RE: Are animals happier than humans?

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Are animals happier than humans?

in philosophy •  7 years ago 

And I propose a counterargument to your counterargument:

  1. Evolution is part of nature (just as everything is, really)

In fact, and this is more controversial, beyond "human-made", artificial things are part of nature too. We evolved to make these buildings, these technologies, the internet, electricity, cryptocurrencies and particle accelerators. Lions evolved to chase gazelles. It's just the way it is, and we wouldn't say that the death of the gazelle is wrong because it's artificial (lion-made). It just is.

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I'm sorry, but I have to disagree on two parts.

Firstly, If I kill somebody with a gun, he/she did not die of natural causes.
Therefore, technology is not natural, or, as you put it, a part of nature.

Secondly, technology is not just the way it is. It could have been different, a human or a group of humans decided to make it that way.

It could have been different

It could only be the way it is, for time has passed and it ended up that way, or that is what determinism would say about it.

Firstly, If I kill somebody with a gun, he/she did not die of natural causes.

I believe this is mere cultural terminology. Natural causes. Artificial means manmade, so yes, technology is manmade, gunshots and gun wounds are manmade, and so they are artificial. But we are animals too. When an otter uses a rock to break a nut and eat its insides, the nut being broken is artificial, otter-made, but you would not call it "unnatural", "outside of nature", "beyond evolution", as you say in

Therefore there exists at least one butterfly leaving the road of nature.

Every action a butterfly takes is within its nature, and evolution is part of nature, Darwinism is part of nature and its actions and reactions, as @vieira would call them, maybe due to the lack of free will in butterflies, are also part of nature.

It could only be the way it is, for time has passed and it ended up that way, or that is what determinism would say about it.

I would like to think that at least hard determinism is not true. I can agree on some things being predictable by means of statistics, a-priori knowledge, phenomenal experience, etc., but a predetermined totality of existence, I cannot possibly agree on that.

I believe this is mere cultural terminology.

I disagree. If you compare a mobile phone to a rock and declare: otter technology is in principle the same as human technology, I would tend to argue that we used to use rocks once as well, and that rocks are accessible to all species. Rocks occur naturally. But we have improved on that natural rock on such a fundamental level that I think you are comparing two different things, separated by a long (technological-) evolutionary path that led to us using mobile phones and otters still using naturally occuring rocks.