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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No Arbitrary Criteria Can Be Used to Violate Basic Rights
- From Bob Torres
By Bob Torres - Author
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Just a thought
I am not trying to be absurdly critical of your argument, I am merely interested in how people derive worth from various things in this world. You argue that it is so plainly apparent that animals should have rights and should be treated fairly, yet laugh away the idea that vegetables should also have rights. I am not trying to argue for rights for vegetables, but merely stating that it is apparent that animals have more rights than vegetables. Your basis for this comes from the fact that animals feel pain and have sentience. Firstly, how is the ability to feel pain any less of an arbitrary characteristic than rationality or language. Is it alright to eat a paraplegic because they can't feel anything? Secondly, how do you define sentience? Do you use that in the sense of self awareness? I doubt a fly is aware of its own existence . Are you referring to a sentience that means merely the ability to feel pain or pleasure? We have no way of knowing the feelings of another person, let alone another species. We can only draw conclusions based on reaction to stimuli. However, many things in this world will react to stimuli. Even a computer program. Something not even out of a science fiction artificial intelligence scenario, but a simple program. When you input proper data, the program responds with accurate data. When you make it try to divide by zero, it crashes. Did you hurt it? Did it feel pain and stop working? I don't see how your views of why animals should have rights differ from the views of these anthropocentric philosophers who are basing their arguments on "arbitrary characteristics".
- Khaos
April 21, 2009 3:09AM
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sor666
You must distinguish between things that are dead and alive. Computers are dead- animals are alive. All animals with a sufficiently complex nervous system feel pain- including all vertebrates and some invertebrates- plants dont have nervous systems. I think this is an absurd comparison- between plants and animals and then computers.
- sor666
May 6, 2009 4:39AM
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The definition of dead and alive is usually clear
Feeling pain and being sentient is not an arbitrary characteristic like moral agency or free will because we can prove scientifically when a being is dead or alive and we know plants do not have nervous systems (ie cannot feel pain), nor do machines. Being dead or alive is not generally a point which is not clear and which cannot be verified through measurement or science . We cannot however measure or determine morality or intelligence, with certainty. I think this is the difference.
- sor666
May 6, 2009 7:34AM
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But animals do not resepct the rights of other animals
But what would you say to those who argue that animals do not grant basic right to life and freedom to other animals, to humans or to each other- so why should we do so for them?
- sor666
May 6, 2009 7:23AM
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