Hunting Ban Free Vote In The Commons

[La_Dolce_Vita]

You don’t have to reply Ballaughbiker, but your argument is disagreeable enough to warrant a response. Besides Evilgoblin is busy.

 

EG - The real test of whether the protester was preaching rhetoric or true belief would be if they developed some disease whose only cure was drugs tested on animals.

Though whether or not a person’s moral stance is something that they abide by or not, or is rhetoric or not, is a separate matter over whether they are correct or not.

 

It doesn't have to be cancer (apparently and conveniently the fault of the sufferer in some people's eyes on here)

Smoking, poor diet, pollution (society’s fault), overweight through lack of exercise) in many cases and as mentioned twice. Do try and not create straw men if you can help it.

 

…but any life changing serious illness. The definitive test would be choosing, or not, to take the drug knowing it was their only hope. You will always get those who would rather die for their beliefs (eg the zealots who won't have a life saving blood transfusion or much worse won't let their children) but I'll wager the majority would opt for the drug that would save their life.

And if the drug was available I expect they would. I would.

Much medicine and medical techniques have come from the use of animals. Now that does not mean that we continue with such testing and use of animals for our medical needs.

(I don’t know who these zealots or why they are relevant. Or you not muddling religious beliefs with this?)

 

However, if they didn't and chose death instead, I would respect that decision providing they were not making it on behalf of another eg their child. It's so easy to develop ideals (any ideals) in a modern western country with a welfare state and NHS. Nobody really wants animal testing if there was an alternative and for trivial things like cosmetics, it is an abomination if it results in real suffering. But let's get real. Ask a thalidomide victim if they wished the drug that blighted their lives had been properly tested.

Is there is an alternative. Stop use of animals now. We don’t have to discard the medical knowledge we have now.

It would also be interesting to know what you determine to be real suffering, is that based on how much pain is felt by the animal or how much discomfort? Why do you believe that it is even warranted to make use of animal for these purposes without regardless of suffering?

If you asked a thalidomide person, they just very well might think that testing of animals (were it to present the side-effects) was acceptable.

Does that make it right? Would it be acceptable (were it to occur) that the animals gave birth to babies with defective limbs that were subsequently killed?

 

Your arguments appear to rest far too much on an emotional argument for accepting medical testing, i.e. what would someone feel like if they got ill or had a defect caused by a drug, etc. You haven’t dealt at all with the value of the life of these animals.

[ScotsAlan]

Well what others forms of hunting are there? Those would be a good place to start when thinking of further bans.

 

I fish.

 

I put most of what I catch back. But I keep the occasional good size one for the table. Not my table I should say, but my pensioner neighbours.

 

Now, fox unting is something I have never understood. Horses and dogs chasing a fox etc. But I have always been against the ban.

 

The strange thing about me, is that I eat meat, but for many years I refused to eat fish. I went 10 years without eating fish.... but then Axholme Friary turned up behind the Co-op in Castletown one night. And my resolve faded. Fish farming damages the environment. Industrial trawling damages the sea. Pigs and cows pretty much only exist because of our desire to eat them.

 

For the pro hunting lobby, I will put forward this old but valid arguement.....

 

The people who have the greatest interest in the health of our countryside, flora and fauna, are the people who want to go into the countryside with a dog or gun and kill it.

 

Put this into the context of fox hunting. The fox hunters need foxes to be in abundance: so they can hunt them. They employ people to look after and improve the environment. The farmers who hunt leave wide margins on their fields to encourage wildlife that the fox can eat. Grouse shooters employ people to do controlled fires on the moor to provide the best habitat for their prey. Fishermen fight water pollution and invasive species.

 

In short, while LDV considers hunters to be the rapers and pillagers of the countryside, they are actually the best people to be it's custodians.

[La_Dolce_Vita]

Put this into the context of fox hunting. The fox hunters need foxes to be in abundance: so they can hunt them. They employ people to look after and improve the environment. The farmers who hunt leave wide margins on their fields to encourage wildlife that the fox can eat. Grouse shooters employ people to do controlled fires on the moor to provide the best habitat for their prey. Fishermen fight water pollution and invasive species.

The moral argument might have passed me by here. You seem to be arguing that such animals are allowed to live and have a habitat for the sake of hunting. I don't think that is true in the case of fox hunting, but I don't think that would be moral either.

[Chinahand]

LDV - was it immoral for cave men to drive cave bears out of their caves?

 

Would you have been against doing this, and so argued against it if you were a member of a hunter gather band caught out in an end-of-ice-age bad night and looking for somewhere dry for the night?

 

I am sure you would do it - that isn't my question - its wether you'd have felt it was immoral or not.

 

My guess is that you are willing to take all the advantages of our immorality (and of course you think capitalism is immoral, something as you know I am willing to challenge you one) while feeling almost any action is in itself wrong.

 

I am interested in the naturalistic fallacy - what is nature is not what is moral - but I tend to shrug my shoulders at being an omnivore etc.

 

Where you can gain consent, do so. Where you can't do not cause suffering, and practice it sustainably.

 

If you are going to say those principles result in immorality I'm going to push back - if you are going to say any use of animals/nature is exploitation and immoral you have to answer for the suffering you will cause by denying people access to nature's bounty.

 

We turfed those cave bears out and I am glad there wasn't a moral debate about it with you wasting precious time with your worries about our exploitation of the bear's resources.

[ScotsAlan]

Put this into the context of fox hunting. The fox hunters need foxes to be in abundance: so they can hunt them. They employ people to look after and improve the environment. The farmers who hunt leave wide margins on their fields to encourage wildlife that the fox can eat. Grouse shooters employ people to do controlled fires on the moor to provide the best habitat for their prey. Fishermen fight water pollution and invasive species.

The moral argument might have passed me by here. You seem to be arguing that such animals are allowed to live and have a habitat for the sake of hunting. I don't think that is true in the case of fox hunting, but I don't think that would be moral either.

 

Why is it immoral to care for the countryside?

 

I would rather see a healthy river stuffed with wild fish rather than a polluted river with no fish.

 

I would rather see a healthy countryside with a healthy population of fauna, rather than a desert of carrot and turnip fields.

 

An occasional dead fox is a small price to pay.

[guzzi]

Put this into the context of fox hunting. The fox hunters need foxes to be in abundance: so they can hunt them. They employ people to look after and improve the environment. The farmers who hunt leave wide margins on their fields to encourage wildlife that the fox can eat. Grouse shooters employ people to do controlled fires on the moor to provide the best habitat for their prey. Fishermen fight water pollution and invasive species.

The moral argument might have passed me by here. You seem to be arguing that such animals are allowed to live and have a habitat for the sake of hunting. I don't think that is true in the case of fox hunting, but I don't think that would be moral either.

 

The moral situation here is surely one of greater good? Field sport benefits wildlife habitat, which benefits a wide range of species, not just quarry species. All for it, although I'm not a hunter nor currently a shooter or fisherman.

[ScotsAlan]

Have a look here LDV:

 

http://www.basc.org.uk/en/conservation/

 

And then, instead of asking about the moral implications of killing things, ask who would pay for, and do the work that goes on to protect the countryside.

[ScotsAlan]

LDV - was it immoral for cave men to drive cave bears out of their caves?

 

 

Depends on if they used sticks or Chelsea tractors

[Chinahand]

Guzzi, utilitarianism is morally complicated - do you really think it is moral for you to be made to suffer so others can prosper. That is the point LDV (EG) etc are raising, but applying it not only to us, but foxes, chimps and fish.

 

You've got to justify your weighting in your utilitarian accountancy - 1 fox = 20 chickens, 1 chimp = 1 million people (is that a 10% chance of curing 10 million) etc

 

Such arithmetic is really difficult - and the problem of unforseen consequences, further complicates it, to the point utilitarianism is rare in moral philosophy, though common in cheap politics.

 

I agree you quickly come at risk of spinning on pin heads in debates such as we are having which is why cheap politics is usually the clincher in deciding to do these sorts of things or not - for me the cave bear is out, pure and simply, and mainly because granny cavewomen would have had no truck with LDV's moralizing given the choice of a night in the snow or a warm fire in that bear's cave ... but even so it is a interesting use of the brain cells during a work break!

[ScotsAlan]

 

You've got to justify your weighting in your utilitarian accountancy - 1 fox = 20 chickens, 1 chimp = 1 million people (is that a 10% chance of curing 10 million) etc

 

 

No we dont. If we accept that we are still cavemen at heart, then it's up to you to persaude us that we are not.

 

In layman's terms of course :-)

[P.K.]

No we dont. If we accept that we are still cavemen at heart, then it's up to you to persaude us that we are not.

 

In layman's terms of course :-)

 

"To fish for the pot is to shake hands with the caveman" - Conrad Voss Bark

 

Being top of the food chain (unless you unfortunately bump into Ursus Maritimus that is) I have no problems at all with killing to eat just like the caveman. To me that is exactly as it should be. But killing something inedible because you get some kind of gratuitous enjoyment out of seeing a small exhausted native mammal torn apart by a pack of dogs? If you like that kind of thing you must have some serious personal issues. Ban the lot and be done with it.

[guzzi]

Chinahand, LDV I am a simple soul and and see nothing wrong with accepting the need to manage the habitats - flora and fauna - that we have (by and large) created. In nearly all such habitats, the top predators are missing, and we fill that niche. On the whole, we are rather less brutal than (for example) the wolf, and our efforts are more directed, so that we have regard to such matters as habitat preservation and creation.

 

However, your points are ultimately difficult to deny. The contrast I personally draw in relation to animals is between the subjective (where the individual is paramount) and the objective, where the best interests of the many predominate. Most people also draw a line between the animal and human realms, and would frankly sacrifice animals on on a many to one basis in the human interest.

[ScotsAlan]

No we dont. If we accept that we are still cavemen at heart, then it's up to you to persaude us that we are not.

 

In layman's terms of course :-)

 

"To fish for the pot is to shake hands with the caveman" - Conrad Voss Bark

 

Being top of the food chain (unless you unfortunately bump into Ursus Maritimus that is) I have no problems at all with killing to eat just like the caveman. To me that is exactly as it should be. But killing something inedible because you get some kind of gratuitous enjoyment out of seeing a small exhausted native mammal torn apart by a pack of dogs? If you like that kind of thing you must have some serious personal issues. Ban the lot and be done with it.

 

I did not say I do enjoy it PK.

 

I find the whole concept of fox hunting a strange one. And I agree with you that it a stupid and gratious pastime.

 

But I do think the money it puts into the countryside is a good thing.

 

That is my arguement against the ban.

 

 

[ScotsAlan]

Chinahand, LDV I am a simple soul and and see nothing wrong with accepting the need to manage the habitats - flora and fauna - that we have (by and large) created. In nearly all such habitats, the top predators are missing, and we fill that niche. On the whole, we are rather less brutal than (for example) the wolf, and our efforts are more directed, so that we have regard to such matters as habitat preservation and creation.

 

However, your points are ultimately difficult to deny. The contrast I personally draw in relation to animals is between the subjective (where the individual is paramount) and the objective, where the best interests of the many predominate. Most people also draw a line between the animal and human realms, and would frankly sacrifice animals on on a many to one basis in the human interest.

 

Yup. I agree totally

[Evil Goblin]

Although the scope of the matter extends beyond the use of animals in medical experimentation it seems appropriate for me to restrict this post to that one area.

 

Whilst I think everyone would agree that the use of humans as subjects in medical experiments is simply not acceptable it does, in fact, go on all the time. e.g. new drug tests by the pharma companies, new surgical procedures, etc. The deciding factor here is, presumably, that the human subjects give their (supposedly informed) consent to what is going on. Yet experiments on humans without their consent are nothing new – the Nazis used “inferior people” for such (often horrific) experiments, as did the Soviet Communists; the American CIA has been known to do so and even the British Government i.e. exposing servicemen to the effects of nuclear weapons tests. Who knows what is going on within the darker organs of Governments? Nevertheless, I think it fair to say that there is a general view that experiments on unwilling or unknowing human subjects are unacceptable.

 

If such experiments on human subjects are unacceptable, why do we not regard experiments on other animals (which cannot give their consent) to be so as well? After all, humans are just another species of animal. The problem so many people seem to have is that they are in thrall to the Judeo-Christian illusion so readily adopted by Humanists that there is something intrinsically different and superior about humans – whereas the facts per Darwin are to quite the contrary. Within a purely secular perspective there can be no good reason for thinking the human species is supremely valuable. Secular Humanists are adopting the anthropocentric viewpoint of Christianity while abandoning the theistic belief system from which it sprang and without which it is meaningless. Humans are not intrinsically different or special to other animals. We may be more advanced in many respects but we are also the most rapacious and destructive creatures on the planet. Perhaps, as Orwell said of the pigs in Animal Farm, our characters are not equal to our intelligence (or our capabilities).

 

Perhaps the most controversial experiments are those involving apes. We know that apes share much of our intellectual and emotional inheritance. They have much of our own capacities and vulnerabilities – they can think and plan, they feel fear and love. Indeed, it is because of those very similarities that they are used in experiments. Can there be any compelling ethical defence for so using creatures so like ourselves in ways that we would find unbearable and unacceptable?

 

Perhaps the answer is that the animals used in these experiments are simply unfortunate – that we have them in our power and their suffering is a regrettable but unavoidable result of our using them for our benefit? This certainly seems to be the case in most peoples’ minds, but it is ethically bankrupt – we do it because we can, without any moral or ethical justification. Why are so many prepared to dispense with morality in this area when they insist on it in other areas of life? Is perceived human need or desirability sufficient justification for anything and everything?