On 4/12/2012 7:27 AM, George Plimpton wrote:
> On 4/11/2012 11:29 PM, Dutch wrote:
>> "Rupert" > wrote in message
>> ...
>>> On Apr 12, 12:23 am, "Dutch" > wrote:
>>>> "Rupert" > wrote
>>>>
>>>> > Most ethicists would agree that equal consideration of interests is
>>>> > the default starting position.
>>>>
>>>> For whom? My default starting position for consideration is my own
>>>> interests, followed by my immediate family including my pets, my
>>>> community,
>>>> my country, mankind, higher level animals, rare plant species, lower
>>>> level
>>>> animals, the planet, and the economy is implied in there somewhere.
>>>>
>>>> The default starting position for every organism in existence is its
>>>> owninterests, that is the way the world works.
>>>
>>> That is something that requires defence from the moral point of view.
>>
>> You mean like you defended your assertion, by claiming that most
>> ethicists agree with you? Well I can't honestly say I've ever met an
>> ethicist,
>
> nor has Woopert...
I should have elaborated in my original reply that it's a sick joke for
Woopert to be saying that the "default position" in ethics is to give
equal consideration to the interests of any suffering-capable entity.
First of all, I don't believe Woopert has studied ethics rigorously at
all, let alone to a degree that would permit him to say with such
comical "authority" what the consensus position among ethicists is.
Second, it is completely obvious, due to the amount of controversy
surrounding it, that Singer's position is distinctly a minority view.
With as much controversy over it as there clearly is, I find it very
hard to believe it's the "default" or consensus view of ethics. Rather,
it's what Singer - and Woopert - would *want* to be the default view.
That's why I maintain they are the ones with the burden of proof: given
that most ethicists (or so I intuitively believe) and the overwhelming
majority of humans do *not* accept it as the default, the burden clearly
is on them.
Carl Cohen said something in "The Animal Rights Debate" that has stuck
with me. He wrote that when there is a huge majority holding a
particular moral intuition, the overwhelming size of that majority gives
it a particular weight that cannot simply be casually brushed away. It
doesn't mean it's necessarily a correct intuition, but there's a
presumption. Now, both the human concept of ethics, and ethics as a
distinct branch of philosophy, have been around literally for millennia.
With all that, the overwhelming majority of humans still consider it
morally acceptable to give less weight to the interests of animals than
to human interests, while at the same time most humans feel that *some*
weight should be given to animals' interests, so it's not as if their
moral intuition simply treats animals as holding no morally considerable
interests at all. However imperfectly people may have thought this
through, they have given thought to it, and concluded that animals'
interests deserve less moral consideration than humans'.
The Humane Society of the US (HSUS) says that 39% of US households own
at least one dog, and 33% of households own at least one cat
(interestingly, there are about 8 million more owned cats in the US than
owned dogs, so many more households have multiple cats than multiple
dogs.)
http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/...tatistics.html
A pet products professional association gives about the same number of
owned cats and dogs, but says the percentage of households owning one or
the other is higher
http://www.americanpetproducts.org/p...strytrends.asp Most US
households are comprised of more than one person, so it's very likely
that more than 50% of Americans have a dog or a cat or both. I think
most people give a fair amount of consideration to the interests of
their animals. They spend over $50 billion a year on them, including
almost $13.5 billion on medical care. If people didn't give
considerable weight to the interests of these animals, they wouldn't
spend nearly as much.
Woopert and his corrupt pal Singer are going to have to do a lot of work
to convince people they ought to be providing the same amount of medical
care and same quality of food to their animals as they provide for
themselves. The "ar"/"al" radicals have the burden of proof. As you
say, most of their so-called ethics with regard to animals seems to be
"believies".
>
>> but if they think that way then they are different than every
>> other person or animal that I am aware of. No, you're wrong here, in
>> fact your description of your own moral calculations proves it. You have
>> admitted that adjusting your lifestyle to avoid causing harm to animals
>> is secondary to maintaining a suitable career and lifestyle for
>> yourself, as it should be.
>
> Exactly. Woopert essentially has refused to make any alteration in his
> life *whatever* to attempt to give equal consideration to the interests
> of animals. I have long maintained that this is a fundamental flaw in
> the belief system itself, rather than a flaw in its adherents, if not
> *one* of them can be bothered to try to live fully up to its moral
> prescriptions.
>
>
>> I don't know if you have ever see the comic
>> Louis C.K. but he does a bit about his beliefs about what is right, like
>> signing an organ donor card, he thinks that everyone should do that, to
>> save lives. But he doesn't do it himself because he thinks its gross. He
>> calls these beliefs "his believies", things that he believes in as part
>> of his self-image but doesn't follow through on.
>
> That is brilliant! I'll have to see if I can find anything on it in
> YouTube.
>
> Years ago I read of something called The Garbage Project. It's a
> long-running academic study at one of the Arizona universities - I can't
> recall if it's U of A in Tucson or Arizona State U in Tempe - in which
> they analyze human refuse, including human behavior with respect to the
> generation and handling of it. One of the things they found is that with
> most people, they claim that they recycle far more than they really do.
> In surveys, people would report that they recycled heavily while their
> neighbors didn't recycle much at all, but what the surveyors found is
> that people recycle about as much as what they say their neighbors do,
> on average. I think a lot of analysis of virtue would turn up similar
> results. That, among other reasons, is why I don't believe ****wit when
> he says he only buys "cage-free" eggs.
>
>
>> He is describing you,
>> your belief that equal consideration of interests is the default
>> starting position is one of your "believies".
>
> Right.