will be no fear of death involved, because the foetus can't know it will be aborted, and doesn't have the capacity to understand such a threat in any case. This is in contrast with the emotional suffering of carrying an unwanted foetus to term. With regard to physical pain, I can but weigh up the relative degrees of pain that the mother and the foetus will experience. Giving birth is notoriously uncomfortable, especially if there are medical complications. So I think mothers have a significant claim to be suffering more than foetuses which are aborted.
In any case, I wholeheartedly support the improvement of abortion techniques to minimise foetus' suffering, just as I support the improvement of the techniques used to slaughter animals so that they too may be more humane.
One or other.
Not that I actually care, I just like playing (for obvious reasons) "devils advocate)"
Mwauhahahahahahaha!!!!
Playing with your food, eh? Despicable
IA IA and all that
I dunno what that means.
