Excellent post, dude. So there you have it. Straight from the mouth of a country boy. Nothing to do with socialisation or not understanding that butchering things for fun is evil. It's just a bunch of vile bastards choosing to kill for pleasure.
Ah I see. You've misunderstood me. We "choose" as a society to have morals as a complex process of abstraction. No-one in practice chooses his entire moral code - to do so is impossible. Moral values come about organically and gradually in society, like the way music or snooker have become part of our culture. We can alter small elements of it as a complex combination of personal choice and socialised values (eg. a meat eater becoming vegetarian). This misunderstanding actually explains a lot of your continued questioning. When I used the word choice I mean it to stand simply for the idea of morality being a result of culture, which in turn is the result of our ability to perform abstract thought. I think my use of this term has thrown you off a bit here; unfortunately your relentless and disjuncted debating style has driven me to use shorthand in my constant reiteration of ideas. Asking this question again, given all that I have told you, is like asking me to explain precisely how humans came to have music as part of their culture. I cannot give you a precise history, including times and dates, of the process by which music came to exist in human culture as an abstraction of our instinctive reaction to sound. To require this level of information as proof that music is a consequence of human evolution is to misunderstand the nature of deductive reasoning. I think again you might have been thinking I was stating that morality was a conscious choice - while this is not something I have ever explicitly stated, I understand how you've got that impression from my sloppy use of the word "choice". I think there seems to be an assumption here that since everything is the result of ultimately knowable processes, our lack of choice must be simple ... that in this conception, our choice of rape or murder is caused by a simple causal mechanism. Far from it. We have at the very least an infinitely complex illusion of choice. As I said, since it will probably be impossible ever to understand the way in which the tiniest electro-chemical impulse interacts with the largest psychological superstructure, we will never get to the point at which the universe looks even vaguely like a mechanistic one. Our illusion of choice is so vastly complex and our awareness of making our own decisions so very realistic, that in practice we are free-thinking rational animals. When I talk about choice, this is what I mean. In practice we are so very far from predetermined, mechanistic creatures that to talk about predetermination in the same breath as morality really makes little sense. Abstracted physiological and pyschological processes yes; by no means logical ones. There is no requirement for the things we believe or experience to be the result of robust logic.
Good to see on C4 news that the Countryside Alliance scum are dropping dead animals all round Brighton as part of their demonstrations. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3695786.stm Is it genetic or what?
Well then you're confusing two issues. On the one hand, you're postulating the existence of a moral code inherited from society, which as you say is shorthand..... but then wouldn't this be encompassed by socialisation? On the other hand, you're postulating the existence of personal choice, whereby we can elect to ignore or amend our inherited/learned moral code. The origins of this particular line of debate are your comments regarding empathising with animals. To summarise (correctly, I hope!): you believe that the socialised values of fox hunters do not include an empathic reaction to the suffering of animals. You therefore believe that when a fox hunter decides that fox hunting is indeed morally objectionable, he is then making a deliberate moral choice, through a complex abstract process, to ignore or modify his internalised social values. This really is the crux of the issue. If the fox hunter is able to make this 'choice', this is where we come right down to the question of "why?". The hunter already possesses empathy (as this is, you say, an evolved function). What's changed at this stage to influence the hunter to behave differently? Following the logic of your argument, there's only one real possible conclusion. The hunter has exercised an abstract mental process and arrived at the decision that he can no longer support killing for pleasure. The flaw in this argument is that "abstract mental process" is shorthand for "we don't have a fucking clue". You're postulating a mechanism that's inexplicable. Which is no different from spirituality, when you get right down to it. Well no. I disagree entirely. I think I understand the nature of deductive reasoning very well, and my argument illustrates the problems with it. In circumstances such as this, "deductive reasoning" is nothing more than a prejudiced guess. You're assuming that our reaction to music is purely the result of an abstraction, but as I've already said..... abstraction is just shorthand for "a process which we don't understand and therefore are unable to demonstrate exists". At the very best, you can demonstrate a likelihood. In the case of morality, I don't think you've managed even that. I respect your opinion as an educated guess, but that's all it really is. Not that that's intended as derisory, because that's all the credibility I can claim for my own beliefs regarding spirituality. Not quite. Our 'choices' are, in the mechanistic universe, caused by a complex causal mechanism. Ummmm... we either have free will or we don't. That's an absolute. If your computer is complex beyond your understanding or ability to explain, you don't accuse it of having free will!!! If the universe is mechanistic, all our actions are pre-determined by chemical reactions in the brain. Just because they're infinitely complex ones that we may never understand, that doesn't stop them being chemical reactions. If this is the case, then we don't have free will. Period. No debate. The illusion of free will is not free will. That simply doesn't add up. In a mechanistic universe, we are predetermined creatures. Choice doesn't enter into it. If our brains are simply complex machines, then there is no choice. All our actions are predetermined. We may not be able to fathom the equation, but the equation is still there. And if the universe is mechanistic and free will doesn't exist, then morality doesn't exist either. The concept of morality pre-supposes choice. That doesn't make sense. In a mechanistic universe, there is cause and effect. Nothing else. If we believe something, it's because something has caused us to believe something. We may not be able to explain the process, but the process is still there.
yes is about time the upper classes lost the right to cruel animal sports i know the upper class arent the only blood sport lovers ie dog fighting a sport that offers viewing to all class levels{normally a working class sport} badger baiting around a 1000 a year are still killed for pleasure. cock fights still going on.(working class again} these all seem as bad by our governments who banned them . the poor where too blood thirsty} but still its all part of the same problem ..this governments allows animal testing for what the good of the people well look we have a lot of sick on our hands still... animal sports .. the upper crust love blood sports and our tony blair a labour man the party of the people allows still the above to happen. animals transported for meat still dying on their journey. animals on farms still being treated badly chickens for one thing these are all part of the governments problem with standing up for this earths animals weak willed tony blair......... yes ban all use of animals let those who eat meat go hunt for it just my opinion thank you love n peace from saff
Hi, Unfortunately i havnt read all 13 pages, so i may be going over old ground here, if so sorry. I am not anti-foxhunting, not viciously for it either i hasten to add. I hope i dont insult or offend anyone too much with my opinions, that is certainly not my intention. However i would like to air my views as another country boy. Firstly i would like to dispell the assumption that fox hunting is a pass-time only for the "toffs". I have friends and aquaintances who are active "hunters", and not one of them (with the possible exception of one who is a toff by character, although not very rich) nor any pro-hunter ive met have been members of the upper-class. Im not claiming my experience of pro-hunters is stratified here, however i do believe the people who go hunting are not necessarily as portrayed. Secondly, the claim that the hunts exist, at least in part, to control the population, is not one that should be so quickly dismissed. Whether the fox population in an area needs to be controlled in a ecological sense is fairly irrelevent to a farmer who sees the fox as a pest who kills his lambs and chickens. This is where the humanity argument comes in. If foxes are not to be hunted with hounds and most won't be, what other methods are going to be used? Snaring, shooting, trapping or poisoning are the most common. None of these have any seasonal constraints, so parents will be killed and as a consequence the liklihood is that the cubs who rely on that parentwill slowly die of starvation. My argument here is essentially that these alternatives are less humane than hunting with hounds. Snares are terrible things, foxes have been known to gnaw their own limbs off to free themselves, with obvious consequences. Foxes are notoriously difficult to shoot, and the most likely outcome of shooting a fox (unless as previously mentioned, the shooter is particularly "skilled") is an injury that will cause the fox a great deal of suffering before it eventually dies. Foxes are not so often trapped since the outlawing of gin traps, however this does not prevent their illegal use. Poisons are often administered as a gas by blocking the entrances to the earths. The correct dosage is also hard to gauge, this means that foxes are often made very ill by the poison, or their death is a slow and painful process. Compared to these methods, i dont believe hunting with hounds is as cruel as many people tend to think. The hounds will by instinct go straight for the throat, this is behavioural evolution, it pays for a predator to kill its prey in the most efficient way. This, i feel, is much more humane than the potentially long and slow alternatives. I am not a hunter myself, and i agree with Doktor Atomic's view that it is not right for someone to kill for fun, but for the most part, hunters do it because they love galloping around the countryside (which they get invited onto) on horseback. And i whole-heartedly agree with the apparent hypocrisy of the pro-hunt protestors, however that hypocrisy is not an agrument against hunting itself.
The argument that banning fox hunting is going to increase the fox population is constantly being proved nonsense. As for the myth of foxes being detremental to a farmers lively hood... http://www.rspca.org.uk/servlet/BlobServer?blobtable=RSPCABlob&blobcol=urlblob&blobkey=id&blobwhere=1053511824641&blobheader=application/pdf http://www.rspca.org.uk/servlet/BlobServer?blobtable=RSPCABlob&blobcol=urlblob&blobkey=id&blobwhere=1024473402764&blobheader=application/pdf
I think the 'sport' it cruel and unneeded... A ban will come in sooner or later, I just can't believe it's taking this long,
Well you're really not getting out enough then. Having had a lot of direct contact with the hunt, I've found them to be overwhelmingly upper-class. Sure, there are working-class hunters, in the same way that there are poor upper-class people. They're the exception to the rule. Are you suggesting that the average Brit can afford stabling fees and other associated costs? The hunt thugs (beaters etc) may be working-class, but the hunters are most definitely not. Oh yes it is. Allow me to repeat myself: An estimated 20-25,000 per year are killed by fox hunting. When you consider that an estimated 100,000 foxes are killed on the roads each year, the car is actually a better method of fox population control than hunting. Furthermore: There are estimated to be 250,000 adult foxes in the UK, producing about 400,000 cubs a year, most of which will die in their first year of life. Humans kill about 400,000 foxes a year so a ban on fox hunting, which kills about 20,000 a year at most, will have little impact. If you think that chasing around the countryside on horses in pursuit of a fox is an efficient means of population control, please explain your logic to me. That's not to mention the fact that certain hunts have actually be caught breeding foxes. As I've just pointed out, this presupposes that hunting is actually a form of population control, which it isn't. Fucking bollocks and propaganda. Let me quote a famous case: Every part of a fox hunt is cruel - from the chase, to the dig-out, to the kill. There is no 'quick nip to the back of the neck' in hunting. Lead hounds will snap at any part of the running fox, before the pack rip it to pieces. If the fox manages to go to ground, then it will be forced to fight with terriers for hours before being hauled out and, if lucky, shot. Copper the fox made national headlines. After being chased, and caught, by the Chiddingford, Leconfield and Cowdray Hunt hounds, he managed to bolt down a rabbit hole. Luckily, Hunt Saboteurs were close by and physically blocked the hounds from Copper, using a policeman's helmet. Copper had suffered bite wounds to his rear flanks and was losing blood from his penis due to kidney damage caused during the stress and exhaustion of the long run from the hounds. The vet was able to offer scientific evidence that hunted foxes undergo pathological stress, a level of suffering so intense that they can die even if they succeed in escaping the jaws of the hounds. He was quoted as saying 'I have never seen such trauma in a dog, even a badly injured one.' Or how about: The BFSS own a fox hunting promotion film (Hunting - The Facts) which shows a fox being killed by hounds. While the commentary by Ludovic Kennedy states that the fox is killed instantly by a bite to the back of the neck or back, the original unedited film sequence produced by the Blencartha Fox Hunt actually shows the animal being savaged in the stomach by the leading hound & still struggling while being savaged by several hounds. (The BFSS film is cut, just as the lead hound reaches the fox.) A post-mortem by a professional veterinary surgeon of a fox killed by the Cottesmore Fox Hounds on 13/1/96, concluded: "I feel that the most likely cause of death was that of shock (in the pathological sense) brought about by blood loss, organ damage, lack of oxygenation of the blood due to lower respiratory dysfunction & upper airway obstruction & ensuing circulatory failure, In short, the fox died a painful & unpleasant death which probably was not quick as evidenced by the areas of haemorrhage seen at many sites." A Merseyside veterinary surgeon carried out a video taped pos-mortem examination of a fox killed by the Cheshire Fox Hounds in Jan 1994. The transcript of the vet's words states: "There are NO bite wounds on the neck. I am not convinced that it has been bitten on the neck or killed in that way. Personally, you've got to be suspicious that it's just been killed by being ripped apart... It hasn't been killed with a single blow." A post-mortem was carried out by another veterinary surgeon on 30/1/92 on a fox killed by the Isle of Wight Fox Hounds. The report concluded: "I could detect no external damage to neck or throat areas, but there was extensive wounds to the abdomen & thorax. In fact the abdomen was ripped open & the intestines were hanging out. The wounds were consistent with the fox having been severely bitten by another animal or animals." Well if galloping around the countryside's where they get their pleasure, it kinda makes you wonder why they're so violently opposed to the hunting ban. I mean, nobody's suggesting we ban galloping around the country on a horse, are they? And hey... lots of people seem to manage to enjoy horse riding without hunting animals. As for "getting invited": The legal dept. of the LACS receives around 50 requests each season from farmers & landowners troubled by trespassing hunts. The League has assisted several farmers to obtain injunctions against Hunt Masters whose hunt persistently ignore the landowners' wishes. More than 150 local authorities, including 37 County Councils, have voted to ban hunting on their land. Somerset County Council banned deer hunting on a portion of its land on the Quantock Hills, but in 1994 the Quantock Stag Hounds, supported by the BFSS challenged the ban & persuaded the courts that local councils do not have the legal right to ban hunting on moral grounds alone. The BFSS has threatened all County Councils with similar legal action if they do not lift bans. Many councils have reluctantly yielded to the threat because of the risk of high expenditure of council tax payer's money in legal costs. "The hounds were running riot through people's gardens & through a children's play area. Many of them were covered in blood . local residents were screaming & the poor school children were fending off the dogs with their satchels," A grandmother witnessing a hunt in Feb. 1998. "I don't think I've seen a meet this year where we've not gone through somebody's back garden." Nick Fawcett, Master of the Surrey Union Fox Hounds, BBC Radio 4, April 1990. Don't be a fool. People who hunt do so for the 'fun' of the chase and the kill. Ever heard of 'blooding'? The practice whereby a child (I've seen examples of kids as young as 9) has the dead foxes blood smeared across his or her face after their first kill? Galloping around the countryside for pleasure my arse.
A piece of Sheffield Propaganda... http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/sheffield/2004/09/298143.html Basic but....so to the point!
This is not the confusion of two issues. These two mechanisms are not inconsistent, why assume it needs to be either/or? As I've constantly stated, it's both. Firstly I would suggest this doesn't happen very often ... most people who support hunting past their formative years are unlikely to suddenly change their minds and start caring about the suffering of the fox if they had no empathy for it before. But for those that do change their minds, the process is quite clear: individual thinking, learning about the issue, the acceptance of a different moral standard, and the adoption of a behaviour which better suits that person's subjective moral code. This kind of moral-modification needs no evolutionary imperative to explain it: it is purely a result of our capacity for higher thought and as such removed from the base requirements of our genes. Indeed. I claim no more authority for this idea (which at this level of abstraction is bordering on thought experiment) than an educated, working hypothesis formulated by a process of deductive reasoning. That's a very interesting line of argument. However the part of the syllogism I would take issue with would be the assertion that a mechanistic universe requires predetermination. Just because something is determined according to physical mechanisms does not necessarily mean it is predetermined. Even though an engine has cogs and gears, we do not know which combination of these the driver will choose until he chooses one. A consequence of our higher brain function and self-consciousness is that we can alter the world around us and can even make changes to our own behaviour. We have become the driver. We can to an extent, transcend our instincts, even while so much of our experience is modified and informed by psychological as well as biological drives. So I'm not entirely sure a mechanistic universe necessarily implies predetermined actions. There is room for random occurrences, and to the extent we can wrest control of our minds, there is room for a certain degree of personal agency, I would suggest. I'm not sure though. This needs more thought. For the purposes of this discussion though, I think it's reasonable to continue with the assumption that we have free will if we are not to become bogged down in such fascinating complexities. From the point of view of our experience, and from the standpoint of a scientific understanding which has not even come close to explaining the physical complexity of our brains, it's a safe working assumption. I'm happy talking about the illusion of morality as part of our illusion of free will. It changes nothing about that debate.
I appreciate this. But it seems that you fall back to one when the other is failing - confusing them. Even if we assume the existence of 'higher thought', there still needs to be a process that would explain why people should choose to care. In the absence of any absolute moral agency by which to define one's actions, why choose to assign value to the life of a fox? 'Higher thought' may be mechanism, but where's the process? Woah. I think it's entirely fundamental to the debate! One of the central issues here is to what extent we can hold hunters accountable for their actions - to what degree they're actions are simply a result of social conditioning, and to what degree they're exercising free will. Secondly, if the universe is indeed predetermined and mechanistic, then the entire concept of morality is illusory anyway, and this debate is a waste of time, because we may as well do whatever we want, however 'cruel' it may be. Our whole discussion was prompted by a disagreement over the nature of morality. It's impossible to conduct an in-depth discussion of morality without reference to free will. I would therefore have thought that it would be crucial for us to understand the nature of free will in order to construct a frame of reference from which to understand morality. If free will doesn't exist (and I'm entirely convinced that this is an unquestionable consequence of your logic), then our debate will surely head in another direction entirely. You're defending the existence of free will and choice with an analogy that pre-supposes the existence of free will and choice. It's actually startling just how close our opinions actually are. We both believe that the universe is mechanistic and subject to the laws of physics. Rather than accept the inevitable conclusion that we're therefore complex machines, behaving according to biologically predetermined laws, you choose to believe that our brains have evolved some form of 'higher function' that allows us free will and unbinds us from the mechanistic nature of the universe. I believe that it's spirit that unbinds us from the mechanistic nature of the universe and allows us free will. Both beliefs are a leap of faith, and assume the existence of a non-mechanistic functionality that is entirely outside the realms of known physics. I put it to you that materialism is your religion You see, you keep coming back to this idea that we've evolved some form of higher function that allows us the capacity for consciousness and choice, and yet there's absolutely no scientific basis for this. We don't have any understanding of the concept of 'choice' in physical terms, since all our understanding of the universe is that it's controlled by strictly definable laws of cause and reaction. Science also fails to provide any framework for an understanding of self-awareness or consciousness outside our personal frame of reference. You couldn't even write a description of consciousness that would make sense to an entity that wasn't conscious to start with. Your solution is to put your faith in physics, and make the leap of faith that leads to your belief in higher mental processes and abstract reasoning. My solution is to put my faith in spirituality - not as some ephemeral concept of a fatherly deity, but as an unknown dimension to the universe that provides purpose and guidance in our lives - meaning, if you prefer. The difference between our two approaches is that yours has no absolutes. There's no right and wrong beyond those notions to which you choose to assign moral significance. My approach allows for the belief that there are objective rights and wrongs that we instinctively understand if we listen to our inner voice. If we follow your approach, then our behaviour is unconstrained. We rape and kill in the knowledge that our only defining morality is self-imposed. Society might disagree, but that is only its subjective view - no more or less valid than our own. Or, as we used to call it back in my day, a guess
I disagree that these are two separate "fallback" arguments; their combination is crucial to the theory. The combination of these two processes working together is a very good potential explanation for the development of morality because it echoes the mechanism of evolution itself. You can think of individual thinking as random mutations in our cultural "memepool"; if they survive in our culture they become accepted norms. Morals are cultural ideas: if they fit our self-image, we like them. Your question "In the absence of any absolute moral agency by which to define one's actions, why choose to assign value to the life of a fox?" almost answers itself: in the absence of absolute morality we have personal and societal moral agency to define our actions. There is no need to invoke an absolute to explain why we might come to this conclusion. We (mostly) see ourselves as rational, compassionate, moral beings. This is why we accept the morality meme which tells us that hunting with dogs is wrong. The process I have outlined not only explains how this idea might have come about in our society but also why not everyone believes it to be true. I disagree. It makes no difference if free will is ultimately illusory as long as we appreciate that if it is, morality is also ultimately illusory. It's simply a relative conceptual shift. Makes no difference to the practicality of discussing it in terms of human experience. I believe the analogy works; higher thought processes place a driver in control of the engine. As for your analogy of the mind as a complex computer, when the computer gets to the point where it is so complex that is capable of independent thought, has self-awareness as acute as that of Hamlet and can make decisions about whether to exist or not, whether to love or kill, then I would say it has achieved the same agency through self-awareness that we have. As such it escapes its deterministic bounds by placing a driver in control of the engine. If it can make decisions contrary to the purpose for which it was created, then does it not have free will? Faith is far too strong a word. It implies, for me, an unquestioning belief in the truth of a proposition. I call it a working hypothesis. It always comes back down to the law of Occam's razor for me: do not multiply entities beyond necessity. I have no empirical evidence for the existence of a non-physical, "spiritual" dimension or realm. I do have evidence for the almost incomprehensibly vast complexity of the human mind. In my conception, this complexity is quite capable of explaining everything about human behaviour; albeit in ways I do not yet understand. Until this assumption is shown to be wrong, I'm not going to risk making a mistake by postulating any other kind of unknown mechanism. Hence my working hypothesis based upon an assumption of universal materialism. Spot on. You keep stating this fact almost with disbelief that anyone could think such a thing! Are you scared of being so free? It sure as anything terrifies me.
Every government inquiry to date has concluded that hunting is "no more cruel" than any other form of population control. There is no good way to be killed, is there? However with hunting the fox has a chance to escape (and perhaps to pass on its superior genes). We may think the hunt is cruel, but it is basically replicating a natural process. Cheetahs, Lions and other predators hunt other animals entirely naturally, yet nobody complains that this is cruel to Gazelles. But lets assume that a standard is being set, and that killing an animal for purposes other than food, scientific research and clothing is to be banned. Just exactly when do we ban domestic cats? People own cats in order to hunt mice. (I'm aware this is only a tiny minority of cat owners, but bear with me). What is the difference between a human using a dog to hunt a fox, and a human using a cat to hunt a mouse? Well, here are some key differences. - the mouse may well suffer a more drawn out death from a "playful" cat. - the economic impact of mice on agriculture and other businesses is negligible - the "mouse hunting industry" supports very few (if any) jobs - a hound will not impact any other wildlife, whereas cats are implicated in many problems with bird populations and the like - cats are uncontrolled predators who kill all year round People may well scoff at this comparison, but I challenge anyone to come up with a good reason why morally one sort of hunting is acceptable, and the other is not. Only one reason is in any way plausible, and that is one of "enjoyment". Many people are repulsed at anyone hunting a fox and enjoying it. But since when is "enjoyment" a reason to ban an activity? And in any case, what if someone is proud of their cat, and enjoys their mouse hunting success?
Our behaviour IS unconstrained, except by our own standards and values. Murder is wrong, yet murderers exist. If there is something "spiritual" that controls our behaviour, then why does this mechanism fail in some? Empathy is a strong part of our evolutionary success. Our young have probably the longest period of dependence in the animal world, and we have relatively few children. So we evolved a strong urge to protect our valuable young in a dangerous world. We are also individually a "weak" animal. We evolved to work in groups in order to gather food, hunt, and protect our families. At a later stage our empathy was needed again when we began to farm animals, and use other animals such as dogs in activities like hunting. If we were unable to recognise an animal in distress, or to empathise with it, we would make very poor farmers. Overall I think Showmet has made a consistent and strong argument about why there are no absolute rights and wrongs. Someone might say killing another human is absolutely wrong. But what if that human is threatening your family? Even then, in our country our learned morality and conventions of society state that minimum force must be used to subdue someone. Yet in other countries, it would be entirely moral and acceptable to kill under those circumstances. There is nothing spiritual in our morality IMHO.
Well if you'd bothered to read the earlier posts, you might've noticed that there's a very strong argument for fox hunting not being a form of population control in the first instance. But it's not for scientific research, is it? It's for fun. This is possibly the most infantile and simplistic argument in support of hunting that I've ever encountered. However, back to the point in question..... the real issue is whether, as a civilised society, we want to endorse an activity that takes pleasure in the hunting and killing of a creature for 'sport'. This is pathetic. As you very well know, nobody is suggesting that hunting should be banned because "people enjoy it". The suggestion is that it should be banned because it's an activity that causes suffering and pain exclusively for the entertainment of humans. Perhaps you'd like to see bear baiting an cock fighting reintroduced as well? Why is murder wrong? If our behaviour is unconstrained by any moral principle, then murder is neither right nor wrong... it just is. As I said, spirituality informs our behaviour, it doesn't control it. I believe spirituality is the force that enables free will, so it follows that it's our choice whether we decide to acknowledge our inherent sense of right and wrong.
I understand your case. It just seems that every time I point out the holes in one strand of you reasoning, you fall back to the other strand. I'm starting to feel like you're playing ping-pong with me! Not really, no. The question only answers itself if asked within the framework of a pre-existing moral consensus. In a moral vacuum, there's no reason to even answer it, yet alone form any personal or social moral agency.
Firstly, I wonder if we could not lower ourselves to merely insulting each other rather than actually debating the issues. I am not a “fool” because I disagree with your points or because I tend towards evidence that conflicts with yours. And I can assure you I do “get out enough.” On the point of whether hunters are predominantly upper-class or not, I don’t think we have any way of verifying either view point, and as it is irrelevant to the argument over this fox hunting ban, I think we are just going to have to disagree on this. “If you think that chasing around the countryside on horses in pursuit of a fox is an efficient means of population control, please explain your logic to me.” I didn’t claim that hunting with hounds in this way was an efficient method of controlling the population; I said that it was A method of population control. My argument was that it provided a (however small) useful function, and that it did this in a more humane way than other methods. My argument is not one of particularly pro-hunting, merely one of anti-ban. Here are some quotes to back up my point. “Hunting by hounds is the most natural and humane way of controlling the population of all four quarry species - fox, deer, hare and mink - in the countryside.” Statement supported by over 500 members of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. “It is the natural, balanced, biological method of controlling wildlife, proven over centuries.” VETERINARY OPINION ON HUNTING WITH HOUNDS These comments were included in a statement supported by over 500 members of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons Their submission to the Burns inquiry said; “Amongst the farming community, there are strong feelings about the importance of maintaining all the currently practised methods of pest control, not least the right to use dogs for the purpose of flushing out and/or taking mammalian pests.” An NFU brief for Report Stage included that "As at least 17 million lambs are born every year in England and Wales, farmers can be forgiven for finding it hard to agree that the loss of some 340,000 of them to foxes at a cost to the industry of over £13.6million should be regarded as not significant." THE NATIONAL FARMERS UNION Britains biggest farming union The Burns Report states: “Hunting has clearly played a very significant role in the past in the formation of the rural landscape and in the creation and management of areas of nature conservation.” “Naturally, people ask whether we were implying that hunting is cruel…The short answer to that question is no.” Indeed, I’m rather inclined to call much of the strongly anti-hunt quotes “propaganda”, undoubtedly propaganda in this situation is inevitable. Your examples are isolated cases and you haven’t given sources. These cases could be (and I believe are) the exception and not the rule, this is of course a highly arguable point. That's not to mention the fact that certain hunts have actually be caught breeding foxes. Could you please reiterate and explain your point. Thankyou. Are you suggesting that the average Brit can afford stabling fees and other associated costs? Actually yes I would suggest this. Contrary to, it seems, popular opinion, it does not cost a vast amount of money to own and run a horse. It depends on the way you live the rest of your life to a degree, that is if your bothered about owning only Prada and Goochi, your unlikely to be able to afford a horse as well. But yes it is within the scope of the average british person to own a horse. Well if galloping around the countryside's where they get their pleasure, it kinda makes you wonder why they're so violently opposed to the hunting ban. Riding with the hunt gives greater opportunities. Firstly there’s the social aspect of hunting, secondly there’s the organisation of routes, times etc (this might not be a plus point to you, it wouldn’t be for me, but it is for some people). And also individuals are not permitted to ride the terrain that the hunts can. Hunts are registered, it is unlikely that all hunts stray wildly all over the countryside. 272 hunts have registered hunting land amounting to 133,600 square miles, only 3% of this is not hunted due to a lack of permission. 26% is not hunted due to safety issues, including development. I agree that blooding is awful, however I question how widespread the practise is. I do disagree with the digging out of, or gassing of foxes that have gone to ground, there is an argument here that without the digging out of earthed foxes, only the weakest die and so there is direct ecological benefit in this way. I however disagree with this argument. Having said that, there is some correlation between areas that are hunted and good ecological environments. i not claiming that hunting has much of a direct impact here, just simply that perhaps many hunting communities have more of an idea about environmental issues and implication than they are given credit for. I think maybe there should be greater regulation of hunting with hounds to decrease the worse aspects of the sport, for example the digging out of earthed foxes, unnecessary cruelty (I know your argument will be that it is all unnecessary cruelty, but this is my opinion here), and straying of hunts onto land where they are not welcome and the like. But I really believe that even if some people do enjoy the killing, this is not an argument for the banning of fox hunting, they are not a majority and there are some benefits to hunting with hounds rather than other methods.
That's not an insult. That's an opinion. I believe it's foolish of you to accept the propaganda that you're regurgitating. Walking round the countryside trying to catch a fox by hand and tickle it to death is a form of population control. The issue is whether it's an effective form of population control that would need replacing were it to be banned. Given the minimal impact that fox hunting has on the overall fox population, the answer is a clear "no". The whole issue of population control is a smokescreen anyway. The central issue is whether we want to endorse an activity that involves killing for pleasure in a supposedly civilised society. The nature of any second-hand information is that it can be labelled as propaganda, unless it's clear and incontrovertible fact. Which particular pieces of information were you questioning? More to the point, why do you find it so remarkable that being hunted to exhaustion and ripped apart by a pack of dogs should be a fairly unpleasant and painful experience? Hunts have been known to breed foxes. Producing more foxes is hardly culling, is it? Full livery stabling at a decent stable costs around £100/week. Now I don't know what your definition of 'average' is, but mine doesn't include having £5,200/year just to keep a horse. Two words. Drag hunting. Sorry, but if you think people really need to kill an animal in order to socialise, then their really not getting out enough. Bullshit. This is a regular occurrence. I can tell you that from direct, personal experience. Well what can I say? If you think a sadistic hobby that calls ripping an animal to shreds is 'sport', then I think you're living in the dark ages. We're never going to agree.
