I've been pondering this comment over a bottle of red wine. I am extremely arrogant about my ability to formulate a robust argument, it's just about the only thing I do very well. But to be perfectly honest, I have no belief that anything I've been saying is "true". In fact, a paradox in my thinking is that since there is no such thing as truth, it is impossible for me ever to be speaking the truth. This may or may not be true, of course. As for my materialist worldview, of course I'm not arrogant enough to think it's "true". It's just my working hypothesis. Welcome to my world!:H
This is still an incomplete theory. Why should empathy be extended beyond its survival funtion? Again, you're postulating the existence of a mechanism, but not a reason. Demonstrating that we can extend an abstract concept such as empathy to a include animals does not address why we should do so. You say: .... which seems like a bit of a cop out. Again, you're suggesting a mechanism (abstract thought) without a reason. If the extension of empathy to another species is the result of an evolutionary process, it should be possible to describe that process regardless of whether it's an accident or not. If the accident occurred, then we should be able to demonstrate why the accident occurred. And this: ... is a closed logic loop. Why is it bad to subject a fox to unnecessary pain? Just because you can empathise with a creature, that still doesn't provide a reason to explain why we should allow that creature's pain to be of importance to us. For example, if you could teach a machine the simple process of empathy (the ability to identify with the feelings of another), it would then be possible for the machine to understand that there's a parallel between its own pain and the pain of another. However, that doesn't provide a reason for the machine to care about the pain of another. You seem to try to work around this point by suggesting that there's an evolutionary advantage to caring about our immediate social group, and that the extension of this empathic connection to other creatures is the result of an abstract logic process, or an evolutionary accident. While the first part of your argument is sound, the latter part is not. It's not a theory, it's a blind leap of faith. Again, I come back to the same point..... you're not demonstrating why we should extend our empathy, you're simply demonstrating that it's possible. And it's not a mistake that I'm making. However, regardless of any evolutionary advantage, we should be able to explain why a creature evolves in a particular way. But even where we can rationally extend our empathy to others, this does not explain why we should do so. So, your theory would seem to be that evolution teaches us empathy, thus making this our 'nature' as you put it? And then our ability through abstract thought to understand the pain of another creature engages our 'natural' empathic reaction? That makes more sense than much of what you've said so far (no offence intended there - just a personal perspective!). However, I still think that this is entirely a leap of faith. There are gaping holes in this logic that I still don't feel have been adequately addressed. For example, if our nature is so fundamentally empathic that we instinctively extend it to encompass other species, then why do we find it so easy to overcome this empathy when we kill human beings? And before you suggest that this is an unusual event, it would seem to me that the history of the human race includes an inordinate amount of killing! Are you suggesting that our fundamental nature is so overwhelmingly empathic that it drives us to care about animals instinctively, and yet it also allows us to discard said nature when we need to kill our fellow men? Well I agree. But the problem I have here is that I still don't feel satisfied with your explanation of why we should extrapolate empathy beyond our immediate social group. In fact, it would seem to me that our survival as human beings has frequently been driven by the need to kill others more than to empathise with them! I think this is confusing two arguments. On the one hand, your suggesting that our aversion to killing is an empathic one, and yet you're also arguing that it's the result of a social taboo. While I accept that these positions aren't mutually exclusive, it makes the issue very difficult to debate objectively, since the relationship of taboo/evolutionary reasons for any given action would be almost impossible to disentangle. This is a massive assumption on your part. You assume that it's because of the way I've been socialised. Equally, as you say, there are those who don't share this moral imperative. And yet I would suggest their socialisation has been largely identical to my own. If that's the case, then we enter the realm (oh shit!) of freedom of choice. Presumably, one of us chooses to respond to this moral imperative while the other does not. If we're all governed by physical laws, where does freedom of choice fit into the equation? The problem here though is that according to your own argument, there's no purpose served by empathising with other living creatures. Your behaviour is less rational than the person who kills for pleasure. Having identified that your abhorrence for violence is a result of the evolutionary processes of empathy and abstraction, the rational thing would be to attempt to put those to one side and pursue merely your own self-interest. In other words, to become a sociopath. In fact, the logical conclusion of your argument is that the sociopathic individual is in fact the most advanced member of our species, because he/she is putting their social/evolutionary conditioning to one side and pursuing solely that which serves them.
I respect your ability to form a robust argument, and it's refreshing to find someone who's capable of following a complicated rational debate without letting emotion cloud the issues. However, I do perceive you getting a little tetchy when your logic is challenged. I think you have a strong emotional attachment to the idea that your logic is consistent and therefore perfect. I think it annoys you when this is questioned, and you choose to be irritated with the inability of the other person to understand your conjecture, rather than taking the path of questioning your own rational process. But hell, we all have emotional reactions! So this isn't intended as a criticism, but rather an interesting observation with which you may or may not agree, and which may or may not be of use to you Just to come back to this for a moment: I think we're quite similar in this regard. I never believe that my own arguments are the objective truth. I might have a great deal of confidence that I'm correct, but I always ensure I leave the door ajar for someone to point out my error. It's a foolish arrogance for one to assume that one is correct. There'll always be someone who disagrees, and they may just be right I also sympathise with your notion that there is no 'truth'. Certainly as far as opinions are concerned, these are always the result of a subjective way of viewing a situation. Here's an example that I like to use to illustrate this point: Westerners argue that the Islamic tradition of covering women is oppressive. Which, of course, it is. Muslims would argue that allowing women to freely display their bodies has a degenerative influence on the fabric of society, resulting in rape, infidelity, and broken homes. Which freedom is more important? The freedom of the individual to dress how they please, or the freedom of society to be protected from degeneracy? The answer you choose will be a subjective opinion, not a truth (this is, of course, a gross simplification of this particular issue, but I think it illustrates my point).
No. We are not fundamentally empathetic creatures who are driven, deep down, to care about all suffering, that's not a claim I have made. Very far from it. What I have been saying is that we have a genetically driven capacity for empathy which has a direct survival function in terms of caring for our young and our peers. The extension of this capacity, and the moral agency we attach to it, to include wider social groups and even other species is the result of a cultural shift. Human culture and our self-made morality have extended our empathetic emotion beyond its survival function. As such the hypothesis states that caring about the suffering of animals is a cultural development of a genetic proclivity. Gossip may well be a cultural adaptation of our grooming instinct: soap operas may not exist in our society if we were not once furry monkeys plagued by fleas and ticks. Our tendency to create and watch soap operas is not in itself beneficial to our survival, but a side effect or echo of something that was. Our emotional reaction to music may be an echo of our instinctive response to the cries of our young and our ability to judge how they are feeling (happy, sad, etc) according to the sounds they make. Our emotional response to music does not directly affect our survival as a species, but is a side effect or echo of something which does; a cultural adapatation of a human instinct. Similarly, our emotional response to animal cruelty is a culturally abstracted development of our instinctive capacity to empathise with the suffering of those we care about, informed by our cultural-moral choice to value other animals as fellow conscious beings. It is not beneficial to our survival, but a side effect or echo of something that is. There is a complex combination of factors at work. In the case of war, it's perfectly possible to demonise enemies. It'd be an interesting study to see how many animal rights activists are also pacifists when it comes to killing humans. There's no reason why people cannot hold different moral standards in relation to different situations. It's quite possible for someone to believe that the life of an animal is more valuable than the life of a human who they see as an enemy. Morality is subjective, complex and has no requirement to be intellectually consistent. Most people experience their morality from internalised emotional reactions to issues, thinking doesn't need to come into it at all. No I'm suggesting a complex combination of factors. It doesn't need to be either/or. An either/or approach to this issue would be overly simplistic and unhelpful. Our genes drive us to do things and we also have the capacity to choose our behaviour as rational animals. Our free choice of behaviour is filtered through our genetic drives, and our genetic drives can be tempered by rationality. We are not automatons. We are free thinking animals with certain biological drives. Why assume culturally constructed morality is not rational? It's highly rational. You certainly can make the rational choice to behave any way you like and to ignore our moral imperative, but there's no basis for assuming one is any more a rational choice than the other.
I think we have done? We're just discussing the issue out of a mutual interest in each other's point of view at this stage (I think!). No time to answer tonight, so will reply properly tomorrow.....
I HAVE READ EVERY WORD BUT THOUGHT I'D LET YOU GUYS THRASH IT OUT! which is gaelic for 'I got confused half way through'.
You're free to stop answering me at any time, Mr Met [/QUOTE] I'm really fine with you both going for the longest Hip Forum thread ever. But just thought I'd point out Dok, that you can also stop at anytime you like
Well I know the thread's a bitch to read, but if you had read it, you'd no doubt have noticed the bits where I've said that both Showmet and myself are too keen on having the last word to let the thread drop. Sorry to burst your bubble, but I've already 'fessed up on that front. Self-awareness is my middle name *edit* And another thing. Showmet's the one who keeps going on about letting it drop. Not me. I'm quite happy with the thread rambling on forever.
But this seems to run contrary to the thrust of your earlier argument. Let me try and clear this up. You're saying that the extension of our evolved capacity for empathy to include other humans outside our direct social group is cultural? And presumably the same would apply to animals? Personally, I don't find this a satisfactory explanation for our capacity for compassion. For example, if our extended empathy is purely a function of socialisation, then you have to ask why society would encourage this extended empathy. Why would we ever form a social imperative to treat animals with compassion? Again, I understand your reasoning in terms of the mechanism that allows for the possibility, but if the specific application of this mechanism is a function of socialisation then I fail to see what motivation there would be for this. But this runs contrary to what you've just been arguing. On the one hand, you specifically said that caring for animals was a product of inherited social values, but now you're arguing that it's the by-blow of an evolutionary process? But a moment ago you said that "We are not fundamentally empathetic creatures". And now you're saying we have an "instinctive capacity to empathise". Part of the problem here is that you talk about "cultural-moral choices" as though they existed in isolation from our evolved nature. Why should we choose to include animals in our compassion? It's not sufficient to say that this is a decision informed by our "cultural-moral choices". You need to demonstrate what evolutionary mechanism leads us to make this choice. Even if it's just a by-blow, there should still be an identifiable imperative that can be explained in evolutionary terms. I agree. My belief is that we have a fundamental inclination towards compassion and empathy. That doesn't preclude the process of evolutionary factors and socialisation. From that perspective, I entirely agree that morality is subjective. This is why I don't believe in religion that tries to layer all kinds of behavioural rules on top of the simple notions of compassion and empathy. These ideals, I believe, are easy to identify as our fundamental nature. Once we try to extrapolate moral codes from this we enter the territory of subjectivity. We can to some extent evaluate a moral code by how it's informed though. Is it motivated but compassion and empathy, or is it motivated by something more negative? For example, as distasteful as I find the views of anti-abortionists, I can understand that they're motivated by compassion. I disagree with them morally, but I don't feel as though my morality is any the less subjective than their own. We simply have different opinions on how best to achieve the same underlying goal - compassion towards living creatures. On the other hand, fascism is clearly not motivated by compassion. As such, I see it as a corruption of the essence of human nature. Greed, fear, envy, hatred..... these are the things that motivate that philosophy. Therefore, I believe fascism to be is objectively of a different order to my own philosophy. This outlook allows for a basic understanding or right and wrong, without precluding tolerance of other people's moral code. This idea is incompatible with your own logic. A purely physical universe means that everything is governed by laws. A series of chemical reactions in the human brain are therefore responsible for every decision we make. Free will is an illusion of choice. We way up our options, and our brain computes the preferable action. Is that not a fair assessment? If you believe in free will, can you postulate a mechanism? In fact, physics has no concept of "choice", so can you explain what you believe "choice" to be? If we live in an amoral universe, where our only code of conduct is a product of socialisation, then it follows that the only individual whose needs should be of any concern to us would be ourselves. Therefore, any choice that prioritises the needs of others is irrational. If it's rational for us to care about animals for instance, why is it rational? For a thing to be rational, then by definition, it must follow a process of logic. Proceeding from the position that our universe is amoral, explain to me how prioritisation of the feelings of an animal is rational.
I believe this has all already been accounted for. Moral values are high level things which occur in cultures as a consequence of our having evolved into rational animals. They are influenced by our genetic proclivities, but are abstractions of them influenced by our capacity for higher brain function. We choose to obey them (or are indoctrinated to do so) because it suits our moral-rational conception of the universe, or because we have unconsciously accepted these cultural-moral values as our own. As I said right at the beginning, ideas such as the wrongness of animal cruelty are fairly new in human culture. This explains why many do not share this moral value. Many of those that do have internalised the idea and experience it as a fundamental part of their morality. Their internalisation of this cultural-moral idea leads them (without the need for conscious thought) to apply the same feeling of empathy to suffering animals that their ancestor primates might have felt for their young. A mosquito has little or no choice in its behaviour because it is governed exclusively by its genetic instincts and very basic senses. Humans have evolved the capacity for abstract thought and consequently have a vastly more refined ability to choose their own behaviour. This choice is of course limited by a complex combination of biological and psychological factors. Our choices as humans are influenced by our genetic drives, but layered upon this low-level influence we have our subconscious and conscious mind, both of which also affect our behaviour. Conscious thought gives us the ability to make high-level choices such as moral choices. Our moral agency is a consequence of our higher brain function, albeit influenced to a greater or lesser degree by all the other factors I've mentioned. It is a perfectly rational choice to decide only to care about oneself and not to care about others. It is also a product of rationality to decide that caring about others has value to your sense of self. It is a matter of what you choose to value.
There is an interesting article IMO that can be found here http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2004/09/14/class-war-on-the-hoof/ which looks at the class issue of hunting.
I think we're going round in circles. You keep offering me the mechanism without the motive. It's no good saying that we choose to obey something without providing a rational process to explain that choice. It also doesn't address why we should ever choose to abstract our empathic capacity to include animals. You keep explaining how you believe this is possible without explaining why we'd do it. Sorry Showmet, this is factually incorrect and a very Euro-centric perspective. For example: Now if this attitude was due largely to an evolutionary imperative towards empathy, it would seem odd that some humans arrive at that perspective 5000 years before others. You're still not explaining why we'd ever arrive at an internalised moral code that encompasses animals. Also, where exactly does socialisation fit into this theory? If we can arrive at compassion for animals independent of societies shared values, then what role does socialisation play? Your argument was that we feel compassion towards animals because of our upbringing and socialisation, but obviously many people arrive at this position independently. So in the absence of this cultural-moral idea, how do you explain how individuals come to apply their empathy to animals? Sorry, but that's a very long winded way of failing to answer the question! What is choice? Choice doesn't exist in a mechanistic universe. Choice is a function of spirituality. If the universe is mechanistic, then every action should be predictable at some level. It may be that humans are too complicated to predict, but we should still be able to predict their behaviour down to the smallest of actions if we had sufficient understanding of their complexity. In a mechanistic universe, choice is an illusion. We can have no free will. If you disagree, please explain to me what choice is without resorting to abstract statements such as "Conscious thought gives us the ability to make high-level choices". This statement does not answer the question. What is choice? You're resorting to answering a logical question in spiritual terms. If we exist in a mechanistic universe, then nothing has any inherent value. Value is just a product of our abstract moral codes, which are, as you've said, an evolutionary glitch. Given that nobody and nothing has any inherent value, the only logical choice would be to serve our own needs before all others. If we make any other choice, then there must be a compelling reason to do so. Why should we choose to value others? If the universe is mechanistic, it follows that all our choices must be logical. Explain to me the logical process for choosing to value others.
I do believe this question to have already been adequately answered; but I appreciate I did not (again) provide a specific-enough answer in my last post. Is there a direct evolutionary imperative to our choosing to watch Eastenders? Or to being moved by a Beethoven symphony? No. But arguably we perform these activities as the result of a combination of their distant relationship to an evolutionary imperative combined with an abstracted, complex culture. They are psychological abstractions of more fundamental drives. Interesting accidents in our culture, arising from echoes of survival instincts and filtered through our ability to perform abstract thinking. Why cry when a violin makes a sound? We don't cry because we believe the violin is feeling pain! But the sound resonates in us and arouses a similar emotion as if our child were. Similarly, it is an interesting accident in our culture that we have chosen to see ourselves as moral beings who care about suffering, well beyond the survival function of this empathy. In fact such a feeling of empathy towards a suffering animal is far closer to its survival instinct than the abstraction of music; because we understand the creature to be feeling pain in the way our young can, and in the way a violin cannot. I have postulated a mechanism by which this interesting accident of morality may have occurred naturally in the same way that these other interesting cultural phenomena may have come about: high-level psychological abstractions of more fundamental drives. In terms of evolutionary biology, psychology and behaviourism, to understand the mechanisms which have shaped such phenomena is to understand why they exist. They exist because they have been caused by the mechanisms I have outlined. Agreed. Change "human culture" to Western culture, even to British society if you like, since that's what I'm talking about. It doesn't have to be either socialisation or individual choice; it's a complex combination of both. It's perfectly possible for a person to care about the fox as a result of an intellectual process despite an original socialisation with different moral principles. Our moral principles can change, informed by our thoughts, knowledge and experiences. You described your empathy for animals as a visceral emotion which occurred for you before thoughts or opinions ever came into it. In that case it seems likely that your internalised moral principles on this issue come from socialisation - perhaps from your parents, perhaps from your peers in early life, certainly from ideas and experiences which, unconsciously, formed part of your psychology as your mind developed. And your opinions have been formed arising from these internalised principles; or rather from the emotion you experience as a result of them. Person B may have been brought up to believe that foxhunting was perfectly acceptable, and as a result of knowledge and experiences gained later in life, may change her opinions and choose not to support it. This would be because her newly-acquired understanding, transcending her socialised principles, tells her that foxes should not actually be treated the way she was brought up to believe was acceptable. It's just a different route to arriving at the same opinion. Many people are brought up as meat-eaters and choose to become vegetarians as a result of their own individual thinking which transcends their early-life socialisation and tells them that eating meat is not, as they were initially led to believe, acceptable. Just because we are subject to social taboo-conditioning does not mean our individual morality is fixed. It can be overcome, as I have consistently stated. I would largely agree with this, yes. The problem is that we are such highly complex creatures that our understanding of psychology is still in its early stages. It may well be that if we had adequate knowledge we would be able to understand all our actions and choices according to their underlying mechanisms. It may well be that all choice is an illusion. The human brain is so extremely complex that the level of understanding we would require of the way the smallest electro-chemical signal interacts with the largest psychological superstructure is so vast that it's probably impossible ever to finally achieve complete understanding of the "mechanistic" nature of our brains. But we understand that there is a vast amount of such almost infinite complexity within our brains; vast enough physical complexity to allow for these facets of our behaviour in physical terms. As such the hypothesis that there is no need to rely upon spirituality for an answer stands as a logical extension of the materialist worldview. Why must all our choices be logical?! If we all thought purely logically then yeah, sure , but we don't. We are influenced by many more factors than our capacity for logical thought. Why is personal anarchy the only logical choice? It is a logical choice. It is the end discovery of a certain pattern of thinking, but there is also the possibility to make a further logical leap: given your understanding that there is no importance to what you do, you are free to choose *any* kind of behaviour. Not just the behaviour which benefits you. If you were to see all possible choices of behaviour as equal then you may freely choose any of them as a purely contingent act at the endpoint of this logical chain. But we don't see them all as equal because we are not purely logical creatures. I certainly never actually got as far as choosing my morality as a purely contingent act; I'm just intellectualising why I might choose it if I were a purely logical creature. I'm an exceedingly complex, socialised creature with certain psychological and biological drives. In fact, given all the factors underlying the mechanism by which extended and abstracted empathy can come about according to this hypothesis, personal anarchy seems an unlikely choice.
Is there a direct evolutionary imperative to our choosing to watch Eastenders? Or to being moved by a Beethoven symphony? No. But arguably we perform these activities as the result of a combination of their distant relationship to an evolutionary imperative combined with an abstracted, complex culture. I think you're failing to understand my point. You argue that the capacity for empathy evolved through evolution, but my above comment was relating to your very specific statement that we choose to follow moral values. Our capacity for morality may or may not be the result of evolution, but why would we choose to be bound by a particular moral code? Yes, but again, why? If we're aware that our choice lacks a survival function, then why would we make that choice without an underlying understanding of morality that's independent of any evolutionary imperative? Argh!!! Whywhywhywhywhy???? It's all very well to understand that an animal feels pain in the same way as our young, but why the fuck should we care? If we understand that there's no survival value in this, then what motivation do we have for the choice of extending our empathy to a non-human species? With all due respect, that statement is essentially meaningless. "High-level psychological abstractions of more fundamental drives" is just another way of saying "we can't explain it". The theory that you're postulating isn't a theory - it's a wild stab in the dark. There's no known or understood mechanism of the brain that can account for morality in the fashion that you describe. That's not to say that I don't respect your right to believe this, but it's no more or less rational than a belief in spirituality. Mind you, given the fact that science can't even begin to formulate a language to even describe consciousness, I think it's actually more reasonable to postulate that it's non-physical. It seems to me that you keep shifting the argument (not purposefully, I hasten to add!). A little while back you were arguing that our morals are arrived at through socialisation. Now you're arguing that it can also be an intellectual process. Well I've already remarked on the problems I perceive as inherent in the socialisation argument. I feel the intellectual argument is even weaker. If we extend our empathy to encompass animals, and this is the result of an intellectual process, then it should be demonstrably logical. Specifically, there should be something in it for us. It's fallacious to say that, for example, "we understand the pain of our young so we intellectually extrapolate an understanding of animal suffering", because it's a fundamental misunderstanding of logic. Yes, I can understand how another creature experiences pain. I can empathise because my mental powers allow me to apply my own experiences to another creature. This still doesn't explain why my brain should give a flying fuck about the other creature. Yes, it's in pain. Yes, I understand that. But so the fuck what? Why do I care? Why? This person has already been socialised. They're already aware of the facts. Why should their opinion change? Could it be that they actually learn to transcend their socialisation and listen to their inner moral voice? The one that's non-physical in origin? Right. So to follow your logic then, we're all isolated individuals in a cold and lonely universe. Why should we care about anyone or anything else? Where's the logic? You can say we choose to listen to the voice of our conscience, but since we've established that this voice is purely a random by-blow of evolution, what would be the point? What logical reason would there be for choosing to care? I absolutely agree. This is the rational conclusion of the materialist/mechanistic argument. I believe it's flawed, because I don't believe that it explains self-awareness and feeling. But more importantly, if we accept that choice is an illusion, then we are not accountable or answerable for our actions. Everything we do is pre-determined. I can go out and rape someone secure in the knowledge that I'm not doing so by choice, but rather as the result of a predetermined set of chemical reactions. In fact, I don't even need to be "secure in the knowledge", because even the act of caring is a simple illusion of moral compunction based upon an evolutionary quirk. In the cold light of logic, whether I rape someone or not doesn't objectively matter. There is no right and wrong. There is no choice. There is no purpose. This is so close to nihilism it's indistinguishable, and it's the only inevitable conclusion to your argument. I have a great respect for your ability to construct a well-reasoned and coherent argument, so it surprises me that after acknowledging that choice is an illusion, you should then go on to say: We've just established that there's no such thing as choice anyway, and it follows from that that all our actions are logical - even if we can't perceive the logic in the short term. It's not a choice (there isn't any choice anyway), it's the logical conclusion to your argument. I agree. But there is no choice, is there? Just a logical culmination of chemical processes. So if we 'choose' to assign value to the lives of other creatures, then there must be a reason for this. Logic. (continues)
(continued) It certainly does! Which is why we see so little of it. But that doesn't mean that it isn't the only rational choice. And given that you're postulating a mechanistic universe, reason can be our only guiding principle. Therefore, we're left with two possible conclusions. It may be the case that we've failed to arrive at personal anarchy because of a quirk of evolution that has no inherent value and should therefore be rejected. When you think about it, that's not entirely unlikely. Given our destruction of the planet, it's perfectly plausible that we've wandered very far from our survivalist evolutionary imperatives The other possibility is that we are spiritual creatures actually empathise with others because it's our spiritual nature so to do. In this scenario, the words 'love', 'compassion', 'empathy' actually have some meaning. In your scenario, they're just descriptive terms for abstract logical processes.
god those are some big posts ok here is my tuppence worth as a country lad being brought up on a farm a fruit farm raspberries strawberries i have seen just how viscious and nasty the hunt people and their vile supporters are they deserve no mercy from the courts at all and to be honest have no part in what the real countryside is about they are mostly the green welly brigade ie like to be associated with the country but are not realy as most farmers and countryfolk i know are not very well off at all unlike these hooray henrys yes foxes can be edestructive but so are most of our wildlife ie badgers its because they are wild would you believe it. the thing is no way is hunting down an annimal with baying hounds humane in any sane persons eyes if you must humanely kill a fox then that is why a gamekeeper should be used as most gamekeepers are properly trained to stalk and kill properly with a high powered rifle unfortunately most gamekeepers in these estates are as bad as their vile employers so that would never happen so then what will happen not a lot it appears they will flout the law and get away with it because they have connections in nasty places so they can murder more annimals The more people that get involved in hunt sabbotage the better i say sorry this got heated but they need sorted out big time
