RE: Can I just say, and I'm just being honest...
March 27, 2018 at 2:59 pm
(This post was last modified: March 27, 2018 at 3:07 pm by Catholic_Lady.)
(March 27, 2018 at 2:33 pm)Losty Wrote: I would eat a fertilized chicken egg if it tasted good.
Same here. I generally don't like the idea that we eat animals because I feel sorry for them, but I'm too much of a foodie to be a vegetarian. Cooking and eating are one of my passions/hobbies. I try to buy organic because I figure they are treated better that way.
(March 27, 2018 at 2:33 pm)Hammy Wrote:(March 27, 2018 at 2:09 pm)Losty Wrote: I don’t understand why it’s up for debate. It seems like a commonly accepted scientific fact that poultry are sentient vertebrates....am I missing something?
I don't think science addresses consciousness much. Unless I'm missing something. Science talks about neurophysiology and brains but no one knows for sure where to draw the line between how much a brain needs to be developed before something is conscious. The question "How advanced does an animal's brain need to be neurophysiologically before we can consider it to actually have a consciousness rather than merely behave like it does from the perspective of people who anthropomorphize it?" I think such questions are more philosophical than scientific. Science can study brains and find real data about how advanced a brain is and what the brain is capable of, but whether that brain is actually advanced enough to have its own first person perspective seems more of a question for philosophy than science because despite the fact that scientists know that consciousness must reside somewhere in the brain, no scientist has ever been able to locate it. We only know consciousness from our own perspective, and we understandably rationally infer that others similar to us must have their own perspectives, but how far back down the evolutionary line you have to go back before you get to a creature that isn't conscious... no one really knows that. Anyway, that's my take on it.
Sentience isn't always an an on/off thing. It's on a sliding scale. We are more sentient than chickens, and chickens are more sentient than earth worms, who are more sentient than bacteria.
"Of course, everyone will claim they respect someone who tries to speak the truth, but in reality, this is a rare quality. Most respect those who speak truths they agree with, and their respect for the speaking only extends as far as their realm of personal agreement. It is less common, almost to the point of becoming a saintly virtue, that someone truly respects and loves the truth seeker, even when their conclusions differ wildly."
-walsh
-walsh