Quote (Handcuffs @ May 21 2010 08:53pm)

Bolded: Of course I do, as I don't advocate or accept the definition of superiority that you've expressed.

Underlined: That's not true at all, I dislike plastic and don't use it unless I have to, I also recycle the plastic that I do use. I support animal cruelty laws like Proposition 2 in California and the like. I think it should be illegal to use animals for clothing etc. I also think we should abondon oil and strive for efficient green energy.

Also, we don't use pesticides on crops because bugs are icky and make our crops less visually appealing. We use pesticides because the insects would wipe out our crop supplies if we didn't.

I do, however, realize that some form of life is going to die one way or another no matter what we do. Short of exterminating the human race, I don't see a potential solution for eliminating human effects on other living things in the near future.

Quote

But why, a moral philosopher might ask, should this matter to us? Isn't it only the discontinuous mind that wants to erect barriers anyway? So what if, in the continuum of all apes that have lived in Africa, the survivors happen to leave a convenient gap between Homo and Pan? Surely we should, in any case, not base our treatment of animals on whether or not we can interbreed with them. If we want to justify double standards - if society agrees that people should be treated better than, say, cows (cows may be cooked and eaten, people may not) - there must be better reasons than cousinship. Humans may be taxonomically distant from cows, but isn't it more important that we are brainier? Or better, following Jeremy Bentham, that humans can suffer more - that cows, even if they hate pain as much as humans do (and why on earth should we suppose otherwise?), do not know what is coming to them? Suppose that the octopus lineage had happened to evolve brains and feelings to rival ours; they easily might have done. The mere possibility shows the incidental nature of cousinship. So, the moral philosopher asks, why emphasise the human/chimp continuity?

Yes, in an ideal world we probably should come up with a better reason than cousinship for, say, preferring carnivory to cannibalism. But the melancholy fact is that, at present, society's moral attitudes rest almost entirely on the discontinuous, speciesist imperative.

Quote (Mezandria @ May 21 2010 09:01pm)

Bullshit. If human crops were not wiped out in the past by insects (before we HAD pesticides), what the hell makes you think they would be today if we stopped using pesticides? Why would it take the extermination of the human race to live in reasonable balance with nature and other species around us?

Quote (Sioux @ May 21 2010 09:04pm)

Without pesticides, we would not be able to produce enough food to sustain our current population. Sure we would produce food still, but hundreds of thousands would starve.

Quote (Mezandria @ May 22 2010 01:01am)

Bullshit. If human crops were not wiped out in the past by insects (before we HAD pesticides), what the hell makes you think they would be today if we stopped using pesticides? Why would it take the extermination of the human race to live in reasonable balance with nature and other species around us?

Quote (Mezandria @ May 21 2010 09:07pm)

Hundreds of thousands already starve. Increasing the food supply will not fix supply issues, nor will it fix the overpopulation problem. Increasing the food supply will necessarily increase the population, it is a well-known ecological fact.

Quote (Handcuffs @ May 21 2010 09:08pm)

Bolded: See Sioux's post #342.

Underlined: I didn't say that it would take the extermination of the human race to have "reasonable balance with nature and other species around us" but instead that the only way that humans could never, within reason, be responsible for harming the environment and those found within it, would be the extermination of the human race.

I think that finding a "balance with nature and other species around us" is a fantastic idea and one that we're currently working towards.

Quote (Mezandria @ May 22 2010 01:15am)

Why would 'eliminating human effects on other living things in the near future' be any kind of goal? We are a part of our environment, we live to interact and coexist with other organisms on this planet, it seems pretty silly to say that this is something we should aspire to? And I don't believe that I ever mentioned that such was my goal. In fact, balance with nature is exactly what I have said in earlier posts that we humans lack, but other species do NOT. The only way to have such a balance is to no longer participate in our current lifestyle, and to instead abandon it in favor of being part of this planet, rather than above it claiming superiority over all.

We are not currently working towards this goal. We claim we are, and then mop up the next oil spill that is caused by our neglect.