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[DJ]

Intelligence is just as arbitrary as cuteness or any other attribute you may choose for deciding whether it's OK to kill something or not. Not killing things based on whether they're human makes perfect sense from a purely practical point of view, though.

[Max White]

Intelligence is just as arbitrary as cuteness or any other attribute you may choose for deciding whether it's OK to kill something or not. Not killing things based on whether they're human makes perfect sense from a purely practical point of view, though.

Not true. Cuteness is subjective, while intelligence is, for the most part, objective. A more accurate comparison would be deciding based off upper body strengh, shade of skin, or having blonde hair and blue eyes.

[DJ]

I'll believe that intelligence is objective when I see an objective measure for it. IQ tests just don't cut it, sorry.

[Africa]

Would the vegetarians/vegans agree that eating meat that was hunted is better/more ethical than eating meat any other way?

Cause when you've got an animal overpopulation issue (see: deer in a lot of the eastern US) and the animal is delicious, basically everybody wins. Hunt 'em, keep the population under control, and eat organic meat that didn't come from raising animals in horrible conditions.

Re: rights: Of course they're something everyone collectively agrees on, but at some point you have to ACT like they're inalienable and eternal, otherwise your ethical system collapses since there's nothing to base it on.

And intelligence is not subjective, but what humans think of as intelligence usually is. We think of chimps as more intelligent than dogs and dogs and more intelligent than fish, because each of those animals resembles humans increasingly more.

[Max White]

I'll believe that intelligence is objective when I see an objective measure for it. IQ tests just don't cut it, sorry.

Unable to measure != subjective. I can't just say, without reason or cause, that one person is smart is any specific feild. I can say, however, that I find any one person personaly attractive and another not.

And realisticaly, it would be hell if we couldn't sort smart from dumb. We have this great big education system that, in it's higher levels, only allows more talented to pass through it's ranks. If we let this fly out the window and say 'intelligence is subjective' then anybody could get into any circle of debate, and what we call reason would turn to mush.

[DJ]

IDK, I think what we call intelligence is actually a large set of different mental abilities, and it's meaningless to lump them all into one number and then compare these numbers.

[Africa]

Intelligence isn't just a variable between different humans. It's an evolved characteristic in many species that exists in many different forms and made up of many different components. We haven't been able to measure it that well because it's too complex for the instruments we've tried to use, and it certainly can't be boiled down to one number. And it makes no sense to apply our concept of intelligence to animals.

[Max White]

IDK, I think what we call intelligence is actually a large set of different mental abilities, and it's meaningless to lump them all into one number and then compare these numbers.

'I don't care' is without question the trade mark of a compelling argument.
While yes, it is possible to one up somebody is a specific form of intelligence, and be belitteled by the same person in another, that does not make it any less objective. While one may be more mathamaticaly inclined then another, while said other could be more creativily expressive, we still have an objjective 'more' and 'less' with wich to compair.

[DJ]

IDK = I don't know

Anyway, my point is that human measures of intelligence are utterly inapplicable to animals.

[Max White]

Well, I don't know, they say pigs are as smart as three year olds don't they? I'm sure men and women smarter then you or I did these studies.

On that topic, I'm all for eating meat. I think that we are omnivores, and as a animal specials (Yes, we are animals, deal with it!) we have the right to eat meat.

[G-Flex]

IDK, I think what we call intelligence is actually a large set of different mental abilities, and it's meaningless to lump them all into one number and then compare these numbers.

That's true. I think the vegetarian criterion is mostly "ability to suffer" or something along those lines, but then you still have the issue of animals being raised in captivity and put down humanely. I'm not sure how they tend to respond to that, but I don't think any of us should presume an answer either.

IDK = I don't know

Anyway, my point is that human measures of intelligence are utterly inapplicable to animals.

Eh. We have ways of at least attempting to judge animals' ability to be self-aware, solve problems, learn, suffer, and that jazz. Obviously we won't be giving them IQ tests, although some of the great ape language/problem-solving style tests are damn interesting.

[Max White]

Eh. We have ways of at least attempting to judge animals' ability to be self-aware, solve problems, learn, suffer, and that jazz. Obviously we won't be giving them IQ tests, although some of the great ape language/problem-solving style tests are damn interesting.

You think that is cool, you should see what squids can pull off. Their abilty to identify patterns goes beyond hiding. They can relate certain pattens to reward, and react to this. It's realy cool, and something you see in few animals outside of primates.

Yes, people like to eat squid, one of the smartest species on earth, right up there with great apes, dolphines and pigs.

[MrWiggles]

IDK, I think what we call intelligence is actually a large set of different mental abilities, and it's meaningless to lump them all into one number and then compare these numbers.

That's true. I think the vegetarian criterion is mostly "ability to suffer" or something along those lines, but then you still have the issue of animals being raised in captivity and put down humanely. I'm not sure how they tend to respond to that, but I don't think any of us should presume an answer either.

The ability to suffer is why I like using sapient over sentience. Though thats probably due to a few to many arguments where sentience gets used to mean 'ability to discern pain' which some species of tree have been able to show in a very rudimentary form.

IDK = I don't know

Anyway, my point is that human measures of intelligence are utterly inapplicable to animals.

Eh. We have ways of at least attempting to judge animals' ability to be self-aware, solve problems, learn, suffer, and that jazz. Obviously we won't be giving them IQ tests, although some of the great ape language/problem-solving style tests are damn interesting.

Some of the most curious test, that I quite like is the Mirror Test. Though it does have a major weakness in that animals which do not have their primary sense as sight should have a great disadvantage with the test.

Canines for instance fail the mirror test, but there have been some notable dogs, for the lack of a better descriptive word, The dog "Einsteins", that can follow and learn human speech with almost a 400? word vocabulary. Perhaps, if their was a analog test to a difference sense, such as smell perhaps then a canine could past it.
On a tangent note, does any buddy else find it freaken hilarious that human beings have developed to the point, where we can have ernest debates on what foods to eat?

You can look at our evolutionary past in an aspect to obtain food. That from obtaining different foods such as marrow, and cooked meat allowed for brain to proposer and get even more food.

[G-Flex]

You think that is cool, you should see what squids can pull off. Their abilty to identify patterns goes beyond hiding. They can relate certain pattens to reward, and react to this. It's realy cool, and something you see in few animals outside of primates.

Yes, people like to eat squid, one of the smartest species on earth, right up there with great apes, dolphines and pigs.

Yeah, I probably wouldn't eat cephalopods these days, now that I know what the damn things are capable of. I swear they're actually aliens anyway (Hawaiian mythology even allegedly features octopuses as the sole survivors of a previous incarnation of the world, which makes perfect sense to me).

Canines for instance fail the mirror test, but there have been some notable dogs, for the lack of a better descriptive word, The dog "Einsteins", that can follow and learn human speech with almost a 400? word vocabulary. Perhaps, if their was a analog test to a difference sense, such as smell perhaps then a canine could past it.

I'm all for discussions of animal intelligence, but I honestly do not believe that dogs are capable of language skills on par of, say, great apes or certain birds. If you're talking about following orders and responding to verbal commands and that sort of thing, that's quite different and is accounted for by more traditional conditioning. That being said, dogs are very good at that.

[MrWiggles]

There was a 2008 study in the UK, where a dog was able to understand phrases constructed out of sentences, instead of doing commands with a single word. The dog could could construct what you wanted from the sentence with its vocabulary. An arbitrary example; "Bring Fred the Red Circle", and the dog would go into a room, and identify a round object and bring it to Fred. It could do this, if the Fred was new to the Dog, or the fetch object was also new to the dog.  It extrapolated the goal from the sentence.