If that were true then why do all air based heat pumps include heating coils that kick on well above 15F?
Because you are lying. I own one that claims performance to -40 and doesn't include "heating coils" (prresuming you mean electric heating elements). So "all" is true only for the one 40 year old model you saw once, and since closed your mind and spread lies.
If you have an air source heat pump and even a ground source heat pump, you have heating coils inside your house in the air handler for when the heat pump can not function efficiently. All air source heat pumps work by compressing a gas generating heat and releasing the pressure causing it to cool. It is basically a big air conditioner with a valve to send the hot fluid into the house's heat exchanger or the cold (like a traditional air conditioner).
Maybe you have a ground source heat pump where the ambient temperature is 55F, so the efficiency is greatly increased. If so, then you could work down to -40. But if you check, you most likely still have heating coils inside air handler.
Apparently my brother has one (panasonic i belive) running on theoretical nonsense down to about -9F (-23C). We have not had any cooler here so I don't know for sure how those behave when it gets really cold, but they say his should work down to at least -25C. It's about 4 years old and I guess newer theoretical nonsense works even better.
Somebody should win a nobel prize if you have an air source heat pump that functions well at -9F without having to use auxiliary heat as it would be a major breakthrough in physics. Just as an air conditioner can only cool so much (about 20F) below the ambient temperature, a heat pump can only increase so much above the ambient temperature. So, unless your brother keeps his house below freezing, there is something else at work if the air source heat pump is keeping his house, say at 68F when the outside air is -9F.
If that were true then why do all air based heat pumps include heating coils that kick on well above 15F?
Why are your cells able to produce energy anerobically, despite that being horribly inefficient and producing lactic acid? To give you an extra bit of power when you're chased by a bear. But it's still just an emergency auxiliary for your normal aerobic energy production.
Last time I checked, cell biology and heat pump technology are two very different processes that don't have anything in common. Nice try, though.
Well... for one, my 1998 4-banger gets me 38mpg on the highway.
And it has air conditioning... power niceties... and weighs probably twice as much as that '68 Beetle. I don't think we're doing too bad.
We're not doing as good as we could be, on average, because everyone buys automatic transmissions, which still cannot match the efficiency of manuals.
I said city. There have been numerous advance on highway mileage, but most driving is city. As for transmissions, evidently, the new six speed automatics can get as good mileage as manuals, but they are expensive and hard to fit in small front wheel drive vehicles.
The heating coils are there for situations where you want (or that the controller board thinks that you want) a lot of heat right now. Like when somebody manually ups the temperature setting about five degrees. With a heat pump, slow and steady (and a programmable thermostat) wins the race.
Maybe your heat pump is different than most of the ones in use here, but those coils kick on whenever the temp is in the low 20s. Ground source would be a different story, but the ones that suck the heat out of the air loose efficiency as the temperature drops.
I'm not particularly impressed by the libertarian arguments, but I do think that these regulations were phased in a bit too soon. A delay of 5 to 10 years would probably make more sense.
That's because the light bulb industry doesn't have the lobbyists that the automobile industry does. Look how long, at least since the 1970s, they've been trying to increase mileage standards. They can now make a 4 cyl engine put out 200HP, but can it still can't get better mileage around town than a volkswagen beetle did in 1968 (25mpg).
The only difference between a "rough service lamp" and "traditional bulbs" is that the filament is more robust and is supported by more framework within the bulb.
I live in Wisconsin, seriously, that "waste" heat is NOT wasted!
Blah blah, I live up north too. Let's see, should I heat my house with a 95% efficient furnace or a 10% efficient light bulb? Boy that's a tough one...
If you have found a method to make a furnace, any source 95% efficient, you would be a very rich person.
I live in Wisconsin, seriously, that "waste" heat is NOT wasted! It's freaking cold outside!! I'm an American, I want to be free to choose!
I doubt you need heat year round. The only way you don't waste energy in that scenario is if you're already using electric resistance heating which is horribly inefficient. Heat pumps are less efficient in the cold, but still outperform resistance heat down to 15*F. If you're routinely colder than that, you have gas/propane/oil backup heat or worst case electric resistance heat.
That said, there are cases where incandescent bulbs are used to provide heat, such as terrariums. For those I guess we're stuck with $4 halogens that don't last any longer instead of the 25-cent walmart specials.
If that were true then why do all air based heat pumps include heating coils that kick on well above 15F? Might it be that there is the theoretical efficiency and the practical result? As for terrariums, the various reptile heat lamps are still deemed specialty lamps and exempt from the incadescent ban (as are many decorative incadescents that high end houses have).
I live in Wisconsin, seriously, that "waste" heat is NOT wasted! It's freaking cold outside!! I'm an American, I want to be free to choose!
I suspect that Poe's Law is at work here. But I'll play it straight and point out that a heat-pump is a lot more efficient than simple resistive heating like the waste heat from a light-bulb. Modern heat-pumps work even in sub-freezing temperatures like a Wisconsin winter.
You might go back and check your calculations. What exactly is the efficiency of a heat pump when the outside air temp is below 20F like it is in the upper midwest this week?
You are free to choose: that's what the ballot box is for.
Capitalistic "freedom of choice" is weighted by the size of your wallet.
Really, and when was the incadescent ban put to a vote of the people? No, the ballot box is only effective on things that those in power (or the people who control them) want it to be effective for.
I don't know of anybody who's pro-abortion. I know quite a few people who believe women should have the right to abortions, but they aren't actually in favor of increasing the numbers of abortions. Lots of people think abortions should be safe, legal, and rare.
If you are in favor of there being legal abortion, then by definition, you are pro-abortion. If you are opposed to legal abortion, you are anti-abortion. Terms like pro-choice or pro-life are simply euphemisms to soften the reality.
As to when life begins, that is beyond the realm of science to determine. It is in fact a philosophical debate, whether that philosophy is religious or secular. However, not all people opposed to abortion are religious, just as not all people in favor of abortion are anti-religious. The two are not synonymous and it is dangerous to simplify abortion as merely a religious issue.
It's also important that women do not have a right to an abortion, there is no such thing as abortion rights. Women, according to the SCOTUS have a right to privacy and what people collectively refer to as abortion rights are, in reality, privacy rights. That is why those who are pro-abortion are concerned over these attempts to grant personhood to animals.
Since a viable fetus is much closer to being a human person than a chimpanzee or a dolphin, if a chimpanzee or dolphin were to be granted personhood, then abortions would not be permitted if a fetus were viable - the courts have already determined in other areas that an individual persons right to life takes precedence over another's right to privacy. Since most six month fetus are sustainable, that would end third term abortions. From there it would be a slippery slope earlier and earlier into the pregnancy.
So, while you may feel that this would be a stupid claim by anti-abortion types, first, it was not their claim, although they support it, and second it has the potential to be as upsetting to the abortion industry as the ipad was to the computer industry.
I don't get the connection between the title and the summary.
That far right side of the Periodic Table...where Helium, Neon, Xenon, Argon, and Radon live. Those elements have always been taught as being chemically inert (i.e. not able to be combined with any other elements), hence why they are called "noble" gases. This apparently is the first instance where that rule isn't necessarily true.
Of course it took the energy of the collapse of a star to produce those compounds, so for practical purpose, those gases are still all pretty noble.
You seem to stick to the idea that the corpus of knowledge gathered through the scientific method is the same thing as the scientific method itself. The difference has already been explained by another poster rather more eloquently than I could. Religious people accept religious truths on faith, whereas those of a more scientific frame of mind accept scientific hypotheses on the basis that they rest upon evidence. They may accept that the evidence exists by trusting those in the scientific community to not pull the wool over their eyes, but this is not the same thing as accepting the hypotheses itself on faith.
Actually since the 1960s science and philosophy have been divorced from each other, to the detriment of science. I am not equating science and religion, by the way. I am merely pointing out that since most people no longer have a solid understanding of philosophy, they fail to understand that what they propose to know scientifically, they don't actually know, but instead believe. That is because to know something, one must have first experienced it (that's philosophy), without that, we can only accept on faith (not religious faith) what has been told to us. Of course the more credible sources that tell us about it, the more we can rely on it, but without first hand experience, it will always be acceptance on faith not true knowledge (although the probability may be extremely high).
Like it or not, that is the same mechanism involved with religious faith. An idea is passed done by those deemed to be knowledgeable or learned. The more credible the sources and the more voluminous the sources, the greater the reliance on it. However, without first hand experience, it is still acceptance on faith and not true knowledge.
Think back to geometry class and doing proofs. Probably you were told various things, and then had to do the proofs yourself. Once you did them yourself, you had first hand knowledge and actually knew, for instance, that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line (in Euclidean geometry). But up until that point, you accepted that the statement was true, based on the testimony of the teacher. That is belief or faith.
Or, take cold fusion, periodically, we hear of accounts of it occurring in a lab. That is testimony. Somebody repeats the experiment for them self and finds that it does not. That negates the first person's testimony. If they repeated it, then they had knowledge that the process worked and the rest of us would accept that the testimony was a little more credible. By the time it is repeated many times, we would accept it as highly credible, but it would still be acceptance and belief, not first hand knowledge.
Belief does not lessen science, it is only a problem because we chose to ignore philosophy. If we emphasized philosophy as part of STEM in education, things would be much more balanced and it would be much more difficult for pseudo-science to exist. Why? Because people would understand what science is and is not and what they know and what they accept (or think they know).
Put differently, faith is much broader than religious faith. If I write you a personal check at a garage sale, you are accepting on faith that the funds are available so that when you deposit the check you will be paid. That is the true meaning of faith - acceptance on the word of another. Without faith, we could not have science, because every scientist would have to repeat every experiment for themself to prove what they were currently wanting to prove. Faith is as essential to science as it is to religion and that is why it doesn't lessen science.
Show us those formulas, and specifically where they say the Earth is in the center.
It math works, that's enough.
You might try reading up on Ptolemy and his successors up until the time of Copernicus (I think Tycho Brahe was a major contemporary of Copernicus who was in the Ptolemic camp). Copernicus was not the first to propose a heliocentric model but his math worked on it. Of course, his theories were later found to be in error, which is what Galileo in trouble, but hey, the math worked, even if the model was wrong.
Likely because it would open a can of worms that would be hard to close. After all, I don't know anybody who skipped straight from conception to childhood, do you?
While your question is rhetorical, the implication is real. If a fetus were deemed a person under the law, then the fetus would have all of the protections of any other person under the law. Now, while still an embryo, it is unlikely that such a declaration would be made, but if a six month fetus which should be viable, at least with assistance would be declared a person, then the courts would be faced with a woman's right to privacy (abortion) and the fetus' right to life. Then if six month and beyond is a person, what about 5 month and 29 days? It becomes a slippery slope. That is exactly the case the pro-abortion people don't want to be heard but the anti-abortion people do want.
Interestingly, that is also why many anti-abortion groups support granting personhood to animals as it tends to bolster their case. It is also why many pro-abortion groups oppose it.
The whole question revolves around how do we know what we know. We have two choices. We can either experience it or we can rely on the testimony of another. This is true whether we are talking about people, or science or even religion. Those are the only two options. With science, to experience it means to conduct/repeat the experiment (or do the math).
However, for most of us, we don't do that. Instead knowledge is passed down from one generation to the next by teachers or books or today, the media and internet. As such, we don't have first hand knowledge but rely on other people who have gone before us. Now look at religion, it really doesn't matter which one. How are the precepts of that religion transmitted from one generation to the next? It is the same way, they go through teachers, books, or today, the media and internet.
Now, there are differences, because with science, one does have the opportunity to conduct the experiment, whereas, with religion, while many claim an "experience" it is hard to quantify and is usually quite subjective.
But, unless one actually does the experiment, they don't know first hand, and are really accepting on faith the testimony from those who came before them. Yes, the earth revolves around the sun. Ask yourself how you know that? Have you gone far enough into space where you can actually see it? Probably not. Have you conducted the mathematical calculations and observations to make that determination yourself? Probably not? Or are you accepting the testimony from others that this actually occurs? For most people that is the correct answer.
Accepting science on faith doesn't lessen the science. However, it is really the same process that people of faith use for their beliefs. Denying that most of what we know about science is not true knowledge, but instead belief or faith, however, denies the entire scientific process.
In reality, it is a philosophical question "How do we know what we know?" Of course, science doesn't like philosophy any more than it likes religion.
In the end, the court did the right thing. Animals, no matter how intelligent are not persons under the constitution.
Why is it then that intelligent animals don't deserve personhood, but corporations do? A sentient intelligent creature is not a person, but a legal entity is? That's pretty inconsistent.
That's a rhetorical question, by the way. The answer is obvious: money and corruption.
Corporations are juridic persons - deemed by law as opposed to natural persons. A juridic person has no rights except what the law grants them, which in the case of corporations was the exercise of free speech as related to political speech. The reason given was because the outcome of political endeavors impacts the corporation so the corporation should be free to present its support or opposition.
What was being proposed, on the other hand was not to declare chimpanzees as a type of juridic person but as a full person, the same as a human being with all of the rights afforded a person. Unlike a juridic person where rights are granted by the state, a natural person has rights by nature (or endowed by their creator). Leaving out the religious debate, the purpose of the state with regards to the rights of a natural person is not to grant them but to protect them. (The state can't grant them because the person has them by nature).
Yours might have been a rhetorical question, but it is the underpinnings of many comments on this article.
All human beings are persons. All persons are human beings. There is no gray area or sliding scale. It is as simple as that.
The law doesn't agree. See "corporate personhood". If a corporation can be recognized as a legal person in the eyes of the law, why not an intelligent animal? Chimps are good candidates, so are dolphins or elephants. Guess which animal is next on the list of intelligence: pigs. Imagine what would happen if pigs had civil rights all of a sudden, where killing a pig would bring a murder charge. A lot of money would be thrown at politicians to make sure that would never happen. Regardless of how intelligent they are, pigs also happen to taste pretty good so they're damned. Chimps are lucky we don't eat them.
The concept of a corporation being a person under the law is not the same thing as being a person. Is a corporation free to marry any other person? Can a corporation get a passport or VISA? When filing taxes, does a corporation fill out an Individual Return and take an exemption for itself? No, to all of the above. If a corporation were a person, it would have all of the rights as any other person. What the courts declared is that a corporation is recognized as a person under certain parts of the law, such as having the right to free speech. They did not say that a corporation was a person.
Bear in mind these are dependent beings....not unlike a child or elderly person. They both have rights as well, but we don't 'let them go in the wild'. (Queue jokes..;) We care for them, as they're unable to care for themselves.
The point of the lawsuit is not as focused on current animals (all of whom are dependants), but more-so for future generations (free-living/wild chimpanzees). If granted personhood, they wouldn't be used in the first place, and animal sanctuaries would be needed less, and demand for them (poaching, breeding) would fall. This way, they wouldn't be in zoos, in labs or other exploitative environments, and instead would be where they ought to be - in the wild.
A ruling by a US court on the personhood of animals would only have jurisdiction in the US and it's territories. As such, it would have minimal impact on poaching, breeding, zoos and labs, etc.
Isn't that precisely what modern pro-choicers also think? That different classes of persons should have different rights? The difference being that most aren't willing to call fetuses people....
One could argue that, however, I don't think the overall pro-choice view takes into account the fetus, but instead the woman and her choice. Even Roe v Wade was about a woman's right to privacy. The courts have never ruled on whether a fetus is a person or not, nor do abortion proponents want them to do so.
Since 'personhood' has changed multiple times, I do not think one can say that it is an absolute, otherwise it would have been settled a long time ago. Even today look at all the debate around abortion and contraception. No, there is quite a bit of subjectivity and arbitrariness going on here.
That being said, yes, it is a human construct, meaning we can change it to mean whatever we want. We get to choose what rights and protections we extend to those who lack the ability to fight for themselves. As a civilization we weight the economic advantages of minimizing those protections vs the ethics of what it costs others.
That is false. Based on what you say, that it is up to society to decide who/what is a person or not, then society could decide a gay is not a person or somebody who is fat is not a person or a black man is not a person, etc. No, what is and is not a person is not the same as what is and is not a planet. It might be acceptable for some group or committee to determine whether a rock in space is no longer a planet, but since only a person has rights, do you really propose that as a solution for who is and is no longer a person?
History has shown us that when a society views a group as somehow less a person than themselves, really bad things happen.
This isn't about giving power to animals. It's about giving power to guardians of animals. Just like organized religion is about giving power not to God, but to priests.
Interesting, since not all religions have priests, nor do they all have a deity. Might your anti-catholic bias be showing?
Some corporations are people, they are called Corporation Sole, in those jurisdictions that allow for it. Most US Corporations are not people. However, they are persons under the law.
You are only partially correct. It is true that monkeys aren't people, then again, neither are corporations. There is a difference between people and persons. Corporations are persons under the law, but they are not people. Monkeys are not even people unless you are referring to The Monkees. The Monkees were both people and persons.
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If that were true then why do all air based heat pumps include heating coils that kick on well above 15F?
Because you are lying. I own one that claims performance to -40 and doesn't include "heating coils" (prresuming you mean electric heating elements). So "all" is true only for the one 40 year old model you saw once, and since closed your mind and spread lies.
If you have an air source heat pump and even a ground source heat pump, you have heating coils inside your house in the air handler for when the heat pump can not function efficiently. All air source heat pumps work by compressing a gas generating heat and releasing the pressure causing it to cool. It is basically a big air conditioner with a valve to send the hot fluid into the house's heat exchanger or the cold (like a traditional air conditioner).
Maybe you have a ground source heat pump where the ambient temperature is 55F, so the efficiency is greatly increased. If so, then you could work down to -40. But if you check, you most likely still have heating coils inside air handler.
Apparently my brother has one (panasonic i belive) running on theoretical nonsense down to about -9F (-23C). We have not had any cooler here so I don't know for sure how those behave when it gets really cold, but they say his should work down to at least -25C. It's about 4 years old and I guess newer theoretical nonsense works even better.
Somebody should win a nobel prize if you have an air source heat pump that functions well at -9F without having to use auxiliary heat as it would be a major breakthrough in physics. Just as an air conditioner can only cool so much (about 20F) below the ambient temperature, a heat pump can only increase so much above the ambient temperature. So, unless your brother keeps his house below freezing, there is something else at work if the air source heat pump is keeping his house, say at 68F when the outside air is -9F.
Why are your cells able to produce energy anerobically, despite that being horribly inefficient and producing lactic acid? To give you an extra bit of power when you're chased by a bear. But it's still just an emergency auxiliary for your normal aerobic energy production.
Last time I checked, cell biology and heat pump technology are two very different processes that don't have anything in common. Nice try, though.
Well... for one, my 1998 4-banger gets me 38mpg on the highway.
And it has air conditioning... power niceties... and weighs probably twice as much as that '68 Beetle. I don't think we're doing too bad.
We're not doing as good as we could be, on average, because everyone buys automatic transmissions, which still cannot match the efficiency of manuals.
I said city. There have been numerous advance on highway mileage, but most driving is city. As for transmissions, evidently, the new six speed automatics can get as good mileage as manuals, but they are expensive and hard to fit in small front wheel drive vehicles.
The heating coils are there for situations where you want (or that the controller board thinks that you want) a lot of heat right now. Like when somebody manually ups the temperature setting about five degrees. With a heat pump, slow and steady (and a programmable thermostat) wins the race.
Maybe your heat pump is different than most of the ones in use here, but those coils kick on whenever the temp is in the low 20s. Ground source would be a different story, but the ones that suck the heat out of the air loose efficiency as the temperature drops.
I'm not particularly impressed by the libertarian arguments, but I do think that these regulations were phased in a bit too soon. A delay of 5 to 10 years would probably make more sense.
That's because the light bulb industry doesn't have the lobbyists that the automobile industry does. Look how long, at least since the 1970s, they've been trying to increase mileage standards. They can now make a 4 cyl engine put out 200HP, but can it still can't get better mileage around town than a volkswagen beetle did in 1968 (25mpg).
The only difference between a "rough service lamp" and "traditional bulbs" is that the filament is more robust and is supported by more framework within the bulb.
And they haven't been banned.
I live in Wisconsin, seriously, that "waste" heat is NOT wasted!
Blah blah, I live up north too. Let's see, should I heat my house with a 95% efficient furnace or a 10% efficient light bulb? Boy that's a tough one...
If you have found a method to make a furnace, any source 95% efficient, you would be a very rich person.
I live in Wisconsin, seriously, that "waste" heat is NOT wasted! It's freaking cold outside!! I'm an American, I want to be free to choose!
I doubt you need heat year round. The only way you don't waste energy in that scenario is if you're already using electric resistance heating which is horribly inefficient. Heat pumps are less efficient in the cold, but still outperform resistance heat down to 15*F. If you're routinely colder than that, you have gas/propane/oil backup heat or worst case electric resistance heat.
That said, there are cases where incandescent bulbs are used to provide heat, such as terrariums. For those I guess we're stuck with $4 halogens that don't last any longer instead of the 25-cent walmart specials.
If that were true then why do all air based heat pumps include heating coils that kick on well above 15F? Might it be that there is the theoretical efficiency and the practical result? As for terrariums, the various reptile heat lamps are still deemed specialty lamps and exempt from the incadescent ban (as are many decorative incadescents that high end houses have).
I live in Wisconsin, seriously, that "waste" heat is NOT wasted! It's freaking cold outside!! I'm an American, I want to be free to choose!
I suspect that Poe's Law is at work here. But I'll play it straight and point out that a heat-pump is a lot more efficient than simple resistive heating like the waste heat from a light-bulb. Modern heat-pumps work even in sub-freezing temperatures like a Wisconsin winter.
You might go back and check your calculations. What exactly is the efficiency of a heat pump when the outside air temp is below 20F like it is in the upper midwest this week?
You are free to choose: that's what the ballot box is for.
Capitalistic "freedom of choice" is weighted by the size of your wallet.
Really, and when was the incadescent ban put to a vote of the people? No, the ballot box is only effective on things that those in power (or the people who control them) want it to be effective for.
I don't know of anybody who's pro-abortion. I know quite a few people who believe women should have the right to abortions, but they aren't actually in favor of increasing the numbers of abortions. Lots of people think abortions should be safe, legal, and rare.
If you are in favor of there being legal abortion, then by definition, you are pro-abortion. If you are opposed to legal abortion, you are anti-abortion. Terms like pro-choice or pro-life are simply euphemisms to soften the reality.
As to when life begins, that is beyond the realm of science to determine. It is in fact a philosophical debate, whether that philosophy is religious or secular. However, not all people opposed to abortion are religious, just as not all people in favor of abortion are anti-religious. The two are not synonymous and it is dangerous to simplify abortion as merely a religious issue.
It's also important that women do not have a right to an abortion, there is no such thing as abortion rights. Women, according to the SCOTUS have a right to privacy and what people collectively refer to as abortion rights are, in reality, privacy rights. That is why those who are pro-abortion are concerned over these attempts to grant personhood to animals.
Since a viable fetus is much closer to being a human person than a chimpanzee or a dolphin, if a chimpanzee or dolphin were to be granted personhood, then abortions would not be permitted if a fetus were viable - the courts have already determined in other areas that an individual persons right to life takes precedence over another's right to privacy. Since most six month fetus are sustainable, that would end third term abortions. From there it would be a slippery slope earlier and earlier into the pregnancy.
So, while you may feel that this would be a stupid claim by anti-abortion types, first, it was not their claim, although they support it, and second it has the potential to be as upsetting to the abortion industry as the ipad was to the computer industry.
I don't get the connection between the title and the summary.
That far right side of the Periodic Table...where Helium, Neon, Xenon, Argon, and Radon live. Those elements have always been taught as being chemically inert (i.e. not able to be combined with any other elements), hence why they are called "noble" gases. This apparently is the first instance where that rule isn't necessarily true.
Of course it took the energy of the collapse of a star to produce those compounds, so for practical purpose, those gases are still all pretty noble.
Yes, it does.
You seem to stick to the idea that the corpus of knowledge gathered through the scientific method is the same thing as the scientific method itself. The difference has already been explained by another poster rather more eloquently than I could. Religious people accept religious truths on faith, whereas those of a more scientific frame of mind accept scientific hypotheses on the basis that they rest upon evidence. They may accept that the evidence exists by trusting those in the scientific community to not pull the wool over their eyes, but this is not the same thing as accepting the hypotheses itself on faith.
Actually since the 1960s science and philosophy have been divorced from each other, to the detriment of science. I am not equating science and religion, by the way. I am merely pointing out that since most people no longer have a solid understanding of philosophy, they fail to understand that what they propose to know scientifically, they don't actually know, but instead believe. That is because to know something, one must have first experienced it (that's philosophy), without that, we can only accept on faith (not religious faith) what has been told to us. Of course the more credible sources that tell us about it, the more we can rely on it, but without first hand experience, it will always be acceptance on faith not true knowledge (although the probability may be extremely high).
Like it or not, that is the same mechanism involved with religious faith. An idea is passed done by those deemed to be knowledgeable or learned. The more credible the sources and the more voluminous the sources, the greater the reliance on it. However, without first hand experience, it is still acceptance on faith and not true knowledge.
Think back to geometry class and doing proofs. Probably you were told various things, and then had to do the proofs yourself. Once you did them yourself, you had first hand knowledge and actually knew, for instance, that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line (in Euclidean geometry). But up until that point, you accepted that the statement was true, based on the testimony of the teacher. That is belief or faith.
Or, take cold fusion, periodically, we hear of accounts of it occurring in a lab. That is testimony. Somebody repeats the experiment for them self and finds that it does not. That negates the first person's testimony. If they repeated it, then they had knowledge that the process worked and the rest of us would accept that the testimony was a little more credible. By the time it is repeated many times, we would accept it as highly credible, but it would still be acceptance and belief, not first hand knowledge.
Belief does not lessen science, it is only a problem because we chose to ignore philosophy. If we emphasized philosophy as part of STEM in education, things would be much more balanced and it would be much more difficult for pseudo-science to exist. Why? Because people would understand what science is and is not and what they know and what they accept (or think they know).
Put differently, faith is much broader than religious faith. If I write you a personal check at a garage sale, you are accepting on faith that the funds are available so that when you deposit the check you will be paid. That is the true meaning of faith - acceptance on the word of another. Without faith, we could not have science, because every scientist would have to repeat every experiment for themself to prove what they were currently wanting to prove. Faith is as essential to science as it is to religion and that is why it doesn't lessen science.
Show us those formulas, and specifically where they say the Earth is in the center.
It math works, that's enough.
You might try reading up on Ptolemy and his successors up until the time of Copernicus (I think Tycho Brahe was a major contemporary of Copernicus who was in the Ptolemic camp). Copernicus was not the first to propose a heliocentric model but his math worked on it. Of course, his theories were later found to be in error, which is what Galileo in trouble, but hey, the math worked, even if the model was wrong.
Likely because it would open a can of worms that would be hard to close. After all, I don't know anybody who skipped straight from conception to childhood, do you?
While your question is rhetorical, the implication is real. If a fetus were deemed a person under the law, then the fetus would have all of the protections of any other person under the law. Now, while still an embryo, it is unlikely that such a declaration would be made, but if a six month fetus which should be viable, at least with assistance would be declared a person, then the courts would be faced with a woman's right to privacy (abortion) and the fetus' right to life. Then if six month and beyond is a person, what about 5 month and 29 days? It becomes a slippery slope. That is exactly the case the pro-abortion people don't want to be heard but the anti-abortion people do want.
Interestingly, that is also why many anti-abortion groups support granting personhood to animals as it tends to bolster their case. It is also why many pro-abortion groups oppose it.
The whole question revolves around how do we know what we know. We have two choices. We can either experience it or we can rely on the testimony of another. This is true whether we are talking about people, or science or even religion. Those are the only two options. With science, to experience it means to conduct/repeat the experiment (or do the math).
However, for most of us, we don't do that. Instead knowledge is passed down from one generation to the next by teachers or books or today, the media and internet. As such, we don't have first hand knowledge but rely on other people who have gone before us. Now look at religion, it really doesn't matter which one. How are the precepts of that religion transmitted from one generation to the next? It is the same way, they go through teachers, books, or today, the media and internet.
Now, there are differences, because with science, one does have the opportunity to conduct the experiment, whereas, with religion, while many claim an "experience" it is hard to quantify and is usually quite subjective.
But, unless one actually does the experiment, they don't know first hand, and are really accepting on faith the testimony from those who came before them. Yes, the earth revolves around the sun. Ask yourself how you know that? Have you gone far enough into space where you can actually see it? Probably not. Have you conducted the mathematical calculations and observations to make that determination yourself? Probably not? Or are you accepting the testimony from others that this actually occurs? For most people that is the correct answer.
Accepting science on faith doesn't lessen the science. However, it is really the same process that people of faith use for their beliefs. Denying that most of what we know about science is not true knowledge, but instead belief or faith, however, denies the entire scientific process.
In reality, it is a philosophical question "How do we know what we know?" Of course, science doesn't like philosophy any more than it likes religion.
In the end, the court did the right thing. Animals, no matter how intelligent are not persons under the constitution.
Why is it then that intelligent animals don't deserve personhood, but corporations do? A sentient intelligent creature is not a person, but a legal entity is? That's pretty inconsistent.
That's a rhetorical question, by the way. The answer is obvious: money and corruption.
Corporations are juridic persons - deemed by law as opposed to natural persons. A juridic person has no rights except what the law grants them, which in the case of corporations was the exercise of free speech as related to political speech. The reason given was because the outcome of political endeavors impacts the corporation so the corporation should be free to present its support or opposition.
What was being proposed, on the other hand was not to declare chimpanzees as a type of juridic person but as a full person, the same as a human being with all of the rights afforded a person. Unlike a juridic person where rights are granted by the state, a natural person has rights by nature (or endowed by their creator). Leaving out the religious debate, the purpose of the state with regards to the rights of a natural person is not to grant them but to protect them. (The state can't grant them because the person has them by nature).
Yours might have been a rhetorical question, but it is the underpinnings of many comments on this article.
All human beings are persons. All persons are human beings. There is no gray area or sliding scale. It is as simple as that.
The law doesn't agree. See "corporate personhood". If a corporation can be recognized as a legal person in the eyes of the law, why not an intelligent animal? Chimps are good candidates, so are dolphins or elephants. Guess which animal is next on the list of intelligence: pigs. Imagine what would happen if pigs had civil rights all of a sudden, where killing a pig would bring a murder charge. A lot of money would be thrown at politicians to make sure that would never happen. Regardless of how intelligent they are, pigs also happen to taste pretty good so they're damned. Chimps are lucky we don't eat them.
The concept of a corporation being a person under the law is not the same thing as being a person. Is a corporation free to marry any other person? Can a corporation get a passport or VISA? When filing taxes, does a corporation fill out an Individual Return and take an exemption for itself? No, to all of the above. If a corporation were a person, it would have all of the rights as any other person. What the courts declared is that a corporation is recognized as a person under certain parts of the law, such as having the right to free speech. They did not say that a corporation was a person.
Bear in mind these are dependent beings....not unlike a child or elderly person. They both have rights as well, but we don't 'let them go in the wild'. (Queue jokes.. ;) We care for them, as they're unable to care for themselves.
The point of the lawsuit is not as focused on current animals (all of whom are dependants), but more-so for future generations (free-living/wild chimpanzees). If granted personhood, they wouldn't be used in the first place, and animal sanctuaries would be needed less, and demand for them (poaching, breeding) would fall. This way, they wouldn't be in zoos, in labs or other exploitative environments, and instead would be where they ought to be - in the wild.
A ruling by a US court on the personhood of animals would only have jurisdiction in the US and it's territories. As such, it would have minimal impact on poaching, breeding, zoos and labs, etc.
Isn't that precisely what modern pro-choicers also think? That different classes of persons should have different rights? The difference being that most aren't willing to call fetuses people....
One could argue that, however, I don't think the overall pro-choice view takes into account the fetus, but instead the woman and her choice. Even Roe v Wade was about a woman's right to privacy. The courts have never ruled on whether a fetus is a person or not, nor do abortion proponents want them to do so.
Since 'personhood' has changed multiple times, I do not think one can say that it is an absolute, otherwise it would have been settled a long time ago. Even today look at all the debate around abortion and contraception. No, there is quite a bit of subjectivity and arbitrariness going on here.
That being said, yes, it is a human construct, meaning we can change it to mean whatever we want. We get to choose what rights and protections we extend to those who lack the ability to fight for themselves. As a civilization we weight the economic advantages of minimizing those protections vs the ethics of what it costs others.
That is false. Based on what you say, that it is up to society to decide who/what is a person or not, then society could decide a gay is not a person or somebody who is fat is not a person or a black man is not a person, etc. No, what is and is not a person is not the same as what is and is not a planet. It might be acceptable for some group or committee to determine whether a rock in space is no longer a planet, but since only a person has rights, do you really propose that as a solution for who is and is no longer a person?
History has shown us that when a society views a group as somehow less a person than themselves, really bad things happen.
This isn't about giving power to animals. It's about giving power to guardians of animals. Just like organized religion is about giving power not to God, but to priests.
Interesting, since not all religions have priests, nor do they all have a deity. Might your anti-catholic bias be showing?
Some corporations are people, they are called Corporation Sole, in those jurisdictions that allow for it. Most US Corporations are not people. However, they are persons under the law.
Monkeys aren't people. Corporations are people!
You are only partially correct. It is true that monkeys aren't people, then again, neither are corporations. There is a difference between people and persons. Corporations are persons under the law, but they are not people. Monkeys are not even people unless you are referring to The Monkees. The Monkees were both people and persons.