[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by horn

what do you mean by reflection? they can certainly remember it... indeed they can be shown to learn from it. do you mean they can't experience the mental anguish of thinking they deserved the punishment?

I mean they can't mentally reflect on it. Or at least, I've seen no evidence. I'm not talking about "remembering" something - that seems fairly trivial - a log file is evidence of memory in some sense. I suppose I'm using reflection in the same sense Dennett uses the term second order introspection.

because some fantasies are more viable than others. the gist i get from most articles written on stem cell research and such is that the main restraint is not scientific/engineering ability, it's legislation and lack of funding.
in relation to our ability at this moment in time. i "think" we can actually :/

I'm pretty sure we cannot grow full humans without functioning brains. Yes, some religious and ethical concerns are probably slowing research but this is not the same as saying if the Christian right in America collapsed tomorrow we'd have clones by next Thursday. Feel free to provide evidence to the contrary of course.

Even if we could make non-thinking humans, it's not really clear that all drugs would be better tested on them than on chimps (say). The interaction of the mind and the body isn't very well understood at all, and so the random bits of the bind you're turning off (again, I'm not sure this would be trivial to achieve anyway) might have effects on the use of the drugs.

Overall this is a bit of a silly argument. The choice (right now, as MrL emphasises) is in some cases testing on mammals or not testing at all (or having to move towards the human stage of clinical trials prematurely). We don't have a clone army to test on. If and when we do (and we need no added incentive in this area - "spare parts" would be more than enough reward) then the debate will be different. Similarly, if someone works out a way to model these sorts of things on a computer reliably then there'll be no need for clinical tests at all (well, maybe).

isn't it the kind of gut wrenching feeling you get when you see someone beating the shit out of a dog that makes you question previous moral paradigms that seemed to fit so well?

On top of what MrL has already said on this topic I don't experience this reaction very strongly. Normally though these are just normal feelings of human empathy bleeding onto other subjects. As I've said previously, I once had a teacher who used to get strangely upset if books were mishandled, and even now (due to her influence) I still flinch if someone drops a book awkwardly on its "spine". I'd imagine most of the (fairly ridiculous in this country) animal empathy a lot of people seem to experience is cultural.

Our entire culture reeks of anthromorphism and from an early age we're taught to name individual animals, speak to them as if they could understand, that animals "love" us if we love them and so on. Hell, popular television programs and movies feature talking animals facing complex moral dilemmas, etc. In such an environment I'm not surprised that people experience "gut wrenching" feelings if they see someone beating a dog. To return to my book analogy, I'm sure in Saudi Arabia people would experience a gut wrenching reaction if someone burnt a copy of the Koran publicly - but so what?

normally it's the seemingly logical "well that could be me in that position", feeling that forces you to rethink. unfortunately with animals, a lacking neuroscience allows you to dismiss this feeling as nonsense. hopefully with time that will change.

A lacking neuroscience? Lacking what? I'm not really sure what neuroscience could show us. Cognitive science or behavioural research would seem to be the key fields here. If aliens (or robots) were introduced to us who clearly demonstrated what I'd term intelligent behaviour then I wouldn't care if their brains were different to ours, or if they shared 0% of our DNA or were made of silicon not carbon or whatever else.

On balance, I don't really see the need for a lot of what others would term "animal cruelty" - if only because it seems to upset a great many people. So while I have some liberty objections to cruelty laws I'm not overly bothered with them. However, when the possible risk to reducing animal "cruelty" is an increase risk to human subjects of clinical trials, or worse still a reduction in the advancement of medical science then I'm going to have to insist on a much stronger argument than the queasy stomaches of a few white affluent liberals.