Promotion of animal experiments as an error of science
"Cognitive impasse" in humans in analogy to those of non-human primates - the example of one method to catch monkeys:
In human societies, which are traditionally accustomed with monkeys due to the common habitat, there is a method of catching monkeys:
a small hole is drilled in a monkey's view into a tree trunk, which has a diameter of a size where a monkey can just push a hand.
At the end of the hole, a depression is created and put into it edible and it is gone out of sight of the monkey. After a while,
the monkey tries to find out what is in the hole and wants to get the food, but it can not because he can not pull out the fist-made hand.
So, in order to escape, he has to let go the food - and that is not what the monkey is able to do.
The monkey thus falls into a sort of cognitive impasse - into an inner conflict, visible to the external inability to act effectively.
Perhaps this conflict rarely leads to an actual disadvantage for this species; otherwise he would not exist evolutionarily. The cognitive
pattern behind it will presumably be on the brink of perception of this kind.
However, what is true for non-human primates must therefore not be excluded for human primates: it is (in the first person's perception) only
the ineffective cognitive pattern that falls under consideration; not in the viewer's (in the same species). Cognitive weaknesses hidden
in the (species-specific) structure are difficult to perceive in the first-person perspective (of the same kind). One of these is to hope
for benefits by taking something away from others - scientifically, by carrying out experiments on animals, or even medically, by removing
organs for exchange.
"Backward turned ethics":
In my opinion it is a mistake to believe, that the greatest benefit of the applied ethics lies only in advantages for the concerning object,
the "others", the excluded opposite, the animal.
The subject waives a portion of its self for the benefit of another. At this point begins a cost / benefit assessment, that the animals
as experimental objects inherently in a man-made human science can not decide for themselves.
The boundary between the ethically included and the ethically excluded species is arbitrarily determined by one species (the human being)
and can be varied according to its interests and "Zeitgeist".
This rather linear relationship is only the smaller value of ethics. The main beneficiaries of applied ethics is actually the user himself, as
he creates the precondition to be able to break out of its own linear thinking and quasi in addition acting positively to the outside.
This thesis is to be justified by the fact that each individual lives in a self-created "world": self-created by the indirect perception of
the world through the filter of our own physical bodies and mental conclusions. Shall I have certain expectations to my outside world, it affects
the direct effect on my internal mobility: if one intended to torture, for an example in an animal study, for themselves promise benefits,
than he must assume that others think the same way and vice versa they would threaten him for their benefits. He would live in a double gloomy
world: once because of his intentions, another time because of his (unconscious) expectations. Likewise, to maintain a positive self-image of
himself upright, he would have make spin-offs, in this example, in the way that he would only be able cruel to animals and not to any
generalization on their own genus.
The process may seem insignificant and runs largely unconsciously, but does live in a more anxiety self-created "world" as if it was real
need without these behaviors. It also binds me mentally and prevents me to self-reflection, causes to live in a smaller world as necessary.
Conversely, the absence of the personal competitive acquisition on the cost of others, that I can imagine that others will act as well.
Although I would have to try to anticipate the real situation in a cost / benefit analysis, but I would not have more fear than real need,
and because of that I am movable of cause the better way of self-reflection.
Generalized from the individual to the lot of researchers, who see animal testing for research as essential, runs just the risk of research,
less questioning on a meta-level itself, at last remain under their real possibilities.
Perhaps, many researchers imagine that animal testing is essential because they have become accustomed to that and are in their "world" grown
up. Centuries ago, many people consider e.g. the slavery are essential for the economic cycle. Years before are surely other things
unthinkable, e.g. during the Stone Age metal tools.
And so on.
Ethical "problems" and their linking to problem-solving strategies
The question of ethics arises particularly in a reverse conclusion: when are the limits of ethics exceeded? Where is set the limit?
In these matters lies in my opinion already the end of the success of the respective previously applied problem solving strategy.
If ethical questions urge into the foreground, it means that the cognitive strategy itself arises "borderline" - regardless of a
moving the boundary or insistence on the verge.
The real problem is the nature of the cognition, which first necessitates thoughts on ethics: letting someone else suffer for themselves,
the suffering for their own "reassurance" applied to species behind the arbitrarily determined ethical limit. This cognition is simply
linear, non-reflective and backwards, because possibilities are not sought on a different level and only existing solution strategies
are applied.
A real solution is to leave the usual cognitive level via detour on the meta level and to develop a completely new strategy.
Conversely, this means: The possibilities of cognitive decision-making processes are only partially used,
recognizable because permanent ethical considerations are relegated to the background.
In politics there are comparable examples:
a) Mutual up-armament: increasingly upgrade in a downward spiral, to reach a better starting position in comparison to the
"Others".
b) Economic policies for obtaining relative wealth: instead of the aiming for an absolute wealth, Thus a general condition of
material and personal satisfaction, the pursuit of a better, respectively, elevated position towards others, what beside
winners necessarily creates losers.
Here is given especially less obvious examples:
c) Transplants of organs:
When transplanting organs from deceased is the time of death is an important ethical boundary. It also raises the question,
whether a living organ is only "alive" if the donor has not yet died, in a way that life can only be passed as a "relay race".
The thinking, which this is based, in my opinion is linear: one part (of the body) is missing or broken, this part needs to be replaced
and must be taken away of someone in an acceptable ethical manner.
In contrast are the approaches to grow new organs from the body's own tissue. Here is a holistic thinking provided. The body is a
non-deformable unit and the individual has a certain personal responsibility in their own acting towards themselves (now here are not
genetically causative diseases meant).
Transplants ensure only represent a medical special case, but are due to the structure of human thought a special attention attain challenge.
But to let organs grow out of the body's own tissue is in the long term not only ethical, but also unspectacular, "supple" and has
rather the system, to grow a "normal" medical operation as the further.
d) animal testing as part of the science:
Animal experiments neglect the "first-person" - level: initially the motivation. It makes a difference whether certain research methods "must"
be carried out due to external requirements, in incongruence to their own values and morals or whether they exact considered this while
involving in the level of experience. Thereby congruence is sought between the personality of the researcher and the experimental setup.
Animal experimentation as an ethical "crutch", which really means human experiments and it bypasses thereby correspond to the linear thinking
in particulate subareas without sufficient reference to the whole. Such kind of research is oriented backwards, on already acquaintances
and mentally rehearsed, but not to the feeling, ethics, the positive in the future developable.
There are already many examples where dispensed with animal experimentation, for example, through research on cell cultures.
On a meta-level, which considers scientific development as a whole, this results in a faster and more sustainable
progress on research that refrained to operate on ethical limits but rather forward-looking and operating at the
Meta, the people in the "first-person" - a holistic perspective (thinking, feeling, acting) inclusive.
Metalevel and Science
I would argue, that "the" science underestimates systematically the influence of the individual's own personality, psychological factors of its
researchers. Every person, including a researcher, has, through his previous experiences, a certain image of his environment,
has tendencies, subject to emotions. He structures his research at the very beginning, by the hypothesis, and rated them as well at the end.
He is subject to cultural influences of its time in its specific environment. The validity will be limited in this way, but probably only
seen outside their own cultural group.
An example of such an impact on the research described in the previous chapter, is the importance attributing the "thinking I" and
which can be found in the attribution of the functions of the cortex in the brain research.
Another example is the theological question of God's existence. While the linear answer to the question of "God" as an object will remain
probably always an issue, for me it is more interesting to look at the subject, the questioner: the attempt of the subject by the structuring
of the unknown, a personalization, humanization of anticipated higher order of the world by the attribution of the word "God" and certain
properties.
Ultimately, the questioner succumbs to a mereological fallacy: to close from the part to the hole character, which were in turn,
described as a part with the agents of a part (i.e. in words).
Conversely to close from a generalized whole, it can be seen in its individual parts. The entirety acts (unconsciously) in this way in its
parts; whether they in turn may cognitively recognize the whole is questionable. In other words, the anticipated higher order is seen
in the process of structuring subjective, not as a static object of projecting.
Example: What options theoretically have a single leaf on the tree to take themselves objectively true without be inferior to the influence
of the tree - or on higher level - the influence of the earth in which the tree is rooted?