Eating Meat, Preference or Necessity?

[vhawk01]

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when it comes down to it, you're basically going to end up drawing the line at the place where it becomes inconvenient/too difficult to continue protecting the animal. its not like when you chop a rat or shoot a deer it doesn't feel pain like a cow does.

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Yes, it is EXACTLY like that. Some animals feel pain and suffering to a far greater extent than others. Humans probably suffer the most. Fish probably don't suffer at all, or feel much pain. Mosquitos almost certainly feel no pain.

[kdotsky]

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Yes, it is EXACTLY like that. Some animals feel pain and suffering to a far greater extent than others. Humans probably suffer the most. Fish probably don't suffer at all, or feel much pain. Mosquitos almost certainly feel no pain.

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How do you argue that humans suffer the most? It seems to me that people are assuming humans feel the most pain, then measure the amount of pain an animal feels by how similar their pain responses are to our own. When we see an animal scream and writhe in pain, we can relate to that because it reminds us of our own pain. It might even trigger a hard-wired reaction in us that causes pity. But for animals that cannot scream and writhe we tend to assume their pain is less -- but maybe this is just because we cannot relate to their reactions to pain, so we assume they are not going through pain like we do.

[vhawk01]

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Yes, it is EXACTLY like that. Some animals feel pain and suffering to a far greater extent than others. Humans probably suffer the most. Fish probably don't suffer at all, or feel much pain. Mosquitos almost certainly feel no pain.

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How do you argue that humans suffer the most? It seems to me that people are assuming humans feel the most pain, then measure the amount of pain an animal feels by how similar their pain responses are to our own. When we see an animal scream and writhe in pain, we can relate to that because it reminds us of our own pain. It might even trigger a hard-wired reaction in us that causes pity. But for animals that cannot scream and writhe we tend to assume their pain is less -- but maybe this is just because we cannot relate to their reactions to pain, so we assume they are not going through pain like we do.

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Exactly.

And then there are the fields of neuroscience, physiology, and comparative anatomy. We can be pretty certain that pain is carried in afferent nerve fibers. We even know where in our brain those fibers go, and the purposes for pain at least, if not suffering. So, we take a look at our animal cousins. Do they have all of these efferent nerves? Are they connected to pain centers in their brains? Do they even HAVE brains? I mean, a CO2 detector receives input from its surroundings, but it doesn't feel pain and (presumably) doesn't suffer. So, we make our best guess. We're wrong from time to time, since recent studies have shown that octopi or giant squids (I am not well-read on this, but Rduke might jump in?) apparently have a much more complex nervous system than we thought, and might very well feel a large range of pain and suffering.

So, we make our estimated guesses, do the best we can, and act accordingly. Just like in everything else. You have a better way? We can kill anything that doesn't have a soul, perhaps? Anything thats slower or dumber than us? Anything we've traditionally killed?

[gamblegood]

You guys worry too much.