We have to kill them to save them.

[256bits]

And that's my point: trying to apply our morals across species leads to contradictions. Our morals were not designed to apply to other species and they do not work well when misapplied.

Further, the fact that we (and other animals) have developed species-specific morality is likely a natural consequence of evolution. Species evolve to survive and reproduce and do so even at the expense of other species.

That is exactly the point I was delving into with my post farther up which sums it all up.
It is all moot. Reasons for helping/not helping the owl can be used on either side and the whole topic ends up in circles.

So far we have had the following argument which all have yay and nay
- its nature way - we either let them be or we can interfer since we are part of nature
- humans are the powerful species on the planet - we can do what we want regardless of consequences or we can choose to attemt to have minimal impact
- we alter habitat - alter away and leave it be or or should we attempt to restore back to "nature"

Empathy for other organisms brings us to feel an obligation for other animals. So which one should we have more empathy for: the spotted owl or the barred owl. Having made that decision then the difficulty lies in how the achieve the desired outcome.

And of course not all will agree on the decision.

 

[daveyrocket]

What's the difference? In western society, "rights" have historically been an individual concept. Indeed, applying rights to groups has often been used as an excuse for restricting the rights of individuals.

Scale is the first difference that comes to mind. I haven't been talking about rights though, so I'm not sure where that is coming from.

I do. What I do not accept is that our intelligence makes us inferior to other animals while simultaneously requiring more responsibility. Your intelligence does not require you to pay bills. You can go live in a New York subway station if you want.

I didn't say it was required, I said it created burdens. Even if I wanted to live in a NY subway station, I'd still have to come up with the money to get from CA to there. But this statement doesn't change the fact that intelligence is a game changer when discussing behavior.
[Not sure where the inferiority thing is coming from, maybe you can clarify that.]

For a surprising number of cases, ethics/morality works out well when you apply practical standards to it, such as reciprocity (the Golden Rule) and quantitative measurements that can be determined to be good or bad (ie, living longer = good).
And that's my point: trying to apply our morals across species leads to contradictions.

Well, now I understand the axiom you're arguing from. But every one of these examples has rather obvious holes that can be poked in them - not a single one can be assumed to be applied universally. Any one of them will lead to contradictions if you look hard enough.

And that's my point: Unilateral statements about ethics virtually always have some exceptions, so one has consider ways of examining those exceptions and finding different ways of dealing with them.

That's not logic, that's "begging the question." You're assuming the conclusion in the axiom.

This is a game you can play indefinitely when it comes to ethics. I can say you're begging the question when you say that we don't have any obligation to do anything about the spotted owl because you take as an axiom that we can't apply any sort of moral value to another species. You're simply assuming an axiom that gives you the conclusion you want in this particular instance.

Avoiding/preventing harm is a fairly common value for human beings. Refusing to apply morals across species isn't nearly as common AFAIK. It's not hard to find people that start foaming at the mouth when discussing abuse/neglect of dogs or cats.

Our morals were not designed to apply to other species and they do not work well when misapplied.

What do you mean when you say that our morals "do not work well?" How do you measure this? Let's say we go ahead and apply some moral system to this situation. If we let the spotted owl go extinct or if we save it, how would we know whether our morals worked well or not?

Further, the fact that we (and other animals) have developed species-specific morality is likely a natural consequence of evolution. Species evolve to survive and reproduce and do so even at the expense of other species.

This seems really selective. Many species have evolved to survive and reproduce at the expense of other members of their own species as well. Many other species have evolved to survive and reproduce in a way where members of different species exist in a symbiotic relationship.

 

[daveyrocket]

So far we have had the following argument which all have yay and nay
- its nature way - we either let them be or we can interfer since we are part of nature
- humans are the powerful species on the planet - we can do what we want regardless of consequences or we can choose to attemt to have minimal impact
- we alter habitat - alter away and leave it be or or should we attempt to restore back to "nature"

Well, the environment provides us with a lot of useful things, and historically when we've gone and "altered away" this has had some significant, negative, unforeseen consequences for us. There's some arguments and evidence out there that the destruction of wetlands in Louisiana has caused hurricanes in the area to be much more devastating. The excess production of CO2 has begun to cause acidification in the oceans. It's not known what effect that might have, if any, but many salt water organisms are not known for their tolerance of changing water parameters.

Our own ability to foresee the consequences of our actions is pretty limited, so one could argue that just from a self-preservation standpoint we should be cautious about making significant changes unless we're really sure about what the impact is going to be.

 

[MathJakob]

Yeah you're right I'm missing the point. And I'm still not getting it so help me out here. So here's what I'm understanding of what you're saying, and you can correct me where I'm wrong.

You're saying that as humans, we have a moral obligation to not interfere with natural* events.
Specifically, we have a moral obligation to not save the spotted owl from extinction.

Now here's my question:
A major factor in the decline of the spotted owl has been excessive logging.
That logging was as human action.
According to your moral theory of noninteraction, we had a moral duty to not destroy the spotted owl's habitat in the first place.
But we did it anyway.
Now do we have a moral obligation to repair the damage we shouldn't have done? Or do we just say well that's too bad for them, but now when it's not so convenient for us we suddenly implement a noninteraction policy.


* In this context, I'm using "natural" to refer to things which happen without human involvement.

As an otter collects wood to build a small damn, we collect wood to build things we need. It just so happens that we need a lot of wood than an otter. Our actions of log cutting is purely to enhance our lives, just as an otter collects wood to enchance their lives, albeit only a small dam, we collect wood to make our lives better.

If humans are responsible for global warming and the melting of the ice caps then again while it's a bad thing the polar bears are dying, it is also sort of required for us to enchance our lives.

 

[Drakkith]

Interesting. Killing thousands of creatures of one species to save creatures of a different species, when the difference between the two is, in the grand scheme of things, very minimal. I wonder if it will be worth it... but I guess that's up to each person to decide.

 

[Vanadium 50]

I remember an issue a decade or more ago when deer were eating an endangered plant to extinction. The choice of letting a species go extinct or shooting Bambi pretty much evenly divided people.

 

[russ_watters]

Empathy for other organisms brings us to feel an obligation for other animals. So which one should we have more empathy for: the spotted owl or the barred owl.

Don't forget the logger who lost his job while we were debating which of those two animals is more important than him! (By omitting him from the discussion.)

 

[russ_watters]

I remember an issue a decade or more ago when deer were eating an endangered plant to extinction. The choice of letting a species go extinct or shooting Bambi pretty much evenly divided people.

I used the example of killing the lion to save its prey, but we've done that in the US, causing a population explosion in deer. Now we shoot them to save them from starvation and getting hit by cars.

 

[nsaspook]

I used the example of killing the lion to save its prey, but we've done that in the US, causing a population explosion in deer. Now we shoot them to save them from starvation and getting hit by cars.

Your comment about 'lions' reminded me we are also shooting California Sea Lions to save fish here.

http://wdfw.wa.gov/conservation/sealions/
http://seattletimes.com/html/opinion/2004183016_sealions15.html

 

[I_am_learning]

Why do we kill cows? Because they will never go extinct and we love beefs. If the government valued right to life for animals, meat would have been banned. So, it's clear that we value our own comfort more than the life of animals or birds. Now, the government (advised by scientists) thinks its not desirable for us to let one type of owl species to go extinct (because perhaps we don't want do deprive our grandchildren the pleasure of seeing them), it is about to do the needful.

Anyone who wants to argue that we don't have right to kill animals, should begin with cows. But if you want to argue that killing the owls will be harmful for ourselves, you can proceed.

 

[turbo]

I attended a pulp-and-paper themed symposium many years ago and a pretend "improv" group took the stage, and took "suggestions" from the audience, and in seconds they came up with "No more tissue. No more towel. Wipe your *ss with a spotted owl" Some morons who where probably drunk on their employers' bill thought that was clever, though it was transparent that the "improv" was scripted to appeal to the morons.

I won't hesitate to kill a deer for food, but I draw the line at slaughtering innocent inedible creatures to "save" other innocent inedible creatures. We have tons of barred owls in this area and there is no way that you could get me to shoot any of them. Their calls are nice, and they eat a lot of pests.

 

[256bits]

I attended a pulp-and-paper themed symposium many years ago and a pretend "improv" group took the stage, and took "suggestions" from the audience, and in seconds they came up with "No more tissue. No more towel. Wipe your *ss with a spotted owl" Some morons who where probably drunk on their employers' bill thought that was clever, though it was transparent that the "improv" was scripted to appeal to the morons.

I won't hesitate to kill a deer for food, but I draw the line at slaughtering innocent inedible creatures to "save" other innocent inedible creatures. We have tons of barred owls in this area and there is no way that you could get me to shoot any of them. Their calls are nice, and they eat a lot of pests.

Clever by half (or not ). That little click group and the chant did more to lose non partisan support through disgust and no doubt switched to spotted owl. And the exclusivity it brings about. Is it a studied and published public relations method to inspire confrontation to win your cause. I guess it is because outfits like Peta seem to like using it.

 

[256bits]

Well, the environment provides us with a lot of useful things, and historically when we've gone and "altered away" this has had some significant, negative, unforeseen consequences for us. There's some arguments and evidence out there that the destruction of wetlands in Louisiana has caused hurricanes in the area to be much more devastating. The excess production of CO2 has begun to cause acidification in the oceans. It's not known what effect that might have, if any, but many salt water organisms are not known for their tolerance of changing water parameters.

Our own ability to foresee the consequences of our actions is pretty limited, so one could argue that just from a self-preservation standpoint we should be cautious about making significant changes unless we're really sure about what the impact is going to be.

I am not sure when the environmentalist movement started to gain momentum. Somewhere around the time of eagles, eggshells, and DDT or was it the smog thing in Los Angeles, the hippy movement and tree huggers, Lake erie catching on fire, or perhaps the phospate froth and more and more people began to speak about humans and nature. There was even a song with the lines "pave paradise, put up another parking lot", from Melanie I think.

Before that it was rape, pillage and plunder. As an example, cod was so plentiful off the east coast of North America a few hundreds of years ago and where are they now and the fisheries and the jobs. As a result of decreased prime fish stocks, including others than cod for whatever reason, you can now buy fish in the store were once considered crap and throw away. If human overfishing activity actually was the main cause of fish stock depletion, then maintaining a viable food source was not on their agenda, even if that actually meant less resouces for the offspring.

Self preservation is a good argument, but it does come with two viewpoints, which may not be mutually exclusive, since there is some overlap. One is the preservation of the human species; the other would be the preservation of the human individual. At times these may be in conflict.

 

[I_am_learning]

I won't hesitate to kill a deer for food, but I draw the line at slaughtering innocent inedible creatures to "save" other innocent inedible creatures. We have tons of barred owls in this area and there is no way that you could get me to shoot any of them. Their calls are nice, and they eat a lot of pests.

The deer is innocent too. But killing the deer gives you food (and pleasure), so you think you are justified. Killing inedible Owls won't give you food, so you think it's not justified to kill them. But I think you are missing a point. Killing the Owls is being done for a purpose: to save a another species of Owls. If you want to argue, killing the barred owl won't help protect spotted owls or that we don't need to protect the spotted owl, I may agree.
But, acting like we are too caring and loving for those poor sweet innocent animals/birds, and acting as if its morally corrupt thing to kill thousands of birds is what I disagree.

 

[BobG]

This is the hypotheses, that the Spotted Owl is in decline because of the logging. According to this mornings paper logging was cut back by 90% in the 90's hence the terrible economics times the PNW has been having. In spite of the cut back in logging the Spotted owl has not recovered. So now the Barred Owl is the problem.

Maybe they are missing something? Perhaps they (the wild life biologists) are just guessing? It has always amazed me that on one hand they say how elusive and hard to find the Spotted Owl is yet on the other they know exactly how many there are? Whats wrong with this pic?

I think what's wrong with this pic is you might be drawing conclusions without having all the information. I don't think there's much doubt that logging played a major role in the decline of the spotted owl in the first place. But that doesn't mean that recovery is simply a matter of stopping the logging. It's quite possible that the previous destruction of their habitat has had long term consequences that aren't reversed simply by ceasing the actions that continue to destroy the habitat.

Don't know whether killing Barred Owl's is a good idea or not, but I agree it's at least feasible.

Once the environment has irrevocably changed (over logging), you now have a new problem and need new solutions.

Just like the recent forest fire here. The fire was put out in a couple of weeks. That doesn't solve the problem - it just kept it from getting worse (from burning more forest). The damage has been done and last year's forest fire has been followed by this year's flash floods and mudslides raging through town.

And there's no guarantee the trees will grow back. With open ground, other species of plant life can move in before the trees grow back, creating an entirely different environment than the one that existed prior to last year's fire.

I would imagine a similar situation could happen with the owls. Once the spotted owl population had been depleted, it was open competition for which species repopulated the the area post-logging, with the first species in having a decided advantage.

Maybe they're right and maybe they're not, but it's not fair to compare the pre-logging environment to the post-logging environment.