Animal Rights

[Lygophilia]

Is there of any benefit from this? I'm aware that humans are animals, but I honestly think that since humans always took advantage of other animals whether it's survival or comfort, then there shouldn't be any lines drawn. I personally believe how owners treat their pets is their business. Afterall, it's their property. What are your opinions? Edited July 18, 2011 by Lygophilia

[Mom]

That's bullshit.

[Exorcet]

I know what pain feels like, and it seems like animals do as well. Nothing should feel it without reason.

[Draxus]

You shouldn't be allowed to abuse animals. They are living things that can't speak up for themselves.

 

I don't know what all animal rights contain. I just think animals deserve good homes.

[exogen]

I take the stance like this.

Animals from what we can see do not have the same capacity for reason and other possible factors that would be prerequisites for moral reasoning and hence moral behavior. If they are incapable of behaving morally then they can't be held responsible for their actions. This makes them amoral beings. As being amoral beings we are not therefore obligated to treat them with the kind of respect we would a being that is capable of morality. This means they do not have rights, at least in the same way humans do.

 

However just because they are amoral beings does not mean we have the right to bring cruel or unnecessary harm to them either. Animals do have emotions, can feel pain and some have demonstrated evidence for self-consciousness. If we harm them knowing they have those qualities we are intentionally inflicting unnecessary harm. Therefore we ought not bring unnecessary harm and pain to them.

 

So things like killing them for food or killing them in humane ways and not abusing them; basically treating them with respect is just us being responsible for the dominion that we have over them given our greater faculties. It doesn't mean they have rights, but it just means we can't go around abusing them either.

Edited July 18, 2011 by exogen

[Mom]

How many animals have you had? They definitely have morals.

[exogen]

[YUNG MASTERLESS GLENCOUR]

I think I get what both you and Owen are saying. It's tricky about the moral thing, cuz if they have morals in the sense we think of morals, then its a completely different set or code than we use. Generally, they only know what's right and wrong because we teach it to them, and even then it only correlates to "things that displease the master".

 

They do do stuff we'd consider morally strong, though, like buddying up with animals we didn't think they would be friends with, or taking care of young that aren't the same species as they are, or trying to help out animals that otherwise aren't related to them. A lot of what they do is based on pragmatism, though. Pragmatism that can play against what we'd consider moral, ie. always going for the weak and the young when you're trying to get food, etc.

 

Honestly, idk if any of that really matters. I think whether they have morals or not is irrelevent. I'm more in line with Exorcet's thought process, but I wanna add something else. If something can feel like family, than I'll treat it like family, and if something can avoid pissing me off, than I think we'll get along just fine.

[Shirtless Crackhead]

PETA faggots are retarded.

 

I'm for free-range hunting.

 

I also really don't give a fuck about the poor animals, there's millions of our own species in the same if not worse straights; and I put my own first.

 

Maybe that makes me a "speciesist".

 

Spoiler! --Click Here to View!--

 

 

[YUNG MASTERLESS GLENCOUR]

PETA is pretty obnoxious but they had Eva Mendes naked in an ad. That's kinda dope.

[Shirtless Crackhead]

I really don't care, if I meet people who say they support PETA I have to fight every fiber of my being that compels me to strangle them.

[The Talentless]

I could care less about any animal, except dogs. I love each and every dog there is, even if it isn't mine. Cause I'm a crazy fag like that, but still, I could never harm a dog and wouldn't stand to see someone else do it.

[Shirtless Crackhead]

I had to maim a pitbull one time, it attacked me and bit down on my calf.

 

So I started stabbing it in the eye/face with a pen, and it let go and ran off.

[exogen]

The issue of them having rights is a moral one. If animals do not amount to the criteria required for rights as humans live up to such criteria then they do not have rights. However, if inflicting unncessary harm and pain is intrincically imoral then it would be immoral to do it to animals.

 

Anamls do not have the same capcities as us. It therefore would fall on our shoulders to take care of the biosshere and everything living in it. this includes killing animals but there is a diference between that and all out cruelty.

[Shirtless Crackhead]

For one who argues about consciousness as you do, dismissing the cognitive functions of other animals simply because they lack language and technology is pretty funny.

[YUNG MASTERLESS GLENCOUR]

Animals don't rock vats huh?

[Shirtless Crackhead]

Well exogen thinks they lack the same capacity for thought as us, although I don't know how he could deduce that conclusion without taking from a materialistic explanation for consciousness.

 

Unless of course, he thinks it's limited by the capacity for speech.

[exogen]

For one who argues about consciousness as you do, dismissing the cognitive functions of other animals simply because they lack language and technology is pretty funny.

 

Hold on now, I never said that they lack cognitive functions. There is a difference in saying that animals don't have the same kind of cognitive functions as we do and saying that those particular functions that we have and that they don't, are a requisite for moral agency or responsibility and saying that animals lack cognitive functions altogether.

 

 

Well exogen thinks they lack the same capacity for thought as us, although I don't know how he could deduce that conclusion without taking from a materialistic explanation for consciousness.

 

Unless of course, he thinks it's limited by the capacity for speech.

 

Why would that be the case? Mind body correlation is not limited to materialism. Just to name a few, property dualism, epiphenomenalism, idealism and panpsychism all make use of the pragmatic objective descriptions of the body and can correlate them to the mind without any contradiction, either empirically or otherwise.

 

With that said, it can follow quite nicely from any one of those views or others that animals have cognitive faculties that are different from our own, and by nature of the correlation we can talk about brain architecture and subsequent subjective states without being materialists.

[Shirtless Crackhead]

We can talk because our vocal cords are so developed to allow us the use of so many sounds.

 

Our brains were the same pre-language, just FYI.

 

Also how in the world can you draw that their conscious experience is any less deep?

[Ataraxis]

I believe pretty heavily in being responsible towards the animals we share our space with, and I kind of see animal rights as inherent in that. Also, I don't like when things suffer (that includes people).

 

A chihuahua tried to bite me the other day on a jog, though, and not gonna lie, I was ready to punt the fucker over a building.

[Shirtless Crackhead]

I don't think they should endure undue suffering either, but making a serious matter out of it when our own species is killing one another for idiotic reasons; raping, kidnapping, torturing, butchering, etc.. all those other things that make human behavior so interesting.

 

I'm sorry I just don't find animal suffering enough to really care about.

[exogen]

We can talk because our vocal cords are so developed to allow us the use of so many sounds.

 

Our brains were the same pre-language, just FYI.

 

Also how in the world can you draw that their conscious experience is any less deep?

 

 

The specifics of why the animals are different from us is a question for someone who studies those kinds of differences in animals and humans.

 

I'm assuming and also going off of recollection of what I have read in the past that the animals lack such capacities required for moral agency. Now if it turned out that they did have such capacities then it would follow that they have moral agency and therefore rights. The moral argument is the same, it's more a question of capacity for agency. I don't see any evidence that they have such cognitive ability required for agency.

 

As for your question. I don't understand. What do you mean how can I draw that their consciousness is any less "deep"? What do you mean by "deep"? All I am saying is that nervous systems correspond to subjective states. We can figure that out in humans with subjects doing reports and other forms of study we can build a coherent pragmatic model of subjective states reported to objective states observed. We can then based on uniformity, which is really just a probabilistic hypothesis anyway, that similar empirically observed states correspond to similar subjectively observed states. Its just an observed correlation with uniformity as the basis. Beyond that science can just do experiments and the theories can be philosophically interpreted this way or that.

Edited July 19, 2011 by exogen

[Shirtless Crackhead]

So rights are a basis of having a brain sufficient enough for the types of thoughts that make one think about their actions?

 

Well, Dolphins and many other species of mammal can show remorse for some actions; does this mean they are therefore due rights?

[LS]

This whole thing about defining pain and debating whether or not animals feel it is beyond retarded, unless you want to expound hedonism, in which case do so in one sentence and we can all go home. For most people, simple happiness isn't the point of life.

 

Ultimately morality isn't based on removing pain, whether it's physical, emotional, mental, or however the fuck you want to define it. Nor is it based on introducing pleasure or happiness, or even preventing the loss of pleasure or happiness. Morality is abjectly and entirely abstract. It's 100% subjectively generated. Talking about a basis for morality is like talking about the science behind magic. You can't articulate a 'code' of morals, only a list; any overriding principle is just an undefined synonym for the meaningless whole you're trying to break down (or assemble, depending on how you look at it.)

 

With that said, morality in general, and by extension rights, are not permissive, despite how we word them; they are only restrictive. Morality (at least in our society; obviously a permissive morality is possible, but give me a break, I'm not writing a thesis here) doesn't dictate what you must do, it dictates what you must not do. Even our government-granted rights are really just politically-phrased assurances of what won't be done to us. We won't be restricted in this way, or punished for doing this, or in this way. (It gets confusing, because when the Bill of Rights says 'the right of the people to ____ will not be abridged' [or whatever the fuck it says] it doesn't mean "right" in the sense we're using the word here; it just means ability. The real "right" is in the "will not be abridged" part.) A "right" is just a positively-phrased restriction on one's ability to effect others. "Right to live" is the same as "murder taboo." Or maybe I should say "right to life" and "abortion taboo." It's really critical to understand this when talking about rights, so they don't reach some sacred status in the discussion. (Unless of course this isn't what is being meant by the word "right.")

 

So, what purpose do these rights/taboos serve? Why is it wrong to effect other people in these ways? The answer is obviously that the generating force behind the taboo believes that it will be negatively impacted by this behavior. In the case of rights, when not speaking in a legal sense but in a moral one, the generating force can certainly be debated, but is generally held to be public opinion (with varying degrees of weighted democracy yadda yadda). This negative impact isn't just pain or a lack of pleasure though; few people will argue for a right to be happy. It's a perceived or anticipated negative impact on function, not on form (it must be remembered that from a whole-subjective perspective of morality, a large part of what is normally considered form is actually function, but the point stands). So, when the generating force is the public, or society, or whatever you want to call it, something is morally wrong when it harms society (NOT when society believes it is being harmed); not when it necessarily makes people less happy, but when it degrades whatever value the society is focused on. I'm not a sociologist, but I would say that, to use modern western society as an example, the focus is on the pursuit of happiness and the ability to choose one's environment. In my own personal morality, the focus is on personal emotional understanding between individuals. So, whenever something makes those values, whatever they are, more removed from reality, that something is amoral.

 

I think it's fair to say that animals cannot be a generating force for human taboos (which any concept of animal rights would be), since animals are not members of society. So the question isn't whether the animals feel bad. It's whether we feel bad about them feeling bad (again, not a matter of simple happiness or sadness, it's loss of function through loss of valued virtues, but I've articulated that enough that I feel I can use shorthand, haha). Animals have rights from us to exactly the extent that we say they do, and rights from each other to exactly the extent that they say they do. Morality isn't something that exists in the water. It's wrong for us to hurt them if hurting them hurts us. There's only really one duty in the world; the duty to aid society. And there's really only one crime in the world; harming society. But society isn't just a material group of people, it's also the abstract emotional, mental, social, *other words* foundation. Damaging (which is just another word for changing) whatever you (and others) perceive as being that foundation can be just as real a crime as killing someone. Likewise, both of those can also be good.

 

But whether hurting them does hurt us that is entirely open to discussion, since which values matter and which matter more is an open question.

[Exorcet]

I don't think they should endure undue suffering either, but making a serious matter out of it when our own species is killing one another for idiotic reasons; raping, kidnapping, torturing, butchering, etc.. all those other things that make human behavior so interesting.

 

I'm sorry I just don't find animal suffering enough to really care about.

 

Humans first, agreed. But it's not like we can't be concerned over both.