Last year Leona Helmsley left $12 million to her dog, Trouble, setting off a heated courtroom battle. California just passed a proposition that says farm animals must be humanely caged. The legal line between humans and animals is blurring further everyday. When it comes to "animal rights," should your cocker spaniel be entitled to the same freedoms and protections as your kid?
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Morality and Rights
- From Tibor Machan
By Tibor Machan - Author/Journalist/Professor
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Are we morally superior?
'Animals are not beings with basic rights to life, liberty, and property, whereas human beings, in the main, are just such beings.' It is not clear how we arrived at this assumption- to do so we must also assume that there is a universal assessor or evaluator of rights who favours a particular morality over another or who favours the existence of a morality over the non-existence of one in assigning rights.
It is not morally transgressible to trespass on another's property to rescue a child being tortured- so why should it be so if it is a cat? If this is because the cat might not do the same for us- this is not logical, since according to all the previous arguments we are the ones with moral choice and the cat has none, so we must not expect the cat to do so for us. If indeed we are the higher moral creatures- why do we discriminate between a child and a cat? If we choose to do 'much better' than is the law of nature- and we are moral and therefore just- why do we not choose to do much better to other species and not only to our own? Does not the fact that we only choose to do better when it comes to our own species make us no different to aniamls morally?
- sor666
May 6, 2009 6:55AM
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Side: Yes
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Morality is a word that has no clear meaning?
"Yet it is confusing, as I have argued above, to introduce the idea of rights, since what distinguishes them in moral discourse is that they are the framework for the treatment of beings with a moral nature, beings who can make moral choices, which is not the case with animals ."
This is the part of the argument I have most difficulty with. Firstly, 'moral' is difficult to define. What beings do have a moral nature and what beings do not is pure sepculation, since 'moral nature' is a completely relative concept and since we have no way at all of proving that being either do or do not have a moral nature. Animals feel guilt, but they might not feel the kind of guilt that would make them want to deliberately seek penance or punishment to redeem their sense of guilt. But does this make them immoral? Who is the judge of what is and is not a moral nature- us?
And why is it that only those creatures who have a 'moral nature' have basic rights to life, property and liberty? Should not all living things have this right? This might not be a right that is respected in nature often- animals eat each other and so on....but it is a right we bestow on animals because we ourselves value our life, freedom and liberty and we know they value theirs. Because we can bestow these rights on them- not because we must- because we are more comfortable than animals are in their battle for survival-because we are freed from the battle for survival? not because we are morally superior.
- sor666
May 6, 2009 7:04AM
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Side: Yes
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Reciprocation
You mentioned that you haven't convinced the people that only animals have rights but if you read all of your arguments and those of Eric Presscott you find the underlying message you have missed. When people violate the rights of others theirs can be taken away and since the animals cannot make such moral decisions to not violate the others rights they themselves cannot have rights.
Humans even in varying stages of development have the capacity for such. The retarded baby example has been brought up numerous times yet it does not violate the life of others so it does have the right to life. If you don't believe me about the rights of people being taken away look at prisoners
Sentience is the best thing we can ascribe to animals, not rights.
- Matt Eastwood
May 25, 2009 4:53AM
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Side: No
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