[Avodah] anti-meat rhetoric "according to Judaism"

[T613K at aol.com]

From: Micha Berger _micha at aishdas.org_ (mailto:micha at aishdas.org) 
Old TK:  : I enter  into evidence the following two exhibits:
: a.  Bilaam's  donkey

RMB:     Which was  created separately from every other animal.
 
 

TK:   It was different from every other animal in its  ability to speak and 
express its thoughts in words, but its feelings and  "thoughts" were those 
of any other even slightly intelligent animal.  Even  a dog would have 
something of the same "thought" -- or rather, emotion of  surprise -- if an owner 
to whom it had always been loyal, and who had always  treated it well, 
suddenly started kicking and beating the dog one  day.


Old TK:  : b. The calf who ran away because it didn't want to  be 
shechted....
 
 

RMB:  Still, where do you see that the calf was aware of its own  thoughts 
in
this story?
 
TK:  Who said anything about the animal being aware of its own  thoughts?  
I specifically denied that "self-awareness" was necessary in  order to 
experience suffering.  The animal somehow knew it was going to be  shechted and 
it didn't want to die (or it didn't want to experience pain).   Animals 
experience both pain and fear and those experiences constitute  suffering.  I 
just don't know where "being aware of its own thoughts" comes  into it at all.  
I don't even know where "being aware of one's own  thoughts" comes in for 
human suffering.  When I was in labor I was  definitely suffering but I never 
had any thought like, "Well here I am, thinking  about how awful this is 
and how I can't wait for it to be over."
 


Old TK:  :                But it is   indisputable 
: that they suffer physical pain, and the notion that they  don't  suffer 
: because there is no "I" there is just wrong.   

RMB:  Then what do you do with my objections:

1- If the  inputs to animal thought include the watching of the thoughts
themselves,  wouldn't that mean they have free will? And isn't free will
the tzelem  E-lokim (see the Meshekh Chokhmah).
 
TK:  I emphatically deny that the "inputs to animal thought" include  "the 
watching of the thoughts themselves."  I don't even know what that  means.  
Even humans often "think" in simple pictures or in emotions without  words, 
and when they do think in words, how often are they aware that they are  
thinking?  People who are deaf from birth think in pictures.  So do  pre-verbal 
babies, and so do animals.


RMB:  ....Thus, to say an  animal has an "I" that is aware of the pain 
raises problems
in how one  explains Bereishis 1:26-27, and 2:7.
 
TK:  Once again, I deny that an animal has a conscious "I" and I also  deny 
that it is necessary to have an "I" in order to suffer.  I think  Skinner 
was not only wrong, but a moron.  Look at a baby crying in  pain:  the baby 
is clearly suffering even if too young to think or to have  any 
self-awareness.  Now look at a baby crying because his mother has left  and he doesn't 
know the baby sitter and he is suffering from  stranger-anxiety.  Look at the 
same baby calming down when his mother  returns.  When he cried in frantic 
distress because his mother left him, he  was suffering even though he did 
not have an "I" and was not "aware" of the pain  in the rather abstract sense 
you seem to be thinking of.  And his distress  was caused not by physical 
pain but by an inchoate thought/feeling:  "The  most important person in the 
world is gone, and has left me alone here with this  stranger."

RMB:  2- The part of the brain which, when damaged,  prevents this ability 
in
people is a set of advanced cortical areas in the  prefrontal cortex,
perhaps in concert with the temporal lobes, others suggest  with
interaction with the centromedial thelamus....
 
TK:  I absolutely and totally do not know what you're talking  about.  It 
is possible to suffer such severe brain damage that one is no  longer 
conscious and therefore does not suffer.  It is also possible to  suffer brain 
damage that leaves a person incapable of thought or speech but  still capable of 
feeling pain and hence, of suffering.

RMB:  The US National Academy of the Sciences Institute for Animal  
Laboratory
Research did studies in 2009 (ILAR 2009). They didn't find any  evidence
for self-awareness (in this sense of the phrase; I don't mean a dog  that
treats its own reflection differently than that of other dogs).
 
TK:  There you go again, beating a dead horse -- or a horse that lacks  
awareness of its non-aliveness.

RMB:  So the notion of self-aware  animals would pose both hashkafic and
scientific questions. .... 
 
TK:  I have no notion of self-aware animals.  I only posited a  non-self 
aware animal nevertheless knowing that it is in pain.  And BTW  many centuries 
ago in Avodah-time, I raised a theological question which I find  more 
disturbing than the question of why G-d created a world in which human  beings 
suffer, and that is, why did He create a world in which animals  suffer?  
What moral, or other, benefit could there be to such suffering,  especially 
when it takes place away from anywhere that humans could either  alleviate the 
suffering or even be aware of it so as to experience pity,  compassion and 
so on?  You have handily done away with my theological  questions by simply 
waving away any possibility that animals can suffer, since  they can't define 
the word "epistemology."
 
RMB:  If you can think of an alternative to meta-cognizance  (awareness of 
one's
awareness) other than radical behaviorism, I'll consider  the merits of
that possibility. I couldn't think of one.
 
TK:  I'm still trying to wrap my head around the question of why you  think 
the only choices are to be a German philosopher or to be Pavlov's  dog.
 
But personally I have not experienced meta-cognizance more than two or  
three times in my whole life.



--Toby Katz
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