[thechat] Fish do feel pain

Mike Migurski mike at saturn5.com
Tue May 6 14:43:11 CDT 2003


>>>When you remove the spiritual from everything, what do you replace it
>>>with?  The myth of objectivity.
>>
>>It's not a myth - some things can be proven within certain criteria,
>>others can't.
>
>There is the proving things within certain criteria.  there is still the
>choosing of the criteria which is not an objective process.
>
>I mean, not in any kind of absolute way... and if it isn't absolute, how
>can it really be objective?
>
>though in practice I agree.  Show me a scientific test (and not just
>the summarized results thank you I want to see the sample and control
>etc...) and that is more convincing than vague claims, of course...

I believe that science is effective because it constrains itself: it's a
framework for asking certain kinds of questions, and it has a built-in
methodology to determine whether answers are valid based on observable
results that can be confirmed by the experiences of other investigators -
that's what I meant by 'objective.'

But of course you're right: selecting the criteria, figuring out which
questions to ask, and how the answers might be determined, is the
difficult part. Some scientists do this well (for a great example, check
out some of Piaget's work on child development), and others do it poorly.


>>>Maybe we should argue about when a fetus become a human, maybe we should
>>>argue about where life begins and ends... why doesn't science tell us the
>>>ANSWER??  WHY WHY WHY????
>>
>>I don't think those are the kinds of questions that one should ask of
>>science.
>
>Where life begins and ends?  Then biology is not a science.  or?

You're asking about where to draw the line: at what point in the gamete ->
embryo -> fetus -> baby progression can the lump of cells in question be
considered 'human'? The Catholic Church believes the demarcation point is
right near the beginning, while the pro-choice crowd thinks it's near the
middle. It's my understanding that the ancient Chinese believed it was at
the end, and that newborns were considered not-yet-human and therefore
expendable until they were a few months old. (!)

So, yeah - I'd say that question is totally innappropriate for the
biologists. They can tell you exactly what the physical characteristics
are of the cell-blob at any given point, but who's to say when the 'soul'
takes hold?


---------------------------------------------------------------------
michal migurski- contact info and pgp key:
sf/ca            http://mike.teczno.com/contact.html



More information about the thechat mailing list