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Originally Posted by
dog-egg
"Thats not an argument, thats a claim, Arguments are what is used to back the claims up."
Fair enough Mentor, but saying that doesn't make your claim any less incorrect - your claims about the language capabilities of non-human animals are quite inaccurate considering chimps can understand and speak sign language, forming their own simple sentences; whale language has been shown to be incredibly complex; bees can inform other bees of locations through body language... the more you look, the more you'll find!
This is why i didnt want to bring up the ideas of true language acquisition and mentioned there would be little point. You have no idea what the hell im talking about. There is a very big difference in the communication levels being talked about. I can write a program for my computer which will allow it to communicate on a level way above that a chip is capable of. I can even make it so my computer can learn new words, the Alice Chat bots are good examples of this functionality. The computer still lacks anything close to true language aqusition or sentience.
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the stuff about us being at the top of the food chain is fair enough - eat other animals by all means, but don't play with your food :D
your info on plants is also true - you only need to watch timelapse to see that they respond quite dramatically to different stimuli - but again, I have no problem with eating plants - testing and eating are separate arguments
Youd move to ban plant testing?
Plus whos playing, animal testing is used to obtain information which we can use to survive. Thats not the same thing as playing.
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if you look at my other posts after the one you referred to, i cited several methods of testing that would ensure that a product could be safe enough to then move onto the voluntary human testing without the non-human animal testing phase
I haddnt actually looked at the majority of the argument after my last post up until my next one.
Although, it see it very likley that most if not all these methods are already employed. Hence making it safe enough for Animal testing. Having no concept of volentearing, the who vol entry issue is pretty irrelevant to an animal, making it so is just anthromphiseing under your own values. After animal testing shows somethings safe, then we have the human testing.
Because theres stuff before animal testing, doesn't make animal testings data any less important. In a few 100 years this may not be the case, but currently we simply dont know enough to not use animals, we may think we know somthing, but when we test it the results could be completely differnt. Are knowlage on the subject is finite, which means are abilty to predict the effects without testing on a full lifeform is also finite.
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it seems that you maybe missed the point of that scenario i mentioned with the guy nailing a puppy's paws to the ground and letting it starve - i'm pretty sure that nobody would agree that it was an ok thing to do, so why is it suddenly ok if it's in the name of medical research?
A) that sort of thing doesnt happen in animal testing.
B) animal testing is for survival, not for pleasure. Suffering is essental for the first, but not the second, and pleasure from it is a little ****** up IMO, dispite being based more in the anfromophising of the animals in order to gain it.
I dont belive suffering should happen when it is not nessassry. But in the case of animal testing, it is.
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a) dominance or perceived superiority over another living thing does not give you the moral right to do whatever you want to them - Hitler tried that one and he wasn't too popular...
Your on a roof with a sniper rifle, hitler is below in the streets, before is reign is in full swing. You have the abilty to kill him, and stop all the suffering and pain that follows and is caused by him? Do you think its right to kill him?
You have an animal, from testing on it you could cure canser, save millions of lifes, animals and humans alike. is it right to test on that animal, possibly kill it in order to stop all that suffering?
The situations are the same. The dominance over an animal doesnt give you a moral right to do what you want with it. BUT weighing up the alternatives does give you moral justifcation.
Save the rabbits, let the fox starve to death, a slow painful death. Let the fox kill the rabbits, rabbits suffer being ripped apart alive. fox doesnt die.
The decision depends really on weather your a fox or a rabbit in the scenerio, somthing has to die, id rather i wasnt that somthing. The same really applys here, since im the human, id rather it was the other thing that died as opposed to myself and other humans.
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b) eating non-human animals (and plants) is obviously fine, unless you're making a protest about how they're kept on farms. and in reference to the plant thing, i don't like tidy gardens - i like wild ones, where plants are left to their own devices
In a wild garden your going to have trouble in getting the crops required to feed people. Fields are necessary for that purpose, the same is true of farms, as the human population is far to large to be sustained without us taking control of many of natures variables.
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c) non-human animal testing is not as accurate as testing on humans, so if you want the products then speed the testing process up and volunteer, and don't be put off by one scare-mongering incident in millions of unreported successful human testing cases
Humans and other animals are very similar, the data may not be as accurate, but it still has a high degree of success in judging these things, useing a one type of tap, may not provide completely accurate results on what would happen when you use another type. despite this, most of the time there the same. Id much prefer 20 rats die in animal testing due to a problem with a drug, than 20 humans. That may just be me though.
(remember, the drug failures in animals go unreported, the reason nearly all human testing is successful is down to the animal testing happening first)
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d) support alternative testing methods (see earlier post for a list) as they can do away with many of the tests currently done on non-human animals
Many of these tests arnt specifically done as they focus on small arias, which any drug devloped should already almost certianly have worked out, or a few people are gona be looseing jobs.
The tests arnt specifcaly done on animals, the rest a result, since you cant test the effects of somthing on an animal without also gathering information such as noteing the toxicity of certain things
Animal testing happens becuse its testing the whole animal. Testing the tyres on a car, the windscreen, the engine, are all important yes. But testing the car as a whole, with all the bits put together, is also an important stadge. Thats what the animal testing is.
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e) we should realise that we're still learning what non-human animals can and can't do, so we should be open to the very real possibility that we could be wrong about how much they can suffer
It isnt possible to conculstivly demostrate one way or the other, absoulty to whom is right here, its a matter of opinion based on the limited amount of evidance avaible to us.
What i will say is, even if animals can suffer, just as much as humans, my argument stands uneffected, as its based more on the nessisity, and the fact im a member of the human one.
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f) the point is, they DO suffer to some degree and it's unnecessary when there are other alternatives
As ive said, i dont belive any of these alternatives come close to reproduceing the real thing. In the same way a computer simulated car doesnt compare to a real car. And we can simulate cars one hell of alot better than we can come close to, in simulating an animal.
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g) a random guy buys a chimp, cuts it's skull open and puts electrodes in it in his living room for no apparent reason is condemned by much of the western world, but if he's a scientist and does it in a lab to test theories on the brain then suddenly it's ok
This is more an outlook question, if in doing this, the guy somehow figures out a cure for deminsia, he'll probably be hearled as a hero.
Its ok when the scientist does it becuse, there doing it for a reason, and the likely hood of success is actualy pretty high. The reaserch is nessary for improveing our own understanding and helping to preserve ourselves as a species.
The random person doing it for a random reason, is not nessary and provides no benifit. Suffering without nesseisty = bad.
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h) as someone once said, 'sometimes logic only allows us to be wrong with authority' - it all boils down to whether you care about non-human animals or not, and logic from that point can take you to a case on either side: from my perspective, i don't like to see any kind of suffering so i would like to see non-human animal testing phased out for something more accurate and less destructive
Id like to see the same thing. Unluckly, im a realist. I know and accept, there arnt any real alternatives, scientist dont cause animals to suffer becuse they think its fun, they do it, as they know there isnt another option, if the partical aria of reaserch is to be looked in to.
If we knew enough to perfectly simulate an animal, wed most likly know enough to perfectly simulate a human, so no testing would be needed. The facts how ever that we dont, so we cannot.
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then presumably you'd rather someone you didn't know in another country died than someone you do know, as most people do: that's one of the reasons WARS break out... surely, all life is precious and until people get that then there will not be an end to killings and suffering amongst us... look at how soldiers make it easier to kill by giving the enemy labels that make them seem less intelligent or sub-human, and take the **** out of their language... then take a look at your arguments about non-human animals and draw some parallels...
Your right. But i see it as a somewhat pointless question, Would you rather your parents died, or some person youve never heard of. We value those we have connections with, more than those we dont. its human nature and im a human.
Humans by defult dont really like to kill, which is why in war times, they can only do what they do but ignoring the enimys own humanity. despite this reacent stats show, 70% or higher people in WW1 for example aimed to miss. Most people dont really like killing. But the options not always there, sometimes for your own survival, or even that of others killing is necessary. animal testing is also nessary.
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I don't say 'i'd rather they died than me', say 'i'd rather nobody was dying'
But, as ive said, we live in the real world, not fanticy land. Im a realist. The option isnt always there.
Fox dies or rabbit dies. Its impossible to save both, weather you want to or not.
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j) the argument of 'just a few animals dying, to save millions of people' kinda falls down when you look at some of the statistics of how many actually die or suffer each year... search on the net - plenty of quite scary results
How many what? how many people die? millions every day? or how many animals die in testing, alot less. Animals in the wild. Alot higher.
Its becuse of animal testing we dont see that so much now days, most familys havent got at least half the orignal number dead by one of many decises around now. We reap the benifits already.
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Summary: phase it out - it's morally wrong, and volunteer for testing - your drugs will arrive a lot quicker and be more effective... and they won't be at the expense of another life that's incapable (we currently believe) of having a say in what was done to it!
Morally wrong, according to your morallity, not mine.
Alot more humans will die in the testing, without the animal testing first. It will become very unsafe, which will put most the human testees of i exspect.
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and one last thing for you to ponder Mentor - give someone an apple and he has 1 apple right? give him another and he has 2?
but in reality, the apples aren't identical and they are different sizes, so is a bigger apple still 1? is there an exact size of apple that denotes 1 apple to which all other apples can be compared to? no
mathematics is all about approximations, and taking something as a 'given' in the first place - there is no such thing as an exact science
by simplifying things down into equations, a mathematician ignores a myriad of external factors that would make the equation impossible to solve... beyond maths and logic, there is LIFE where morals play their part:
what may seem like perfect logic can also be terribly wrong
Actualy.. an apple isnt a mesurement of the subtance apple. its a thing in itself. If you have one small pool and one big pool, you have 2 pools. Since a pool is an item, and the amount of an item has nothing to do with the size or value of those items. So no simplifcation is takeing place, if a mathmatition wasnt asking how many apples you had, much how much apple you had. We would be useing the weight of the apples instead, although thats till two simple, differnt types of apple, have differnt nutrational content, differnt shapes, some may have bad bits, some may be more dence.
This is why in science so many varibles and controls have to be strictly noted and understood, it deals with very low level stuff, and will look at a great deal of it, as the averge is a better refrelction than a one off.
Humans have one life, the worth of those lifes has no effect on that count.
The math you learn in primary school is simplifed, the math you learn in high school is a little less simplifed. The math you learn in A levels is less simplifed still. Undergrad -> post grad. At the top, that simplifcation doesnt exist, its just for those not takeing a job useing math, a massive understanding of it is not requred, so teaching it to such a high level has no use and is a waste. But just becuse we only expernce the simplifed stuff, doesnt mean the real math doesnt exist.
The flaws you point out are only from your limited view point of a subject, and should not be taken to reflect the actuality of the subject. Also your misusing words. 1 apple will always be 1 apple, despite its size or any number of other facters, since the count is other the amount of apples, not of an apples value, worth or any over varible you may wish to apply to them.
