Would humanity have the right to extinguish alien races? [.Mitch. v Aanker] discussion thread

[Aanker]

I guess it ends here then, because I would regard myself as a moderate anthropocentrist (not religious though): humanity is more valuable (to humans) than any other race, whereas you seem to be egalitarian or biocentrist. Ironically, your statement that morals and rights should extend equally to all other races is in itself extremely anthropocentric, because you believe that just because we humans have a perception of what is right and wrong, what is good or evil, means that this thinking extends to everything else, when, in fact, any alien species may have an entirely different perception of morality that rivals our own. What is to say that theirs is inferior?

What you regard as right and wrong, is very much based on genetical heritage. A human has a genetically built basis (the moral center in the brain) from which our later advanced thoughts are constructed. What is to say that an alien species will have the same moral center, if any? Are their morals, or, lack thereof, therefore inferior? If we do not allow ourselves to regard the value of a human as more than that of any other animal or race, then we may as well equal a human with any other animal or race (else we would be favouring an organism over another!), and the outcome of that would be catastrophic.

[Tankbuster]

I guess it ends here then, because I would regard myself as a moderate anthropocentrist (not religious though): humanity is more valuable (to humans) than any other race, whereas you seem to be egalitarian or biocentrist.

I assign the importance of a creature based on its conscious experience, yes. Genetics plays no role in it for me. You could turn out to be an alien writing to me from Alpha Centauri, but if this conversation was a good representation of your intellect and conscious experience, I'd respect you for it just as I would any human.

I don't understand how any system where you'd find out about someone's genetics and that would totally alter your moral evaluation of them is even possible. "Oh your consciousness isn't based on neurons? Sorry, I suddenly don't care about your problems at all anymore."

Ironically, your statement that morals and rights should extend equally to all other races is in itself extremely anthropocentric, because you believe that just because we humans have a perception of what is right and wrong, what is good or evil, means that this thinking extends to everything else, when, in fact, any alien species may have an entirely different perception of morality that rivals our own. What is to say that theirs is inferior?

That's not the definition of anthropocentric at all. I base my morality on a regard for conscious creatures based on the fact that my consciousness is the only intelligible and consistent way of evaluating my place among other conscious creatures -not genetics.

Obviously an alien might not agree with this (hell, you even don't agree with it, so I have no illusions that an alien would) but that doesn't make it anthropocentric under any of its definitions.

What you regard as right and wrong, is very much based on genetical heritage.

That's easy to throw out there, but you don't actually have any evidence for it. Valuing consciousness as the starting point for normative ethics is an entirely recent phenomenon.
You might as well say that what I regard as scientific is based on my genetical heritage. Obviously my genetics enable me to think as I do to some extent, but that's something entirely different.

A human has a genetically built basis (the moral center in the brain) from which our later advanced thoughts are constructed. What is to say that an alien species will have the same moral center, if any? Are their morals, or, lack thereof, therefore inferior?

Same moral center or not, I find the claim that an alien species will have no regard for consciousness to be totally unintelligible. At the very least they'll have a regard for their own consciousness, and to modulate respect based on the possibilities of consciousness really isn't friggin' rocket science.

If we do not allow ourselves to regard the value of a human as more than that of any other animal or race, then we may as well equal a human with any other animal or race (else we would be favouring an organism over another!), and the outcome of that would be catastrophic.

Valuing a human more than another race for no reason at all except that you're a human yourself, that is what's baseless. As well as catastrophic for billions of other conscious creatures if I'm listening to the consequences.

Now happily we do actually have a reason to place ourselves above animals to a certain extent: because we are capable of deeper and richer experiences than they are. This is a consistent way of evaluating our priorities, since it lines up with how we assign priorities among humans as well; for instance we're more concerned about your average human than about a dog, but the moment a human is in a vegatative state, we're not very concerned about them anymore, and arguably a dog would be more important at that point.
We also modulate our moral actions based on the amount of good we can do to a conscious creature; for instance, a piece of sugar might make you happy, but if you're next to a diabetic who could be spared an hour of pain and nausea due to lack of sugar, it makes perfect sense to give it to him. Because in this situation, the improvement that can be made to his experience is far greater than that that can be made to yours. And I don't see how this changes when instead of a diabetic who can be spared an hour of nausea, it is a Na'avi who can be spared an hour of nausea - or death.

So I'm happy to bite the bullet to say that if there are alien species out there who stand to us in terms of the possibilities and depth of their experience, as we stand to dogs, then they are more important than we are.

[Aanker]

Valuing a human more than another race for no reason at all except that you're a human yourself, that is what's baseless. As well as catastrophic for billions of other conscious creatures if I'm listening to the consequences.

So, going by your logic, the comparative values of any two organisms are decided by their abilities to have conscious interaction and experience with. But surely, if we can value, say, a genetically manipulated dog with extraordinary emotional abilities more than we can value a human with a mental disease that prevents him from any interaction whatsoever beyond the most rudimentary (that is, he is not brain dead or without awareness), then surely we can treat him socially and morally just like we treat the dog? A dog can be owned, therefore this man can be owned, since their values are judged not by their belonging to a specific species but rather their abilities to have conscious experiences with you.

In order to prevent the justification of slavery and social isolation, we must have the moral interest to regard each and every human to be equal above any other organisms, because if not, they hold the same value as any other organism and could therefore be given the same treatment if the amount of ability to share conscious experiences were the deciding factor.

Now happily we do actually have a reason to place ourselves above animals to a certain extent: because we are capable of deeper and richer experiences than they are. This is a consistent way of evaluating our priorities, since it lines up with how we assign priorities among humans as well; for instance we're more concerned about your average human than about a dog, but the moment a human is in a vegatative state, we're not very concerned about them anymore, and arguably a dog would be more important at that point.

And this is where my problem with your argument arises. To be entirely frank, honest, and express myself clearly, I could not care less for the lives of a billion innocent puppies if the life of one mentally disabled human, with less possibilities of consciousness and interaction than those of any one of those puppies, was on the line. I value human life because it is human, because even though a human may be an egoistic, self-centered, conversation-incapable sociopath, his value is still higher than that of any quantity of other organisms, unless, of course, the removal of those organisms would endanger the lives of other humans. Why, you ask? Because his survival lies within the rational and moral interests of mankind.

This raises the question of whether a human responsible for genocide or murder on other humans is still more valuable than other organisms, but I would argue that he is, and that he should afterwards be judged against and compared to the actions and morals of other humans, not the feelings or innocence of some truly socially sophisticated dog.

We also modulate our moral actions based on the amount of good we can do to a conscious creature; for instance, a piece of sugar might make you happy, but if you're next to a diabetic who could be spared an hour of pain and nausea due to lack of sugar, it makes perfect sense to give it to him. Because in this situation, the improvement that can be made to his experience is far greater than that that can be made to yours. And I don't see how this changes when instead of a diabetic who can be spared an hour of nausea, it is a Na'avi who can be spared an hour of nausea - or death.

However by not destroying the Na'avi, you could be endangering the lives of millions of humans on Earth, each one part of your species. What if that unobtainium was the cure for cancer? Or diabetes(!)? Judging by the lines below, you see this as of relatively little consequence, so I will not push this point further because I have already explained my position.

So I'm happy to bite the bullet to say that if there are alien species out there who stand to us in terms of the possibilities and depth of their experience, as we stand to dogs, then they are more important than we are.

If you will happily let them treat you, us two, the members of this forum, or rather, all of humanity, including every living man, woman and child, like domesticated animals, have us enthralled under their bidding and put us to death at will, then...

Even if their race was, in every way conceivable, morally "superior to ours", I would with all my heart pick the mentally disabled human over the billions of aliens that their race may encompass. As a human, it is my moral obligation to do so.

[Menelik_I]

I'm gonna go with Corporal Hicks on this one.

[Tankbuster]

So, going by your logic, the comparative values of any two organisms are decided by their abilities to have conscious interaction and experience with. But surely, if we can value, say, a genetically manipulated dog with extraordinary emotional abilities more than we can value a human with a mental disease that prevents him from any interaction whatsoever beyond the most rudimentary (that is, he is not brain dead or without awareness), then surely we can treat him socially and morally just like we treat the dog? A dog can be owned, therefore this man can be owned, since their values are judged not by their belonging to a specific species but rather their abilities to have conscious experiences with you.

I think there's a grammatical error in there somewhere since it doesn't quite seem to make sense, but to address what I think you're asking: yes, we should modulate our concern based on considerations of this kind. Depending on what level of consciousness the human is and what kinds of actions he can appreciate, we have moral obligations towards him. This runs all the way on a continuum from vegetative state on one hand, over states of reduced consciousness that you're describing, to the consciousness we have now or even higher states.

I mean essentially your scenario is equivalent to giving a dog the brain of a human and the brain of a dog to a human (obviously that's physically impossible, but in terms of what consciousness is going on in which body, it is an accurate analogy). And it seems obvious to me that at that point our moral obligations have inverted because their brains have inverted.

After all, if a human is in a vegatative state we rightly conclude that -sadly- this person has gone from someone who we could love and respect to essentially a plant in human form. And we should go give his oxygen device to someone who can actually be helped with it.
I find this a fairly consistent framework.

In order to prevent the justification of slavery and social isolation, we must have the moral interest to regard each and every human to be equal above any other organisms, because if not, they hold the same value as any other organism and could therefore be given the same treatment if the amount of ability to share conscious experiences were the deciding factor.

That doesn't follow at all. According to this framework you are essentially saying that a human in a vegatative state (who still has chemistry going on, just there's no consciousness in any way whatsoever) is more valuable than any other organism.

Also I find it interesting that you're finding a paradox that our treatment of other animals right now is not ethical. You seem to be saying that if another race arrived that stood towards us like we stand towards pigs, they could be treating us the same way that we treat pigs. And since that doesn't seem right, you therefore dismiss it as absurd.
You don't consider the other alternative: perhaps our current treatment of pigs and other forms of life is wrong.

And this is where my problem with your argument arises. To be entirely frank, honest, and express myself clearly, I could not care less for the lives of a billion innocent puppies if the life of one mentally disabled human, with less possibilities of consciousness and interaction than those of any one of those puppies, was on the line.

Okay.
To be clear, the fact that your current value judgements differ from the ones my argument proposes, is not a "problem" with my argument. If you think something about my framework is self-contradicting or inconsistent, by all means say so, but saying "It doesn't agree with my current belief X." is futile.

I mean, this is literally the same as saying: "To be frank, I could not care less about the lives of a thousand black people if one white child could be saved, and thus I have a problem with this non-racist point of view". Unless there's going to be an argument why that feeling is worth having, it is ineffectual.

I value human life because it is human, because even though a human may be an egoistic, self-centered, conversation-incapable sociopath, his value is still higher than that of any quantity of other organisms, unless, of course, the removal of those organisms would endanger the lives of other humans.

See above: your position is devoid of any actual argument other than "I feel this way because I am a human".

Let me ask you something: how would you argue with someone who said that he only cared about white people? How would you make it clear to him that this is a silly and arbitrary thing to care about? You might say -as seems to be your argument- "Actually black people share a large amount of our DNA and they're just as much a part of humanity as we are." and his response is "Oh I realise that, but I actually don't care about someone's DNA, I just care about the color of their skin, and unless it's white (because I'm white and that's what I like) I consider them expendable for the sake of people that are white."

It seems to me that the only way you can possibly bridge this gap is to point out that while their external appearance is different, there's no functional difference between a black person and a white person in terms of their mental life and their experience, and so caring about their skin is a silly thing to care about.
Because right now your argument seems to be about equally arbitrary.

Why, you ask? Because his survival lies within the rational and moral interests of mankind.

You misspelled intuitions. You feel this way because you feel this way, and if you were born a member of another species you'd feel something completely different. That's why it's arbitrary.

It's like saying that caring for black people doesn't lie within the interests of whitekind. Unless there's a justification for your starting point, you're clearly not talking about morality at all but accident of birth.

However by not destroying the Na'avi, you could be endangering the lives of millions of humans on Earth, each one part of your species. What if that unobtainium was the cure for cancer? Or diabetes(!)? Judging by the lines below, you see this as of relatively little consequence, so I will not push this point further because I have already explained my position.

I would evaluate this scenario the same way as I would in a scenario where the cure for cancer was stored in some holy mountain that the Pygmees didn't want us to reach.
Would we -if necessary- kill everyone standing in our way? Clearly it depends on the harms to them compared to the benefits to us.

If you will happily let them treat you, us two, the members of this forum, or rather, all of humanity, including every living man, woman and child, like domesticated animals, have us enthralled under their bidding and put us to death at will, then...

See above: you conveniently skirted the issue of whether our current way of treating domesticated animals is actually justified. Perhaps it really isn't moral to treat a lower life form like a domesticated animal; but then you can't claim that it's moral if we do it.

Once again you imagine that there's really no way of bridging this accident of birth.
Another thought experiment: an alien species comes along and enslaves all of your friends, family and loved ones. You protest loudly and proudly and fight to free the people you love because you think the way they are treated is unfair and deeply immoral.
Then it is announced that you are actually an infiltrator of the alien species which was considered lost and raised by the ignorant humans as a result, and that actually, your genetic interests lie with the aliens. Would you turn around and say "Oh well then actually I have no reason to care for these silly humans anymore. Subjugate anyway!", yes or no?

Because that's exactly what this fixation on your own species implies. The moment you find out that the DNA of the people you loved is actually different, you assert that your former compassion was misplaced.
A perspective that entails consciousness makes much more sense and is consistent: whatever treatment your friends deserved, they deserve even after you learn more about their DNA. But if they're exposed to actually be in a vegatative state and are some kind of zombies with no consciousness at all, then you will probably realise that caring about them is misplaced. That makes more sense.

Even if their race was, in every way conceivable, morally "superior to ours", I would with all my heart pick the mentally disabled human over the billions of aliens that their race may encompass. As a human, it is my moral obligation to do so.

An obligation dependent on your DNA can't be reasonably called "moral" in any way at all.

[Aanker]

You will have to excuse the lack of quoting, because I responded to your post more in general, but some segments are obviously related to specific parts of your reply.

The concept of morals, at least as we know it, is human. It is subjective and it is built on human interests. We cannot claim that our model of morals is the universal "right" one, because morals are in their very nature related to human thoughts and behaviour, things that produce non-objective results. To us, one action may clearly be right, whereas to another species, it may be wrong, and clearly evil. Suppose that a human was to be compared to a highly sentient, intelligent but canniballistic creature. If the judge were to be human, of non-anthropocentric view, he would claim that the cannibalistic creature could be of higher value or importance than the human. If another creature of the same kin as the one opposed to the human had been the judge in this
thought experiment, he might have claimed that the human was of higher value or importance because he regarded the other creature as an acceptable dinner. Who is to say that the human has the universal moral right of it? The alien could very well have been able to share conscious experiences with his kinsman, just as humans could be able to do with their favourite dinner, cows. Perhaps the cannibals hold the key to the ultimate objective moral truth. Thus, humans should only allow their morals to extend only to themselves, and perhaps to creatures whose destruction is not necessitated or warranted for the survival of mankind. When humanity is put on the line, we cannot claim that the other race that stands against us is of higher importance or value, firstly because that is not a universal "objective" truth claimed by anyone else than humans, and secondly because that is an
argument to suicide. Whereas death may be very tempting to you or your possible offspring, I, in my ego- and group-centered thinking would really not find that very pleasant.

So, we end up knowing that (human) morals are made by, and for, humans, extending perhaps to some extent to those creatures which you say we are able to have conscious experiences with but, ultimately, do not have a comparable value.

Because humans then hold the highest moral value, all humans must be encompassed. If someone is human, then their rights are equal to other humans. A human cannot claim inherent value over another human. Your racism-related (and this is interesting, because what racists actually try to do is claim that humans are subdivided into separate, smaller biological entities for which there is no evidence) analogue is void of meaning because it attempts to compare major genetical, chemical and moral differences to minor, more or less insignificant ones, which vary more between individuals of the same group than between groups themselves. There is additionally a reason why human rights activists claimed that they were seeking acknowledgement as humans, because humans appear to have an equal value to each other, and the norm is to judge human life above other life, because it is human.

From a practical perspective, treating every possible domesticated animal with the same rights as humans would be the end of mankind, thus another argument to specieswide suicide that I find extremely unappealing from selfish, group-oriented and specieswide happiness points of view.

Your example is completely absurd. The presumptions that nobody would be able to discover my true genetical belonging or that I would be able to fully communicate and apprehend human thought are too wild, nearing the impossible, to give this much of a bearing. At best, I could perhaps 'feel' human, but only because I would as a child have been indoctrinated in human morals and systems of thought, and subsequently been given a human view of the world. Perhaps I would continue my fight for humanity, but I have no doubt that my own species would regard me as a traitor if I did, and there is nothing that says that I would have made the right decision, because even by your reasoning, my chances of "emotional and conscious" exchange would
probably have been higher with my own race, so there it falls. I make the wrong choice by abandoning my species.

[Blatta Optima Maxima]

Why should we give rights to aliens we so often deprive our own race of?

[Tankbuster]

The concept of morals, at least as we know it, is human. It is subjective and it is built on human interests. We cannot claim that our model of morals is the universal "right" one, because morals are in their very nature related to human thoughts and behaviour, things that produce non-objective results. To us, one action may clearly be right, whereas to another species, it may be wrong, and clearly evil. Suppose that a human was to be compared to a highly sentient, intelligent but canniballistic creature. If the judge were to be human, of non-anthropocentric view, he would claim that the cannibalistic creature could be of higher value or importance than the human. If another creature of the same kin as the one opposed to the human had been the judge in this
thought experiment, he might have claimed that the human was of higher value or importance because he regarded the other creature as an acceptable dinner. Who is to say that the human has the universal moral right of it? The alien could very well have been able to share conscious experiences with his kinsman, just as humans could be able to do with their favourite dinner, cows. Perhaps the cannibals hold the key to the ultimate objective moral truth. Thus, humans should only allow their morals to extend only to themselves, and perhaps to creatures whose destruction is not necessitated or warranted for the survival of mankind. When humanity is put on the line, we cannot claim that the other race that stands against us is of higher importance or value, firstly because that is not a universal "objective" truth claimed by anyone else than humans, and secondly because that is an argument to suicide. Whereas death may be very tempting to you or your possible offspring, I, in my ego- and group-centered thinking would really not find that very pleasant.

I've commented below about how this simply begs the question. How you even move from "I care about my possible offspring" to "I care about the entierity of the human race in principle, regardless of whether I have offspring" is a series of very acrobatic leaps that only an enlightened 21th-century individual can make since just about nobody in human history actually did that.
For instance the part about how "other creatures should only be valued to some extent whose destruction is not warranted for the survival of mankind"... substitute "other creatures for "other tribes" and mankind with "my tribe" and you have the exact attitude towards other humans that a prehistoric human would have. Substitute with "other empires" and "my empire" and you have that of an Iron-Age human. That you've chosen to see the survival of all of mankind as a goal in the first place, is not as basic and non-arbitrary a starting point as you imagine.

But anyway, I disagree that morality is that tied to genetics in the first place. You seem to imagine that unless we all share the same genetic predispositions for morality and the same genetic interests, there's just no way to structure a society in any way at all.
I think that's false. I think morality relates to a structure of mutual obligations we use to keep the desires from others from trumping our own. Obviously this process is somewhat simplified on Earth since the only creatures capable of trumping or helping to fulfill our own desires are other humans (and so this leads you to think that morality is only tied to humans as a rule, which is actually getting it backwards), but there's nothing that stops similar processes from taking place even if there were no mutual genetic interests at all.

For instance, the reason we humans scorn those who kill other humans isn't because we have a genetic interest in their survival (usually), but simply because we personally desire to live and so we have reasons to condemn those who could trump that desire and to mould their behaviour in this way.
This is akin to why we condemn those that steal; again this has nothing to do with genetic interests, it's simply because we don't want to be stolen from and so have reasons to build societies that condemn this behaviour.

It's clear that the reasons we have to want certain moral codes to exist have nothing to do with the genetics of those who we try to influence. Of course you need a certain brainpower to analyse your own desires and seek to influence those who can trump them, but any halfway-intelligent alien species is capable of this process just the same, and there's no reason simple moral codes of this kind can't be worked out with them as well.

Obviously there will be some kinds of alien desires which are just intrinsically contrary to our own in which case there obviously are problems, but on the whole there's no reason why you'd imagine them to be utterly morallly nihilistic. If they have desires just like we do then they have an interest in morality just like we do.

Because humans then hold the highest moral value, all humans must be encompassed. If someone is human, then their rights are equal to other humans. A human cannot claim inherent value over another human. Your racism-related (and this is interesting, because what racists actually try to do is claim that humans are subdivided into separate, smaller biological entities for which there is no evidence) analogue is void of meaning because it attempts to compare major genetical, chemical and moral differences to minor, more or less insignificant ones, which vary more between individuals of the same group than between groups themselves.

This whole paragraph eand a large part of the one before) is simply you begging the question, ad nauseum. So "moral" differences are important, but say, skin color is not. Who says? Racial supremacists find differences of this kind very significant, to the extent that they're willing to treat people very differently over it. The same goes for hardcore nationalists: they're usually quite happy to grant that other people are not all that genetically different, but they still see the artificial borders of their country a perfectly sane border.
Many religious fundamentalists do the same thing to people of other religions. They find what people believe a better denominator for moral obligations than genetics.

And you're right that many racists try to justify biases of this sort using genetics (and I say justify, because the bias clearly predates the search for evidence; it's not like the Romans who enslaved the Nubians thought that there were chemical or genetic differences), but unless you're going to say that if black people were genetically different from us, treating them like slaves would be justified, that distinction still gets you absolutely nowhere.

You blithely dismiss all of this with assertions like "morality is based on human interests" and "no human can claim inherent value over another human". But many people do exactly that and value allegiance to a state or adherence to a religion far more than genetic similarity (and to this extent I actually agree, since I think genetic similarity is something relatively useless).

You keep putting your own arbitrary framework (only care about conscious organisms labelled "humans" according to genetic markers) up front and then judge other equally arbitrary frameworks (like only care about "Sunni Muslims" based on religious marker or only care about "people of my nation" based on geographical factors) on that basis. You don't seem to realise how totally unpersuasive such a move is.
That's why I said that you can't bridge differences of this kind unless you actually start caring about other creatures for their own sake rather than yours.

From a practical perspective, treating every possible domesticated animal with the same rights as humans would be the end of mankind, thus another argument to specieswide suicide that I find extremely unappealing from selfish, group-oriented and specieswide happiness points of view.

Nobody argued for treating a domesticated animal with the same rights as a human, certainly not me.
If you still didn't understand that simple point by now, this conversation was truly useless. If you did understand it but just ignored it, it was a strawman.

Either way I'm somewhat disappointed.

[conon394]

Tankbuster - do you object to wiping out smallpox and polio?

And I'm hardly the first to notice that that is an ethical blind spot we have. Interestingly our blind spot here isn't even that great anymore; few Westerners would eat a steak if they had to kill a cow to get it, or even look at a cow being killed.

Why?

[Tankbuster]

Tankbuster - do you object to wiping out smallpox and polio?

I feel like I've repeated the principle of assigning importance to another creature based on their ability to suffer and have conscious experiences more than a dozen times.

That should answer why I don't care much for viruses.

And I'm hardly the first to notice that that is an ethical blind spot we have. Interestingly our blind spot here isn't even that great anymore; few Westerners would eat a steak if they had to kill a cow to get it, or even look at a cow being killed.

Why?

That wasn't exactly a point I was arguing for. It's just a fact that many people have gotten to the point where they wouldn't kill a cow to get their steak, and generally try not to think too much about it.

So having it done out of sight and out of mind, isn't really an ethical solution.

[conon394]

I feel like I've repeated the principle of assigning importance to another creature based on their ability to suffer and have conscious experiences more than a dozen times.

That should answer why I don't care much for viruses.

I guess I still see a gulf here - so theoretically you are OK with destroying alien life forms as long as they are not apparently cute and cuddly?

It's just a fact that many people have gotten to the point where they wouldn't kill a cow to get their steak, and generally try not to think too much about it.

They should I find it very much more ethical to know how my cow/pig/chicken was raised and see it killed quickly and humanly at the local butcher - rather than be the product of the often systematically inhuman industrial slaughter industry (to both workers and animals).

[John ''True Grit'' Wayne]

If we find aliens does it mean there is no god.
If we find green aliens praising jesus do we assume that its all true??
If god made aliens then we do not have the right to kill them as he only gave us this earth to use and abuse

[Tankbuster]

I guess I still see a gulf here - so theoretically you are OK with destroying alien life forms as long as they are not apparently cute and cuddly?

I don't even...
How on Earth did you make the leap from "ability to suffer and have conscious experiences" to "apparently cute and cuddly"?

Most of the cute and cuddly creatures on this planet aren't actually very cognitively complex. It doesn't seem like there's much to "being a rabbit". And the opposite is true for some of the less cuddly creatures like pigs and chimpanzees, who are probably much closer to our level of conscious experience than most other life forms.

There is no link between what I'm saying and the physical appearance of another life form. It's about interaction, if anything.

They should I find it very much more ethical to know how my cow/pig/chicken was raised and see it killed quickly and humanly at the local butcher - rather than be the product of the often systematically inhuman industrial slaughter industry (to both workers and animals).

I agree.
But the moment you've admitted that there's an ethical difference between systematic industrial slaughter of animals and a more sane and "humane" way of doing it, it seems to me like you're on my side of the argument.

[Kanaric]

If we find aliens does it mean there is no god.
If we find green aliens praising jesus do we assume that its all true??
If god made aliens then we do not have the right to kill them as he only gave us this earth to use and abuse

If we find aliens mormons come and convert them to god on their way to Kolob.

[saxdude]

This whole argument strikes me as rather stupid. I mean we would treat them as any other species, if they are not sentient but we need the recources then there would be some form of strict regulation, all the biological faculties and institutions wont just cease to exist because its on another planet and infact they would be even stricter because of the scarcity of life on other planets and the massive investigations to be conducted there. For the most part modern society has already decided that we dont have the right to exterminate other races.

Now war on the other hand.

[Inconsistent]

For the most part modern society has already decided that we dont have the right to exterminate other races.

If you think people are xenophobic when the only real differences are skin color, height, and a few facial features, wait until they look so different to anything we've ever seen it's uncomprehensible.

[saxdude]

Non intelligent life forms will still be held in extremely high regard for studies, so no. Tigers are very different to us that doesnt mean that.... oh. Well but its illegal anyway.

[Chocoman]

I'm against humanity extinquish aliens or any other lifeform. We have to prove we are better and more humane than they.

[saxdude]

I'm against humanity extinquish aliens or any other lifeform. We have to prove we are better and more humane than they.

No . You mean we arent already?

[nhinhonhinho]

To be unclean
That's the mark of Xenos
To be impure
That's the mark of Xenos
To be abhorred
That's the mark of Xenos
To be reviled
That's the mark of Xenos
To be hunted
That's the mark of Xenos
To be purge
That's the fate of Xenos
To be cleansed
For that's the fate of all Xenos

Ordor Xenos