"Vivisection" Response

*How does pity influence our decisions?

If we knew animals are able to think the same way we do, would vivisection supporters have a different opinion on the issue?

Should there a certain limit to which animal experimentation could reach?

            As most of us know, human emotions tend to have some type of influence on our decisions.  There are many emotions we could point out, but let’s focus on one we usually don’t think about: pity.  Every day I have to at least see one thing/person that I feel bad for.  There it is.  “I feel bad for”.  That right there is pity, but I never think of that emotion.  However, this pity that I feel indeed makes an impact on me.  Some times I would go out of my way to help out the person or thing (animal); other time I just walk past but then my day is ruined thinking of the ways I could have helped.  Pity pulls at your conscience with what you could have done to save that person’s day.  As we can see in the article, it is quite difficult to make a decision with no emotional influence.  After all, we are human beings.  The author points out pity for the animals and pity for the sick and dying.  Honestly, for me at least, by the end of the article, I feel like the author still has not reached a decision on what’s best to sacrifice since his pities conflict with each other.  You save one, you lose one.  However, which is the best to save?  At this point, one might think it is a simple decision since logically the answer is quite clear.  The world would have been so much simpler had decisions been based off of logic alone.  When choosing which species to sacrifice, pity and other emotions come into play, and from here, an argument stems.  Pity for one leads to the sacrifice of the other, but when there is pity for both in one’s conscience, who is to sacrifice?  When we actually stop to think about it, emotions play a huge part in our decision-making in day to day life, let alone in a controversial issue like this.