Friday, October 10, 2008
Compassion for Chickens
It was reported today in our paper, the Daily Camera, that Caliornia has put a Proposition on its November ballot that would make it illegal for poultry farms to house chickens in spaces where they could not turn around. It should be pretty obvious that this should be the case, but obviously in our world of cheap goods, people have become accustomed to turning the other way when confronted by truths like the fact that most poultry farms keep their chickens so crammed together. The measure is meant to allow egg-producing chickens to have 'a little more room' instead of spending their days in a 'battery cage'. It is also meant to have an effect on pig farming and veal; two other industries that notoriously keep their animals in terrible conditions. It will be interesting to see how the people vote. If you vote against the measure, you will appear to have NO compassion for the animals. Therefore, I encourage ALL Californians to vote for this measure, even if it means your Fried Chicken will cost 50 cents more. It baffles me that still, to this day, people are more concerned with their profits than the lives and suffering of the sentient lifeforms that give them their sustenance. Even if you eat meat, this type of Factory Farming should not exist. Please go to the polls and vote for Compassion.
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Alrighty, I would like to make a comment on the "sentient lifeforms" part of this post. Dictionary.com defines sentient as - characterized by sensation and consciousness. I think we all can agree that most, if not all, multi-celled organisms have some form of sensation. So, lets discuss the consciousness aspect as I think it is the critical aspect of what you mean by sentient and how it applies to animal rights. I am writing this as a behavioral psychologist and what I am writing is the current interpretation of consciousness as held by non-religious academics world-wide.
Consciousness is the combination of the internal monologue and the visuo-spatial sketchpad (each located in the tertiary occipital cortex and tertiary temporal corte x respectively). The pre-frontal cortex (unique to humans and advanced primates) receives this information and combines them to form a dual coded visual/auditory account of our sensations. This serves as a filter so that the problem solving aspects of the brain do not get bogged down by the overwhelming amount of data accumulated by the senses. It also gives the impression of a small man, or homunculus, that is 'driving' the body. This illusory effect gave rise to dualism and views common in religion like the separation of body and soul or body and mind.
Have you ever been driving a car and not really paying attention to the road, but you successfully navigate a turn? This is because we are still taking in information about the road while not translating it into consciousness. In effect, consciousness is the verbal and visual interpretation of what we are paying attention to both externally and internally.
While non-human animals may have a visual concept of consciousness (this is still being debated and tested through the use of fMRI's) it is certain that they do not have a verbal account of consciousness due to their lack of linguistic capabilities. This is not to say that non-humans cannot communicate, but they do not have the depth of language found in human animals. Research is currently being conducted (two doors down from my office) as to whether non-human animals with rudimentary forms of communication can have a theory of mind. In other words, can they speculate as to the mental state of others, or are they confined to their personal sensory experiences.
Whatever the results, it is safe to assume that whatever form consciousness takes in non-linguistic animals, it is beyond the comprehension of linguistic animals such as humans.
Fascinating debates are taking place within the philosophy of mind as to the qualities of such things as pain if the individuals do not have linguistic capabilities and the ability to describe pain to others of their species. How painful would it be to burn your hand if you could not communicate? If you had no way of knowing what other forms of pain there were? If you did not have the storage capacity of the human brain and could not remember the last time you had injured yourself. When you watch a child fall down sometimes they will look around and see if anyone is watching before they start to cry. Pain is certainly relative to the situation and our interpretation of another's pain is directly influenced by their outward behavior.
I do not disagree that livestock in today's culture is treated without compassion. However, I think a bit more thought and introspection is required before one can regard any organism as sentient.
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