Dolphin Slaughter in Taiji Begins September

[cranks]

I like heated discussions, not a flaming war.
What should I do...

OK. I'll muddle things up.

Originally Posted by Columbine

Please appreciate that the slant will have to make a return on this

I can't believe you called me the slant, Columbine!!!

[PitneyTrocke]

I think that it is just the cruelty of the slaughter that bothers me most. If they just humanely killed these animals then it would be different.

Just like someone else said, some cultures eat dog and that is ok. Eating these animals is no different than a cow, sheep, chicken, or pig. We've just grown to have emotional attachments and we think that they now have human traits.

I think that the killing is also a little strange because where I live people go hunting. But you don't see them rounding up deer into a valley and then shooting the crap out of them.

[Ronin4hire]

Originally Posted by cranks

OK. So there are numerous reasons for you shouldn't eat babies. And when it comes to babies, it is not about self-awareness. But when it comes to dolphins, it is self-awareness.

Why the difference?

Also, eating dolphins wouldn't make an unhealthy society, at least Japanese people think so. And if a baby dolphin has a potential for self-awareness, why don't pigs have the "potential" for it? Is it OK to eat a baby if the mother has died and nobody's around?

I can come up with just as many examples too.

It shouldnt be difficult to grasp.

The difference is because self awareness matters in the case of animals.

In the case of babies who arent self aware, there are other factors as why you would not want to eat it.

With regard to pigs, Columbine suggested that they passed a certain test. She didnt say that they were self aware. In fact she pointed out that Pigs dont mourn or feel remorse for their own dead.

If more tests are done to show that Pigs ARE self aware then I will change my position to include pigs too.

Originally Posted by cranks

The thing is, in the western philosophy, "self" has been reserved for human and for human only. Dogs don't have self. Pigs don't have self. Cows don't have self. And Whales don't have self. This is the view that has been held for more than 2000 years since the Greek invented "philosophy".

Now you are trying to expand the idea of "self" to dogs and whales, which, of and by itself, I agree with. I think it is absurd to think that only humans have selves. But how can you "know" which species at what development stage acquire selves? You can't. Science can't even answer a simple question, "What is self?". It is a feeling we think we all share, and we know it's there. But every time we try to define its boundary, it evades us. The Greek solution was that they "defined" it was something that humans have. You can't go wrong with this one. It's in the definition.

The eastern solution though, was that they thought we all had a bit of self. The amount of which, we don't know. The good old eastern gray area tactic. We feel a human has more self than a dog, and insects probably have teeny tiny selves too. Have you heard of the saying "一寸の虫にも五分の魂"?

So, you, and a lot of westerners, justify eating animals by saying they don't have "self". Japanese people don't justify it. They simply take other "selves" because they need to, not because they are permitted to by some logic. And you are supposed to thank other "selves" you take to sustain your own. Hence "いただきます".

Saying "Pigs don't have selves" is a sacrilege to pigs' selves which Japanese believe they have. It is important to show respect to the taken "selves" and not waste the bodies they left in this material world. Now that contradicts with the amount of food Japanese are wasting but that's a different discussion.

Anyway, a history lessen. Japan abounded her seclusion policy 150 years ago. Why? An American guy called Matthew Perry came all the way from the states with a squadron and pointed cannons at Edo castle, scared the shit out of the Shogun. Perry wanted Japanese ports open to… American whaling ships. Americans didn't eat whale meat (what a sacrilege! :P). They just took oil from them and discarded the carcasses. They hunted and hunted and hunted until the whales almost became extinct. You might say it was long time ago, but Japan is a country with a very long history. People in Kyoto still talk about The War, 応仁の乱, which happened in 1467.

Now, I can't stop you from thinking you are morally superior to people in Taichi, but to their view, and this is merely one way of seeing things, you are one of the people who came from the west, bullied Japanese because they wanted to hunt whales, profaned whales' "selves", and made them almost extinct. You also don't have the moral value of respecting other animal selves sans whales and dogs. You actually look morally lower to their eyes. I'm not judging you, and it is not my "opinion", I'm just trying to present their side of view.

I don't know how you will take this soap box speech of mine, but one thing for sure is your "logic" of "whales have selves, and pigs don't" is not just something that doesn't wash in Japan, but it actually sounds morally low and hippocratic. Again, I'm not judging, and it is not my opinion, I'm just saying it looks so in the light of the Japanese moral and cultural values.

I wrote this using more western logic and ideas, purposely used some rhetorics to better illustrate Japanese values, and so it is more like a westernized version of a Japanese way of thinking. Your Japanese friends will never express things the way I just did, the ones who don't think in English won't anyway. But I think this is a good approximation. Ask your friends why they say "いただきます" and what their feelings are when they say it. Ask how they feel about wasting food and playing with food. And ask what they really feel about the idea that whales have selves and pigs don't. They might give you a good answer, they might not. But there would be something definitely different from the western culture there.
[/RANT]

Dont you see what is happening though?

Your rant does not go against MY position.

I am not the West. I was not born when Perry entered Japan and forced it to open up at gunpoint.

Furthermore I am against factory farming and the unethical treatment of animals in the west as I have stated before.

I can agree with you on many points. America is a world bully. As an International relations major I can completely agree with you on that. Many Americans themselves agree with that and so do many in the West. In fact, some of the most anti-American people can be found within Western countries. But that is a completely different issue.

I feel your rant is better directed at the issue of Western hypocrisy or Western history perhaps. I dont think it has a place in the whaling argument.

[chiuchimu]

I just spent 30 minutes looking around for proof that whales are self aware and I found nothing that proves dolphins are self aware. In fact, it is still disputed among the scientific community on the relevance to intelligence this self-aware tests are. Even the method of using a mirror and observing behavior is a highly questionable method of experimentation. The experiments are inconclusive, yet the people who did the experiments feel the results imply that dolphins have self-awareness. This goes to show you that the very people doing the experiments are bios. Scientist should never interpret results but accept the results as proven or not proven - that's what they taught us was the scientific method in Bio101. It's amazing how some scientist can be bios towards a cause and get away with it.

As clockwork, what does appear a lot on the internet is people using this implied result as an argument against whaling. Some tactfully argue that even if the results only imply self-awareness we should error on the side of caution just in case a future test does confirm awareness in whales. If that is so, then we must all starve since we don't know for sure if any plant or animal is self-aware. Evolution is a continues branching tree. There are no signs saying "This side for self-aware that side for brainless animals".

Next, the only tests I've seen were on dolphins and Beluga whales in captivity. So in the near future, if someone conducts the same mirror test on wild dolphins out at sea and gets different results, this would unarguably destroy the dolphin self-aware theory. More importantly, until such experiment show the same results for captive as well as wild dolphins, this mirror awareness argument carries ZERO weight. A trained lion and a wild lion act differently. I expect the whales will too.

Furthermore, no other whale species other than the two named has been tested as far as I know, so all other whales could be stupid cows of the ocean that don't deserve protection. In other words, as stupid as the aware argument is, it doesn't even apply to all other whales.

[evanny]

Originally Posted by Ronin4hire

It shouldnt be difficult to grasp.

The difference is because self awareness matters in the case of animals.

well for me it is difficult to grasp. why should it matter? just why?
who are you to say to these people that it matters? its just like a religion - you say it matters and i say no it doesnt and stop minding everyones elses business. if you want to belive in god (in this case that selfawarnes matters) then do it, but dont push your god or in this case ideas of selfawarnes on other people because just like with religion you cant prove selfawarnes importance in animals.

[dogsbody70]

well for someone who admires Hitler-- who wants to hear YOUR opinion.

[evanny]

Originally Posted by dogsbody70

well for someone who admires Hitler-- who wants to hear YOUR opinion.

yea. i belive a lot more people than you and your hippie ideals. so..put on your second pair of pink glasses and go see only the beautiful things and be blind to the rest of the world.
also, in my opinion, hitler jokes are just like the N ford for black people. only blacks can say it and only countries who have been occupied by hitler can say hitler jokes freeley even if they are racist. and mine was (not just by hitler...700 year of german rule) and i feel better when i can joke about it.

[Ronin4hire]

Originally Posted by chiuchimu

I just spent 30 minutes looking around for proof that whales are self aware and I found nothing that proves dolphins are self aware. In fact, it is still disputed among the scientific community on the relevance to intelligence this self-aware tests are. Even the method of using a mirror and observing behavior is a highly questionable method of experimentation. The experiments are inconclusive, yet the people who did the experiments feel the results imply that dolphins have self-awareness. This goes to show you that the very people doing the experiments are bios. Scientist should never interpret results but accept the results as proven or not proven - that's what they taught us was the scientific method in Bio101. It's amazing how some scientist can be bios towards a cause and get away with it.

As clockwork, what does appear a lot on the internet is people using this implied result as an argument against whaling. Some tactfully argue that even if the results only imply self-awareness we should error on the side of caution just in case a future test does confirm awareness in whales. If that is so, then we must all starve since we don't know for sure if any plant or animal is self-aware. Evolution is a continues branching tree. There are no signs saying "This side for self-aware that side for brainless animals".

Next, the only tests I've seen were on dolphins and Beluga whales in captivity. So in the near future, if someone conducts the same mirror test on wild dolphins out at sea and gets different results, this would unarguably destroy the dolphin self-aware theory. More importantly, until such experiment show the same results for captive as well as wild dolphins, this mirror awareness argument carries ZERO weight. A trained lion and a wild lion act differently. I expect the whales will too.

Furthermore, no other whale species other than the two named has been tested as far as I know, so all other whales could be stupid cows of the ocean that don't deserve protection. In other words, as stupid as the aware argument is, it doesn't even apply to all other whales.

I think the arguments for whales and dolphin self awareness is pretty solid.

The main experiment concerns a dolphin being able to recognise itself in the mirror. Most animals when they look in the mirror they think they are seeing another animal or some dont even recognise what they see. Dolphins are able to look into a mirror and see that they are seeing themselves. This pretty much proves that dolphins are aware of themselves.

Other evidence concerns the fact that Whales and dolphins communicate with each other via "song". Scientists have recognised this as a sort of language and have shown that some even "name" each other.

I gave two links before which referenced scientific studies which suggest this.

It only has zero weight if you think that the only way to prove self awareness is to start talking English (or Japanese).

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/we.../27angier.html

Yet many biologists who study whales and dolphins view such a compromise as deeply flawed, and instead urge that negotiators redouble efforts to abolish commercial whaling and dolphin hunting entirely. As these scientists see it, the evidence is high and mounting that the cetacean order includes species second only to humans in mental, social and behavioral complexity, and that maybe we shouldn’t talk about what we’re harvesting or harpooning, but whom.

“At the very least, you could put it in line with hunting chimps,” said Hal Whitehead, who studies sperm whales at Dalhousie University in Halifax. “When you compare relative brain size, or levels of self-awareness, sociality, the importance of culture, cetaceans come out on most of these measures in the gap between chimps and humans. They fit the philosophical definition of personhood.”

How much more personable can you get than to wave the flag for tribe or team? Among sperm and killer whales, Dr. Whitehead said, “there’s a feeling of what one might call ethnicity or cultural identity, of saying, ‘This is my clan, and it’s different from the others.’ ” One way whales express their ethnicity is through dialect. Every clan has its signature call, and in regions of the ocean where two clans overlap, the differences between calls become exaggerated. “It’s like if you’re Irish and you run across someone who is Scottish or Welsh,” said Dr. Whitehead. “You’ll speak with an even stronger Irish accent to make it really clear whose group you belong to.”

[MissMisa]

My opinion is this:

- I don't agree with the killing of Dophins in Taiji. The fact that they are dolphins is irrelevent. I don't like it, first and foremost, because of the methods they use to kill the dolphins. This is even worse for dolphins though because they are arguably aware of the fact that they are dying.

- I agree with the opinions of environmentalists, but again, I don't approve of their methods. Sometimes they are very brash and intrusive, which just makes the Japanese people angry and causes more problems.

- I don't believe this is about culture. Culture can change. If culture stayed the same in England, we would still be hanging people in the streets. Culture is a stupid justification for doing awful things, which in the modern world we have come to realise are cruel and pointless.

- I do believe this is mainly to do with money. I doubt the farmers would be so passionate about their 'culture' if another job was offered to them with similar pay.

- I don't agree with whaling at all. This is because whales are not a sustainable source of food, because they are not bred specifically to be eaten. They are wild animals. This is not because whales are 'magicalspecialwonderful.' It's because if we allowed whales to be killed for this reason, they would be extinct in a short amount of time. How do we know this? From past events. The reason why it's bad that whales are extinct is not because they are 'magicalspecialwonderful.' It's because they play an important part in the food chain which could adversely affect a LOT of other species. Not just whales.

- Also, it is extremely difficult to kill a whale humainly because of it's size. The current methods are painful, distressing and inhumane, and we should not allow this on ANY species.This is another reason why whaling should not be permitted.

[dogsbody70]

Originally Posted by evanny

yea. i belive a lot more people than you and your hippie ideals. so..put on your second pair of pink glasses and go see only the beautiful things and be blind to the rest of the world.
also, in my opinion, hitler jokes are just like the N ford for black people. only blacks can say it and only countries who have been occupied by hitler can say hitler jokes freeley even if they are racist. and mine was (not just by hitler...700 year of german rule) and i feel better when i can joke about it.

there were millions killed-- it is extremely poor taste to do hitler jokes.

It certainly offends me. I don't know what goes on in your head but?!!

A hippie? I lived through WW2 here in UK. bit late for me to be a hippy

You said that you admired Hitler? what does that say about You as a person?