Re: Ecokosher


"Micha Berger" <micha@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:f7edf5$nv0$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Eliyahu <lrooff@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I do not believe that Judaism demands we believe animals have an "I"
watching their thoughts and what happens to them. IOW, that the animal
actually experiences anything in any but a metaphoric way. It's all
stimulus-response; WRT animals, the radical behaviorists are right.
I could certainly make a Torah-based argument that this kind of
awareness
is what is distinct about the human soul.

How do you explain Koko the gorilla?

Learning some ASL vocabulary (but not grammar, BTW) or cuddling a kitten
prove the existence of a first person perspective?


Just about anything an animal communicates is from the first person
perspective. I want food, I am sick, I want to be played with because it
gives ME pleasure.

I think you might have it backwards, the thing that differentiates us from
animals isn't the ability to see things in the first person, but to
understand that there's a world we don't directly experience.


.

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