What is an non-human animal?

[The Feral Underclass]

I am interested to know what people think a non-human animal is, how they relate to humans and why. Do people reject the non-human animal label? Do you think there is a profound difference between "animals" and "humans? If so, what is it, why and how does this inform our relationship with "animals"? Also, how do these views relate to your politics and why?

[Jimmie Higgins]

Well only humans can have this discussion for one thing. I do think there is a difference in consious choice of how we relate to the rest of life and the environment in general - politically I think it means we have an obligation to try and direct our efforts in a non-harmful way (which means getting rid of capitalism and rule by the few).

[Jimmie Higgins]

Interesting question by the way.

Oh and for the non-human animal term... well personally I think it's kind of a silly jargon-y term. But I do think there are other animals who have their own intelligence or experiences and whatnot. I don't think humans are superior to animals in some abstract way - I just think there is a concrete difference in our ability to socially determine how we relate to the environment - something that most animals for whatever reason can not do and so that means that dolphins - despite being intelligent - can't really liberate humans whereas humans can change they way we impact (or not) dolphins.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

I don't know about non-humans, but for what sets humans apart?

Complex language, and through it complex communications, mass conscious terraforming of the world around them for their own needs, distinct differentiating social cultures and adaptability come to mind.

There is an interesting book out there called Who asked the first question? by Joseph Jordania, which delves into origin of human language and the remarkable ability of human beings to ask questions, a trait not found in any known species (speech, language and relaying information through answers can be found in many primates, such as Gorillas and Bonobos, and even some birds, but none of these animals can independently ask a question) and which underlies all human society as we know it.

This thread is actually a perfect example of that truly human trait. :lol:

[The Feral Underclass]

I am more interested in understanding what people think a non-human is i.e. what is it's social, cultural, actual position and purpose in the world.

Is an animal a social construct? Why is our sapience lauded as the point of separation when we can't fly or breath under water for example? Does this narrow understanding of our differences not pre-suppose a human-centric view of the planet?

[Ele'ill]

Check out some of the previous animal liberation threads.

[The Feral Underclass]

Check out some of the previous animal liberation threads.

Why?

[Jimmie Higgins]

I am more interested in understanding what people think a non-human is i.e. what is it's social, cultural, actual position and purpose in the world.I'm not quite sure what you mean here. What a non-human is to human culture and place in the world? I guess as far as movements to grant "rights" to non-human animals - I don't know - rights are really only as good as people are able to defend them, so I think of it as the right of humans to have a say in how we relate to the natural world. And why should chimps or other animals that have human charateristics be given more consideration than other animals? Because they are more "like us"? Shouldn't we just be trying to just have a less harmful and exploitative relationship to nature in general - reducing unnecissary harm (as in I'm ok if people want to eat meat, I have more of a problem with how capitalism achieves this).


Is an animal a social construct? I'd say it certaintly is on a number of levels. First that human society in creating different relationships to the natural world, then in a sense begins to see a difference between themselves and the natural world (not necissarily a difference in superiority/inferiority, but in the sense of begining to cultivate and shape the natural world with a level of consious intent.

Second in a more specific context, class societies have tended to divide up and categorize the world into human-uses. Where there is less ridged class distinctions this doesn't seem to have meant an automatically destructive exploitative relationship with nature - I've read about many examples of customs designed to more or less maintain sustainability because a community would need to ensure that the parts of nature that they used would not be depleted. There's evidence of natural resources and animals being destroyed too, but as far as I can tell it doesn't seem to have been systematic. In capitalism this has been more the norm because of the way the class system is and the need to accumulate quickly for its own sake rather than accumulating things as needed.


Why is our sapience lauded as the point of separation when we can't fly or breath under water for example?Good question and I don't think this should be the basis for understanding the relationship of man and nature. Other animals can be intellient in the way we normally think of (human) intelligence - other creatures can be intelliegent in evolutionary/adaptive ways that do not seem to be at all what we think of as human intelligence.


Does this narrow understanding of our differences not pre-suppose a human-centric view of the planet?If intelligence or wisdom is the basis for understanding differences, then I would say it's totally a human-centric view.

However I do think there are differences, and as I said in the my first post, I think the difference is not in an abstract sense of intelligence but in the ability of human society to change it's relationship to nature for good or bad.

[LovingEmbrace]

I am interested to know what people think a non-human animal is, how they relate to humans and why. Do people reject the non-human animal label? Do you think there is a profound difference between "animals" and "humans? If so, what is it, why and how does this inform our relationship with "animals"? Also, how do these views relate to your politics and why?

when i was a little brat. i identified more with. squirrels. foxes. wild animals. than other kids. i was a feral kid. often spending days. alone. in the woods. lying down on a log. over a purling brook. feeling the sense of wood. filling my nostrils. while i could hear. animals. pass. by. feeling. the bark. of the log. against my. skin.

[Sotionov]

As Peter Singer said: "All the arguments to prove man's superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering the animals are our equals." I therefore support that animals should have the same rights as humans without natural/legal capacity, that is- that we a duty not to do harm to animals, as much as we have that duty towards all non-reasoned humans (children, retarded, demented, etc).

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

It is interesting to consider that - in terms of content more than form I mean - only humans could be having such a discussion as we are presently having.

That, combined with our more complex understanding and usage of language and communication and other characteristics, does set us apart in some sense from 'non-human animals'. However, that alone is no justification for not having any responsibility towards animal welfare.

Consider this: a domestic dog may have the basic 'fight or flight' instinct. If my dog senses that i'm going to close the door and she's sitting in the doorway, she'll scarper. If something startles her, her first instinct will be to jump out of the way. BUT - and this is a big but - a dog can go through their whole lives not witnessing the concept of death, and thus having no conscious understanding of what death entails. One could go further and say that a domestic dog, kept by a middle-class family in a developed country, that is never mal-treated, that every day is given nutritious food, enough exercise, love, attention and companionship, would never experience suffering, and thus would have no conscious understanding of what suffering is. Humans, however, through our developed social structures, communication networks and highly developed skills for language combined with an inquisitive nature, cannot fail to witness death and suffering, and understand them as concepts, at least on the most basic level - death happens to all of us and means we are no more, suffering causes a varying level of misery at the individual level, and is a societal bad. One may come to the conclusion (i.e. my conclusion) is that, due to this advanced understanding of such concepts, we have some sort of responsibility for such animals. Of course, we cannot prevent death (at least not in the long-run), but we can prevent un-necessary death, and un-necessary suffering and, in the cases where premature death occurs (for example, to satisfy the carnivorous desires of humans), then we can at least hope to mitigate the suffering of individual animals, by reducing our total meat consumption at a world/society level (this could be done by distributing food more efficiently, for starters). So for me, that means advocating improvements to animal welfare, attempting to reduce meat consumption across the board (not necessarily advocating vegetarianism, nor advocating that the poor should cut out meat based on the price of meat relative to their incomes but rather, that we should enable some mechanism where excess meat is not consumed, and that it is pointless to kill 10 cows if we only require/want/desire the meat of 8 cows, with 2 cows as excess/wasted meat) etc.

A second point is thus - whilst we may be, for example in language, more complex than 'non-human animals', there are also things we are bound to share with animals that we cannot change (at least not at the moment). Chief among these is land. We need x/amount of land for x/number of people to live in relative comfort, animals need a certain amount of land to live in relative comfort, for prey to run and hide, for mother animals to nest, for predatory animals to chase, find food etc. So, for me, a consequence of this shared environment is that it is in our interests to protect the environment for animals, because we share the same environment and, where animals' habitats are destroyed, the most common cause is humans. A secondary consequence of this is that, wherever animal species die out prematurely (by this, I don't mean being killed off by natural causes, or dying because their prey die off from natural causes, but where an animal is actively killed off by humans, or its prey is killed off by humans, thus putting it at a competitive disadvantage and at higher risk of extinction), humans bear some responsibility and blame. So a conclusion I draw from this is that, whilst the planet can support a larger population of humans than it currently does, and it is really idiotic to suggest that the total world population is a problem, we do need to find a more efficient distribution of populations. Big cities, with huge sprawling suburbs, seem to have been the choice for a long time for expanding populations, mainly due to the need for mass (or something approaching mass) production to satisfy economies of scale on the macro level, and the need to (attempt to) equilibrate the demand and supply of labour, and the skillset of the labour force, on the other. In a post-capitalist world, it may perhaps be feasible, wherever population explosions occur, to attempt a distribution of the new population that doesn't result in building huge, polluting cities on top of areas where animals used to live, effectively killing them off. What irks me is the population doomsday types in the UK, for example, who moan about supposedly un-supportable population totals, but then fail to consider that there are HUGE swathes of the country that support a moderate-to-low population density quite easily; the population only becomes unsustainable when population density is increidbly high. This may not be so much of a problem for humans (I really don't find London OVERLY crowded, in many respects), but it certainly kills off much of the habitat for animals. Looking forward to areas of the world that will develop in the medium-to-long term, such as large swathes of Southern and Eastern Africa, and currently under-developed areas of Latin America, it should really be a key policy goal to manage the inevitable population expansion a bit better - not to attempt to control population, but to have a more efficient spread of populations to ensure that we are not harming the long-term prospects and welfare of the animals who we share the environment with.

Just my two cents.

[Lord Hargreaves]

The term non-human animal does a number of things:

#1) it "animalizes" human beings, by refusing to see "non-human animal" as a tautology (It reminds us to avoid that particular hubris). We can think of "human" as a subcategory of "animal".

#2) it puts the emphasis on what we (human and non-human animals) share - our animality - as our most important characteristic from the moral standpoint. We have a dual typology of "human animal" and "non-human animal", both subcategories of animal.

#3) but at the same time it problematizes "animal" as a homogeneous, catch-all term, or "animal" as a single ontological category. The purely negating designation "non-human" tells us nothing about the animal, but then hopefully we can see that neither does "animal". The term "animal" makes sense only in relation to "human" - usually in order to distinguish animals from human - but also (as in #1 and #2) in order to emphasize their union. If this problematization works we might be able to go even further to look at "species" too, so as to better understand each individual being and its own unique needs, rather than understand it in terms of the lazy speciesism that says we should treat each animal as simply a replica of an original genus

[Rooiakker]

I'm going to approach this from a different perspective. This logic that humans do XYZ is exactly what starts the dehumanization of people with disabilities. Humans can use complex language, unless they have a disability that prevents this.

To see someone that is "severely" Autistic, or having another disability that effects cognitive performance as non-human is disgustingly ableist. This same logic is used to justify killing them.

I'm disabled, and a vegan. I see too many correlations to ignore.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

I'm going to approach this from a different perspective. This logic that humans do XYZ is exactly what starts the dehumanization of people with disabilities. Humans can use complex language, unless they have a disability that prevents this.

To see someone that is "severely" Autistic, or having another disability that effects cognitive performance as non-human is disgustingly ableist. This same logic is used to justify killing them.

I'm disabled, and a vegan. I see too many correlations to ignore.

I think you're making a category mistake here. When people talk of humans having complex communication and culture, they are talking about humans as a species, rather than as individuals. If there are individual humans who lack such abilities, well they're the exceptions and are not typical of the species. But more often than not, humans have cognitive abilities that surpass that of animals, much like how more often than not it is that humans have two legs. Losing a leg doesn't make anyone less human, so why should cognitive shortcomings disqualify an individual? I see no good reason.

[DasFapital]

Our high level of sentience is what makes us unique from other animals. It has it's evolutionary advantages and disadvantages like the traits of other species. Does it have long term survival value? Maybe. Single celled organisms seem to do just fine without it.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Dolphins. Crows.

[Sotionov]

What is a human animal?

"I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure."

[blake 3:17]

I am more interested in understanding what people think a non-human is i.e. what is it's social, cultural, actual position and purpose in the world.

Is an animal a social construct? Why is our sapience lauded as the point of separation when we can't fly or breath under water for example? Does this narrow understanding of our differences not pre-suppose a human-centric view of the planet?

Huh? Human beings are animals. Dogs don't fly.

Of course, one's corporeal being, which for anybody writing on the internet, is human and social in particular ways going to make us see in particular ways.

[Luís Henrique]

As Peter Singer said: "All the arguments to prove man's superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering the animals are our equals."

And suffering is the end all be all of everything... exactly why?


I therefore support that animals should have the same rights as humans without natural/legal capacity, that is- that we a duty not to do harm to animals, as much as we have that duty towards all non-reasoned humans (children, retarded, demented, etc).

This looks like duties for people, not rights for non-human animals.

Luís Henrique

[Sotionov]

And suffering is the end all be all of everything... exactly why?
Suffering is the reason we think it's not ok to go around and kill people.


This looks like duties for people, not rights for non-human animals.
Your right means my duty and vice-versa, they're correlates.

[Luís Henrique]

Suffering is the reason we think it's not ok to go around and kill people.

Sorry, I am not included in that "we". Suffering is definitely not the reason I don't think it is OK to go around and kill people.


Your right means my duty and vice-versa, they're correlates.

Not like that. My duty means someone else's right, not something else's right. I can't chop a tree that doesn't belong to me (and, in some cases, not even one that does belong to me), but this doesn't mean the tree has a right (its proprietor if it is property, the public if it is part of the commons, society at large if it is an endangered or otherwise protected species, etc.)

Luís Henrique

[Sotionov]

Suffering is definitely not the reason I don't think it is OK to go around and kill people.
No? Then on what do you base your 'moral community', i.e. according to you what trait puts someone into a group what warrants consideration? Reason?

[Luís Henrique]

No? Then on what do you base your 'moral community', i.e. according to you what trait puts someone into a group what warrants consideration? Reason?

I don't think the issue is "what traits" put someone into a group, but rather what kinds of rule make a group possible or impossible, better or worse. With no legal or moral restriction of the right to kill others (meaning other human beings, not animals or plants), no communitary life is possible, so this is the reason I don't think it is OK to go around and kill people.

If suffering was the base of morals, we would have to forbid the bearing of children for starters, which wouldn't be very conducive to communitary life either.

Luís Henrique

[Sotionov]

Community can exist with a lot of kiling. You can have ultra-violent fascist nationalism (even coupled with cannibalism) and still have a tight-knit community life inside those groups.

Any view you have about killing, rape, torture etc. can only be consistent with having suffering in mind, otherwise you'd be ok with a lot of nasty stuff, which I don't thinkg basicaly no one is.

E.g. let's try this, humor me with a few answers. I'm going to assume that you, like anyone sane, thinks that torturing animals is bad. E.g. someone taking a knife and inflicting pain to a dog because he's a sick motherfucker, I think I can safely take it for granted that we all think that that's bad. Now, why do you think that torturing animals is bad?

[Luís Henrique]

Community can exist with a lot of kiling. You can have ultra-violent fascist nationalism (even coupled with cannibalism) and still have a tight-knit community life inside those groups.

Indeed. But in anyway, those are certainly regulated killings. Unregulated killing would make society impossible - and this is the reason I am not OK with going around and killing people. The reasons why I am also not OK with ultra-violent fascist nationalism, or cannibalism, are of course different.


Any view you have about killing, rape, torture etc. can only be consistent with having suffering in mind, otherwise you'd be ok with a lot of nasty stuff, which I don't thinkg basicaly no one is.

Well, no. Why would anyone be OK with "nasty stuff"? There are other reasons, besides "suffering", to oppose "nasty stuff", and indeed to consider stuff nasty.


E.g. let's try this, humor me with a few answers. I'm going to assume that you, like anyone sane, thinks that torturing animals is bad. E.g. someone taking a knife and inflicting pain to a dog because he's a sick motherfucker, I think I can safely take it for granted that we all think that that's bad. Now, why do you think that torturing animals is bad?

I think it is a symptom of mental disease, and an indicator that such a person might inflict similar treatment upon people. If one makes drawings of people and then tear or burn them up in rage, I would similarly think it a symptom of mental disease, and fear that it might be a first step in the direction of actual violence - even though the drawings obviously don't suffer.

Luís Henrique

[Sotionov]

I think it is a symptom of mental disease, and an indicator that such a person might inflict similar treatment upon people.
Ok. As far as I can see you would think that inflicting similar treatment upon people would be bad. Why? Can you state the reason why you think so?

[Ele'ill]

I am interested to know what people think a non-human animal is,

animals other than humans (?)



how they relate to humans and why.

What do you mean by relate (I know I am relatively late getting to this thread but I don't want to read through it and feel enticed into certain discussion that is already going on elsewhere (as well as conversations here honestly))

I would say other animals bond with one another. I think humans are advanced but we can see other animals bond in ways that are meaningful to them, and we can see the results from forced separation.


Do people reject the non-human animal label?

I don't understand the 'non-human animal' emphasis



Do you think there is a profound difference between "animals" and "humans? If so, what is it, why and how does this inform our relationship with "animals"? Also, how do these views relate to your politics and why?

I think there is a difference between humans and other animals (and animals and other animals) but there is a spectrum of physical feeling and emotional feeling that overlaps or comes close to overlapping depending on the animals.

[Bea Arthur]

Humans have a unique ability to reason in highly abstract ways, enabling them to universalize from specific experiences and infer complex cause-effect relationships. This places on humans the additional burden most animals do not have: to treat not only other humans with dignity and benevolence, but all other animals as well.

[Luís Henrique]

Ok. As far as I can see you would think that inflicting similar treatment upon people would be bad. Why? Can you state the reason why you think so?

Of course. I might be one of the victims of such psychopath.

Luís Henrique

[Sotionov]

Can you state why would one, even more if a victim, think that such treatment is bad?

[Decolonize The Left]

I am interested to know what people think a non-human animal is, how they relate to humans and why. Do people reject the non-human animal label? Do you think there is a profound difference between "animals" and "humans? If so, what is it, why and how does this inform our relationship with "animals"? Also, how do these views relate to your politics and why?

IMHO, non-human animals are animals without language. Almost all animals have a variety of forms of communication, but none have a set of symbols which can be re-organized to form an infinite number of meanings (my simple definition of language as opposed to the more broad: communication).

Non-human animals (dogs, sheep, whales, whatever) are just animals without language. Some may even have meaning-structures but they don't have language. That is all.

[Luís Henrique]

Can you state why would one, even more if a victim, think that such treatment is bad?

We usually act in the way of self-preservation.

Luís Henrique

[Sotionov]

You're not answering my question. Why do you think that torturing people is bad?

[MarxSchmarx]

As materialists, we should commit ourselves to the perspective that all non-Homo members of the heterotrophic, multicellular eukaryotic lineages lacking cell walls - from jelly-fish to butterflies to whales to crocodiles - consistute non-human animals.

The only other taxonomic group that I lose sleep over as to whether they are "non-human animals" are the Australopithocine, although Paranthropus I can see some faint resemblences I am agnostic. I will leave it up to paleontologists to figure out the fate of Ardipithecus.

I do not believe it to be a matter of this or that trait (language, religion, whatever), but rather a matter of ancestry. Any member of the animal kingdom, except the fossil groups I mention above, that does not share the most recent common ancester of the genus Homo should be, by definition, a non-human animal.

[CyM]

On this planet, Humans are the pinnacle of an evolutionary chain stretching back from dumb molecules tending to clump into complex chains, through single celled organisms and the beginnins of life, through the cambrian explosion, through the first animals to walk the earth, through all the shades of consciousness to the qualitative leap into molding the world around us and human consciousness. In the human brain, matter became aware of itself.

This does not mean we should treat other life in a cruel way. Neither does it mean there are no more developed species in the universe. But it does mean the earth centers around its most highly developed species, and it is that species that must bring harmony to its incredible power to shape the universe.

It is no use being able to recombine matter like gods if we create a bunch of waste that kills us and life around us as a byproduct.

[Jimmie Higgins]

You're not answering my question. Why do you think that torturing people is bad?Basic empathy - there is no ends justified by the means of torturing for the sake of creating pain in the abstract. But such abstract moralism doesn't actually play out this way in real life: capitalists do this to excuse their wars or torturing people (to find the baddie with the a-bomb hidden in the city on a timer! :P), but a more common example would be killing in self-defense - it is "moral" because there is a justifyable reason for doing this. But maybe a better example for this thread: if people are omnivores and need to eat meat, they will cause animals pain to get that meat - but not for the sake of pain, so most people see this as "reasonable". In fact with a lot of tradditional practices, minimizing pain and not depopulating were built into practices as "custom".

Capitalism, however is "unreasonable" to most people on an abstract level because we don't understand why animals would be systematically tortured by meat producers in the form of cramped living conditions, brutal treatment, hormones, etc. But it is not "unreasonable" to capital since such methods maximize profits; it becomes "reasonable" and moral within the framework of capitalism.

Some people still may not like this and because they just want the "use value" - the "food" they will protest "inhumane" treatment of animals, others will say, "well people need to eat, so whatchagunnado?". This is a problem for abstract moralism because it pits starving people and animal suffering against eachother (but this only has to be true in capitalism).

Capitalism is most effective when it convinces us that their methods are the more "rational" and "efficient" and "only" way to do things. However, I think if you look at many band societies, even many class societies, you don't see this sort of thing. Small subsistance farmers, tradditional hunters, people who lived off of lakes, etc - more often than not seem to have had a more balanced, less wasteful, and less callous relationship with (respect for, even) the natural world that helped sustain them.

So it's not a matter of abstract morality, it's a matter of organization - how do we produce what we need in order to survive. Do we strip everything to accumulate accumulation, or do we try and maintain some harmony so that we know there will still be fish for us to have the next year? A society based on minority rule and enrichement of the few by the enslavement of the many, is more likely to exploit the natural world as it does labor - a society of mutual benifit and collective production and decision-making is more likely to protect our mutual well-being which means also ensuring sustainability.

[Sotionov]

Some people still may not like this and because they just want the "use value" - the "food" they will protest "inhumane" treatment of animals, others will say, "well people need to eat, so whatchagunnado?". This is a problem for abstract moralism because it pits starving people and animal suffering against eachother (but this only has to be true in capitalism). Actually pitting starving people and animal suffering agianst eachother was only true in pre-modern era eskimo and similar tribal communities that had no option of agriculture or viable transportation of food from agricultural communities.

You mention empathy. I don't see the point of empathy without abstract moralism making it clear and concrete. We are rational beings, we have the ability for abstract thought, and we have the moral intuition of which empathy is a huge part, but without abstract moralism, or what Rawls called 'reflective equilibrium', it's a pointless notion to discuss or even to have.

E.g. a core prescriptive notion of empathy on which basically we can all agree on is that inflicting harm [pain and death] (to beings that don't want to have the pain and death inflicted on them) should not be done for mere pleasure, being that we can all recognize that as cruel behavior, something totally opposite to empathy.

When we then add a simple fact that there is no need for eating meat, being that one can easily be alive, healthy and strong without eating it, the only possible conclusion is that killing animals for food is actually killing them is not for need, but for pleasure.

The "abstract moralism", that is- rational reflection allows us to see that the core notion of empathy that basically we all accept is in contradiction with what most of us do.

[Comrade #138672]

Actually pitting starving people and animal suffering agianst eachother was only true in pre-modern era eskimo and similar tribal communities that had no option of agriculture or viable transportation of food from agricultural communities.

You mention empathy. I don't see the point of empathy without abstract moralism making it clear and concrete. We are rational beings, we have the ability for abstract thought, and we have the moral intuition of which empathy is a huge part, but without abstract moralism, or what Rawls called 'reflective equilibrium', it's a pointless notion to discuss or even to have.This may be a stupid question, but how would abstract moralism make empathy more concrete?


E.g. a core prescriptive notion of empathy on which basically we can all agree on is that inflicting harm [pain and death] (to beings that don't want to have the pain and death inflicted on them) should not be done for mere pleasure, being that we can all recognize that as cruel behavior, something totally opposite to empathy.

When we then add a simple fact that there is no need for eating meat, being that one can easily be alive, healthy and strong without eating it, the only possible conclusion is that killing animals for food is actually killing them is not for need, but for pleasure.

The "abstract moralism", that is- rational reflection allows us to see that the core notion of empathy that basically we all accept is in contradiction with what most of us do.I think this conception of moralism is pretty idealist.

What do you think about Rawls? Are his ideas of any use to the Left? What do you think about the veil of ignorance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance_(philosophy))?

[Thirsty Crow]

I am more interested in understanding what people think a non-human is i.e. what is it's social, cultural, actual position and purpose in the world. Social and "cultural", it depends on the species I suppose. As for purpose, no single living being on this planet (as well as the planet itself, the Solar System and so on) has a "purpose". That is, if you do not hold one variant of a theist or deist teleology.

[Luís Henrique]

You're not answering my question. Why do you think that torturing people is bad?

I think that the consequences and premises of rules that allow torture of people lead to inequality and oppression.

Luís Henrique

[Sotionov]

I think that the consequences and premises of rules that allow torture of people lead to inequality and oppression
Why do you think that inequality and oppression are bad?

[Luís Henrique]

Why do you think that inequality and oppression are bad?

They are against my class interests.

Now, you complained that I was not answering your question. But your unending questions, which seek to find something that isn't there - some kind of absolute foundation for law or morals - begin by you answering a question with another question. So back to my long unanswered question, what makes "suffering" the end all be all of everything? Based on such criterion, why is my dentist allowed to cause me pain, but a police officer is not?

Luís Henrique