Animals are sentient. They value their own lives, can feel pain and experience terror. Therefore, there are unavoidable moral considerations that come into play when we choose to raise them as livestock or hunt them.

However, they are not sapient.

Sapient means  having  wisdom and discernment.  Every animal has  all the wisdom and discerenment they need to survive according to their being.  Only when measured from the self serving human point of view they lack anything.  They don't need to know how to build bridges.

Have you ever thought about  the kinds of sophisticated calculations and muscle reactions  a bird needs  to fly  or a mosquito to bite in the proper place where he can find blood?

In any case, sapience   has nothing to do with wheter it is moral to kill them or not. If we are going to go with that, a lot of stupid humans would be skating on thin ice.

And, I think, the vegan/animal rights mentality takes the aforementioned moral considerations way too far, by trying to suggest animals should have the same moral consideration as human beings.

They are sentient beings, so they have the same moral considerations, since moral simply means respect for life.

Using that reasoning, plants should have the same level of moral consideration as animals.

Plants are not sentiemt beings. Sentient beings are not stuck in the ground.

That's not to say we should not also have moral consideration toward plants. But obviously, it does not bear the same weight as that toward animals, which in turn, should not bear the same weight as that toward human beings.

The AR/vegan mentality fails to see the fundamental difference in kind, upon which the weight of moral consideration rests. Therefore, it can not, or refuses to, recognize the nonsensical irrationality of, for example, giving a horse or a pig "personhood" in a court of law -- or suggesting that hunting is "murder."

Now you are getting into mental gymnastics.   Morality is not just an intellectual excercize. It is coming from a deeper source, the place where   empathy, love, respect, etc. are coming from.   Without those human aspects, there is no morality.

May 17, 2012 -- 5:12PM, arielg wrote:

Animals are sentient. They value their own lives, can feel pain and experience terror. Therefore, there are unavoidable moral considerations that come into play when we choose to raise them as livestock or hunt them.

However, they are not sapient.

Sapient means  having  wisdom and discernment.  Every animal has  all the wisdom and discerenment they need to survive according to their being.  Only when measured from the self serving human point of view they lack anything.  They don't need to know how to build bridges.

Have you ever thought about  the kinds of sophisticated calculations and muscle reactions  a bird needs  to fly  or a mosquito to bite in the proper place where he can find blood?

In any case, sapience   has nothing to do with wheter it is moral to kill them or not. If we are going to go with that, a lot of stupid humans would be skating on thin ice.

And, I think, the vegan/animal rights mentality takes the aforementioned moral considerations way too far, by trying to suggest animals should have the same moral consideration as human beings.

They are sentient beings, so they have the same moral considerations, since moral simply means respect for life.

Using that reasoning, plants should have the same level of moral consideration as animals.

Plants are not sentiemt beings. Sentient beings are not stuck in the ground.

That's not to say we should not also have moral consideration toward plants. But obviously, it does not bear the same weight as that toward animals, which in turn, should not bear the same weight as that toward human beings.

The AR/vegan mentality fails to see the fundamental difference in kind, upon which the weight of moral consideration rests. Therefore, it can not, or refuses to, recognize the nonsensical irrationality of, for example, giving a horse or a pig "personhood" in a court of law -- or suggesting that hunting is "murder."

Now you are getting into mental gymnastics.   Morality is not just an intellectual excercize. It is coming from a deeper source, the place where   empathy, love, respect, etc. are coming from.   Without those human aspects, there is no morality.

Then, by your own defiition, animals are outside of morality. (Which is what I think, btw.)

A bird flying or a mosquito finding blood are night signs of sentience. They are signs of motor function, and deeply ingrained instinct, some of which we share with animals. There is no "wisdom" in what animals do. Their senses and instincts guide them. 

However, our sapience is something far above and beyond that. Again, you seem to be arguing a difference only of degree, when, clearly, a difference of kind exists. Just as their exists a difference in kind between animals and plants, and plants and minerals. 

May 18, 2012 -- 7:46PM, Dondiegodelavega wrote:

What useful purpose does a wolf serve to the community, besides killing other animals and even people sometimes? As or me, I don't like them, never will. If I'm ever attacked by a wolf, I won't provoke it. I it tries to jump me, I'll tell it to go ahead, make my day, then help it to become extinct. We are superior to the wolves and we shouldn't have to put up with their threats. Now, if it bites me, I don't want to take that chance as it might turn me into a werewolf, or is that just a legend? If wolves are used to thin out the animal kingdom of whatever animal, then what's wrong with us hunters thinning out animals by hunting and killing then? I don't hunt.

Yeah, that's the worst part of living here in Wyoming. The darned wolves are always running up and trying to pee on me.

May 18, 2012 -- 11:39AM, arielg wrote:

Then, by your own defiition, animals are outside of morality. (Which is what I think, btw.)

They are not concerned with morality.  They don't have to reciprocate. Morality is of the human mind.    It is a problem  only for our conscience and free will.

A bird flying or a mosquito finding blood are night signs of sentience. They are signs of motor function, and deeply ingrained instinct, some of which we share with animals. There is no "wisdom" in what animals do. Their senses and instincts guide them.

Most people are not much more than that, although they have the capàcity to go beyond. 

 There are many depictions of beings half animal, half human. An animal  has to develop into a human. It is a conscious process. It doesn't happen automatically.

However, our sapience is something far above and beyond that. Again, you seem to be arguing a difference only of degree, when, clearly, a difference of kind exists. Just as their exists a difference in kind between animals and plants, and plants and minerals.

Our sapience was  developped to substitute for  instincts, which  humans no longer go by.

The whole point of morality is that it is not a difference in degree only, but a diffference in kind. 

 One is the  automatic reactions of animals and the  other the enlightened perception  of humans, guided  by  wisdom, as opposed to   reactions based on instinct.

That is why we cannot be guided by what animals do and justify our ways based on what they do. We have to find our own ways. What may work for them in their animalness, doesn't necessarily work for us.

I don't have any fundamental disagreement with anything you say here.