Back to animals

I finally gave up on "Taking Animals Seriously" by David De Grazia, especially after being side-tracked by that awful but "gripping" book, Da Vinci Code. I tried to come back to it, but found that I just can't understand it. It is too academic and requires too much knowledge on theories of ethics and philosophy. So I just started reading Regan's All that Dwell Therein . Regan is one of the big animal rights proponents. I must say I am enjoying this book far more as it is more practical and doesn't rely on so much theory.

Regan briefly discussed Descartes's opinion on animals. He believed that animals are simply automata. They react to things like machines and have no consciousness. Even when they yelp, wimper, cry and scream this is just an automatic response and doesn't actually mean they are experiencing pain. This radical conclusion is based entirely on the fact that they don't have language. Discartes believed that without language you can't think, and without thought you can't feel pain. I disagree with every premise.

As a result of his conviction that animals are just automata, he and others (easily influenced by the great Descartes) happily tortured (experimented) animals while they were alive for the sake of science. I was horrified to read that he used to nail animals' feet onto boards and cut them open to see how they would bleed while they were alive! This was all to discover how blood circulates.

shocking and very sad...