From: Philip Goetz (philgoetz@gmail.com)
Date: Sun Jan 22 2006 - 20:02:16 MST
On 1/22/06, Phillip Huggan <cdnprodigy@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Fine, fine. Here is the answer you are looking for.
You greatly underestimate the difficulty of the problem.
Considering that all the moralists who have ever lived have failed
to solve the much simpler problem of human ethics in several thousand
years, you shouldn't expect to solve cross-species ethics in an evening.
> The level of actual
> interaction a living organism should be permitted with other living
> organisms is proportional to how negatively the behaviour of the organism
> affects the contacted community. A lion that can only kill gazelles should
> be restruicted to inert simulations of the killing.
This is a complete non-starter. You are outlawing ecology.
The task is to examine the space of ethical systems in which the
lion kills gazelles. We are not talking about a community of equals,
or a community of people who regard different entities, even if of the
same level of intelligence, as moral equals.
> This system works as long as resources don't become scarce. That shouldn't
> become an issue for a long time.
Resources are always scarce. That is the nature of ecologies.
- Phil Goetz
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