spin

spin:
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It's very hard to communicate with someone who simply spews sarcasm and shows no sign of analytical thought. Persistence in such is what I would call a militant idiot. It's not a phrase I need to use often.
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Jon:
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I think you've done a great job of describing what it is like talking you.
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This is a fairly typical statement of someone who has been accused of somethig not having the originality to come up with anything better to say attempting to turn the thing around on the accuser.

Jon:
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Not only are you fanatical about this topic, but you stray so far from logic and into the realm of fallacious arguments, that I question your abillity to think rationally on this issue.
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It's very hard for you to meaningfully say this. You've shown no sign of logic in your contribution here. You've been too busy trying to be funny and then being offended. This doesn't leave you much time to be either rational or analytical. So, it means little that you use words like fanatical or fallacious. You know how to talk the talk. Shame about the content.

Pomp

spin said to Malaclypse:

I find that exceedingly odd, as spin has previously stated that the reaction of a cow to a brandished weapon ought to be considered communicative, indicating that (s)he has a very broad definition of what (s)he considers commincative value. Broad enough, one would think, to include Malaclypse's English language sentences.

bonduca

If anyone posts a thread on a public forum, anyone who participates is contributing to the discussion, even those who disagree with you or just plain piss you off.

This is really quite funny.

spin

tronvillain posts an URL:
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Overview of Gut (Digestive System Morphology in Primates and Humans. We appear to be accurately described as omnivores.
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It's very hard to get a straight scientific comment when the society has condoned the industry of animal slaughter for millenia and more. Can one trust such comments given the context of meat having been an integral component of human diet for so long? It's a bit like trusting Christians to know what the history of antiquity was really like because they were the ones who preserved it. The preserver of a tradition has trouble seeing reality as separate from the tradition.

Anthropologists studying early humanoids show what the early diet was due to the teeth that have been preserved. The evidence points to a diet of varous nuts and other vegetable sources. The diet changed with the climate change that gradually reduced the jungles to savannah in the zone east of the Great Riff Valley. The necessary diet change led to opportunistic consumption of meat.

When one talks of the term omnivore does one apply it to chimpanzees who also opportunistically, though to a far less organized or frequent scale, will eat meat?

Does the category exist to justify the consumption of meat?

spin

PB, I can't be bothered after dealing with a number of apparent clones on the issue to take you to court on each of your statements. Let me deal with just the beginning of your post:

spin:
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…there is nothing "moral" about your "contract theory".
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PB:
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Translation: “Contract theory is not compatible with spin’s idiosyncratic conception of morality.”
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You've shown nothing moral to your contract theory. What's moral about it? That you can blithely use it to exclude animals, because naturally they can't participate in your contract theory.

It is very normal for one to argue by exclusion through one pretext or another, but this is simply cooking the case, not making a coherent argument.

Exclusion is a typical act of someone who is not moral. Blacks can't vote because they are not human. Jews can't be treated as human because they killed Jesus. Animals can't be treated in a reasonable manner because they are not capable of entering your contract theory. There is nothing moral as I understand it in what you have proposed.

You go on to attempt to say that I am working on a different morality from many of the posters. I agree. I also attempted to show that there are other people working on other moral bases as well, people who didn't uphold your contract theory.

If I understand correctly that you derived this contract stuff from some philosophical efforts of the past, I would gather that the developers were not trying to exclude but to include to protect as many as possible. It would seem to me therefore that you are only perverting the original aim.

spin

spin to Macaclypse:
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But if there is any core argument in the above, you'll need to flesh out the second sentence which is the only one that has the {p}ossibility of any communicative value.
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PB:
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I find that exceedingly odd, as spin has previously stated that the reaction of a cow to a brandished weapon ought to be considered communicative, indicating that (s)he has a very broad definition of what (s)he considers commincative value.
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A picture is worth a thousand words, PB.

If I stick a gun in your face I communicate much more clearly than if I tell you you're in an extremely complicated situation. Linguistic communications are quite prone to going wrong, more especially so on internet because the participants are not physically in the same place to get all the added non-linguistic information.

spin

spin:
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I'm quite amused at the inordinate number of people who feel the necessity to come in to the discussion who aren't contributing to it in any way. Most try to be funny, some merely nitpick, so attempt to take a distanced_I'm not_involved approach.
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Bonduca:
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If anyone posts a thread on a public forum,
anyone who participates is contributing to the discussion, even those who disagree with you or just plain piss you off.
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You are correct. There is no need for a participant to be polite, intelligent, considerate, interested, or whatever. It is a public forum, though I would hope that as it is not one which is built on someone else's principles that the participants would be more prone to less unthought-out communication, and that in truckloads. I realise that I am optimistic with my expectations of participants in this topic.

spin

As there are few participants interested in discussing the topic with any seriousness and, in attempting to reply to the backwash of other types of response, I've filled up most of this page, please feel free to carry on for a while not talking about what the topic is about. I'll be dealing with other things.

x-member

Spin:

-I have not taken your arguments seriously because of the fallicious nature of your reasoning. Although I have failed to address any specific points you have made, that does not invalidate my observations.

-You say that I have failed to contribute to this discussion in a meaningful way (one which is meaningful to you). I suggest that the only contribuation you would be happy with is conversion to veganism. Such is the nature of a fanatic.

This entire thread has turned into an argumentum ad nauseum. It seems clear that Spin will repeat himself regardless of points made by other posters. I suggest not feeding the troll

Spin: You will not convert us to your outlook. It is obvious that no amount of disucussion will sway you either. Perhaps you might learn to come to terms with the fact that not everyone will share outlook.

Jon

[ March 13, 2002: Message edited by: Jon Up North ]</p>

tronvillain

spin:
I see. They can determine the percentage of meat eaten from teeth? I'd like you to back taht up with something - at least I gave a link.