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Originally Posted by shakran
Then by your argument humans do not have consciousness. Why did I buy that sports car last year? I could have saved the money to use if I ever lose my job so I don't starve. Buying the sports car reduces my net worth, wastes my money, and puts me at risk of having MY meals cut off due to lack of funds.
Why do people play music? There's no survival reason for it. Grog the Caveman did not escape from the sabre toothed tiger by using a cello.
If you want to argue that observing an organism doing something that does not specifically relate to personal or species survival automatically means the organism has no consciousness (I think the word you're actually searching for is sentience) then humans are not sentient either.
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I think you missed my argument. The actions of the cat are related to species survival, although at first glance it may seem the cat is just cruelly playing. Anyways this argument was just me pondering on stuff- it's not really related to the second argument.
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Or perhaps people are not as arrogant as your argument suggests they be, and do not automatically assume that "that which is not human is a mindless automaton that can't feel anything."
In fact, I would submit that it is YOU who have no connection to the earth and its animals, because it doesn't take much observation to see that animals can indeed feel emotions, pain, and generally everything humans can feel. They're just generally not as intelligent and therefore may react differently. If you don't know that, you must not have interacted with very many animals.
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Slow down there. I never said animals don't feel pain, and a lot more besides. I've just come to terms that it is natural to eat them. We're at the top of the food chain. Any (meat eating) animal, given the chance, would eat humans if they made it to the top. If they don't, it would be because we taste bad, not because they would have a moral directive not to eat us.
Things die. Sometimes quickly and humanely, and sometimes slowly and painfully. I think that since we have the capacity for empathy, we should end the life of our prey as painlessly as possible. But not to just stop eating them because it reminds us of that dog we had when we were growing up. You know the one- it "ran away" when it was old, blind, and started shitting on the carpet.