In one sense a person's values are undeniably determined in large part by the society she is born into, but there are right and wrong values, just as there are right and wrong beliefs in physics. I may have the belief the earth is a disc resting upon an elephant, which rests upon a turtle. I may have the belief that storks deliver babies.
Questions of fact are different than questions of value. We can (theoretically) check questions of fact against objective existence to determine truth and falsity. There is no such standard to measure questions of value against.
This is similar to the previous cited argument about how a lion does not deny his prey's "right to life." (Does a tornado deny a person's "right to life"?) This gets into agency. Babies are not moral actors either, so is it OK to brand them? Instead we need to make a distinction between moral agents and moral patients. A full adult human being is a moral agent, that is capable of distinguishing between right and wrong. Animals, small children, severely mentally handicapped are moral patients, that is deserving of respect (we cannot harm them at will).
I messed up on the agent/patient distinction, you're right there. But I don't think you can claim animals as moral patients. Likewise, although I share my societies horror at infanticide, there have been cultures that practiced it without remorse and in those cultures babies were not considered people. I can't accept that, but I can understand it. It's the whole abortion question again.
A pro-choice person, like myself, doesn't think a fertilized egg is a person because it shares very few characteristics with a developed, functioning, aware human. As it develops, that gap narrows. After a certain vague, undefined point, they share enough features to be considered human. When that happens I can't say. But I know times when it hasn't happened and when it has. When it's a fertilized egg, it's definitely not a moral patient. When it's a little kid running around it definitely is. Where in between there the line should be drawn is a question, but I'm happy to go with the societal definition of x weeks after fertilization.
This same kind of logic applies towards animal rights. A mosquito is so far removed from humanity that we feel no obligations towards it, a gorilla is so close we might.
Mountains are not moral patients; they're objects incapable of experiencing pleasure and pain.
Is this your sole criterion? I'm pretty sure a lot of things can have pain or pain equivalent responses that you don't really care about.
Why human equivalent? I recall when first reading animal liberation/animal-rights books, I was forced to accept the fact that some non-humans had higher functioning than normal infants. Basic fact.
As I said, its a societal choice to draw the line for moral exclusion with infants on the included side. That isn't always the case. However, I'm happy to give infants bonus points for personhood because they are humans rather than other animals. I privilege humanity as a species based on rational self-interest, and the infants benefit from that.
I'll let someone else argue potentiality, because I don't like that argument.
It was not difficult to accept limited rights for certain apes, especially because I do not eat them; it's all so abstract and requires no real sacrifice. But why set down some human standard? Why say any species that exceeds X human functioning has rights? That's completely arbitrary. The aliens come down and they impose a much higher threshold -- X Zantarinian functioning -- one not met by any member of our species.
Rights are a function of humanity to grant or withhold according to whatever arbitrary standards we apply. We are the only species capable of conceptualizing them, therefore we have a monopoly on their distribution. I also don't see what's so unreasonable about your Zantarinian example. It'd suck being on the short end of the stick, but why wouldn't a species promote a system of ethics with themselves at the center?
This applies to the "bright lines" and 18th birthdays above. Two things: 1) We need to avoid random standards; 2) we ought to err on the side of safety, which probably means refraining from consuming animals.
1) Agreed, but random is not the same as arbitrary.
2)Partially agreed. I am completely comfortable consuming plants, insects, fish, and birds. I am also comfortable with consuming most mammal species, cows, horses, pigs, dogs, cats, etc. I don't eat dog and cat because it's not provided in my society, but I don't see anything immoral about eating them. I like my ferrets, but if someone killed and ate them, I would be angry because of the offense against me and my emotional ties, not because of the act itself.
