Hawthorne police kill dog while arresting dog's owner for video recording them

[Bryce]

Something without a voice is such an easy target for a coward.

I've seen a lot of YouTube videos of or about cops shooting dogs. And I don't think it's a coincidence. A person with a gun, with authority, with a compulsion to kill and a justification to do it will kill. I don't think a moral code is what stops these government employees from so brazenly shooting humans. I think it's that the potential repercussions are much more severe. And god help us when those are taken away.

Oh, and let's not forget what the guy was handcuffed for.

The ending is graphic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0isxv2jnIo

[Bryce]

After the video was removed I looked for another upload. Then I found comments that described the dog owner antagonizing the police prior to the shooting. Apparently video of that exists but I didn't see it. He supposedly parked his car next to the scene after driving by and being belligerent. So if he was antagonizing them then I was wrong (about why he was handcuffed). I don't believe that baiting the authorities in this way is productive. This guy, the Ridley Reporters and

of the world are not defenders of rights.

Still, the officers were wrong in shooting his dog and I stand by the rest of my comments.

[BaalChatzaf]

Having been both chased and bitten by dogs, while riding my bike, I have 0 empath for the dog. The only dogs I consider worthy of life and breath are seeing-eye dogs. The rest are cursed among animals. Filthy, pesky beasts they are.

[jts]

Peikoff's answer to a question about your dog vs a stranger:

http://www.peikoff.com/2013/07/01/in-order-to-assess-the-moral-character-of-others-talk-show-host-dennis-prager-asks-the-question-if-you-come-across-your-dog-and-a-stranger-hanging-off-a-cliff-which-would-you-save-who-would-t/

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Peikoff's answer to a question about your dog vs a stranger:

http://www.peikoff.com/2013/07/01/in-order-to-assess-the-moral-character-of-others-talk-show-host-dennis-prager-asks-the-question-if-you-come-across-your-dog-and-a-stranger-hanging-off-a-cliff-which-would-you-save-who-would-t/

One of the problems I always have with Peikoff is that he has his moral condemnation and outrage on autopilot with a veneer of reason on top. It's almost Pavlovian: "ding-->salivate." Except it's "word or phrase-->jargon slap."

In these cases, he uses the normative before cognitive method of reasoning and it often leads him to make some weird contradictions that just sound like silly bluster.

For those who don't know, when I say normative before cognitive, I mean judging something (generally on autopilot) without identifying it first, then going around trying to find facts to fit the judgment while ignoring those that don't. In my understanding, you have to correctly identify something in order to correctly judge it, so the proper sequence at the conscious awareness level is cognitive before normative.

This podcast comment by Peikoff shows an interesting variation of the normative before cognitive approach that leads to the contradiction. It's like he's split into two different men. Let's look. From the opening:

In order to assess the moral character of others, Prager often asks the question, “If you come across your dog and a stranger hanging off a cliff and could only save one, which would you save?” Who would the Objectivist save?

Peikoff is talking about radio talk show host, Dennis Prager, who Peikoff says is often good if you can abstract out the mysticism.

Well, this is a lifeboat question. You know, putting values in a situation which is not the situation in which human beings live or form values. We do not form values in order to deal with people who are drowning, or hanging off a cliff, or falling from an airplane. Those are lifeboat questions and morality is not defined to answer such questions.

So I think there is no one answer that I can say Objectivists should have. It depends on their values.

Up to here, good. Agree or disagree, this is a correct answer according to Objectivist thinking.

Then he goes on about his dog and how much he loves the pooch and how he, personally, would, without hesitation, choose her over a stranger.

Up to here, OK, too. Like he said, it's his values. His dog. Not someone else's. There is no correct answer for everybody.

But then he ends with this:

The idea of throwing that [his dog and his value of her] overboard because somebody I don't know is having a problem, or is even having a life problem, is just outrageous to me.

Now you say, "But isn't man above the animals?"

Yes... in general. But that doesn't mean... anything wrong with some animals are above some men to some people. Properly, that is egoism. The man is nothing to me. The dog is everything... well close to everything.

So, it's an outrage that this question is asked.

Which is it (for Objectivists)?

A morally neutral question or an outrage to even ask it--implying that the very question is evil?

The phrase, "it's an outrage that this question is asked," is boilerplate Rand from countless articles, interviews and Q&A's.

Oh, I suppose you could say he meant the question was an outrage to him if talking about his dog and not an outrage in general, but I don't think that would be precise. I think Peikoff was on normative before cognitive autopilot at this point. Notice that his grammar was falling apart right before that statement.

The rational Peikoff at the beginning makes the emotional Peikoff at the end sound silly because of the contradiction.

Cognitively, this is a minor point because it's so easy to ignore Peikoff's sporadic comical swagger, but I find it annoying. Probably because I am an artist (emotions are serious business to artists). It has always interfered with my appreciation of him--starting with his switch-on/switch-off bluster in "The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy."

Michael

[Darrell Hougen]

Hi Michael,

At this point, I can't listen to the podcast because I'm in my office, but I'll use your analysis as a starting point. Using that starting point, I disagree with at least a couple of points of Peikoff's analysis.

First of all, Rand didn't say that there was no one answer to the question and that, "it depends upon their values." According to the this website, Rand simply refused to answer the question:

There is an excellent answer by Ayn Rand on "lifeboat questions" in Ayn Rand Answers, pp. 113-114 (as noted in my original answer). The answer is too long to excerpt here in its entirety, but the question is:

A rational person finds himself in a life-threatening situation, such that unless he kills an innocent man, he will be killed. Under such circumstances, is it morally permissible to kill an inocent person?

Ayn Rand's response, in part is:

...every code of ethics must be based on a metaphysics -- on a view of the world in which man lives. But man does not live in a lifeboat -- in a world in which he must kill innocent men to survive.

So, if Peikoff had stopped at that point, he would have been fine.

One can gather further insight into how Rand might have answered the question by looking at her ethics of emergencies. For example, according the Ayn Rand Lexicon, Rand said:

For instance, a man who values human life and is caught in a shipwreck, should help to save his fellow passengers (though not at the expense of his own life).

From this, it is impossible to say whether Rand would have favored the human over the dog, however, it certainly doesn't seem like an outrageous question.

In my view, it is certainly not outrageous to consider saving the person. In fact, I tend to think that dog owners generally place too much value on their animals and that my knee-jerk reaction would be to save the person. Of course, from the question it is hard to tell what kind of person needs rescuing. It could be a criminal. But, there is a pretty high probability that any random stranger is a decent human being worthy of help in an emergency situation. That is consistent with Rand's benevolent universe belief as well.

Darrell

[Brant Gaede]

Human first, dog second.

Dog first, human second, I don't want to know you or of you.

--Brant

when and where did this ever happen and what is the situation supposed to illustrate?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Darrell,

You are correct that Rand did not answer such a question in "The Ethics of Emergencies."

But I remember some place (I'll have to look it up) where Rand was asked about a question similar to Sophie's choice (where she had to choose which of her children the Nazis would kill). I think it was kill someone innocent or be killed herself or something like that, and Rand basically said where normal human life is not possible, meaning where a person is forced to choose values in a drastic context that does not resemble human existence, there is no morality. In other words, morality is a code of values to guide man's choices for living on earth, not for living in a torture chamber or in some implausible or impossible thought experiment.

Thus, there is no way to morally judge a person's choice in a case like that. Lifeboat seems to have been added on over time (or maybe by her, I can't remember right now) as a colorful metaphor borrowed from her article on the ethics of emergencies.

So I believe Peikoff got it right, meaning he was consistent with Rand's views, when he said it depends on a person's values (rather than a moral principle).

I just don't agree with the way he uses his values as a form of justifying total lack of empathy and indifference to the suffering of others. It seems like he doesn't understand the phrase "species solidarity" that is given right there in "The Ethics of Emergencies." See here (it is Rand quoting a passage from an article by Nathaniel Branden):

"The respect and good will that men of self-esteem feel toward other human beings is profoundly egoistic; they feel, in effect: 'Other men are of value because they are of the same species as myself.' In revering living entities, they are revering their own life. This is the psychological base of any emotion of sympathy and any feeling of 'species solidarity.' "

I don't agree with this reasoning, although that is another issue. Briefly, for one example, as one of the psychological bases of "respect and good will" towards others as a default attitude, it's enough to say mirror neurons exist. And I think "species solidarity" is a tortured synonym at best for empathy. God knows where this reasoning would go in dealing with the suffering a mother endures during childbirth. Would she endure that suffering for another (her baby) out of "species solidarity"? Man, that sounds weird.

I hold we are individual human beings, not individual things that somehow got grafted onto the human species. My view implies that there are certain innate behaviors and mental dispositions that are much more species-related than individual-related. But my views on empathy and species are beyond the scope here.

Getting back to the point, the quote clearly shows that, way back when, Rand (and Branden) did not consider a pathological level of indifference to others to be a psychological component of "men of self-esteem."

Peikoff totally misses that in dismissing a man hanging off a cliff as somebody he doesn't know who is having a problem, a man who is only a "potential value" to use his words, not an actual value. I think he sensed the framing of this was off, so he added (chuckling), "or is even having a life problem."

To my ear, the chuckle made the remedy worse than the problem.

And, of course, I don't like the way he apes Rand's swagger unless I'm thinking comedy. He always manages to do it at the wrong time.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

Was the dog attacking the cops?

[Dglgmut]

Human first, dog second.

Dog first, human second, I don't want to know you or of you.

--Brant

when and where did this ever happen and what is the situation supposed to illustrate?

That's what you get when you mix "objective" ethics with a subjective value theory.

He would act to gain and keep the dog... it's perfectly Objectivist.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here's a cute addition to this discussion:

Shipwrecked man Graham Anley saves dog Rosie before wife Sheryl off coast of South Africa
August 7, 2013
Herald Sun

From the article:

A SOUTH African man has saved his pet dog before his wife when their yacht was shipwrecked.

Graham and Sheryl Anley and their Jack Russell terrier Rosie ran aground off one of South Africa’s most dangerous stretches of ocean, at Cebe on the Transkei coast. They battled waves of up to seven metres and were swept onto a reef.

National Sea Rescue Institute North London station commander Georff McGregor said all three were wearing life jackets. The dog Rosie was wearing a specially tailored dog life-jacket with an emergency strobe light.

"As the incident happened Graham sent a Mayday radio distress call and activated the EPIRB (Global Positioning Distress beacon) but they were immediately forced to abandon ship," said Mr McGregor.
"He first swam Rosie ashore safely before returning for his wife, whose safety line had snagged on the steering gear," said Mr McGregor.

Once all three were safely on shore, Mr Anley - who is also a sea rescue volunteer - used his mobile phone to raise the alarm. Rosie and Sheryl Anley were airlifted to the East London sea rescue base, IOL News reports.

Now that's what I call keeping your priorities straight! Maybe he listens to Peikoff...

Michael

[Mikee]

Yeah, if something happened to the dog he'd of never heard the end of it...

[Brant Gaede]

Here's a cute addition to this discussion:

Shipwrecked man Graham Anley saves dog Rosie before wife Sheryl off coast of South Africa

August 7, 2013

Herald Sun

From the article:

A SOUTH African man has saved his pet dog before his wife when their yacht was shipwrecked.

Graham and Sheryl Anley and their Jack Russell terrier Rosie ran aground off one of South Africa’s most dangerous stretches of ocean, at Cebe on the Transkei coast. They battled waves of up to seven metres and were swept onto a reef.

National Sea Rescue Institute North London station commander Georff McGregor said all three were wearing life jackets. The dog Rosie was wearing a specially tailored dog life-jacket with an emergency strobe light.

"As the incident happened Graham sent a Mayday radio distress call and activated the EPIRB (Global Positioning Distress beacon) but they were immediately forced to abandon ship," said Mr McGregor.

"He first swam Rosie ashore safely before returning for his wife, whose safety line had snagged on the steering gear," said Mr McGregor.

Once all three were safely on shore, Mr Anley - who is also a sea rescue volunteer - used his mobile phone to raise the alarm. Rosie and Sheryl Anley were airlifted to the East London sea rescue base, IOL News reports.

Now that's what I call keeping your priorities straight! Maybe he listens to Peikoff...

Michael

Maybe the wife insisted, maybe Rosie insisted, maybe the actual circumstances insisted.

--Brant

going down with all my guns blazing!