[viraginity]

One of Singer's three main points in favor of animal liberation is the similarity between animal struggle and the civil rights movement or women's suffrage. He likens "speciesism" to sexism or racism, where a preference for, or belief in the superiority of, one group over another is arbitrarily formed. Further, he argues his stance from the existence of "marginal cases," or people who by birth or accident, have lesser capacities than a typical human. Singer theoretically argues that we should not do to an animal what we would not do to a marginal case of our own species, or we are acting on simple bias.

I may ethically kill and eat an animal because it is inferior to me. A very simple concept held true by most humans. Not a point of contention outside of the realm of religious views or an excess of wealth. From the simplest view, we are animals. Animals eat animals. A cat eats a bird, and it is not evil. A spider kills another spider in a territorial dispute. It is nature.

Barring a religious debate, most would agree that we are animals of the classification Homo sapiens sapiens. Unlike the cat who eats the mouse, or the spider-killing spider, we are responsible for our actions. Animals are ethically neutral, but we subscribe to the higher notion of ethics -- that there is an appropriate way to behave other than what is dictated by our most natural self. There is no such thing as animal murder. There is no animal rape. Do we exist in, or outside of nature?

If we are above nature in the sense that we subscribe to ethics, and are responsible for our actions, that places animals below us, justly. We have a capability that animals do not, and therefore, have earned a station above that of a dog, a mouse, a chimp, or an elephant. A chimpanzee will never debate if it is right to slaughter its prey -- I will.

If we exist within nature, we are obligated to behave as our instincts tell us we ought to behave. The teeth in my skull, my appetite, and the diet of my chimpanzee cousins indicate that we are omnivores. Our omnivorous friends, the bear and the ant, would agree: other animals taste good. If our so-loved-by-animal-rightists cousins are any indication, how would our society function?

[youtube=
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
We may not be peaceful animals, but we are animals that subscribe to notions of right and wrong. By asking us to deny our superior ability to rationalize and to ignore our animal appetites, animal rightists offend both sensibilities and are dually irrational and unnatural.

"And if it is this ability to rationalize and choose that sets us above animals," a Singer-supporter may ask, "then what about marginal cases?"

What puts a baby or a retarded human above an animal? Species. This is a warranted preference; we ARE superior to animals. They ARE our dinner. We cannot deny that we exist at the very top of the food chain. But where do we draw the line between what is dinner, and what is a dependent on our income tax report? Species. Like a nice, clean line of birth in defining abortion or murder, we have the convenient line of human or not human.

[stasis]

Originally Posted by viraginity To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

What puts a baby or a retarded human above an animal? Species. This is a warranted preference; we ARE superior to animals. They ARE our dinner. We cannot deny that we exist at the very top of the food chain. But where do we draw the line between what is dinner, and what is a dependent on our income tax report? Species. Like a nice, clean line of birth in defining abortion or murder, we have the convenient line of human or not human.

While I am generally opposed to the animal liberation movement, I greatly dislike defenses of speciesism which revolve around notions of superiority and inferiority. It seems to me that making an argument which states as its basis 'power dictates entitlement' is to carte-blanche behavior based upon the ability to behave as opposed to dealing with the qualities of that behavior and therefore fails as an ethical treatment of the problem.

I dislike the argument from instinct as well. In part because I have not found convincing evidence which supports the theory that complex behavior is generally instinctual instead of being
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
or
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
in adaptation to an environment, but predominantly because when applied to this issue the argument is construed as a sort of "nature's intent" position and thereby strays into the realm of anthropomorphic fantasy. Simultaneously, I reject the assertion that a meaningful dichotomy between humanity and nature exists.

Instead, what I tend to argue in opposition to advocacy of animal rights revolves around the useful definition of ethics. Ethics, I'd say, are a set of interpersonal standards which normalize our interaction with one another so that social groups can form and prosper. I suggest that we should should begin asking ourselves why it is that we need to treat one another in one way or another in the first place. In doing so, we should find that the function and therefore the value of things like ethics is social in essence. We can go from there. A social scenario requires two or more actors. Mice, for example, are physically incapable of manifesting human-type sociology, which excludes them from being actors in our societies, which should prevent them from having ethical substance within human societies since ethics generate value by their functionality in dealing with the societal.

All social animals have analogous rules amongst themselves in some manner or another. The distinction in my opinion isn't the superiority or inferiority of species, but it is that we as a species are physically unable to form human-type social groups that are fully inclusive of other species of animals. They are incapable of being ethical actors within our societies, therefore they can have no ethical substance and no meaningful rights therein. The meaning, or value if you prefer, in generalized rules like "don't kill other people" lies in facilitating our necessary interaction with one another. And that is also the rational predicate.

The retort which appeals to absurdity by dehumanizing the handicapped or the retarded, who do in fact manifest human-type sociology and must therefore have ethical substance within human societies, however limited in relation to the average person at the extremes, looks more to me like a form of evasion than counterpoint. This retort certainly wouldn't apply to the other marginalized groups such as racial or religious minorities within a population either, precluding any analogy to racism or sexism and the like.

Humankind cannot at this point exist without consuming other living things. Some animals, usually large and mammalian, are sometimes given special consideration because people empathize more with them than trees or bugs or whatever else. That they don't popularly extend the same consideration to all living systems and consequently die of starvation illustrates that they are making the sort of exclusive judgment that they decry. Proponents of animal rights offer a gradient of lifeforms that look enough like us to have an equivalent significance (mice, monkeys) and an exclusion of everything else (trees, microorganisms) because of the differences in resemblance that become obvious to them at scale. Arguments like that are self-defeating. They bemoan the myopia of the so-called speciesism while simultaneously aspiring to draw the same bounds across life, only they'd like to draw them somewhere else.

That's not to say that there are no sound animal protection arguments. But I think those sound arguments tend to be rooted once again in maintaining only our interaction; for example, what kind of negative interpersonal behavior cruelty to certain classes of animals might antagonize or promote.

[Maarten]

Marginal cases aren't relevant to this discussion. They're exceptions to how human beings normally function. The clearest example of this is that everyone can tell the difference between a chimpanzee baby and a human baby. It is absolutely clear that they aren't the same, even though up until a certain level of development they might be almost exactly similar. The thing is, that adult, non-impaired humans are what we should use to derive these kinds of principles. Human beings use reason to survive; that is why they have rights. We need to be free from coercion so we can act on our judgment and live the way we think we should. Animals aren't rational, and therefore it would be meaningless to give them rights.

One issue here is that an animal must have an understanding of rights before it can really have them. Animals aren't able to do that. When you compare an average specimen of pretty much any animal species with an average human it is clear that there is a major difference in how they live. But babies will become rational human beings. Cats always remain cats; I am unaware of any cats that can communicate and have the ability to reason as we do.

When we then go to marginal cases as you call them, they are simply instances of "broken" humans. In certain cases they will become fully functional human beings, and in others they might not. However, because they are still human they have certain rights, even though we might not let them exercise all of them because they lack the capability to understand it.

The problem is just that most people have a mistaken understanding of why we have rights. if you say that humans have rights because they have feelings, well, that is a rather weak argument. Animals have feelings, too. We have to look at the essential characteristic that sets them apart. That has nothing to do with our appearance or what we do on an everyday basis, but with our nature; that nature is different and that calls into being the concept of rights.

[Autoptic]

Originally Posted by Maarten To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Animals aren't rational, and therefore it would be meaningless to give them rights. ... One issue here is that an animal must have an understanding of rights before it can really have them. Animals aren't able to do that. ... Cats always remain cats; I am unaware of any cats that can communicate and have the ability to reason as we do. ... However, because they are still human they have certain rights, even though we might not let them exercise all of them because they lack the capability to understand it. ... The problem is just that most people have a mistaken understanding of why we have rights. if you say that humans have rights because they have feelings, well, that is a rather weak argument. Animals have feelings, too. We have to look at the essential characteristic that sets them apart. That has nothing to do with our appearance or what we do on an everyday basis, but with our nature; that nature is different and that calls into being the concept of rights.

Define this nature. That almost sounds religious. Try apes and cetaceans for communication with human no less and easily demonstrable rational thought, not to mention there intrinsic, complex social behaviors.

[Maarten]

Our nature as animals who use reason as our means of survival. That is the fact that requires us to be free from other's coercion (our rights). I don't see how my statement that humans have a specific nature is in any way religious? Anyone can look around and see that human beings need reason. Just think about pretty much any necessity we have; it is all produced by our minds in one way or another.

As for the humans who can't comprehend rights needing guardians, I was talking about cases where someone is mentally handicapped for example. We usually have guardians for such people because we recognize that they cannot independently make certain decisions; so in a way other people exercise the rights for them.

[Autoptic]

	Originally Posted by Maarten To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Our nature as animals who use reason as our means of survival. That is the fact that requires us to be free from other's coercion (our rights).

I could make a case for even mice using reason to survive, thus the need to be free to do it amusingly would apply directly against your argument. Notably higher mental functions exist in non-humans as I already pointed out. Chimps can talk intelligently if they're taught which is more a matter of vocal ability and our socially inherited communication tricks which, of course, isn't any more present in feral humans despite their "nature".

	We usually have guardians for such people because we recognize that they cannot independently make certain decisions; so in a way other people exercise the rights for them.

That is a direct contradiction to the basis of your claim. This human animal doesn't have the rational capacity to survive and thus not the nature that you've so far described. Why isn't a chimps caretaker in the same situation even when the chimp is even capable of requesting his rights when informed of them? They know what death is and, at least one that I'm aware of, requested not to be killed.

[Maarten]

Originally Posted by Autoptic To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

I could make a case for even mice using reason to survive, thus the need to be free to do it amusingly would apply directly against your argument. Notably higher mental functions exist in non-humans as I already pointed out. Chimps can talk intelligently if they're taught which is more a matter of vocal ability and our socially inherited communication tricks which, of course, isn't any more present in feral humans despite their "nature".

I don't know of any evidence of mice using human level reason, but if you have groundbreaking studies to cite that show that, please let me know. Yes, certain animals can behave similarly to how humans do. However, it is up to them to claim rights if they feel they are able to. I mean, if you think there can be a really good case as to why a specific animal should have rights, more power to you (although I still don't think that is at all ironclad and obvious), but that has no implication whatsoever for other animals. But even for chimps, they do not use reason as their primary means of survival. Yes, we can teach them certain things and they might be able to understand lower level concepts and abstractions, but that is not even in the same universe as what human minds can understand, and furthermore we have to teach them those skills.

But going back to your mice, I see no evidence whatsoever that mice are rational beings, which means that they have no rights in the sense that we apply the concept to human beings.

That is a direct contradiction to the basis of your claim. This human animal doesn't have the rational capacity to survive and thus not the nature that you've so far described. Why isn't a chimps caretaker in the same situation even when the chimp is even capable of requesting his rights when informed of them? They know what death is and, at least one that I'm aware of, requested not to be killed.

You must have missed the part where I stressed that such cases are not how we derive rights. For human beings, we consider non-rational individuals to be lacking in certain aspects; i.e. they aren't fully functional qua human. But they are still human, and as a human being they have rights. Rights are derived from the nature of the species, what gives them their identity. Just because there are exceptions doesn't really matter, because you don't derive principles from the rare exceptions.

Conclusions about humanity that you get by studying some really small portion of the population (for example super intelligent humans) would be a poor basis for making a case about human beings in general. Yet that is exactly what you are advocating.

But first things first: do you at least agree with me that we that the distinguishing characteristic of human beings is their ability to reason; that they are rational beings? I'm not sure how to logically prove that case, because it's based on induction. You can simply look around yourself and it should be clear that any successful human activity is based on reason, and that it is absolutely necessary for them to survive. Without thinking we'd probably have died out long ago, or at least we would be nowhere near where we are today. Does that definition of human sound acceptable to you?

We can later argue if other animals possess that characteristic in the same respect as we do, but we won't get anywhere unless we first agree on where rights come from and what human beings are.

[ATCGs]

I thought about this discussion... but I guess I really don't understand the premise.

Rights aren't real. They are completely constructed by humans, and there is no such thing as 'inherent' or 'inalienable' rights.

I've never understood how killing animals traverses into ethics.

[Autoptic]

	Originally Posted by ATCGs To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I thought about this discussion... but I guess I really don't understand the premise. Rights aren't real. They are completely constructed by humans, and there is no such thing as 'inherent' or 'inalienable' rights. I've never understood how killing animals traverses into ethics.

Burning flags, imaginary friends, and other sentiment traverse into ethics. Ethics is aesthetics after all. Why not other sentient beings?

[Maarten]

	Originally Posted by ATCGs To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I thought about this discussion... but I guess I really don't understand the premise. Rights aren't real. They are completely constructed by humans, and there is no such thing as 'inherent' or 'inalienable' rights. I've never understood how killing animals traverses into ethics.

I disagree (obviously
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
). The problem with saying that rights are subjective is that there is then no basis to say that other organisms don't have rights.

I'm not saying no other organisms can have rights, but they'd first have to prove that their method of survival is reason. It's not up to us to disprove whether other animals have rights or not; it's a matter of the burden of proof being on he who makes the positive assertion, and having rights is a positive assertion. So the only case that needs to be made is for human rights, not against any other rights. The default is that they don't have rights.

[ATCGs]

... but thats exactly my point. Humans conjured rights out of our collective ass - we can define them however we want.

I don't see how our fabricated rights intersect with nature and our need to eat at all.

To want to eat a fuzzy bunny rabbit and then to make an idea that somehow you shouldn't because.... you shouldn't seems really odd to me.

To say that animals have 'rights' seems to imply that if humans did not exist, the animal would still possess those rights.... this seems so obviously false to me that I still feel like I don't understand the premise and framework of the discussion.

[Maarten]

And we'll have to start prosecuting carnivores for murder to protect those poor prey animals
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
Obviously, if they have rights, they should respect others' rights, too. That'll be fun!

[Autoptic]

	Originally Posted by Maarten To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	And we'll have to start prosecuting carnivores for murder to protect those poor prey animals To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. Obviously, if they have rights, they should respect others' rights, too. That'll be fun!

We could eat each other instead and end world hunger quick.

[Maarten]

Unless a species has the ability, overall, to articulate the need for rights and can demonstrate that they understand that that means to respect others' rights, it'd be fine. I don't think any animals qualify, though.

[Autoptic]

	Originally Posted by Maarten To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Unless a species has the ability, overall, to articulate the need for rights and can demonstrate that they understand that that means to respect others' rights, it'd be fine. I don't think any animals qualify, though.

Why a specie? The capacity you're referring to is possessed by some individuals. The specie doesn't, by definition, possess any such thing.

[Maarten]

Because that's basically what you'd have to set out to prove. That there is something in the nature of a chimpansee (for example) that makes them deserving of rights like humans are. Yes, you can start out with a single example, but then you'd have to prove that that is normal for the species, and for example, that all of them can be rational and productive members of society (or at least know to not initiate force and so on). Lacking that, you might be able to say that one chimp has a rational consciousness and is basically the same as a human in that regard, but it'd apply solely to that individual. That super chimp would basically be an aberration and we could make an exception for it, but you first would have to prove that is the case before we'd do it.

But the thing is, species is a valid concept in this instance, because there are far more similarities than differences within a species compared to between species. Yes, not all human beings are at all the same, but we share more together than we do with other organisms (that's the definition of a species nowadays, I think).

Another issue is that this question is primarily a scientific one. Until there is enough evidence that a particular species of animal (or plant, insect, fungus) has a rational consciousness and is basically similar to human beings in that sense, we shouldn't just give them rights.
Most of the animal rights stuff is based on no scientific evidence whatsoever. It is up to them to prove that animals need rights to survive, but that case is rather hard to make because they violate them all the time. Instead, such campaigns are mostly based on appeals to people's emotions, which is NOT a valid way to argue any case; it shows a decided lack of intellectual ammunition, for one thing.

[Autoptic]

Originally Posted by Maarten To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Because that's basically what you'd have to set out to prove. That there is something in the nature of a chimpansee (for example) that makes them deserving of rights like humans are. Yes, you can start out with a single example, but then you'd have to prove that that is normal for the species, and for example, that all of them can be rational and productive members of society (or at least know to not initiate force and so on). Lacking that, you might be able to say that one chimp has a rational consciousness and is basically the same as a human in that regard, but it'd apply solely to that individual. That super chimp would basically be an aberration and we could make an exception for it, but you first would have to prove that is the case before we'd do it.

We know already that chimpanzee possess rational thought. That's not the issue. The largely irrational, purposely ignorant human specie is denying the evidence that "monkeys", usually with appeals to their imaginary friend or playing the specie card without regard to any definition they actually possess. They can't actually prove they are rational without resorting to social norms that have no rational basis either.

[Maarten]

Originally Posted by Autoptic To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

We know already that chimpanzee possess rational thought. That's not the issue. The largely irrational, purposely ignorant human specie is denying the evidence that "monkeys", usually with appeals to their imaginary friend or playing the specie card without regard to any definition they actually possess. They can't actually prove they are rational without resorting to social norms that have no rational basis either.

What I am saying is in no way based on social norms, as far as the human argument goes anyway.

[Jaycen Rigger]

Originally Posted by viraginity To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

One of Singer's three main points in favor of animal liberation is the similarity between animal struggle and the civil rights movement or women's suffrage. He likens "speciesism" to sexism or racism, where a preference for, or belief in the superiority of, one group over another is arbitrarily formed. Further, he argues his stance from the existence of "marginal cases," or people who by birth or accident, have lesser capacities than a typical human. Singer theoretically argues that we should not do to an animal what we would not do to a marginal case of our own species, or we are acting on simple bias. I may ethically kill and eat an animal because it is inferior to me. A very simple concept held true by most humans. Not a point of contention outside of the realm of religious views or an excess of wealth. From the simplest view, we are animals. Animals eat animals. A cat eats a bird, and it is not evil. A spider kills another spider in a territorial dispute. It is nature. Barring a religious debate, most would agree that we are animals of the classification Homo sapiens sapiens. Unlike the cat who eats the mouse, or the spider-killing spider, we are responsible for our actions. Animals are ethically neutral, but we subscribe to the higher notion of ethics -- that there is an appropriate way to behave other than what is dictated by our most natural self. There is no such thing as animal murder. There is no animal rape. Do we exist in, or outside of nature? If we are above nature in the sense that we subscribe to ethics, and are responsible for our actions, that places animals below us, justly. We have a capability that animals do not, and therefore, have earned a station above that of a dog, a mouse, a chimp, or an elephant. A chimpanzee will never debate if it is right to slaughter its prey -- I will. If we exist within nature, we are obligated to behave as our instincts tell us we ought to behave. The teeth in my skull, my appetite, and the diet of my chimpanzee cousins indicate that we are omnivores. Our omnivorous friends, the bear and the ant, would agree: other animals taste good. If our so-loved-by-animal-rightists cousins are any indication, how would our society function? [youtube= To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. We may not be peaceful animals, but we are animals that subscribe to notions of right and wrong. By asking us to deny our superior ability to rationalize and to ignore our animal appetites, animal rightists offend both sensibilities and are dually irrational and unnatural. "And if it is this ability to rationalize and choose that sets us above animals," a Singer-supporter may ask, "then what about marginal cases?" What puts a baby or a retarded human above an animal? Species. This is a warranted preference; we ARE superior to animals. They ARE our dinner. We cannot deny that we exist at the very top of the food chain. But where do we draw the line between what is dinner, and what is a dependent on our income tax report? Species. Like a nice, clean line of birth in defining abortion or murder, we have the convenient line of human or not human.

Well put. I think of it in simpler terms. If cow isn't what's for dinner, why the hell does it taste so good, and why is it slower than me?

The thing that torques me off the most about the types who argue for "animal rights" (whatever that means), is that they don't live by example. If they truely believed humans are wrong, they would lead by example and off themselves. Freaking hypocrites.





Jaycen Rigger added to this post, 7 minutes and 36 seconds later...

	Originally Posted by Autoptic To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I could make a case for even mice using reason to survive, thus the need to be free to do it amusingly would apply directly against your argument.

Disney doesn't count, neither does Tom & Jerry. Those are cartoons and don't reflect reality...

Mice use some level of cunning and instinct to survive. This is not reason. Go look the words up and let's try again.

	Originally Posted by Autoptic To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Notably higher mental functions exist in non-humans as I already pointed out. Chimps can talk intelligently if they're taught which is more a matter of vocal ability and our socially inherited communication tricks which, of course, isn't any more present in feral humans despite their "nature".

Chimps never talk intelligently. It's never happened, not even once. To suggest otherwise it at best delusional.

What does "socially inherited" mean? Is it like genetics, only not? I'm confus-ed.

Originally Posted by Autoptic To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

That is a direct contradiction to the basis of your claim. This human animal doesn't have the rational capacity to survive and thus not the nature that you've so far described. Why isn't a chimps caretaker in the same situation even when the chimp is even capable of requesting his rights when informed of them? They know what death is and, at least one that I'm aware of, requested not to be killed.

Aw. That is so sad. You're so easily swayed by propaganda. Did you actually type out as INTJ?





Jaycen Rigger added to this post, 3 minutes and 12 seconds later...

	Originally Posted by Maarten To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	And we'll have to start prosecuting carnivores for murder to protect those poor prey animals To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. Obviously, if they have rights, they should respect others' rights, too. That'll be fun!

Right, but notice there's absolutely no attempt to address your point. That's because to try to do so would make them look even more rediculous. It's easier NOT to argue. When their arguements aren't based on logic, they'll always win, because they don't care whether it makes sense or not. They KNOW how they FEEL.

[Autoptic]

	Originally Posted by Jaycen Rigger To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Mice use some level of cunning and instinct to survive. This is not reason. Go look the words up and let's try again.

	Chimps never talk intelligently. It's never happened, not even once. To suggest otherwise it at best delusional.

talk    /tɔk/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [tawk] Show IPA Pronunciation –verb (used without object) 2. to consult or confer: Talk with your adviser. 3. to spread a rumor or tell a confidence; gossip. 7. to give or reveal confidential or incriminating information: After a long interrogation, the spy finally talked. 8. to communicate ideas by means other than speech, as by writing, signs, or signals. 9. Computers. to transmit data, as between computers or between a computer and a terminal.

	What does "socially inherited" mean? Is it like genetics, only not? I'm confus-ed.

Where the hell do you get genes from in that statement? I meant speech itself much less language or concepts like rights. It must be learned from others.

	Aw. That is so sad. You're so easily swayed by propaganda. Did you actually type out as INTJ?

That was an argument?

[Jaycen Rigger]

	Originally Posted by Autoptic To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Where the hell do you get genes from in that statement? I meant speech itself much less language or concepts like rights. It must be learned from others. That was an argument?

My labrador has learned that when she paws at us we give her treats. So she does it all the time in an attempt to get treats.

Is that intelligent communication?

When I ask her, "Is Timmy in the well", she barks. Is that communication? It's not, I just thought it would be funny to teach her to "speak" based on that question.

Does she reason that because she paws at the air, she receives treats? The chimp "signing" at her handlers was a trick. That the chimp has the capacity to learn more complicated tricks than my dog is no surprise. I think dogs are typically easier to train than cats. Cats are easier to train than mice.

That doesn't imply reasoned intellect. It doesn't come close to equating the animal's ability to human ability.

No, it wasn't an argument, and neither was your point. That a chimp didn't "want" something that wasn't a treat doesn't mean the chimp understood the concept of death and that it "didn't want to die". That is a HUGE logical leap.

[Autoptic]

	Originally Posted by Jaycen Rigger To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	The chimp "signing" at her handlers was a trick. That the chimp has the capacity to learn more complicated tricks than my dog is no surprise.

To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

[zibber]

Whoa now. Who died and made "reason" the sole criterion in this discussion? Other animals may not be as rational as us, but reason is no essential criterion for certain basic rights that have nothing to do with reason. Other animals do feel pain, for instance, yet I haven't seen that notion mentioned here once. We can quabble all day whether a mouse uses reason, but what bearing has that on rabbits getting mascara smeared on their eyes in labs? That smarts. You don't need reason to smart.

Not that attempting to formulate "absolute" ethical rules is quite Sisyphean, but let's at least use relevant criteria, you know?

I think it's sensible to say something like "if a being is capable of feeling pain, try not to hurt it". Better yet, "be aware that beings capable of feeling pain can be hurt". I think this is a very reasonable rule of thumb, and my own sort of adherence to it (rather: my awareness of other animals' capacity to feel pain) causes me utterly to despise factory farms and cosmetics laboratories. These are the main "targets" of animal liberation groups.

	Originally Posted by viraginity To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	We may not be peaceful animals, but we are animals that subscribe to notions of right and wrong. By asking us to deny our superior ability to rationalize and to ignore our animal appetites, animal rightists offend both sensibilities and are dually irrational and unnatural.

Indeed, you naturalise your opinion. Superior and inferior are value judgements.

And really.. animal rightists? Speciesism? I just hate to know that people of my species systematically torture other animals (for the sake of efficiency or whatever other reason). No isms. Just benevolence.

(To anticipate a possible counter: I am unsure about animal testing for strictly medical (as opposed to for instance cosmetic) purposes, but that is far removed from the rabbits I mentioned.)

Originally Posted by stasis To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

[Animals] are incapable of being ethical actors within our societies, therefore they can have no moral substance and no meaningful rights therein. ... The retort which appeals to absurdity by dehumanizing the handicapped or the retarded, who do in fact manifest human-type sociology and must therefore have ethical substance within human societies, however limited in relation to the average person at the extremes, looks more to me like a form of evasion than counterpoint.

Oh, no. It's a simple falsification of the rule "one must be capable of being an ethical actor to have rights (in a 'human society')".

If you're going to try to formulate general rules, you will be confronted with the exceptions. Exceptions exist. Exceptions prove that generalisation is not sufficient when dealing with reality.

	Originally Posted by stasis To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Proponents of animal rights ... bemoan the myopia of the so-called speciesism while simultaneously aspiring to draw the same bounds across life, only they'd like to draw them somewhere else.

Your abstraction is meant to show the absurdity or hypocrisy of the "animal rights 'cause'", right? What's wrong with questioning someone's criteria for drawing boundaries, though? It is a huge fallacy bluntly to compare the human/animal boundary to something like a pain/no pain boundary. It really isn't the same. It is an entirely different distinction, and you can't just compare them based on the label "bound(ary)" or "distinction".

[viraginity]

Originally Posted by zibber To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Indeed, you naturalise your opinion. Superior and inferior are value judgements. And really.. animal rightists? Speciesism? I just hate to know that people of my species systematically torture other animals (for the sake of efficiency or whatever other reason). No isms. Just benevolence. (To anticipate a possible counter: I am unsure about animal testing for strictly medical (as opposed to for instance cosmetic) purposes, but that is far removed from the rabbits I mentioned.)

Yes, value judgments. Exactly. A human life is more valuable than an animal life. My opinion is only half "natural" -- the half dealing with humans being omnivorous. The other half deals with ethics, and which species subscribe to them.

I work for a university here in the states for its division of lab animal medicine. My job is to maintain regulatory compliance, and to provide the animals (almost entirely rodents, though we have some birds, fish, frogs, dogs, and pigs) with veterinary care. Few people know this about animal research, but each institution receiving public funding (NIH grants) has an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee made up of scientists and non-scientists that read, debate, and approve or deny EVERY protocol dealing with animals, and further, they oversee all research with the power to boot anyone not adhering to the federal regulations or institutional standards.

We do NOT torture animals. We maintain high standards of animal care superior to those I have seen in every animal shelter I have ever entered, and work diligently and responsibly for the good of humanity and animal kind.

[melon]

Originally Posted by viraginity To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

I may ethically kill and eat an animal because it is inferior to me. A very simple concept held true by most humans. Not a point of contention outside of the realm of religious views or an excess of wealth. From the simplest view, we are animals. Animals eat animals. A cat eats a bird, and it is not evil. A spider kills another spider in a territorial dispute. It is nature. [snip] What puts a baby or a retarded human above an animal? Species. This is a warranted preference; we ARE superior to animals. They ARE our dinner. We cannot deny that we exist at the very top of the food chain. But where do we draw the line between what is dinner, and what is a dependent on our income tax report? Species. Like a nice, clean line of birth in defining abortion or murder, we have the convenient line of human or not human.

Appeal to the majority, appeal to nature, and false dilemma aside, your main claim seems to be that eating and killing animals is moral because we are "superior" (where you're apparently equating superiority with being high in the food chain). A hypothetical that I like to raise in this sort of debate is this: If we humans constructed an artificial intelligence that was superior to ourselves, would that artificial intelligence carry a greater weight than humans do in our moral decisions? In other words, would it be worse to murder a superior artificial intelligence, or a human? (This could also work with an extraterrestrial civilization, etc.) Your superiority argument would entail that we must treat a superior race more morally than we do humans, and that the superior race may ethically kill and eat humans. I find that people often get stuck in this hypothetical, as we don't often think, or like to think, of another race being superior to ourselves. If superiority under your definition could be measured, would a race possessing twice as much superiority carry twice the moral weight? If the race were 7 million times more superior than humans, would it be worse to kill one of the superior beings than the entire human race? Or, perhaps, you might draw another convenient fine line to solve this problem.