Author: Stevan Harnad

<center><img width=’600′ height=’401′ border=’0′ hspace=’5′ src=’/~totl/skywritings/uploads/rodeo1.jpg’ alt=” /></center><blockquote><b>Q1. </b> M. le maire, je m’adresse à vous en tant que rédacteur en chef d’une revue scientifique internationale portant sur <a href=”http://animalstudiesrepository.org/animsent/”>la sensibilité animale</a>, que professeur en sciences cognitives à l’UQÀM, et que directeur d’un institut d’été international sur la sensibilité animale qui aura lieu à Montréal, peu après les célébrations [du trois cent soixante-quinzième] anniversaire de Montréal.

Sachant que les rodéos tombent sous la catégorie des activités, concours ou épreuves « <a href=”http://www.veterinairesaucanada.net/documents/utilisation-danimaux-dans-le-cadre-des-spectacles-et-des-loisirs”>qui présentent une probabilité élevée de blessures, de détresse ou de maladies</a> » à laquelle s’oppose formellement l’Association canadienne des médecins vétérinaires;

Sachant que le Québec a récemment modifié le statut juridique des animaux afin de bonifier sa mauvaise réputation en matière de bien-être animal;

Sachant que causer du mal aux animaux pour le divertissement est contraire à la loi québécoise [sur le bien-être et la sécurité de l’animal;]

Sachant que les chevaux et les taureaux du rodéo de NomadFest sont protégés par les articles 5 et 6 de cette loi, les rodéos ne faisant pas partie des activités qu’elle exempt;

[Sachant que pour faire ruer ces animaux on va jusqu’à les électrocuter à l’aide d’un aiguillon électrique alors qu’ils quittent l’enclos pour l’arène;]

[Sachant que l’Association canadienne des médecins vétérinaires a formellement reconnu inacceptable « <a href=”http://www.veterinairesaucanada.net/documents/utilisation-danimaux-dans-le-cadre-des-spectacles-et-des-loisirs”>le recours à des interventions qui modifient la conformation ou la fonction des animaux pour les besoins de la compétition</a> »;]

Sachant que [les organisateurs de Saint-Tite] ont retiré [de la programmation] du rodéo urbain [l’épreuve de] la prise au lasso du veau, admettant ainsi le risque de blessures pour l’animal [inhérents aux épreuves d’un rodéo;]

Sachant que l’opinion publique, partout dans le monde, s’exprime de plus en plus fort contre l’abus des animaux [tel qu’il s’affiche] dans les corridas, les combats de chiens et les rodéos, forçant l’annulation de telles activités aux États-Unis, en Australie, en Nouvelle-Zélande;

Sachant que des pétitions ont demandé l’annulation du rodéo urbain;

Sachant que plusieurs organismes internationaux sont à demander aux commanditaires de s’en dissocier, ce qu’a déjà fait <a href=”http://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/montreal/201702/11/01-5068711-loblaw-se-dissocie-du-rodeo-du-375e-anniversaire-de-montreal.php”>Loblaws</a>;

Sachant que la SPCA de Montréal s’est publiquement opposée à la tenue du rodéo urbain;

Sachant, finalement que les rodéos n’ont rien à voir avec le patrimoine montréalais,

<b><i>Je vous demande, M. le maire, pourquoi vous tenez mordicus à ternir l’image de Montréal et celle du Québec en maintenant coûte que coûte une telle abomination dans les célébrations de notre [trois cent soixante-quinzième] anniversaire?</i></b></blockquote><b>Q2: </b> Vous m’avez dit l’autre fois que vous aviez assisté à un rodéo de Saint-Tite et que vous l’aviez trouvé acceptable. Lorsque je vous ai demandé si vous supporteriez un tel traitement pour vos animaux de famille, vous m’avez répondu qu’il existait tout de même une différence entre les animaux domestiques et les animaux de ferme. Vous sembliez même surpris que votre réplique n’ait pas suscité d’applaudissements.

<b><i>Quelle est cette différence, M. le maire, et en quoi est-ce qu’elle justifie un tel traitement des animaux de ferme?</i></b>

Il n’existe aucune horreur infligée aux animaux
que nous n’avons pas infligé aussi aux humains

—la subjugation, l’esclavage, la torture, le meurtre, le viol, le génocide–

There is no horror we inflict on animals
That we have not also inflicted on humans

-slavery, subjugation, torture, murder, rape, genocide–

Mais envers les humains,

c’est illégal

et la plupart de l’humanité s’y oppose

et ne le ferait jamais

But doing it to humans,

is illegal

And most of humanity opposes it

And would never do it

Tandis qu’envers les animaux

c’est légal

Et la plupart de l’humanité le demande

et le soutient

Whereas doing it to animals
is legal

And most of humanity demands it

and sustains it

—-

Jusqu’à ce que ce ne soit plus vrai

comment peut-on attendre à plus de miséricorde que ce qu’on en accorde?

Until this is no longer true

how can we expect to get any better than we give?

Re: Frost, Ben (2017) Ecorazzi January 9, 2017
Why the Mainstream “Animal Movement” Promotes Peter Singer

---

Stevan Harnad: Such a pity — a tragedy, actually, for the (animal) victims — this needless, destructive, dogmatic divisiveness. So few vegans in the world, yet the “abolitionist” zealots fight with them instead of trying to reach the hearts of carnivores. This is not the way to cultivate compassion. Nor to reduce suffering. Nor, for that matter, to convert most people to veganism or abolition.       — A Non-Dogmatic Abolitionist

Gary Francione: What are you talking about? It’s not a matter of being “divisive.” It’s a matter of criticizing an ideology which holds that, because animals (supposedly) have a qualitatively different level of self-awareness, they lack an interest in, or have a qualitatively different interest in, continuing to live. That is the basis of the welfarist movement, which holds that killing animals per se is not to harm them and that the focus should be reducing suffering. This has nothing to do abolition. One cannot be “divisive” unless there is a unitary whole that can be divided. There isn’t.

I have attempted to engage you before. You never deal with the substantive issues. You simply repeat the welfarist PR slogans. You’re doing it here.

Gary L. Francione. Rutgers University

P.S. If you would like to have a public discussion about this, let me know, We could do something on a platform like Skype. Let others determine whose position is correct.

Stevan Harnad: Hi Gary,

Thanks for your reply. Here are a few clarifications that I think might help:

1. I too am a vegan abolitionist (activist).

2. This means that I do anything I can to help and protect animals.

3. I don’t eat or wear or use animals in any way.

4. I do anything I can toward abolishing the use of animals.

5. I do anything I can to try to encourage people to become vegans as well as activists doing anything they can to help and protect animals and to abolish their use.

I realize that most people in the world are carnivores and do not (yet) share all of 1 – 5. So I think that the more people begin to do at least part of 1 – 5, the better for the animal victims, present and future.

I don’t hold any part of the ideology that you attribute to the welfarist movement. I am sure that there are people who hold some or all of those views, but they are not vegan abolitionist activists.

I am an abolitionist vegan activist who is also a welfarist, and so are many others. I think that not only do I not fit the stereotype you describe as the ideology of “welfarists,” but that that stereotype does not fit many other abolitionist vegan activists who are also working for animal welfare, including those who are provisionally making common cause with non-vegans who are merely trying to reduce rather than abolish animal suffering.

I would be very happy to have a public discussion with you. I admire your heart, your feelings towards animals, and all you are trying to do to help animals and to abolish the horrors. But my public discussion with you will be ecumenical, because I do not oppose the positive efforts of fellow abolitionist vegan activists to end the horrors. I just greatly regret divisiveness among abolitionist vegan activists as well as negative stereotyping. I don’t think fighting with one another helps the countless animal victims that we are all fighting to help and protect from the horrors.

Best wishes, Stevan

GARY FRANCIONE: You say: “I am an abolitionist vegan activist who is also a welfarist, and so are many others.”

No, you’re not an abolitionist.

In the 1990s, many welfarists said they really wanted to achieve animal rights (which required abolition) but they supported welfare as a means to that end. I wrote a book in 1996 (Rain Without Thunder) in which I discussed this phenomenon, I called it “new welfarism.” I explained the theoretical and practical problems of that position. What you are articulating is *exactly* that position: you’re an abolitionist but support welfare. Abolition is a position that says that the means must be consistent with the end. You cannot simultaneously support abolition and welfare,either in some absolute way or as a supposed means to the end of abolition. You are articulating a new welfarist position. You either are not familiar with my work or you don’t agree with it but I have yet to see you make a single substantive argument against it.

You say: “I don’t hold any part of the ideology that you attribute to the welfarist movement.” But you say: “I am an abolitionist vegan activist who is also a welfarist.” So you’re a welfarist but you don’t embrace the welfarist ideology? Sorry, that makes absolutely no sense.

There is no divisiveness amongst abolitionists. There are abolitionists and there are new welfarists. They are two separate approaches to animal ethics.

Stevan Harnad: Hi Gary,

I know your position and I know your work and I admire and value it, as I do the work of all sincere, dedicated vegan abolitionist activists.

But yes, I cannot agree with you that one cannot be working toward complete abolition while also working for immediate welfare improvements along the way. I know you hypothesize that this entrenches and reinforces animal exploitation and the industries that thrive on it.

That is a hypothesis. It might be right, it might be wrong. I believe it is sometimes right but often wrong. I also cannot bring myself to not do whatever I can to lessen the current victims’ immediate suffering on the strength of a hypothesis. I might have been able to do it (for a while) if there were overwhelming evidence to support the hypothesis, and if abolition were around the corner, but neither of these is alas the case.

One is free, of course, to define “isms” in any way one wishes. You are working toward the total abolition of animal use by humans. So am I. I would say that by the ordinary rules of nominalizing verbs in English, that makes us both “abolitionists.” On the road to abolition, I am also working toward reducing ongoing animal suffering as much and as soon as possible, by any means possible. Knowing your compassion and motivation, I am absolutely certain you are too.

It seems reasonable to say that working to reduce animal suffering is working to increase animal welfare. But the path from a noun (welfare) to an ideologized hyper-noun, “welfarism,” is more arbitrary and subjective. And I think you have projected an ideology onto those who are trying to reduce current animal suffering on the path to total abolition, describing them as people who are delaying or deterring abolition, either inadvertently, or deliberately, for their own interests.

There do indeed exist many people who are deliberately or inadvertently delaying or deterring abolition for their own interests. Such people, either knowingly or unknowingly, really aren’t abolitionists.

But that simply does not cover all the people who say, truthfully, that they are abolitionists, and act accordingly, and who also say, truthfully, that they are “welfarists” as well, trying to reduce animal suffering along the way, and act accordingly.

Nor is there any reason to believe that formulating a hypothesis or attributing an ideology makes real people fit one’s hypothesis or one’s attribution as a matter of fact. That rather exceeds the definitional power of language.

I will be directing a Summer Institute on “The Other Minds Problem: Animal Sentience and Cognition” in Montreal in June 2018. The daytime sessions will be scientific ones, focussed on sentience and biological/psychological needs, species by species, from invertebrates to fish to birds to mammals to primates. The evening sessions will be about ethics and practical activism for immediately reducing and eventually abolishing animal suffering. I hope you can come and give a talk.

With best wishes,

Stevan

On a long walk in Princeton many years ago I asked David Lewis whether the distinction between what’s necessary and what’s contingent might be just an epistemic (based only on what we do and don’t, can and can’t know), rather than an ontic one: The things we regard as necessary are the ones that are either provably necessary, on pain of formal contradiction with our premises, such as the fact that 29 is prime or that “p or q” implies p, or are thought to be “nomologically necessary,” based on current causal theory and evidence, such as that apples fall earthward rather than skyward because of gravity. The things we regard as contingent are just the ones that are not provably necessary, nor thought to be nomologically necessary.

In other words, the necessary/contingent distinction could be metaphysical, but it could also be that everything that is and that happens is necessary (could not have been otherwise), either formally or nomologically, but we just don’t always know the proof, or the laws/evidence/reasons. Contingency and possibility are just symptoms of our ignorance.

The idea has its homologue in metatheory of probability: What look like possibilities only look that way because of our ignorance. Everything is determinate and necessary; just some of it (unproved and unprovable theorems, the answers to NP-complete questions, many-body problems, even quantum indeterminacy), is uncertain, unpredicatable, its formal or causal story unknown or even unknowable. (No, I don’t think QM’s hidden necessity would be committed to the truth of hidden-variable theory.)

What would become of the realist view of necessity if everything were necessary? (Those are, of course, epistimic “woulds” and “weres”.)

This would not solve the “hard” problem of consciousness either because it’s not enough to say that our brains must produce consciousness: We still want to know, as with everything else, how and why. The hard problem is an epistemic one, of causal explanation.

And of course there’s a lot more at stake in asking whether the laws of nature themselves could have been otherwise than in pondering whether or not the various incarnations of the Ship of Theseus are the same ship.

Formalists in mathematics would then be pragmatists, in John Burgess‘s sense, but the law of non-contradiction would be the underlying realist constraint.

Non-ontic contingency would of course have implications for “possible worlds” theory, “concepts,” and “free will.”

Footnotes:

“Uncomplemented Categories” (for which non-members do not exist) are admittedly problematic.

If everything were ontically determinate and necessary this would not only pose problems for free will but for ethics.

LANGUAGE, LIE-DETECTORS AND CARLO COLLODI

1. Yes, Trump is a compulsive (and repulsive) serial liar.

2. Yes, the right-wing press is trying to minimize this.

3. Yes, it’s harder to prove that someone tried to deliberately misinform people rather than just “mistakenly asserting and believing something false to be true.”

4. Yes, Trump can be serially absolved of his serial lies by sugar-coating them as “mistakenly asserting and believing something false to be true.”

5. Fine. Ban the word “lie” in the Trump era, forget about intent, and simply, relentlessly keep building a cumulative list of the things that Trump asserts to be true that are false, from day to day, every day, coupled with the evidence in each case.

6. Let’s see how many people are ready to believe the things Trump says as this list just grows and grows and grows.

7. Natural language evolved 300,000 years ago on the default assumption that what people tell you is true; if the default assumption had been that it was false, language could never have gotten off the ground.

8. But, as a safeguard, we also evolved highly sensitive serial lie-detectors: If someone keeps lying to us, we stop believing them, whether we like it or not.

9. The deplorables believed (or pretended to believe) Trump enough to vote for him despite the evidence; the decent majority already saw through him long, long before the time of the election (but the electoral laws gave Trump a false majority anyway).

10. Let’s see how long Trump’s serial lying leaves him any credibility at all in the US and the world as the list of the things he asserts to be true that are false just grows and grows, like Pinocchio’s nose…

Picike,
már nem vagy,
és amire kiváncsi voltál,
már tudod hogy nincs
— vagy is tudtad volna,
ha lett volna,
ahogy XCIV lettél volna,
ha még lettél volna.
Mi még vagyunk,
egyre kevesebben,
de emlékszünk,
és a műveid,
meg a Bonzóé,
még vannak
és még lesznek
már akkor is
mikor már nem emlékszik senki.
Na és?

Le foie gras à nouveau banni en Californie Le Devoir 8 janvier 2019

Alain Roy: « Il faut mettre tout ça en perspective : est-ce que mon confort alimentaire, ma tradition, mon goût l’emporte sur la souffrance d’un être vivant qu’on reconnaît susceptible de souffrance selon la science ? »

Une lecture que ne partage pas Rougié. Le producteur de foie gras (de Marieville, en Montérégie) estime plutôt que le stade de « stéatose hépatique », ou « lipidose » du foie, atteint par l’engraissement maîtrisé des canards est « un état réversible et non pathologique », selon les informations publiées sur son site Internet.

Quelle hypocrisie: En réhabilitation on encourage les alcoholiques souffrant de la stéatose hépatique de cesser de boire pendant que c’est encore réversible, avant que ça mène à la cirrhose du foie, la démence, le cancère du foie et la mort.

La production de foie gras grossit le foie jusqu’à 10 fois sa taille normale. Cela entrave la fonction hépatique en obstruant le flux sanguin et dilate l’abdomen, ce qui rend difficile la respiration des oiseaux. La mort survient si le gavage est poursuivi. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foie_gras#Humane_foie_gras

Jusqu’un certain point la strangulation et même l’égorgement sont réversibles, si on arrête de les faire assez tôt.

Est-ce que dans sa publicité l’entreprise Rougié est en train de prôner la réhabilitation des oies? Pas la peine, puisque les alcoholiques s’empoisonnent de leur propre libre arbitre, tandis que les oies ne se gavent pas volontairement.

(Au moins boire du vin donne du plaisir au buveur — avec ou sans foie gras — mais le gavage ne donne que de l’agonier au gavé, pour le plaisir du consommateur, et au profit des gaveurs de la Montérégie. Est-ce réversible, ça?)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-MBjIoXNLprWlRDcGlzaVRfY3M/preview

Extraits du code civile du Quebec B-3.1 – Loi sur le bien-être et la sécurité de l’animal

CONSIDÉRANT
—que la condition animale est devenue une préoccupation sociétale;
—que l’espèce humaine a une responsabilité individuelle et collective de veiller au bien-être et à la sécurité des animaux;
—que l’animal est un être doué de sensibilité ayant des impératifs biologiques;
—que l’État estime essentiel d’intervenir afin de mettre en place un régime juridique et administratif efficace afin de s’assurer du bien-être et de la sécurité de l’animal;

Nul ne peut, par son acte ou son omission, faire en sorte qu’un animal soit en détresse.

Pour l’application de la présente loi, un animal est en détresse dans les cas suivants:

—il est soumis à un traitement qui lui cause des douleurs aiguës;
—il est exposé à des conditions qui lui causent une anxiété ou une souffrance excessives.

Toute disposition d’une loi accordant un pouvoir à une municipalité ou toute disposition d’un règlement adopté par une municipalité, inconciliable avec une disposition de la présente loi ou d’un de ses règlements, est INOPÉRANTE.

MA QUESTION: « Face à ce constat, comment est-ce que la ville de Montréal peut faire venir le rodéo de St Tite à notre festival NomadFest 2017? »

(Le maire répond que ça se fait ailleurs aussi (St Tite, Calgary), qu’on nous assure que les animaux ne souffrent pas, qu’il y a des vétérinaires qui sont présent, et que ce qui est important c’est que ça se fasse de façon « professionnelle ». Il promet de m’envoyer des informations supplémentaires à ce sujet.)

QUESTION COMPLÉMENTAIRE: « Est-ce que le maire a jamais témoigner de près ce qui ce fait au rodéo — et est-ce qu’il permettrait faire ça avec ses animaux de famille? »

(Le maire répond qu’il a été voir le rodéo à St Tite, qu’il était satisfait, et qu’il y a une différence entre les animaux domestiques et le animaux de rodéo.)

Le maire semble avoir attendu à ce qu’on l’applaudisse après cette réplique. C’est un indice de la direction que nous devons prendre: Le maire cherche l’applaudissement, il n’aime pas la mauvaise presse, il souhaite être re-élue. Donc il faut lui communiquer — sans rancoeur, tout à fait sang-froid — ce que les citoyens du québéc ont communiqué avec leur manifeste, et ce qu’ils attendent en termes de respect à la nouvelle loi B-3.1…

Il faut insister sur une consultation publique, témoignage privilégié de la SPCA de Montréal, témoignage privilégié de l’ordre de vétérinaires, témoignage privilégié des autres métropoles qui ony banni les rodéos, et beaucoup de preuves vidéos des dégâts…

Hilary was only half-right: The Trump supporters were (and are) ALL deplorables, without exception. So are those who voted 3rd-party or didn’t vote. They all share the blame for what’s to come. Only the numerical majority of decents are blameless. Yet they, too, will suffer the consequences of the triumph of the deplorables — as will the rest of the world.

To have voted for a vile, cheap, ignorant and indescribably dangerous con-man like Trump, with eyes open, has no other word to describe it than deplorable. Yes, we now have to try to make the least worst out of this terrible bargain, but to pretend that Trump voters are anything but deplorables is to pretend OJ Simpson was actually innocent because so adjudged by a jury of peers.

We are in the era of crowd-sourced hearsay demagogy (that some are beginning to call “post-truth”).