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This is quite a strawman. While there are some people in the world who do what you describe (but for different reasons)[1], doing away with the binary (and high

This is quite a strawman. While there are some people in the world who do what you describe (but for different reasons)[1], doing away with the binary (and highly suspect) barrier of "rationality" that that has been invoked at least as far back as Kant to elevate humans over all other animals is not tantamount to granting viruses and intestinal flora the right to vote and a universal basic income. There are other bases—very intuitive ones among them, like capacity to suffer or to anticipate the future—by which you could decide in a principled manner how much ethical consideration a certain organism is due. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahimsa_in_Jainism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahimsa_in_Jainism

nyolfen 9y ago
it’s not a strawman, he represented an earnest and well developed, if extreme, position on animal rights that many vegans hold
- lgessler 9y ago
  Let me do away with the word "strawman"--perhaps I have misused the word here. My point is that noobermin suggests that there are only two "bundles of rights" that we may give to organisms: those that we have traditionally given to humans and to non-human animals. Noobermin says that we must "draw a line" between organisms that we may exploit and organisms that we must regard as human-like. (That traditionally we have indeed used nothing more nuanced than a binary distinction is not important: we are talking about possible, not actual, ethical frameworks.) This is wrong in principle because you can choose to assign individual rights on an individual basis. E.g., in one system of animal rights, I might say that everything with at least as much capacity to feel pain as a crustacean must be put under anesthesia before any surgical operations are performed on it, but I might also say that any animal with the ability to use tools may not be raised and killed for food. What's important here is not the particulars of my hypothetical animal rights framework. It's just that different animals would have different rights: chimpanzees and pigs would both not be permitted to be operated on without anesthesia, but pigs (and not chimpanzees) would be allowed to be eaten. Thus if we accept that you can make graded decisions in how you assign animals rights, you are not put on the slippery slope that ultimately claims you are committing genocide every time you use soap.
  - noobermin 9y ago
    So I actually admit in the later reply down below that I don't really have a line. In fact, what I prefer is closer to what you suggest here: a level of respect for life that isn't bunched into two classes but should be on a spectrum dependent on their level of sentience. The reason I said the actual word "line" wasn't too literal, I meant it more in a colloquial sense; I think a more helpful wording would be "you can't include all animals under your definition of 'sentience', some will fall short and essentially make life very unpleasant for you and those humans you love." The commenter I was replying too shared links that suggest that nearly all mammals should have their life respected and their interests "cannot be considered to have less weight than humans' interests[0]", which is an extreme position most people won't take. [0] http://www.animal-ethics.org/sentience-section/relevance-of-sentience/ http://www.animal-ethics.org/sentience-section/relevance-of-...
thaumasiotes 9y ago
> There are other bases—very intuitive ones among them, like capacity to suffer or to anticipate the future—by which you could decide in a principled manner how much ethical consideration a certain organism is due. "Capacity to suffer" is no better defined than "rationality" is. Everything alive has the capacity to suffer, in that there are some states it seeks to avoid. If you try to imbue "suffering" with more metaphysical meaning than that... then you're relying on "rationality" to make your argument.

nyolfen 9y ago

it’s not a strawman, he represented an earnest and well developed, if extreme, position on animal rights that many vegans hold

lgessler 9y ago
Let me do away with the word "strawman"--perhaps I have misused the word here. My point is that noobermin suggests that there are only two "bundles of rights" that we may give to organisms: those that we have traditionally given to humans and to non-human animals. Noobermin says that we must "draw a line" between organisms that we may exploit and organisms that we must regard as human-like. (That traditionally we have indeed used nothing more nuanced than a binary distinction is not important: we are talking about possible, not actual, ethical frameworks.) This is wrong in principle because you can choose to assign individual rights on an individual basis. E.g., in one system of animal rights, I might say that everything with at least as much capacity to feel pain as a crustacean must be put under anesthesia before any surgical operations are performed on it, but I might also say that any animal with the ability to use tools may not be raised and killed for food. What's important here is not the particulars of my hypothetical animal rights framework. It's just that different animals would have different rights: chimpanzees and pigs would both not be permitted to be operated on without anesthesia, but pigs (and not chimpanzees) would be allowed to be eaten. Thus if we accept that you can make graded decisions in how you assign animals rights, you are not put on the slippery slope that ultimately claims you are committing genocide every time you use soap.
- noobermin 9y ago
  So I actually admit in the later reply down below that I don't really have a line. In fact, what I prefer is closer to what you suggest here: a level of respect for life that isn't bunched into two classes but should be on a spectrum dependent on their level of sentience. The reason I said the actual word "line" wasn't too literal, I meant it more in a colloquial sense; I think a more helpful wording would be "you can't include all animals under your definition of 'sentience', some will fall short and essentially make life very unpleasant for you and those humans you love." The commenter I was replying too shared links that suggest that nearly all mammals should have their life respected and their interests "cannot be considered to have less weight than humans' interests[0]", which is an extreme position most people won't take. [0] http://www.animal-ethics.org/sentience-section/relevance-of-sentience/ http://www.animal-ethics.org/sentience-section/relevance-of-...

thaumasiotes 9y ago

> There are other bases—very intuitive ones among them, like capacity to suffer or to anticipate the future—by which you could decide in a principled manner how much ethical consideration a certain organism is due. "Capacity to suffer" is no better defined than "rationality" is. Everything alive has the capacity to suffer, in that there are some states it seeks to avoid. If you try to imbue "suffering" with more metaphysical meaning than that... then you're relying on "rationality" to make your argument.