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[BeerSnob]

If it can beat me in chess (very easily done), it may live.

 

[VALIS]

For example, a lot of Americans find it morally wrong to eat a dog. Sure, I can see how you might see someone eating dogmeat and remember your own pet that you love as a family member, but what if someone walked up to you while you were having a pork chop and told you they have a pet pig that they love as much as you love your dog? Should you feel bad about eating pork because someone else has a pet of the same species?

I would assume this has been said already, but dogs have been domesticated over centuries to be very friendly to and reliant on humans. Comparing them to wild animals really doesn't work.

 

[Zertez]

Not sure if it is morally wrong, but I dont know many people who are willing to eat a crow. Possum, buzzards, and racoons are animals I wouldnt eat for many reasons.

 

[Eighty Deuce]

The question should be

What animals are morally wrong NOT to eat?

 

[pigeon]

I don't think the mirror test should be the ultimate test of whether or not an animal is self aware though. I mean, dogs obviously feel emotions like guilt, for instance.

How could you possibly tell this? Dogs don't even remember being castrated two weeks later, but you think they have the concept of regretting an action they've taken because of the negative effects it had on somebody other than them? Dogs are just really good at learning what people want them to do, even when people don't necessarily realize they're training them. So if you want your dog to look guilty when it does something you don't like, it'll learn pretty fast to do that.

Whenever I start wondering how smart my dog actually is, I remember the bit in one of Oliver Sacks's books where he pricked the hand of a patient with Korsakov's (who thus can't form memories) with a pin while shaking hands. Very rapidly that patient started refusing to shake hands with him, on the principle that "sometimes people have things hidden in their hands." Conditioning is an extremely powerful behavioral force -- and it doesn't require memory or understanding, just stimulus and patterning. I don't think my dog can understand what I want or what's going on except in the most rudimentary sense -- I'm pretty confident he doesn't even have the concept of "the past" or "himself." But he has a very strongly developed set of conditioned responses that make him look very smart. (Makes you wonder to what degree your personal actions are driven by conditioning versus memory.)

To the topic, I wouldn't eat an endangered animal, or an animal that I thought could actually conceptualize past or self. Apes, dolphins, octopi, I think that's basically it. And I'm doing my best to no longer eat meat that's inhumanely slaughtered, but obviously that's a luxury most people probably don't have access to.

 

[Raistlin]

Dolphins have a complete language with regional differences, they use tools and more than anything else they have culture.

rape culture

 

[crazy monkey]

So it's an issue of education? I could just watch 60's filmstrip of "How beef gets to you plate" an I'm allowed to eat cow again?

nope you will never get a feel for it. try slaughtering a cow with a knife. i cried first time. you will never see meet the same way.

 

[Bulbo Urethral Baggins]

nope you will never get a feel for it. try slaughtering a cow with a knife. i cried first time. you will never see meet the same way.

That probably made a bigger impression on you than a 1960s filmstrip.

 

[hym]

The question should be

What animals are morally wrong NOT to eat?

Insects, they are the most efficient at converting biomass into protein and you have a wide range that produce other useful elements like vitamins and iron. Breeding them is also far more space efficient and produces a minimum of waste.

Switching to insects for our daily protein in take would probably be the most environmental friendly change humanity is able to make right now.

 

[way more]

nope you will never get a feel for it. try slaughtering a cow with a knife. i cried first time. you will never see meet the same way.

I've killed and skinned sheep. Do I still have to do it with a cow? And then a pig? Then every species of fish I've ever eaten?


Is that really a better use of someones time than getting an education and getting a job in something useful?

 

[CornBurrito]

nope you will never get a feel for it. try slaughtering a cow with a knife. i cried first time. you will never see meet the same way.

All this seems to do is to get people desensitized to the slaughter of animals. Early agricultural humans had pet dogs, and raised their cattle which they would then happily slaughter. You grow desensitized to it the more you do it. What does the meat eating populace actually gain?

 

[Trent Strong]

How could you possibly tell this? Dogs don't even remember being castrated two weeks later, but you think they have the concept of regretting an action they've taken because of the negative effects it had on somebody other than them? Dogs are just really good at learning what people want them to do, even when people don't necessarily realize they're training them. So if you want your dog to look guilty when it does something you don't like, it'll learn pretty fast to do that.

Whenever I start wondering how smart my dog actually is, I remember the bit in one of Oliver Sacks's books where he pricked the hand of a patient with Korsakov's (who thus can't form memories) with a pin while shaking hands. Very rapidly that patient started refusing to shake hands with him, on the principle that "sometimes people have things hidden in their hands." Conditioning is an extremely powerful behavioral force -- and it doesn't require memory or understanding, just stimulus and patterning. I don't think my dog can understand what I want or what's going on except in the most rudimentary sense -- I'm pretty confident he doesn't even have the concept of "the past" or "himself." But he has a very strongly developed set of conditioned responses that make him look very smart. (Makes you wonder to what degree your personal actions are driven by conditioning versus memory.)

.
To the topic, I wouldn't eat an endangered animal, or an animal that I thought could actually conceptualize past or self. Apes, dolphins, octopi, I think that's basically it. And I'm doing my best to no longer eat meat that's inhumanely slaughtered, but obviously that's a luxury most people probably don't have access to.

I can tell they feel guilt by the way they behave. The same way I can tell whether or not a person feels guilty. As far as the bolded part of your post goes, how could a dog learn to "look guilty"? It has to have these "guilty" looking behaviors in the first place before somehow learning them, or you wouldn't be able to reward these behaviors (and since when do people reward dogs for looking guilty? Dogs look guilty after they do something people don't like, so a guilty look is most likely followed by a punishment.)

Also conditioning IS memory.

 

[cdyhybrid]

I had raw horse in Japan. It was actually pretty good.

 

[CornBurrito]

Also conditioning IS memory.

Though not generally explicit memory, which is what I think he was going for when he said "conditioning vs memory."

 

[Tuck]

Humans, obviously.

I would also go with dogs and cats, just because of the role they play is western society. They're pets, not food.

 

[Eighty Deuce]

I had raw horse in Japan. It was actually pretty good.

That sounds dirty.

 

[cdyhybrid]

That sounds dirty.

From Wikipedia:

In Japanese cuisine, raw horse meat is called sakura (&#26716 or sakuraniku (桜肉, sakura means cherry blossom, niku means meat) because of its pink color. It can be served raw as sashimi in thin slices dipped in soy sauce, often with ginger and onions added.[54] In this case, it is called basashi (Japanese: 馬刺&#12375. Basashi is popular in some regions of Japan and is often served at izakaya. Fat, typically from the neck, is also found as basashi, though it is white, not pink. Horse meat is also sometimes found on menus for yakiniku (a type of barbecue), where it is called baniku (馬肉, literally, "horse meat") or bagushi (馬串, "skewered horse"); thin slices of raw horse meat are sometimes served wrapped in a shiso leaf. Kumamoto, Nagano and Ōita are famous for basashi, and it is common in the Tohoku region as well. Some types of canned "corned meat" in Japan include horse as one of the ingredients.[55][56] There is also a dessert made from horse meat called basashi ice cream.[57] The company that makes it is known for its unusual ice cream flavors, many of which have limited popularity.

I had the bolded.

 

[triplestation]

anything that wouldn't eat us if we were small enough and anything that can potentially have a bond or some form of relationship/communication with humans

 

[pigeon]

As far as the bolded part of your post goes, how could a dog learn to "look guilty"? It has to have these "guilty" looking behaviors in the first place before somehow learning them, or you wouldn't be able to reward these behaviors (and since when do people reward dogs for looking guilty? Dogs look guilty after they do something people don't like, so a guilty look is most likely followed by a punishment.)

Obviously people don't reward dogs for looking guilty, but they're likely to punish them less if they believe that the dog feels guilt, so the dog has an incentive to approximate guilt. The rest is just unintentional conditioning, because every interaction you have with your dog is a conditioning model for him, even if it isn't for you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans

Also conditioning IS memory.

It's like you didn't even read my post.

Though not generally explicit memory, which is what I think he was going for when he said "conditioning vs memory."

The point is that you don't need to have the concept of past and future for conditioning to work -- you don't even need to REMEMBER the stuff that happens to you for it to condition you. So how much of the stuff we think is consciously learned is actually just conditioned response?

 

[Kozak]

There is NOTHING wrong with eating Blue Whale.
If they get to the point where they become endangered then they will be declared endangered & it will be against the law to kill them period. BUT until that happens I'll be eating my Blue Whale tail for dinner.

Blue Whales are endangered. Been that way for a long time.

Would be surprised if there were more than 20'000 left.

 

[Trent Strong]

Obviously people don't reward dogs for looking guilty, but they're likely to punish them less if they believe that the dog feels guilt, so the dog has an incentive to approximate guilt. The rest is just unintentional conditioning, because every interaction you have with your dog is a conditioning model for him, even if it isn't for you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans



It's like you didn't even read my post.



The point is that you don't need to have the concept of past and future for conditioning to work -- you don't even need to REMEMBER the stuff that happens to you for it to condition you. So how much of the stuff we think is consciously learned is actually just conditioned response?

You don't think there is any sort of feeling or "emotion" that goes along with these dog's "guilty" behaviors? These dogs have no feelings whatsoever? Like dogs are indistiguishable from robots?

 

[CornBurrito]

The point is that you don't need to have the concept of past and future for conditioning to work -- you don't even need to REMEMBER the stuff that happens to you for it to condition you. So how much of the stuff we think is consciously learned is actually just conditioned response?

Depends on who you ask. B.F. Skinner would say ~100%.

 

[Mammoth Jones]

They're not. When I die the worms will have one hell of a feast. As they should. Life feeds on life last I checked. It's just the nature of reality.

 

[Escape Goat]

Flying squirrels

 

[GrandHarrier]

Dolphins.

I'd add whales too.

 

[CornBurrito]

They're not. When I die the worms will have one hell of a feast. As they should. Life feeds on life last I checked. It's just the nature of reality.

I'm pretty sure the OP is referring to humans. As in, is it immoral for humans to eat any animal. In which case I sure hope you find humans are off limits.

I'd add whales too.

Are whales even that smart? I swear I recall their intelligence being vastly overrated.

 

[Seanspeed]

I don't think the mirror test should be the ultimate test of whether or not an animal is self aware though. I mean, dogs obviously feel emotions like guilt, for instance.

Seriously. 'Self-aware' is such an ambiguous term in the first place anyways. If they're aware at all, they will no doubt be 'self'-aware at the same time. I'm not sure how they couldn't be. Evolution has most animals programmed to be. I even remember seeing a video of a bacteria trying to outrun a white blood cell. Thats pretty damn 'self aware' to me.

 

[Bossun]

Well there are/was some culture that were cannibalistic, either as ritual or punishment and didn't see anything wrong with it.
Don't have any problem with that as it was in their culture and was accepted.
Though eating humans comes with its fare share of deseases and thus is probably not worth it. And contact with outsiders probably showed them that they are way better meat out there.

In my case : everything can be eaten except endangered species. For personal reason probably won't eat dog or cat (though I probably ate dog without knowing).

 

[pigeon]

You don't think there is any sort of feeling or "emotion" that goes along with these dog's "guilty" behaviors? These dogs have no feelings whatsoever? Like dogs are indistiguishable from robots?

I'm not sure I'd go that far -- that's why my question to you was "how can you tell?" Your statement was that it was "obvious" that dogs have emotions, even ones as complicated as guilt. I am confident that it's not obvious. It's not even obvious when humans feign emotions! I think it's a complicated question that depends on what you think an emotion is and how you define individual emotions. I believe that my dog is a social animal that can feel loneliness or enjoyment, for example, but that's because those are more or less reactions to immediate circumstances. I am not sure he can feel boredom, and that's only a little bit more complicated. I have grave doubts about guilt, which requires cognitive functions -- such as the ability to connect past actions to present circumstances -- I know he doesn't possess.

 

[CornBurrito]

Seriously. 'Self-aware' is such an ambiguous term in the first place anyways. If they're aware at all, they will no doubt be 'self'-aware at the same time. I'm not sure how they couldn't be. Evolution has most animals programmed to be. I even remember seeing a video of a bacteria trying to outrun a white blood cell. Thats pretty damn 'self aware' to me.

No. You do not need self-awareness for movement. Plants move in response to the light, but it would be asinine to assume they have a mind that can generate thoughts that humans can.

It is possible for a mindless being to have sensory organs that allow it to respond to stimuli in the environment without conscious recognition of what it is doing. The bacteria does not need a mind or consciousness to try to escape a white blood cell. It would only need a chemoreceptor.

 

[Seanspeed]

No. You do not need self-awareness for movement. Plants move in response to the light, but it would be asinine to assume they have a mind that can generate thoughts that humans can.

Only goes to show that 'self-aware' is a very ambiguous term.

 

[Des0lar]

All forms of primates
Anything near extinction

Everything else is fair game imo, even if I wouldn't even most of the stuff like insects, dogs, cats, snails, frogs etc.
Just kill it in a humane way and don't torture the animals.

 

[Xeke]

Seriously. 'Self-aware' is such an ambiguous term in the first place anyways. If they're aware at all, they will no doubt be 'self'-aware at the same time. I'm not sure how they couldn't be. Evolution has most animals programmed to be. I even remember seeing a video of a bacteria trying to outrun a white blood cell. Thats pretty damn 'self aware' to me.

That is acting off of survival instinct.

 

[Seanspeed]

All forms of primates
Anything near extinction

Everything else is fair game imo, even if I wouldn't even most of the stuff like insects, dogs, cats, snails, frogs etc.
Just kill it in a humane way and don't torture the animals.

If people could, explain WHY they have the standards they do. Makes for a much more interesting and thoughtful discussion, I think.

 

[sappyday]

I would eat a rhino.

 

[CornBurrito]

Only goes to show that 'self-aware' is a very ambiguous term.

I use the definition of self-awareness provided by wikipedia: the capacity for introspection and the ability to reconcile oneself as an individual separate from the environment and other individuals.

Bacteria do not need this to move away from a white blood cell. Nor do plants need this to move in response to lights. It is always better to assume a behavior is the result of a lesser process before assigning to it some higher mental process.

 

[Seanspeed]

I use the definition of self-awareness provided by wikipedia: the capacity for introspection and the ability to reconcile oneself as an individual separate from the environment and other individuals.

Bacteria do not need this to move away from a white blood cell. Nor do plants need this to move in response to lights. It is always better to assume a behavior is the result of a lesser process before assigning to it some higher mental process.

By that definition, its nearly impossible to prove anything other than a human is 'self aware'. We certainly cant ask a dog if they "see themselves as an individual entity apart from their species counterparts" can we? If you want to bring the mirror test up, it should be known that not all dogs show the capacity for recognition. Yet they are all the same species.

What other test is there that proves 'self-awareness'?

 

[wenis]

As long as they're not endangered, they're fair game.

 

[Laughing Banana]

Cats.

I don't think I can be friends or even get near anyone that eat cats.

 

[Alligatorjandro]

dog or cat

I would never eat one

 

[Camp Lo]

Bats.
Pandas.

 

[Kitsunebaby]

I'm personally trying to conquer the animal kingdom one morsel at a time. No species is off limit.

 

[CornBurrito]

By that definition, its nearly impossible to prove anything other than a human is 'self aware'. We certainly cant ask a dog if they "see themselves as an individual entity apart from their species counterparts" can we? If you want to bring the mirror test up, it should be known that not all dogs show the capacity for recognition. Yet they are all the same species.

What other test is there that proves 'self-awareness'?

The mirror test is basically the only test I'm aware of, and I'd agree more tests need to be developed.

 

[DarkFlow]

I'm pretty sure I ate dog meat one time in Mexico, it was tasty.

 

[Dead Man]

I'm going to say the eating of none of them is wrong, but the killing may be depending on the population and intelligence level.

 

[JCG]

Cultural taboos aside...if they're actually going to be eaten, period, and not just killed for the sake of trying to sell them when the size of the demand is limited or is rather questionable as a whole....then most animals are fair game in practice. I'd say only those that are in a quantifiable danger of extinction shouldn't be killed under those circumstances.

 

[Goodacre0081]

1,000 cats saved from Chinese dining table after being discovered in cramped cages when truck crashed

cats!

 

[brianjones]

Would you eat a chimpanzee ? It's almost canabalism

 

[Paddington Bear]

Man

Edit: Manatee

 

[legbone]

i wonder if dolphins have conversations about whether it is wrong to try and fuck humans every chance they get?