Re: the value of animal life

[nd603@soton.ac.uk]

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the most obvious counter to david is the fact that animals are capable of
cognitive, rational thought, even if not to the same level as humans. the
wealth of evidence to support this is overwhelming - all you have to do is
to tell a dog to fetch a ball, or sit, to know that there is some level of
reasoning going on, or they wouldn't be able to associate the word with the
action.don't forget that they are also synaesthesing here, turning sound
information, of a frankly abstract nature, into a physical movement (not to
mention aticipating a reward, which requires a judgement on the probable
outcome of their actions.

i'm not suggesting here that an animal is capable of human levels of
reasoning, except the primates, such as the chimp who learned to
communicate in american sign language, or the bonobo who appears to have
developed some words of his own.not learned, but created.in the early 19th
century people also believed orangutans to be a type of human, who no
longer needed language,as they could communicate telepathically.naive, but
it shows how blurred the lines can be.

 humans are a particularly developed type of animal, but we are still an
animal. although as my previous email suggests, sometimes it seems notjust
that we take animal lives for worthless, but other human lives too.


nick




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