Human and Animal rights...the same thing?

[MarkCorrigan]

Or you could say:

1) Because only a subset of our species are sufficiently able to cognitively grant rights, those rights apply only to the members who really do have that sufficient cognitive ability.

2) Because vertebrates are the only class of organisms sufficiently able to cognitively grant rights, those rights apply across the board within all vertebrates.

Both arguments are equally non-sequitor, both are the same argument with the same level of justification. I can understand why you'd reject widening the classification to vertebrates, but its not clear why you'd reject narrowing the classification to humans with a certain mental level -- namely because we really are interested in cognition when we classify people for rights.

That's easy. I apply my mindset/worldview/opinions/moral compass/whatever you want to call it in this topic on a species level. If there were a number of breeds of hyper intelligent cows (for example) then I wouldn't want cows to be eaten, used for testing or used to make clothes out of, and I wouldn't want them milked either. However, cows are really dim. Like, really dim. I live around them, and I've seen how they behave. As a species cows cannot and will not have any members who are able to comprehend complex things. Therefore cows are not rational, and are considerably less cognitively able than humans. Even if you found a human who was functionally on the same level as a cow, they are still part of the human species.

I think by species, basically.

Nothing justifies the transition between cognition and species membership, except that its just very convenient, it avoids reducing a whole class of mentally impaired humans to animals.

Except that we're dealing with species. You might think it's a perfectly arbitrary line to draw, and you're right, it is, but it's one I am comfortable with. I wasn't entering this discussion to make you an avid meat-eater like myself, merely to share my point of view. Essentially I consider myself moral, my arguments are as logical as it is possible to be when dealing with something entirely arbitrary, and I would say are no more or less arbitrary than your own. I draw the line for comparison at species, you draw it further up. There's no real reason why anything is considered illegal beyond the reasons that society on a larger scale and individuals on a smaller scale make up themselves. Even the fact that it harms others is an entirely society-grounded reason for not stabbing people to death for something they own. Without appealing to an arbitrary line, explanation for why mugging is illegal is impossible because morality and ethics are totally subjective. I accept that being a vegan would hurt animals less than my current lifestyle, but I have drawn my arbitrary line at the most permissive point I feel comfortable with, exactly like everyone else.

If its acceptable to make non-sequitor transitions because they're convenient, well then the second argument (widening to vertebrates) suddenly becomes many times more appealing.

It's not a non-sequitor, it's merely an arbtrary line. If you were expecting me to say that my position is the most logical, the most ethical, the least arbitrary or the right one, you won't get that from me.

Ack. Three ways of grouping people together, none of them more preferable than others.

None of them necessarily more intrinsically logical, no, but I find that we treat different species differently anyway, so why not draw the line there?

With the boundaries drawn at species, we then compare the potentials of that species and treat accordingly. Given that "species" is a (somewhat) strict biological term, and is certainly has more rigorously defined boundaries than any sub division, I think it's possibly counter-intuitively a more accurate measure than a closer focus at sub-species levels or smaller.

Its also not clear why potential capacities have any relevance whatsoever. As in, why would an infant be in the class of humans who are cognitively able to grant rights? Because they are inherently capable of doing so? They certainly are not. Could they do so if we waited long enough? Well sure -- do they have certain rights because they're potential rational persons then?

Again, you're focusing on the individual and I'm not. The actual potential of children A and B is totally irrelevant. They are both humans. Similarly if puppy A is more intelligent than puppy B, they're still dogs.

I freely accept it's utterly, utterly arbitrary. I just happen to like it. Is that selfish? Sure. Is it illogical? No more so than any other position.

They very well may be. The problem is the connection between being "ethically superior" and slaughtering animals for food. You obviously agree that dogs should be spared obvious cruelty, even when inflicted by the obviously superior humans, so perhaps superiority isn't a free license to be cruel to inferior animals even if we enjoy doing so, especially when such cruelty can be easily avoided. Ok, well then how do we fit slaughtering animals into this systems?

Provide for the animals and ensure that they have a happy and comfortable life. Don't use factory farming methods or organic farming, don't abuse the animals, pen them in so they can't move, don't fatten them artificially, don't kill them in painful ways.

Death after captive bolt is essentially painless because all cognitive function is already switched off, so the animal can't really be said to be suffering anything but an end. I understand that killing an animal in any circumstance is something you seem to be totally against, but I'm not.

The cruelty caused to them in the process is easily avoidable, the benefit we get at their expense is a few nice flavors -- seems like a hideous trade off.

Being killed in a method that immediately terminates sensation essentially negates the suffering beyond the causing of death. I don't have a major issue with killing animals if it benefits people. I don't know if you think that makes me horrible, but as I've said, it's my own arbitrary line.

If you're against unnecessary animal cruelty, you should be automatically against using them for food. How could you rationalize doing anything else?

Because I consider my own arbitrary line to be one I'm comfortable with. I don't think it makes me a saint, but there we are. Again, I have absolutely no problem with vegetarians and vegans, and I don't have a problem with you disagreeing with me. As long as you don't think me a deplorable monster or try to beat me with PETA material then personally I see no reason we shouldn't get along.

Animal rights is a very hot button issue for me and I'm already kind of an egomaniacal bitch. My apologies for being rude.

Eh, I'm a pretentious ass, so I think we're even.

Plus, I was stupidly tired. I had to get up for work about 5 hours later. I did manage it, but I shouldn't stay up that late to argue.

 

[Dessi]

That's easy. I apply my mindset/worldview/opinions/moral compass/whatever you want to call it in this topic on a species level. If there were a number of breeds of hyper intelligent cows (for example) then I wouldn't want cows to be eaten, used for testing or used to make clothes out of, and I wouldn't want them milked either. However, cows are really dim. Like, really dim. I live around them, and I've seen how they behave. As a species cows cannot and will not have any members who are able to comprehend complex things. Therefore cows are not rational, and are considerably less cognitively able than humans. Even if you found a human who was functionally on the same level as a cow, they are still part of the human species.

I think by species, basically.

Note how you shift: its ok to kill cows because they're dim, its wrong to kill infants because they're human. Infants are likely considerably more dim than cows, it should acceptable kill them for the same reasons. The line you draw is on cognitive level, a matter which is intensely personal, its an attribute of individuals completely separate from their species membership.

There's no logical step between "some individuals are rational" to "all members of a species therefore have the rights of rational people". Its non-sequitor. The consequence of your ethic is that only people at a certain cognitive level have rights, no one else does. Why would non-rational people have rights at all?

Before you answer that "they're members of a species", why would species membership even matter whatsoever? Remember species membership is not a morally relevant characteristic. Its not more reasonable to draw moral lines on species membership than eye color, planet membership, or any other property. If humans are a rational species between a subset of humans are, then vertebrates are a rational classification because a subset of vertebrates are.

We have an automatic justification to exclude all non-rational organisms from moral consideration, and simultaneously an automatic justification to include all non-rational organisms for moral consideration. You can understand why that's a problem, right?

More so, its not exactly obvious why its rational to "think by species". A subset of rational humans can consent to sexual relationships with other rational adults -- your ethic implies that non-rational humans can consent to sexual relationships with rational adults as well. You likely reject pedophilia and ephebophilia on the basis that non-rational humans do not, in fact, consent to anything. If that's the case, I would say your own ethical principle against pedophilia contradicts the principle that you "think by species".

Even more than that, its not exactly obvious what rationality is a requirement for all other moral consideration. Certainly if something has a capacity to suffer, then we have no reason not to take that suffering into consideration. Humans are "species" that suffers, so are dogs, pigs, rats, octopi. Rationality can have an effect on whether organisms consent to a social contract or have a capacity to consider the interests of others, but certainly suffering should matter for the sake of suffering alone, right?

Except that we're dealing with species. You might think it's a perfectly arbitrary line to draw, and you're right, it is, but it's one I am comfortable with.

Everyone is comfortable with their own arbitrary moral lines. You appear to accept that much as natural, and likely reject rational criticism as a matter of principle because all beliefs are as good as others. I take that as implicitly condoning all of the following and more:

Apartheid is still a reality in many parts of Africa, homosexuals are imprisoned or sentenced to death in Africa, transgender people are murdered all over the globe for being transgender, ethnic genocide is a reality even into the present, Saudi women are beaten or stoned to death for driving alone or getting raped by anyone but their husband, a right-wing Norwegian murdered 70 children in a rampage against "zionists". In the US, we have people who want a wholesale ban on abortion and prosecute abortion providers as murderers, not long ago the US had a set of Baby Doe Laws which prosecute doctors as murderers if they actively or passively euthanize terminally handicapped infants.

People draw moral lines wherever the hell their prejudices lead them, not everyone's arbitrary moral lines are similar to yours. You've already stated your line is arbitrary, not a rational one. The principles you've already laid out imply that you cannot, not even in principle, object to any amount of cruelty inflicted on any person for any reason whatsoever.

Essentially I consider myself moral, my arguments are as logical as it is possible to be when dealing with something entirely arbitrary, and I would say are no more or less arbitrary than your own. I draw the line for comparison at species, you draw it further up.

I don't draw my lines "further up than species", I don't even talk about species at all in moral decisions, except to comment that species is not a moral characteristic of any greater or lesser interest than race membership or meeting some height threshold.

There's no real reason why anything is considered illegal

You've written several lengthy posts trying to explain the reasons that justify your ethics. You even said that much yourself, you give dozens of reasons for why you prefer things over others, like using a captive bolt piston to kill things less painfully, that non-rational children mysteriously inherit the rights only ever afforded to rational people. Now you've completely changed your tune: if you weren't giving reasons to justify your ethics, what exactly was the point at all making those statements?

I would say that your own actions in responding to me, the way you feel about human cruelty, the likelihood that you reject some moral lines as grossly irrational or simply evil, etc flatly and categorically contradicts the statement that there are no real reasons for anything. You clearly don't believe that statement, or you cannot fit it in with your ethical system that really does reject some reasons in favor of others, so its not clear what would prompt that comment in the first place.

I can sympathize with moral skepticism to some extent, but at the point where a discussion becomes "everyones reasons are as good as others" and "you have your opinion, I have mine", there's nothing more to say on the subject.

 

[Kay]

Nonsense.

I never ceded anything

You can't go out and kill and rob people. You can't run around in the streets naked, or **** a cow or a dead person. You can't buy child porn, or meth, or heroine.

That's because of society. What YOU think is irrelevant, as if rights really did come from the individual, you would be capable of giving yourself the right to kill other people. But you don't. Only a state can give an individual the right to murder others, which they do with the military.

I do my best to keep apart from your society and to conduct my life as I please away from its prying eyes.

Irrelevant. You drive on society's roads or take its trains and busses, you buy food which you can generally assume won't kill you and is actually what it says it is, you can sleep at night without worrying about being shot. That makes you part of society.
There's no concept of degree. You're either part of society, and partaking of its benefits, or restrictions, or you're not and you're off somewhere in some Siberian woods. There is no in between.

 

[AlBell]

Nonsense.

I never ceded anything

You can't go out and kill and rob people. You can't run around in the streets naked, or **** a cow or a dead person. You can't buy child porn, or meth, or heroine.

That's because of society. What YOU think is irrelevant, as if rights really did come from the individual, you would be capable of giving yourself the right to kill other people. But you don't. Only a state can give an individual the right to murder others, which they do with the military.

I do my best to keep apart from your society and to conduct my life as I please away from its prying eyes.

Irrelevant. You drive on society's roads or take its trains and busses, you buy food which you can generally assume won't kill you and is actually what it says it is, you can sleep at night without worrying about being shot. That makes you part of society.
There's no concept of degree. You're either part of society, and partaking of its benefits, or restrictions, or you're not and you're off somewhere in some Siberian woods. There is no in between.

Needs repeating.

 

[sadhatter]

Humans are the most capable beings on Earth, and therefore we eat/kill what we want. The most capable animal survives and flourishes.

And this is my stance on the subject.

When any animal lover , extreme or otherwise sees a lion run down a gazelle, they don't think " **** that lion, how dare it kill an innocent animal.".

Yet, when it comes to use eating, suddenly it is " **** that guy, how dare he kill an innocent animal."

If you are going to say humans need to be on the same level as animals, then either:

A) You must make as much of an attempt to stop other animals from killing and eating animals.

B) Realize that both us and the lion eat meat, and it is just as silly to be angry with the lion for doing so as it is to be angry with us.

We just do it better. We have systems set up so our individuals do not have to go stalk down a deer. And in the same vein one cannot get angry at a chimp for termite fishing, one cannot logically get angry with other humans for doing the same thing ( using intellect and tools, to procure food quicker and easier than nature would normally allow.).

And the interesting part is, that a common rebuttal to this line of logic is " Well the animal does not have the ability to make a rational decision not to eat the other animal.". But that is nothing more than using the " They arn't a smart as us." line of logic, which they absolutely hate.

 

[slingblade]

And this is my stance on the subject.

When any animal lover , extreme or otherwise sees a lion run down a gazelle, they don't think " **** that lion, how dare it kill an innocent animal.".

Yet, when it comes to use eating, suddenly it is " **** that guy, how dare he kill an innocent animal."

If you are going to say humans need to be on the same level as animals, then either:

A) You must make as much of an attempt to stop other animals from killing and eating animals.

B) Realize that both us and the lion eat meat, and it is just as silly to be angry with the lion for doing so as it is to be angry with us.

We just do it better. We have systems set up so our individuals do not have to go stalk down a deer. And in the same vein one cannot get angry at a chimp for termite fishing, one cannot logically get angry with other humans for doing the same thing ( using intellect and tools, to procure food quicker and easier than nature would normally allow.).

And the interesting part is, that a common rebuttal to this line of logic is " Well the animal does not have the ability to make a rational decision not to eat the other animal.". But that is nothing more than using the " They arn't a smart as us." line of logic, which they absolutely hate.

^^^
This.

We impose rights, we impose feelings, intent, motives and so forth on animals, with only minimal evidence it is anything but that. We think we'd know what an animal wants, that we can decide what it has a right to expect, or that it even has the ability to "expect" anything...but we can't exactly ask the animal for its input.

We also do this with those humans who are mentally incapable of cognizance, or who have limited cognizance from our human point of view rather than from the one we impose on animals. But when we use this "empathetic extrapolation" to determine the rights of less cognizant humans, we have a better sense of what rights they're entitled to, what rights pertain, because we're both human. We know what we'd want, what we're afforded, and we can reason why some things aren't as workable for one person as they are for another.

A comatose patient might have the right to enter contracts, but he can't exercise it; a mentally deficient person might lack the cognizance to enter into contracts, and so must be denied that right for his protection, or we can appoint a guardian to exercise his rights in his best interests, and so on.

Because the perceived rights/ethical treatment of non-human animals pertains to and affects humans, humans have a vested interest in assuring these things to the best of our ability, based on reason et al.

 

[Dessi]

If you are going to say humans need to be on the same level as animals, then either:

A) You must make as much of an attempt to stop other animals from killing and eating animals.

Fair enough. Let's say I accept the general principle that predation is evil. What can be done about it. Seriously, what master plan do you have to stop all predation, how do you propose we police 1.3 billion cubic kilometers of ocean and 150 million square kilometers of land? How would you suggest we even do it without destroying every ecosystem on the planet?

That's the point, we can't. Your criticism is facetious, offensive, and pointless if your recommendation is not possible to obtain in the first place. Its not different from attacking human rights activists on the basis that, since they've yet to do anything to end all natural disasters and cure all diseases, they must tacitly condone and even promote the wholesale slaughter of people as general principle.

Maybe we can't police every ecosystem on the planet, but we can certainly police our pets behavior so they don't inadvertently harm other animals or people. We can at least do that much.

B) Realize that both us and the lion eat meat, and it is just as silly to be angry with the lion for doing so as it is to be angry with us.

Lions kill other lion cubs, and its silly to be angry with the lion for doing so as it is to be angry with us -- wait, what?

Animal rights discussions are weird because of comments like yours above. On the one hand, people argue that animals can't practice moral reciprocity, they aren't rational, they're so dumb that they have no rights in the first place; on the other hand, they argue that people should take moral inspiration from animals that don't make moral decisions in the first place. Strange contradiction if you ask me.

The trick is understanding that, while lions don't make moral decisions about their diet, we do. We can also minimize the harm that we cause, so we should do exactly that regardless of whatever lions do in the wild.

And the interesting part is, that a common rebuttal to this line of logic is " Well the animal does not have the ability to make a rational decision not to eat the other animal.". But that is nothing more than using the " They arn't a smart as us." line of logic, which they absolutely hate.

Strawman much? Animal rights activists "hate" the argument that, if animals aren't as smart as rational adults, then we have no reason to consider their suffering in our moral decisions -- the principle is inconsistent, it applies only to non-rational animals without applying to non-rational humans. Animal rights activists will generally argue that, if non-rational humans should be considered, then rationality is not a prerequisite for moral consideration, so the original argument against animal rights on the basis that they're "dumb" is false. "Dumb" humans are no more or less advantaged than "dumb" animals.

Its not clear why you reject this rebuttal.

 

[Dessi]

We impose rights, we impose feelings, intent, motives and so forth on animals, with only minimal evidence it is anything but that. We think we'd know what an animal wants, that we can decide what it has a right to expect, or that it even has the ability to "expect" anything...but we can't exactly ask the animal for its input.

We also do this with those humans who are mentally incapable of cognizance, or who have limited cognizance from our human point of view rather than from the one we impose on animals. But when we use this "empathetic extrapolation" to determine the rights of less cognizant humans, we have a better sense of what rights they're entitled to, what rights pertain, because we're both human. We know what we'd want, what we're afforded, and we can reason why some things aren't as workable for one person as they are for another.

How exactly do you think a rational human has insight into a non-rational humans wants and desires? Because they're the same species? I don't think so. Species tells you only that a person can breed with the same people you breed with, what do you expect to do with that information? A 3-week old embryo and a dead human are members of your species just as much as I am, yet you can reasonably attribute some rights and feelings to me which you'd not likely attribute to embryos and dead people. The only way you'd be able to make that distinction is by appeal to something else, like my level of intelligence and rationality -- properties which aren't equivalent to species at all.

Incidentally, the interesting properties you consider when you empathize with non-rational humans are shared by many animals as well. For a start, the capacity to feel pain, pleasure, satisfaction, suffering, frustration, that much alone. There's a huge spectrum of animal emotion that we may never have access to, but we can definitely empathize with suffering -- do you find that reasonable?

 

[Dessi]

Double post.

 

[Complexity]

You can't go out and kill and rob people. You can't run around in the streets naked, or **** a cow or a dead person. You can't buy child porn, or meth, or heroine.

Actually, I could do each of those things. I usually choose not to, however. The reasons for not doing so have to do with my moral system and a risk/benefit analysis. I am surrounded by thugs who think they are entitled to intrude into my affairs - whether they are government thugs or gang members makes little difference.

I have little interest in your society and someday will be left alone by it entirely, one way or another.

I am delighted that we shall never meet.

 

[Kay]

Actually, I could do each of those things. I usually choose not to, however. The reasons for not doing so have to do with my moral system and a risk/benefit analysis. I am surrounded by thugs who think they are entitled to intrude into my affairs - whether they are government thugs or gang members makes little difference.

I have little interest in your society and someday will be left alone by it entirely, one way or another.

I am delighted that we shall never meet.

..............Okay, let me rephrase that.

You CAN go out and kill and murder. But people with guns will show up and throw you in a place where you lose all your rights. If you object to that, they shoot you. Not nice, but it is reality.

Furthermore, even if your moral system and analysis said that murder is okay, that would be completely irrelevant. Society is the judge on whether it is okay, which goes and shows where the rights belong - its moral system and analysis trumps yours, even if it's for a reason no more than they have more guns than you do.

And like I said, the only way you're leaving this society is if you go off to some Canadian woods and do your own thing. And I highly doubt you'll be doing that anytime soon.

 

[SusanB-M1]

Very interesting thread; reading, but not joining in. I nod in agreement with slingblade, MarkCorrigan and those with similar points of view.

 

[Roboramma]

..............Okay, let me rephrase that.

You CAN go out and kill and murder. But people with guns will show up and throw you in a place where you lose all your rights. If you object to that, they shoot you. Not nice, but it is reality.

Which is of no more meaning than that I can't jump to the moon because gravity doesn't cede that "right" to me either. You will note that Complexity pointed out that he does a risk-benefit analysis as well as making moral considerations. Whether that risk-benefit analysis is influenced by the possibility of a thunderstorm or by the laws of the land doesn't really change the fact that that's what he's doing. So I don't see why you insist that he use one word (rights) to describe the way that society impacts upon that analysis and completely different words when it's the natural world.

His point seems to be that both influences are equally meaningful: they need to be taken into account, but they don't change his moral viewpoint.

 

[Roboramma]

That's easy. I apply my mindset/worldview/opinions/moral compass/whatever you want to call it in this topic on a species level.

And you do so completely arbitrarily. There's no a priori reason to do so, but you choose to apply your worldview on a species level.

What I wonder about is why you consider human X (X being anything that you find morally meaningful in humans) to be, well, meaningful?

Now, let's say that there's a non-human with that exact same quality. Somehow, by virtue of nothing other than being possessed by a being that is non-human, that quality is now meaningless?

Your viewpoint is consistent, but it also suggests that there is nothing that has moral value on it's own. Suffering is not bad in any way. Only when a member of an arbitrarily defined subgroup is doing the suffering can you accept some moral impact...

 

[MarkCorrigan]

ETA: On second thought, I'll just say that I'm a moral relativist and leave it at that.

 

[slingblade]

Discussion sometimes gets the better of me, in that I find so many ideas going around at once, that I don't know which to focus on.

If I may (or not ), I'd like to go back to a point I'd hoped to discuss early on, and which I'm not sure we have yet.

I had reposted the thread title: Human and animal rights.

I then commented, quite seriously, that "I'd need to know what animal rights exist when humans are completely absent.

"Then, I'd like to know how we know that."

I have a reason for asking this: to recognize that whatever we're discussing here, we're discussing it because we have minds that can conceptualize, and we have the ability to articulate these concepts to other minds. Among these concepts are "rights."

If animals possess rights, in the complete absence of humans, it is necessary for us to know and acknowledge it.

And as ridiculous as it sounds at first, I can only ask the rest of you to tell me this, as my cat is somehow unable. So the first thing we really have to do in any discussion of animal rights is discover what rights animals have, totally apart from humans.

And then, please tell me how you know that.

 

[Manopolus]

If someone takes you out to the African jungle somewhere, strips you naked, and just leaves, you will understand.

In nature, animals are not our friends or pets. They are the competition. We have largely won that competition through technology, and get a bonus through animal husbandry. Eating meat is just the spoils of victory.

Man is not a dog, nor is he a sheep. The human social instinct is in a state of malfunction when we include other animals in its function. You would not argue with this when it comes to bestiality (at least, I HOPE you aren't into sex with animals)... so why would you when it comes to extending other human social conduct to members of a different species? In Darwinian terms, we don't often do such because it is not helpful to our own survival.

Many species have a social instinct. There are even a few that can be tricked into extending that instinct towards humans, given the right upbringing. However, the pride of lions you meet while running around naked in Africa is not likely to take you in as one of their own. I'd say that there's a 99 percent chance or so that they would rather kill you and eat you. Nature is pretty harsh when you don't have all the little perks and comforts that human society has given us.

As technology advances and humans grow softer and more helpless outside of its protection, we seem to want to forget who we are and what got us to this point. In some cases, a greater amount of civility towards our fellow man, as well as towards animals is beneficial. We now appear to have the luxury of being able to eat without killing and not sacrifice nutrition... or so I'm told. I'm not sure I even believe that, but I'll let that point slide, for now.

...but what happens when society fails? Can YOU provide a properly nutritious meal (including protein needed for growth, strength, and brain development) for yourself and your children in a world with no supermarkets? Furthermore, can you do so without resorting to violence against other species? I think not. A belly full of meat will give you a lot more energy than whatever edible roots and berries you might be able to scavenge in any location, at any season. Have we really come so far that we can put our own arrogant ideals over biology? Stuff happens, and although I don't foresee an immediate regression to hunter-gatherer times, our technology and skills are compiled one on top of another. If you take out one -rather major- thing that has made us what we are... such as eating meat, and the industry that has grown around it, who knows what else it will take down? This isn't a minor change, but a complete overhaul of society we're talking about here if you were to have your way, and who knows where it would lead us? Perhaps the attempt itself would destroy everything we humans have built.

We are what we are, and what we are is a species of omnivores with a strong lean towards the carnivorous. Why, pray tell, should we be so ashamed of the reality of ourselves that we deny ourselves the right to be what we biologically are? To do so is dangerous when living in an unpredictable world... even if it seems a good thing to do at the time.

 

[TubbaBlubba]

Thing is, Dessi... We decide the rights of people. Most people are comfortable with the idea that all humans, including infants and retards, have the same rights. This forms a fairly consistent framework and allows us to use tools such as Rawls' veil of ignorance to determine moral courses of actions.

Now, you may very well wish to extend that right to, say, all mammals. You are free to do so, however, our society is made up by humans, and simply extending the framework surrounding society to all mammals obviously doesn't work - we would have to, for instance, consider taxing animals, or as previously mentioned, punish them for crimes, or at least take active action against it. Alternatively, craft extremely complicated rules that dictates that it's OK for some animals to kill each other, but not others.

Granted, you could simply say that you only extend the rights to life and freedom from material suffering to all mammal. But we still run into problems. What are we going to do with all of the animal babies who die because they are too small? Give them intensive treatment? That would be impossible, and thus this framework falls on being impractical.

Finally, we could revise it again protect all mammals from only human-induced suffering and death. I'm not sure how you would go about, but I figure a Nozickean animal rights activist could pull it off. Well, then you run into the final hurdle: most people don't empathize that strongly with animals. That is to say, most people value the taste of beef higher than the life of cows. Moreover, most people value the life of certain animals, such as cats and dogs, higher than farm animals. This is why you will never convince people that animals should have rights similar to humans - most of us don't care that much about them. Most of us DO care enough about them to dislike animal cruelty (empathy kicks in), which is why we have laws against that.

You are of course free to try to convince all of us into wanting human-like rights for animals... but don't delude yourself into thinking that you're sitting on some real morality, while that of ours is somehow flawed. It isn't. All moral frameworks are entirely arbitrary - most of us choose one that works in tandem with our nature and is practical for society as a whole.

 

[Darth Rotor]

While I sympathize with such arguments, I disagree with them...they seek to depict an equivalency that, in my opinion, just doesn't exist.

Higher brain function required for abstractions, for one ...

I'd need to know what animal rights exist when humans are completely absent.

Then, I'd like to know how we know that.

Nicely put.

 

[Cain]

Humans are the most capable beings on Earth, and therefore we eat/kill what we want. The most capable animal survives and flourishes.

I'm sure that argument appeals to Hannibal the Cannibal. Why limit it to humans? Why not say the best humans are the most capable beings on earth and should be allowed to kill/eat whomever they want? America is the most capable country on earth, we should be allowed to bomb whomever we want. White people are the dominant race on earth, we should be able to oppress whomever we want.

This deficient reasoning strongly appeals to the egoist, the nationalist and the racist.

Regarding speciesism:

And you do so completely arbitrarily. There's no a priori reason to do so, but you choose to apply your worldview on a species level.

So many of these discussions are all about already having an answer and then reverse-engineering the math.

Thing is, Dessi... We decide the rights of people. Most people are comfortable with the idea that all humans, including infants and retards, have the same rights.

Save Terri Schiavo!!

This forms a fairly consistent framework and allows us to use tools such as Rawls' veil of ignorance to determine moral courses of actions.

Rawls' "Original Position" is a useful mental exercise, but assumes rational egoism.

Now, you may very well wish to extend that right to, say, all mammals. You are free to do so, however, our society is made up by humans, and simply extending the framework surrounding society to all mammals obviously doesn't work - we would have to, for instance, consider taxing animals, or as previously mentioned, punish them for crimes, or at least take active action against it. Alternatively, craft extremely complicated rules that dictates that it's OK for some animals to kill each other, but not others.

I think this is probably the first straw man ever presented against animal rights. Straw Adam.

It seems as though it does not matter how many times this non-argument is created, we always go back to Straw Adam. There's no higher order response to feasibility, "ought-implying-can."