• Registered: 2002-03-19
  • Posts: 9,988

Re: Earthlings (An Animal Rights film)

Ya that kind of illustrates another point that I wanted to make, which is just because corporations produce crops and meat more cheaply than the farmer would on their own, that doesn't necessarily mean that consumers are buying these products at lower prices.  Certainly in the US today that "savings" isn't handed down to the consumer. 

( it is also notable that the farming techniques that corporations use or force upon farmers destroy the land which will surely later effect availability of future product and thus the price; that these same corporations give large campaign contributions to presidents and policital parties that are in favor of destroying any authority that OSHA has to regulate them, and thus the the products they pruduce are infinitely more likely to be tainted with E. Coli and Salmonella and other such contamination, thus the quality of meat they produce is of much lower quality, if it is even fit for human consumption in the first place; furthermore these same corporations routinely artifically drive up the cost at which they sell their products while simultaneously artificially driving down the rate at which farmers can sell their crops and meat in the first place )

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  • Registered: 2002-04-18
  • Posts: 8,116

Re: Earthlings (An Animal Rights film)

agreed yes, I hate corporations as much as the next guy, but what does this have to do with animal rights anymore? smile just saying...

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53 Reply by darin

  • Registered: 2002-03-22
  • Posts: 4,666

Re: Earthlings (An Animal Rights film)

Originally posted by: LiQuiDcHeEsE
agreed yes, I hate corporations as much as the next guy, but what does this have to do with animal rights anymore? smile just saying...

Before I read this I was thinking the same thing.  This kind of turned into a stick-it-to-the-man fest.  But only from a few people.

@Legal: I was being sarcastic, but I could see how that argument could be used.

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  • Registered: 2007-07-07
  • Posts: 509

Re: Earthlings (An Animal Rights film)

LMD

Originally posted by: KingofNewYork

Originally posted by: Frost

Originally posted by: sunpoprain
Also along with Lmd, i'm also curious about what people hold as the reason(s) animals are inferior.

Same here - and also how they'd compare it to, say, young children, who arguably have the same level cognisance.

I would think it would be obvious.

Also a baby is immeasurably more intelligent than the smartest of animals. A trained dog may be able to sit and stay on command, but that is just a conditioned response to a stimulus. The dog isn't actually thinking. The limits of a dogs intelligence are the ability to recognize other creatures, the ability to comprehend small numbers (I think 7 is the highest), the ability to socially rank a small number of creatures, and the ability to be conditioned to perform a number of activities. The limits of a child's intelligence are seemingly endless.

That is simply not true, considering modern biological literature and experiments on the subject.  (other people have gone towards this point too)  Similarly, a child's intelligence and potential to be a rational creature are extremely limited, because a human being needs at least a few years of development before their intelligence amounts to anything resembling a full grown human's.  This is also simple biology.

Intelligence is a creatures capacity for learning. A baby's capacity for learning is enormous. Also, if you want me to cite sources, how about you start. What modern biological literature claims an animal is more intelligent than a baby? A baby is absorbing information at a level that an adult human is completely incapable of doing. They can't tell you what they are learning, but their brains are at work deciphering everything around them. Babies lack knowledge, compared to an adult, but they are still extremely intelligent.

When you look at the most intelligent animals in the world: chimps and dolphins, they are still extremely limited. Their ability to comprehend numbers is similarly limited to that of a dogs. They can store far more data than a dog. They are capable of empathy. Chimps have the problem solving abilities to use simple tools. Chimps, however, are not smart enough to use multiple tools to complete a task. Chimps can be taught simple language, a few hundred words. Obviously, chimps are quite intelligent compared to other animals, but they are nowhere near the capabilities of a human.

And this is all irrelevant anyways because a baby human grows into an adult human, a chimp (even if it lived to be a thousand years old) would never even come close to the mental abilities of a human.

PS:
Also, an *actual* nitpick here:  I am not sure if I would ever describe the intelligence of human beings as "seemingly endless".  tongue  But thats neither here nor there.


Yeah, after thousands of years of progress we haven't hit the wall of humans intelligence yet.

  • Registered: 2002-03-19
  • Posts: 9,988

Re: Earthlings (An Animal Rights film)

Originally posted by: LiQuiDcHeEsE
agreed yes, I hate corporations as much as the next guy, but what does this have to do with animal rights anymore? smile just saying...

The connection is that most of the reason animals are treated so poorly is because it is up to a corporation to determine the policies of how the animals are raised and then slaughtered.  The argument being hinted at was that "Hey, I know animals are treated poorly, but it is sort of justified by how much food is produced in this way".  Thus, my aim was to show that abuse of animals aside, it is still actually NOT in the greater good to let corporations be in charge of how our food gets to the grocery store, or at the very least do so completely unregulated.  If we at the very least inspected these corporations so that we enforced regulations on them, or toned down the importance of the role of corporations in how we get our food, then in the process animal cruelty will also be combated.

Remember, corporations were BUILT with the idea of making mass profit with no individual responsibility.  Left unchecked, it is in the nature of corporations to evolve absolutely monsterous and immoral practices all in the name of making money.  Whether it is your car or medical insurence companies denying coverage or meat packing companies knowingly shipping out tainted meat, the best interests of society are NOT in mind.  The way society's best interests were protected was through OSHA and government entities like it, but all regulation of the meat packing industry is a joke ATM.  Coming full circle, the corporations in this respect give little to no shits about animal cruelty (or how they treat human beings for that matter).

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  • Registered: 2002-03-19
  • Posts: 9,988

Re: Earthlings (An Animal Rights film)

Originally posted by: KingofNewYork
Intelligence is a creatures capacity for learning.

Negative, that is a very narrow definition of intelligence.

"Intelligence is an umbrella term used to describe a property of the mind that encompasses many related abilities, such as the capacities to reason, to plan, to solve problems, to think abstractly, to comprehend ideas, to use language, and to learn. There are several ways to define intelligence"

The way you have defined is not what I think we had in mind when we were talking about animal intelligence, neither is it a very helpful way of understanding animal cognition, and it doesn't serve as a very good foundation to categorize animals and humans like you want it to.

And this is all irrelevant anyways because a baby human grows into an adult human, a chimp (even if it lived to be a thousand years old) would never even come close to the mental abilities of a human.

Be careful not to look at things based solely on what they have the potential to be as opposed to what they actually are.  I will be dead some day, that doesn't mean I am dead now.  Similarly, a normal baby will be a fully sentient and rational creature someday, that doesn't mean the baby is one now.

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  • Registered: 2003-07-17
  • Posts: 4,306

Re: Earthlings (An Animal Rights film)

A human baby and a baby chimp will develop with amazing similarity up, until, I believe, the age of 3, at which point the chimp plateaus towards their "maximum". Up until that point, there's not really any difference between them.

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  • Registered: 2007-07-07
  • Posts: 509

Re: Earthlings (An Animal Rights film)

Originally posted by: Legal_My_Deagle
Be careful not to look at things based solely on what they have the potential to be as opposed to what they actually are.  I will be dead some day, that doesn't mean I am dead now.  Similarly, a normal baby will be a fully sentient and rational creature someday, that doesn't mean the baby is one now.


This makes no sense in the context of what I said.

  • Registered: 2003-07-17
  • Posts: 4,306

Re: Earthlings (An Animal Rights film)

You need to read it a bit more carefully then wink
You are saying a human baby is more intelligent than an animal baby, based only on the potential for learning, which both LMD and I are claiming to be silly.

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  • Registered: 2007-07-07
  • Posts: 509

Re: Earthlings (An Animal Rights film)

Originally posted by: Viserys
You need to read it a bit more carefully then wink
You are saying a human baby is more intelligent than an animal baby, based only on the potential for learning, which both LMD and I are claiming to be silly.

I wasn't addressing your response. I was addressing LMDs response, to me saying that the argument over a babies intelligence is irrelevant because a baby grows up into a human and a chimp doesn't.

Although, to address your point, at the age of 2 children are able to communicate in complete sentences and solve complex tasks. When my niece was 2 she was playing with her Dora toys and having them talk to each other and drive cars around. She was able to figure out complex tasks like how her electronic train worked and how she could get it to hop off the tracks by making a ramp out of a hair comb.

Human babies are leaps and bounds over the babies of Chimpanzees. This is partly due to humans having a much better encephalization quotient, than chimps. Human babies develop their cognitive abilities in a very different way than chimps. Human babies also develop much, much faster than chimps. Saying that they develop the same is kind of ridiculous. A chimp baby isn't even able to recognize the faces of different species of animals for the first 9 months of their lives. Chimps don't begin categorizing things until between 12 and 15 months. By comparison human babies are able to recognize faces of both humans and animals at birth. Humans begin categorizing things within 6 months. Humans understand social hierarchy within 6 months whereas it takes 12-15 months for chimps. Logical abilities develop earlier and quicker in humans than in chimps. Cause and effect understanding develops earlier and faster in humans than in chimps. Human babies are able to recognize the difference between 100 objects and 1000 objects where as chimps can't tell that difference until up to 24 months. Humans are able to understand complex cause and effect relationships (over 2 orders of separation) at 12-15 months. Chimps NEVER learn complex cause and effect relationships. By 6 months old humans are already beginning to understand language, chimps never develop language. (If you want to learn more, Langer from Princeton University has published numerous studies about the differences)

However, we weren't comparing the intelligence of baby chimps vs baby humans. We were comparing the intelligence of baby humans vs adult animals. Some of the smarter animals have more knowledge than human babies, I am not arguing that. I am saying they are not more intelligent than babies. Maybe an adult animal is smarter than a baby up to 6-9 months old.

  • Registered: 2003-07-17
  • Posts: 4,306

Re: Earthlings (An Animal Rights film)

I'm well aware you weren't responding to me, just suggesting that LMD's post wasn't as nonsensical as you accused it of being.

Anyway, as far as I understand it, we were discussing whether or not animals have any capacity for intelligence, and are thus deserving of any degree of human compassion.

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