Responding to Kurtiss Keefner's
response to me, I can see where he is coming from with regards to the selfish humans attributing rights to ourselves above all other organisms, and by doing so, we have worked the right to life into our laws. I believe that us, as "moral agents" have not necessarily an obligation, but we should at the very least, respect those who share "mental capabilities" or "social capabilities" with us, such as chimps, and whales. I believe the idea of giving rights to life to "moral Agents" such as ourselves and, perhaps these "persons" (whales and apes) is justified in our mind, but I still have trouble wrapping my head around the idea that we have so much authority as to dictate "what lives". This is something that I can identify and come to a conclusion in my head but have trouble saying or expressing, therefore I'm going to use this post to try and determine what exactly I'm trying to say.
Humans are the top of the "food chain" because of our advances in technology such as holding sticks to strike at a greater distance, or pick insects out of trees or reach further, early agriculture to step out of hunter/gathering, and the advent of cooking meat to aid in digestion and production/ advancement of the telencephelon (fore-brain, cortex, "major part of the brain" "grey mater" whatever, they are all essentially the same thing) Due to this, we were able to think, remember and eventually step towards eusociality.
Us humans, we like to label, it's in our nature, we also like to believe that we can empathize or tell body language saying "my baby looks sick" or "that dog looks hurt" whether we know it or not. This broken thought leads me to the idea that we put rights on ourselves, but rights I feel are a construction of our own minds, we use rights to justify how humans treat humans saying "there's a right to bear arms, or a right to the freedom of speech" these two having nothing to do with animals other then a bear.... that's a joke on bear arms...
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| Evolution, or looking back on the past? -Relevancy is unknown! |
I just don't get why we need to say "this whale has the same rights as me" I try my best to respect animals as much as I can and, maybe I'm being selfish, but I don't care if all animals have a right to life, or if only a few have a right to life, I'm just going to try not to hurt them as best I can unless I need to, and if I do, i'm not going to be sadistic and slowly drive a screw through their brain or anything gruesome, i will try to follow Temple's idea that I should give them a quick, painless death if necessary after a few warning shots, a shot right between the eyes, rather then shooting it's legs and intentionally making it suffer.
I think the reason for trying to decide on the rights and value of non-human animals is precisely to decide when and to what extent we are allowed to harm the animal.
ReplyDeleteIf a non-human animal has the same value and rights as a human then it would unacceptable to do to an animal what we would not do to a human. If it is only okay to kill humans in self-defense situations (regardless of how harmless the killing is), and if non-human animals have the same rights as humans, then it would only be okay to kill non-human animals in self-defense situations.
The problem with not recognizing their rights and trying to operate on a "respect as much as you (anyone) can" principle is that many people will decide that they don't have any respect for animals. So, unless there are some reasons to which we can point and say, animals have such-an-such rights, the value of animals is subjective. The conclusion can also become sort of slippery slope, unless we fall victim to speciesism.