Quote:
Originally Posted by activeco
No, that was my suggestion.
But just as with everything else extremely relevant, you evade straight answers by simply declaring it nonsense
Objective support by who's measures?
Indeed I used ad hominem approach but not for the reason and in the way you put it. My apologies for that, although the unnecessary hunting issue always puts me into higher emotional arousal.
- Sir, why you killed and mutilated the postman
- Well... I was hungry.
- But didn't you have other choices to feed yourself? And don't you think it's wrong?
- Only if one accepts your implied anthropomorphic premise. You probably eat meat and even vegetables too.
Besides, postmen have poor life and do not die peacefully, rather, they suffer prolonged and painful deaths from starvation and sickness. On the other hand, when I take a postman, with a shot to the head, it dies quickly, with little to no suffering.
- But Sir, he had a right to live just like you do. Would you do it to your loved one?
- Non-responsive, irrelevant & non sequitur. My family is not the issue at hand.
- Don't you think he had feelings just like you have.
- The fact remains that there is no objective basis for your premise. Mere response to stimuli in a manner that mimics that of me or my family in no way bespeaks of sentience. Your premise is but an article of faith; and, proclaiming it to be self-evident differs naught from those who hold religious scriptures to be revealed truths.
- OK 
- That premise, though, is not an a priori one, but rather one that is a posteriori, and therefore one that cannot be taken as a given, but must be proven to be true prior to its being used as support for any argued for conclusion. |
I've an extremely low tolerance of sophistry, which is what this thread has descended into. This issue is obviously one that is for you emotionally quite charged, one that therefore does not well lend itself to rational discourse.
While I do commend you for looking on lesser creatures with compassion, as do I, even though you may not allow of such, owing no doubt to our different life experiences, such experiences do not compel me to endow such creatures with the same attributes and/or to the same extent as do you.
I therefore respectfully submit that we are at an impasse, and must simply agree to disagree in this regard.