🚀 go-pugleaf

Tormod V. Burkey writes:
>We do not know and probably never will know anything about other animal's
>concepts of fairness or justice, or lack thereof. This is prejudice, and
>has nothing to do in a scientific forum. We do not have the ability to
>communicate with other species to hear their views on fairness and justice
>(or lack thereof), nor do we have instruments to tell us what they may be
>thinking (or _whether_ they are thinking).

Justice and fairness are concepts created and defined by human beings in a
human context. Since we have no data to suggest equivalent process or
constructs in other creatures we must say that, given the complete lack of
evidence to the contrary, that these concepts are exclusively human. Hence
their application to the natural world must be seen as the artificial
imposition of a human  conceptual framework. The danger is that
we may project our own concepts of fairness and justice onto nature,
and then read them back implying that they have a deeper extra-human basis.
This has happened repeatedly. In the middle ages the natural world was
seen as a set of allegories which reflected the teachings of the church. In
the nineteenth century Spencer and other social darwinists, saw a natural
justification for the disparities of wealth and opportunity created by the
industrial revolution. I do not see more justification for creating an ethic
of wilderness preservation based on a higher-extra-human law of
trans-species fairness and justice. I do not see any evidence for the
existence for such a thing, and I think that it is  unnecessary in any case.
Numerous, completely valid reasons to preserve the wilderness exist
within the human framework, insuring our survival as a species being
only the most prominent.

Later Burkey writes:
>I strongly suspect that people who profess views as those expressed by
>Jonathan Haskett and others time and time again, have had an overexposure
>to Judeo-Christianity in their formative years or else have not endeavored
>to think critically about the dogma popularly accepted in human societies
>(and our ability to test it).

It is often dangerous to base an argument especially in a scientific forum on
position for which there is no evidence. Dr. Burkey, knows *nothing*
about my upbringing especially during my formative years. As a matter of
fact it was secular almost in the extreme, our family never attended religious
services, and only entered a church to look at the architecture. In any case,
even if I had spent my entire childhood taking up serpents and speaking in
tongues, it would have no bearing on the truth or falsehood of my argument.
It is a trick Dr. Burkey is using, well characterized by Thouless, of attacking
your opponent in a debate rather than the argument being made (ad hominum
being the net shorthand for this approach). Here the premise is that anyone
holding my position is a religious fanatic (since early childhood) or too lazy
to use their analytical powers. The other possibility, that having used one's
intellect on this subject, one might reach a different conclusion from
Dr. Burkey, is excluded. This is not a position I agree with.

***********************
Jonathan Haskett
jhaskett@asrr.arsusda.gov
***********************