ANIMAL RIGHTS! ANIMAL RIGHTS?

[futurebird.livejournal.com]

I don't recall talking about animal intelligence/rights with you. So let's have at it!

What questions in the area of animal rights do you think are most urgent that we resolve?
Do you see hypocrisy in the way we protect some animals more than others?



First a poll:

[Poll #1768683]

Comments

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

A few quibbles.

Consciousness and emotions are relative to the species. I have human emotions. My cat has emotions, but they are not the same as my emotions. They are cat emotions. Same for consciousness, for certain values all living animals are conscious, even some plants. But that doesn't me that I and a Venus flytrap "share" the experience of consciousness.

On the same level, learning is relative. I can train my cat to use the toilet, but that process of learning is very different than my child being trained to use the toilet.

For me, "animal rights" is a contradiction in terms. Animals do not have rights because rights are not a quality of animalness. We can provide "rights" to animals in relation to us by circumscribing our own actions, but that doesn't mean that "rights" abide in them in any way that I am compelled to respect.

[squidb0i.livejournal.com]

How is that different from humans? Define 'animalness'.

[raichu100.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much exactly what I was going to say. Humans are animals too. And in what way to rights "abide" in humans but not non-human animals?

[telemann.livejournal.com]

It's Thomism, sort of.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

Animalness is not humanness. We are animals, but we are ourselves, as well. We can distinguish, in other words, between what is right for a human and right for a lion. It is right for a lion to eat the cubs of another lion within the community, it is not right for me to kill children who are not biologically related to me in the community. For me, to act "inhuman" is to act outside of humanity's laws to act... like an animal.

Whether cats feel the same way about us and dogs is a question that cannot be answered with current technology, or perhaps ever.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

Because they can be intuited from our common human experience. We don't know what the interior life of other living creatures are. I can't know what the a dog's thoughts are or what a cat the hopes for,. whether or not they think it is wrong for me to keep them as pets. I can know my mind, however. And within my mind I have a innate desire to continue living. Since I am not a solipsist, I believe that my experiences are congruent with other humans. Looking around me I find this belief justified and reinforced by experience. Therefore, humans believe they have rights, above all they believe they have a right to life, liberty and the fruits of the same.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

And yet somehow in the real world rights come out of the barrel of a gun, not "civilized" behavior.