Ryan Gregory has put up an interesting posting on Genomicron [On speciesism]. He points out that most of the so-called "debate" about animal rights is at the level of 8th graders. Personally, I think he's being generous.Ryan asks the following questions,
And so I ask, on what basis do you draw the sharp moral line between "humans" and "animals", "human rights" and "animal rights", "us" versus "them"? What rational argument do you bring in defense of speciesism? Perhaps you argue that only humans are capable of suffering, or that our intellectual capabilities are of a different kind from those of other animals. As Dawkins has noted, neither is compatible with what we understand about evolutionary history.I don't have an answer to these questions even though I've been thinking about them far longer than youngsters like Ryan Gregory.
Swatting mosquitoes does not pose an ethical dilemma for me. Nor does eating beef, chicken, fish and shrimp. On the other hand, I don't fish and I don't hunt. I don't lose sleep over gorillas in a zoo but I do when they are killed in Africa.
There doesn't seem to be an easy answer to why some animals don't matter while others do.
I'd like to go beyond Ryan's question and include plants. What is the justification for caring about some animals and not about the weeds in your garden or the wheat plants that feed you? I don't think there is a rational basis for doing so. This seems to be one of those issues where rationality doesn't work. That makes me very uneasy.
[Photo Credit: Smithsonian National Zoological Park]
19 comments :
Carrot Juice is Murder
Now I am by any definition a youngster, but I've also given these issues a lot of thought.
All biological processes, wheather plants or animals, are just advanced chemistry. That's why we have a problem when we use the words "life" and "biology" interchangibly.
Imagine that your conciousness moves beyond your body, into a machine. Your thoughts move in an artificial space rather than between your neurons. Surely you are not now just a bunch of silicon and copper. It is not still the "real" you in there, the same you who deserves rights and respect?
Killing a mosquito is no more wrong than to smash a TV set. I wouldn't do neither, but not for moral reasons.
But killing a conscoius entity is murder, weather it is a chimp or a man or a future AI running on your cellphone.
I agree that there is no reason for naturalists to make any distinction.
And choose however you wish, it seems there is not only no reason to make a decision, but also no basis on which to make a decision, except for practical considerations (sorry, mosquitoes, you don't get a pass).
A moral basis for such a decision, well, if morals are evolutionary tendencies to promote survival, then I don't see much reason to consult such tendencies here...
Complicated issue? You bet! I think we have here another case where the fuzzy qualitative continuum of good old complexity/morphospace space is rearing its ugly complicated head again and giving rise to a mind numbing incommensurability issue when it goes head to head with a binary cut-off question like whether to kill or not to kill. Anyway looks to me that at least female rights have moved on a pace in the simian community, because the lady pictured has obviously burnt her bra. But where’s Dad in all this? Hasn’t he heard about child support?
"What is the justification for caring about some animals and not about the weeds in your garden or the wheat plants that feed you? I don't think there is a rational basis for doing so."
Seriously? Is that a joke? Ask yourself, what is it that we value about our fellow humans? Some things that I've come up with are: we have the capacity for suffering and joy, we form social relationships with others, we have desires, concerns, memories and a sense of individual identity, etc. It's not hard. If you found a human who lacked most or all of those traits (e.g., Terri Schiavo), we might say that that human was no longer, in some sense, a "person," because personhood is contingent on traits like those.
We have every reason to believe that plants lack each and every one of those traits, just as we have every reason to believe that many non-human animals possess them.
I'm a vegetarian and people bring up that question of why I don't care about plants. I, and many others, do care about plants and the best way to save plants is to become vegetarian, as you'll cut the number of plants "killed" 10-fold just in terms of what needs to be fed to the animals you formerly ate, not to mention the rainforest plants cleared in ofder to raise cattle for the North American market.
So yes, if you value plants the best way to help them is to stop eating meat - strange but true.
The more an animal species resembles us in appearance, behavior, capabilities, the more we care about its welfare. We empathize with that which we can identify, and the more humanlike they are the greater the degree of personhood we attribute to them. That is perfectly reasonable and natural. There is no need to invoke interspecies kin selection or some other fancy scientific or philosophical construct.
Tupaia
I see animal testing as a necessary evil. This implies two things:
1] It's necessary
2] It's evil
That is, I don't pretend that there are no ethical concerns related to animal testing, but I recognise that the suffering involved can be justified since it advances human knowledge and has also reduced human (and animal) suffering.
I have an old, and repeated question on this one (people may have seen it elsewhere).
"Animal Rights"?
For the Cats, or the Mice?
For the Buzzard or the Rabbit?
For the Sperm Whale or the Squid?
Human beings are a species like other animal species. Some of those others also exhibit communal behavior, signs of joy and suffering, memory, respect for others in their species, maybe sense of identity.
But an elephant doesn't seem to worry about killing an individual of another species, including humans, either from a sense of threat or maybe of rage. Does an elephant feel regret in some cases? Maybe.
Lions don't think about the suffering of their prey, or dolphins don't worry about killing sharks. It is part of their nature. You can easily find more examples.
Human beings are an omnivorous species. We live by killing and eating other species--plant or animal. Why should we expect them to act outside of their evolutionary development? Individuals may make certain choices for their diet, but it is unreasonable to make them the rule.
We also have the ability to modify our environment and our health. If we use other species to do that, it is just in our nature as a species. Animals didn't ask to be domesticated, but we found it useful to our survival. Using animals in experiments is not any different. Wouldn't a donkey or a camel be happier if it didn't have to carry heavy loads?
If there were a species that could use humans in those ways, it would do it and it would not be a question of morals either.
This seems to be one of those issues where rationality doesn't work. That makes me very uneasy.
As this has moral aspects, i.e. it is what we do in practice, I'm not sure that it is derivable from any ethical principle. And I don't see why we necessarily have to, so I don't feel that unease.
I do think that there are practical benefits from acknowledging that we have practical, moral and ethical concerns for other organisms, and in that sense codify some as regulations. (Rather than vacuous and hard to manage "rights", I think.) In fact, we already do. "Animal welfare" as opposed to "animal rights" doesn't quite cover that aspect.
But there isn't any sense that other species will necessarily be considered having equal rights, for obvious reasons.
Also, as Sven DiMilo points out @ Genomicron, one must not conflate issues or regulations pertaining to populations (conservation, and traits such as consciousness) and individuals (minimizing suffering, and individual behavior).
killing a conscoius entity is murder
I do think that if it becomes possible to define consciousness and/or we will recognize conscious entities other than humans (whether animals, AI's, or ETI's) it will change the concept of murder.
Today it is practically defined and used in legal procedures, and that will remain so in the foreseeable future.
lee_merrill:
there is no reason for naturalists to make any distinction
How do you figure that, considering that all humans make moral choices and most persons including scientists and other naturalists agree with the difference between eating animals and eating humans, husbanding animals and enslaving humans, or animal research and human research?
A moral basis for such a decision, well, if morals are evolutionary tendencies to promote survival, then I don't see much reason to consult such tendencies here...
You confuse the basis for morality with the observed morals. There is a lot of freedom in how we practice morals. To return to my previous argument, some human societies have consumed humans, enslaved them or done research on them that we use animals for.
You have very confused ideas what naturalists do (which is based in what you in other comments shown that you have very confused ideas of what naturalism are and who are naturalists), and what biology has to say on moral behavior (which is based in what you in other comments shown that you have very confused ideas of what biology is).
If you get those ideas from creationist sites or churches as it looks like, I must warn you that they are wrong and often intentional lies.
Here is my reasoning plain and simple:
1. With rights come responsibilities
2. Animals shouldnt be held responsible for anything they do
Thus,
3. Animals dont have rights
1. With rights come responsibilities
2. Animals shouldnt be held responsible for anything they do
Thus,
3. Animals dont have rights
Fine. I agree that 'animal rights' is not the best way of phrasing the issue.
But it can certainly be argued that humans have responsibilities toward animals. That's the point here.
I agree with most of these posters, and would like to add just a little to this conversation. I mostly agree with Justin in that it is the consciousness of a being that makes it murder if one is to take their life away.
I recommend the film Earthlings to all who are unsure as to whether an non-human animal life is different than a human life. As a vegan myself, I do not have a problem with people hunting for their food. See my blog also at http://lifesup.blogspot.com/ To me, the major problem is mass production farming. The way these animals are raised in confined quarters and brutally (slowly) murdered for the pleasure of some ignorant human to munch on in a restaurant is disturbing to me. If you want a steak- go kill a cow yourself. Don't pay the industry to torture an animal for you. It is immoral and benighted.
P.S. Ned- Dolphins don't kill sharks... Sharks don't have any predators except humans. :)
Animals shouldnt be held responsible for anything they do
Or at least it is darn difficult, even if some animals such as dogs can be domesticated to feel shame when doing something irresponsible towards other 'members of their flock'.
A better reason than mine why "rights" aren't really practical here.
Dolphins don't kill sharks... Sharks don't have any predators except humans.
They are claimed to have killed sharks in self defence in artificial situations (tanks) . I guess it is doubtful if they do so in nature.
To add all of this there is the evidence that Chimps might have learned culture.
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/104/45/17588
Commented on:
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/104/45/17559
(of course what this means for evolutionary psychology is also interesting to think about)
"Here is my reasoning plain and simple:
1. With rights come responsibilities
2. Animals shouldnt be held responsible for anything they do
Thus,
3. Animals dont have rights"
That's rather simplistic:
1. With rights come responsibilities
2. Babies shouldn't be held responsible for anything they do
Thus,
3. Babies dont have rights
You can replace "babies" with "mentally ill people" and it is just as problematic.
Btw, is it just me or isn't easier to kill a small animal than a big one; for instance if you _had_ to kill either an elephant or a mouse, wouldn't you choose to kill the mouse?
Another question: if there was an ape that was the size of, say, a fly, wouldn't it be easier to kill it than a regular ape?
Marc L.
You can replace "babies" with "mentally ill people" and it is just as problematic.
I took it to mean that we shouldn't conflate citizen's rights with concerns for other groups. (Because in the discussion about "specieism", equal rights is one position.)
Children doesn't have the (same) rights that adults have. I mention regulations, but there are certainly laws and children's rights.
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