Russ, you're taking the logic too far. The barred owl is pushing the spotted owl out, but no one is suggesting that we hunt the barred owl to extinction. This isn't about preventing individual organisms from being killed it's about preventing a species from going extinct.
I know that as physicists, we have a tendency to want to find the smallest/simplest set of axioms that can produce a complete, logically consistent theory. I think that's an approach that is not well suited to the study of ethics/morals. You have to accept that humans are different from other animals, because other animals do not have enough intelligence to consider morals. Otherwise, you conclude that there is no such thing as morals, and we might as well eat our own babies if we don't like them (plenty of animals do this).
russ_watters said:
Being intelligent is irrelevant there. Every species takes actions that affects the existence of other species. Why is it part of nature for the lion to decide who lives but not part of nature for us? You're saying the fact that humans are intelligent creates a burden on us that does not exist for other species.
Intelligence creates lots of burdens. I have to find a way to pay my bills, I have to wash my clothes and clean my kitchen. My dog doesn't have to do any of these things. She has enough intelligence to be able to learn to poop outside. Intelligence is a major game changer when it comes to discussing behavior.
russ_watters said:
That's exactly the self-contradictory logic I'm referring to, yes. And with the motivation laid-bare: emotion. People react emotionally to seeing death, so they think they should stop it. That's all this is. It isn't logical at all.
Actually, it's perfectly logical. If you start from an axiom that one should prevent death to the best of one's ability. Then it's quite logical to stop one thing from killing another thing when seeing it about to happen. You can't say it isn't logical. It might not follow from whatever axioms you're operating on, but you can't assume other people are working from the same axioms, especially when it comes to discussing morality.
You have to first start by discussing what axioms are going to be acceptable. The way we do that in physics is to observe some phenomenon, think up some axioms, work out the logic, and see if the logical prediction of the axioms matches the observation. That approach doesn't work well with ethics because a lot of times there isn't some standard to judge against. You have to look at whether the resulting behavior is acceptable or not, which is really difficult except in very extreme cases.
In this approach we're looking at is if humans act one way (do nothing) then the spotted owl will likely die out. If we act another way they might not. Is their extinction an acceptable consequence of our behavior? I don't know if it is or not, but if you're going to tell me their extinction it is acceptable because we have the same moral obligations as a lion, well I don't find that to be very convincing. And if you're going to tell me it's because it's logical, then you'd better be prepared to make a convincing case for the axioms you're arguing for. If your argument is that you want a system of morals so simple that it could apply to any living organism regardless of intelligence, then sorry, I reject your axioms.