yes, i am aware of this and was not saying that at all. In some cases it may be filling a similar niche. And fwiw under newer treatments the two Phrags are different species (splitters again) even though its very hard to tell them apart.
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Very philosophical. The problem is that nature works extensively by means of total competition in which there are no rules. The winners merely survive. What we see are the beautiful and effective winners of that war.
Civilisation, on the other hand, is the cave in which we humans shelter from the violence of nature and inside civilisation, we nurture our kind and reproduce. But nurture requires rules and the first rule of “indoor” civilisation is, “Sharing and fair exchange without violence”. From that simple rule we have developed all our morals and ethics, and rights, but they are still the “indoor” rules of human civilisation.
Outside, the hawks still kill sparrows, but it is not wrong, or immoral, or cruel because there are no rules in nature. Nature works by absolute competition, not indoor human nurture. To civilise nature would be to destroy it.
Martha Nussbaum is very civilised, but has lost sight of the reality of nature. Her attempt to extend human ethics over nature is a colonialist attitude that wild animals and nuture can do without.
We do apply human rules to animals and remove their predators, but that is called farming.
We cannot turn nature into a farm simply because its violence causes philosophical human discomfort.
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