What are the prefered lab animals for fantasy?
- Thread starter DMH
- Start date
And how do good wizards and alchemists get around the ethics questions?
(apologies to DMH
)Seriously, in a world where some humanoids can communicate with animals (gnomes, Druids, etc) and spells exist to grant animals perfect sentience (awaken), vivisection takes on a whole lot of new ethical problems for those who are really, really Good.
If it's ethically proper to test on a mouse which could be undeniably turned into a potential member of the moral community through the use of an awaken spell... well, to remain consistent... it seems it is also ethically proper to test on a human which has been struck by a feeblemind spell.
I bet really really Good wizards/alchemists try to do their testing in short time intervals on summoned monsters.
frankthedm
First Post
No it doesn't.Thikket said:
Two separate things. A druid who slices off a section of his own soul [500xp which brings with it the druids alignment and a language] to transplant it into a non sentient is fundamentally different that an independently sentient being suffering under a powerful, but removable curse / enchantment to strip it of its mental facilities.
frankthedm said:
Aw, ethicists love to find new problems! Don't spoil my fun.
These sorts of ethical questions will not be important to a majority of characters in a D&D world, but that does not mean we can't talk about them. Furthermore, I'd have to be convinced the considerations I posed do not exist -- at the very least, concerns like this will exist in some characters' minds.
I believe perspectives like this make for interesting characters in some games, especially since D&D is so much about killin'.
frankthedm said:
Maybe there's errata I don't know about, but my PHB says the awaken spell involves "no special empathy or connection with a creature [the caster] awaken
The language part of your observation is in the spell, though I have a different interpretation of that too -- I view bestowing the language as cramming 5 years' of Common lessons into the spell's casting time. And the XP cost (albeit at 250XP, not 500) does exist. So I suppose if in your world, XP translates to a character's soul, then this is definitely valid!
My personal interpretation runs differently, obviously. The very first line of the spell description is: "You awaken a tree or animal to humanlike sentience". This is the important one for me, because of the following sketch of an argument:
Edit: I've included a more rigorous argument beneath the spoiler block below.
(1) Awaken grants humanlike sentience.
(2) If a character in a D&D world respects sentient life, he or she must (to remain consistent) respect awakened non-sentient individuals.
(3) If a character in a D&D world respects potential sentient persons -- those who do not currently have human sentience, be it from curses or being born mentally handicapped (though I realize the minimum INT for a character in D&D is 3, and the max for an animal is 2) -- then they ought to respect animals (and trees!) in the same way, as they are also potentially sentient persons, by (2).
[sblock]
Premise 1. Character A respects the life of "humanlike-sentient" individuals.
Premise 2. Character A respects the life of an individual who has been feebleminded.
Premise 3. A feebleminded individual is not of "humanlike-sentience", but does have the ability to gain "humanlike-sentience" via a spell: heal.
Premise 4. Character A ought to respect all lives of individuals with the ability to gain "humanlike sentience" via spells. [Assumptive-equality generalization of Premise 3]
Premise 5. An animal is an individual not of "humanlike-sentience".
Premise 6. Awaken grants "humanlike-sentience" to animals.
Conclusion 1. An animal is an individual with the ability to gain "humanlike sentience" through a spell. [By Premises 5 & 6].
Conclusion 2. Character A ought to respect the life of an animal. [By Premise 4 and Conclusion 1].
I think the stickiest point is Premise 4, but the observation about the feebleminded individual and the fact that ethical considerations should usually be treated in an arbitrary-equality fashion lends a lot of strength to that point.
[/sblock]
You'll have to explain to me a little more why using a 5th level Druid spell (awaken) to bless a creature with intelligence and grant it personhood is significantly different from using a 6th level Cleric spell (heal) to cure a cursed individual's lack of (mental) personhood. At any given instant, both the cursed individual and the animal have equivalent sentience. Both corrective procedures have costs, and both have a strong result.
I think it's also interesting to use this concept of the awaken spell to explain why elves stereotypically have such a connection with trees and the forest, and why gnomes stereotypically respect animals as equals. I figure many Good gnomes would be opposed to magical/alchemical animal testing, but that's also setting-dependent.
**
While I think a discussion on awaken's possible ethical implications is interesting for a thread on animal testing in D&D, as one might get some interesting new personality traits and arguments for characters responding to such testing in a D&D world, I do realize this is not entirely on-topic, and I'd be happy to take this discussion to another thread or remove it altogether.
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HeavenShallBurn
First Post
Peasants, doesn't seem to be any shortage of them either.DMH said:
Thikket said:
first look at my sig
second IMO once you awakened an animal it is no longer that animal but a completly different being so in my view just because there is an option of awakening doesnt mean that all living things are now potentially sentient.
i think a good wizard will simply use willing subjects for his experiments, did you know that in the USA prisoners are offered shortened sentences if the are willing to participate in medical experiments? when i did a medics course in the army they showed us a movie on how to perform emergency operations on live people by using prisoners
but more to the point if a good wizard had to experiment on live subjects he'll simply pay them IMHOAust Diamondew
First Post
I've always thought trolls would be good for this reason also. Sorta like Wolverine.Reynard said:
Would explain why templated trolls pop up every now and again when I DM too.
Nifft said:
This is the problem with just sketching out arguments, rather than writing them rigorously!
It doesn't follow from (2). It's just a conditional: IF this is true, THEN this must also be true. The conditional in (3) is independent from that of (2). My reference back to (2) was just an attempt to show why the conclusion of that conditional seems secure.My point here was that the whole conditional statement (3) seems to hold true because we do respect those who are feebleminded -- and at any given moment while feebleminded, they are merely potentially sentient individuals. Of course, some will disagree with this sentiment, as it's simply a premise.
The assumptions that one respects sentient life, or that one respect potentially sentient life, are just that: assumptions. Different characters will have different ones when it comes to these sorts of things, I think!
I've edited in a more rigorous argument into my previous post under a spoiler block.
Nifft
Penguin Herder
Eh, if you consider falling asleep to be the same as a persistent vegetative state, then sure. But I don't.Thikket said:
I'll look at your spoiler, but I may recommend moving the discussion over to the circvs.
Cheers, -- N
