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

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

I have been silent on this so far, hoping that with enough repetition I might figure out what RMB means, but I give up. So I will ask.

R' Micha Berger writes:

> Level 1: Feeling pain. Pain is an input to an animal's psyche.
> It's not an input to a stalk of celery's psyche, because there
> isn't even a psyche to talk about.
>
> Level 2: Feeling the fact that it's feeling pain. This requires
> self-awareness, which in turn is a property of free will. With
> free will, people have their thoughts as inputs to our psyches,
> so that we can adjust our thoughts and decisions. But animals
> don't have free will, they don't have self awareness, so it
> doesn't go to level 2.
>
> There is no level 3. Level 2, self-awareness, is the ability to
> look at oneself. ...
> An animal's pain doesn't rise to a level of suffering. Our needs
> are therefore qualitatively different than theirs.

Here is my understanding of what you claim:

Celery can be injured, but it cannot feel pain. It never thinks, "Ow, that hurts," because it cannot think. An animal can feel pain and think, "Ow, that hurts." But it is not self-aware, and cannot think, "I am in pain", or "I like it better when I am not in pain", or "I hope someone will help me." The most it can do is find the source of the pain and try to remove it.

Am I correct? If so, what do you mean by "An animal's pain doesn't rise to a level of suffering." Why doesn't "That hurts" meet your definition of "suffering"?

Akiva Miller


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