On Apr 16, 4:59*am, George Plimpton > wrote:
> On 4/15/2012 6:34 PM, Rupert wrote:
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> > On Apr 16, 2:13 am, George > *wrote:
> >> On 4/12/2012 3:08 PM, Rupert wrote:
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> >>> On Apr 12, 6:50 pm, George > * *wrote:
> >>>> On 4/12/2012 9:00 AM, Rupert wrote:
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> >>>>> On Apr 12, 5:41 pm, George > * * *wrote:
> >>>>>> On 4/12/2012 7:27 AM, George Plimpton wrote:
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> >>>>>>> On 4/11/2012 11:29 PM, Dutch wrote:
> >>>>>>>> > * * *wrote in message
> ...
> >>>>>>>>> On Apr 12, 12:23 am, > * * *wrote:
> >>>>>>>>>> > * * *wrote
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> >>>>>>>>>>> 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,
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> >>>>>>> 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/...facts/pet_owne...
> >>>>>> * * *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 higherhttp://www.americanpetproducts.org/press_industrytrends.aspMostUS
> >>>>>> 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.
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> >>>>>> 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.
>
> >>>>> That does not follow from the principle of equal consideration of
> >>>>> interests.
>
> >>>> It follows from the fact that your position is distinctly a minority
> >>>> position that has been implicitly reject by the vast majority of humanity.
>
> >>> No, it doesn't.
>
> >> It does.
>
> > When I wrote "That does not follow from the principle of equal
> > consideration of interests",
>
> I don't care about that.

You ought to care about what you are saying, otherwise people will get
the idea that you are a fool who babbles nonsense without rhyme or
reason.

> I reject that principle, and I don't believe
> you that "equal consideration" across species is the default position of
> ethics. *You're bullshitting.

Yes, I am certainly aware that you reject the principle.

You probably believe in some sort of equal consideration for humans
though, don't you? Would you be able to tell us more about that?