11 ms·

Animal rights is one of the biggest swept under the rug ethical issues of our day, and one in which I see lots of smart rational people stumble over themselves

Animal rights is one of the biggest swept under the rug ethical issues of our day, and one in which I see lots of smart rational people stumble over themselves to justify their habits (or uncomfortably turn a blind eye). Recommended listening is Peter Singer's Philosophy Bites interview, which links animal suffering to utilitarianism: http://philosophybites.com/2008/05/peter-singer-on.html http://philosophybites.com/2008/05/peter-singer-on.html

dsl 14y ago
I'm curious where animals get rights from in the first place? Serious question.
- salmanapk 14y ago
  From having feelings? WTF is wrong with you people.
  - hkmurakami 14y ago
    crap sorry I meant to upvote you but misclicked and downvoted you. I'll go upvote a random different post of yours to compensate. I'll also add that animals can feel 'pain'. The world is a better place with less overall pain.
  - Volpe 14y ago
    There are lots of ways to express how we should treat eachother (and animals), other than "Rights". Being able to think outside of the existing paradigm of rights based thinking is not something that is "wrong" it is actually more 'considered' than knee jerk assertions.
- glesica 14y ago
  That's a tricky question. Start with a different, and probably easier (for many people) question: where do humans get rights? There are many possible answers. Some people think our rights come from God (or gods), others take different approaches. Ultimately it's just a matter of deciding what is important and "true". You have to invent your own axioms in some sense, I think. So, once you've done that, you can use those axioms to decide whether or not animals have rights.
- smtddr 14y ago
  To answer your question, first you'll have to tell us where you think humans get their rights from. For me, I'd say that animals, humans and the general respect for all life comes from (not so)common decency and/or religion.
  - lostlogin 14y ago
    Religion is a great hinderence to human and animal rights in my view - too much personal responsibility is passed off.
- davekinkead 14y ago
  Rights are the correlative of duties and obligations. If people have a duty not to X, then who ever that duty is owed to now has a right to X. As a being capable of moral reflection, I think I have a duty not to inflict, or support the infliction upon, other beings capable of feeling pain and suffering. Thus, other beings have a right not to be inflicted with pain and suffering, from me at least.
  - tantalor 14y ago
    > pain and suffering As far as you know.
    - a_bonobo 14y ago
      Depends on your definition of "suffering" - if it's >Physical suffering or discomfort caused by illness or injury it has to be communicated to you, which in the case of animals is quite hard. On the other hand, if you define "suffering" as >an unpleasant situation causing signs of distress that is avoided by the sufferer, then you can make better predictions, because "avoidance" or "distress" are easier to measure.
    - colanderman 14y ago
      Ignorance is a poor excuse for moral blindness. If I am about to demolish a house, it is my moral duty to ensure that the house contains no occupants. It is not sufficient to claim "as far as I know the house is empty, therefore I needn't check". Similarly, if you make any moral claim predicated on the assumption that animals do not experience pain (or experience it to a lesser degree than humans), the burden is on you to demonstrate as much. If you do not take religion or the supernatural as an axiom, you face a very difficult proof due to the physiological and evolutionary similarities between humans and other animals.
      - icebraining 14y ago
        How does that work if we could (can?) not prove that plants and the other sources of food can feel pain? Does eating at all become immoral?
- jonmrodriguez 14y ago
  From a utilitarian standpoint, lets suppose that a human can feel +/- 100 utils, a pig can feel +/- 50 utils, and a chicken can feel +/- 20 utils. Even with these anthropocentric weightings, factory farming might be causing enough suffering to switch life on earth from net positive happiness to net negative.
  - icebraining 14y ago
    How says pigs get points?
    - lilsunnybee 14y ago
      Because they have a nervous system and the same brain as you as far as registering nerve impulses. If you've ever had a pet, they give all indications that they are suffering when they're in pain. If they give all indications of experiencing pain and suffering, though they cannot communicate this to us, the simplest explanation is that they feel pain and suffering.
- telesphore 14y ago
  Your question misses the point. Animals may not have the rights we grant a human, some would argue that they have no rights. But that does not mean that we then have the right to treat that creature with arbitrary cruelty. In fact, we don't allow arbitrary violence to be performed on inanimate objects, for instance you might get in trouble for damaging the Statue of Liberty. We decide what we will allow based on our own convictions, morals, customs, religion, etc. Many, likely most, people would agree that torturing animals,even those destined for slaughter, is wrong.
  - icebraining 14y ago
    In fact, we don't allow arbitrary violence to be performed on inanimate objects, for instance you might get in trouble for damaging the Statue of Liberty. That's not a right of the object, it's a right of the people who own the object. If I make a replica of the Statue, I can do whatever I please with it, including burning it to the ground.
- twentysix 14y ago
  We endowed it upon them. These rights apply only in human - animal relations and not animal - animal relations. Carnivorous animals and other plants are free to do as they like to their fellow beings. But, from what I know animals rarely abuse other animals for no reason. Usually there is a good reason for them to attack another animal like food, territory, self defense or if they are ill( elephants in musth, rabid dogs and wolves). What am trying to say is that animals get rights from the same place that we get rights, laws and social norms. Animals are farmed and killed for us to eat, the least we can do is to treat them with respect while they are alive. I am sleepy.
  - intended 14y ago
    From what I recall there are definitely cases of animal animal abuse - as in one animal torturing another for amusement. For the life of me I can't remember the exact incident. I do know of 1 monkey which decided to tease the ever living daylights out of a tiger/lion though.
    - sxp 14y ago
      Cats have a habit of playing with their food while their prey is still alive. If that cat was a human, then what they do would probably be classified as animal abuse.
    - boon 14y ago
      Is that really abuse? Play is one of those behaviors that animals exhibit to prepare for dangerous encounters. Arguably, that is just as important to their species survival.
    - tomjen3 14y ago
      Dolphins are rapist and attack their fellow dolphins for fun.
  - zizee 14y ago
    > But, from what I know animals rarely abuse other animals for no reason. Not trying to undermine your point, but wanted to point out that animals aren't always as noble as you suggest. Ever seen a cat playing with a mouse? http://youtu.be/O0qMT2YBIcg?t=27s http://youtu.be/O0qMT2YBIcg?t=27s
- fleitz 14y ago
  The same place we do, natural law, note that under natural law we can do whatever we please. The underpinnings of non-fiat social contract is the idea that we give up certain rights to the state, namely the right to commit violence against others, in exchange for protection of the remaining rights. In all honesty though we get our rights from wherever we can convince others that we have those rights, for example in the UK if you're born to the right parents you have the right to live in buckingham palace. They claim those people get those rights from God.
- n3rdy 14y ago
  Nobody and nothing gives you rights. You are born with them, and its up to you to assert them for yourself. Nobody is obligated to protect your rights for you (and vice versa), but they can do so voluntarily. Looking at it like this, it makes animal rights a matter of morality. An animal cannot defend its own rights, so they depend on humans to voluntarily defend their rights for them. Nobody is obligated to do so, but its reasonable to believe the world would be a better place if we treated animals better.
  - 1123581321 14y ago
    How do you know animals are born with such rights (or if humans are, for that matter), and if they want to exercise them the way you exercise what you believe to be yours? A somewhat facetious take on it from Chesterton: But what do we mean by making things better? Most modern talk on this matter is a mere argument in a circle -- that circle which we have already made the symbol of madness and of mere rationalism. Evolution is only good if it produces good; good is only good if it helps evolution. The elephant stands on the tortoise, and the tortoise on the elephant. Obviously, it will not do to take our ideal from the principle in nature; for the simple reason that (except for some human or divine theory), there is no principle in nature. For instance, the cheap anti-democrat of to-day will tell you solemnly that there is no equality in nature. He is right, but he does not see the logical addendum. There is no equality in nature; also there is no inequality in nature. Inequality, as much as equality, implies a standard of value. To read aristocracy into the anarchy of animals is just as sentimental as to read democracy into it. Both aristocracy and democracy are human ideals: the one saying that all men are valuable, the other that some men are more valuable. But nature does not say that cats are more valuable than mice; nature makes no remark on the subject. She does not even say that the cat is enviable or the mouse pitiable. We think the cat superior because we have (or most of us have) a particular philosophy to the effect that life is better than death. But if the mouse were a German pessimist mouse, he might not think that the cat had beaten him at all. He might think he had beaten the cat by getting to the grave first. Or he might feel that he had actually inflicted frightful punishment on the cat by keeping him alive. Just as a microbe might feel proud of spreading a pestilence, so the pessimistic mouse might exult to think that he was renewing in the cat the torture of conscious existence. It all depends on the philosophy of the mouse. You cannot even say that there is victory or superiority in nature unless you have some doctrine about what things are superior. You cannot even say that the cat scores unless there is a system of scoring. You cannot even say that the cat gets the best of it unless there is some best to be got.
- captain_mars 14y ago
  Let's assume that animals don't have any rights. Still, they do feel emotions such as joy and fear, and physical sensations such as pleasure and pain. And how we treat them does have an effect on which of these they are going to feel. Would I go out of my way to cause pain to an animal? Would I go out of my way to prevent pain to it? On what basis should I decide? I think everything we do says, "this is who I am". That is, through every action (or inaction), we make a statement about how we perceive of ourselves. If I perceive of myself as a kind person, I would be conflicted about doing anything that I know will cause pain to another sentient being. If I have low self-esteem and don't think of myself as a particularly nice person, I might not make much of an effort to regulate my behavior to account for the effect it might have on others. So, I would say that we forget about "animal rights", and think only about whether our actions truly reflect the kind of people and the kind of society we wish to be.
- jtheory 14y ago
  Oh man, I love this discussion but I'm late to the party. Before the animal question -- where do people get rights? "Rights" are absolutely not inherent to anyone or anything... though it serves our society if people believe that rights are natural and inherent. The language of rights reinforces that view, but it's obviously false if you think it through; they're a language construct around a behavioral guide. In reality, a single entity (person/animal/etc.) has no rights whatsoever. What "rights" do you have when you're alone? They only serve any purpose when you're interacting with others. Rights are something a thinking entity recognizes (acts as if they exist) in others. If you "recognize" a right in another entity, you guide your behavior to avoid violating that right. So generally non-humans aren't capable of respecting human rights -- your dog can't personally understand that the mailman has a right to unhampered movement in public walkways. But that's irrelevant to whether "animal rights" can exist -- if a thinking person recognizes that an animal has a right (to no undue suffering, whatever), that animal now has that right. In the eyes of that one person, anyway. The animal rights struggle is generally about getting more people generally to respect rights in animals, and then enshrining those rights in law (to force recognition of those rights even in people who don't intellectually agree the right is merited). I love thinking about this stuff because the language is so misleading -- I was confused about rights for many years, before I finally sat down and mapped out what actually happens IRL when various rights were respected, violated, etc..
Falling3 14y ago
I'm completely with you on your first sentence. I experience this first hand on a regular basis. Ironically, you point to Peter Singer after mentioning animal rights and you specifically point out his utilitarian stance. Singer (despite having brought many people into the Animal Rights world) is a utilitarian. He does no believe in rights. In fact, he has recently softened his stance even further - see the "Paris Exception".
- EdSanchez 14y ago
  Indeed - If you want true animal rights read Gary Francione's books, essays and blog. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=gary+francione http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3D...
  - Falling3 14y ago
    I second Francione. He's definitely an impassioned proponent of true rights.
- siglesias 14y ago
  I agree with you, but I only intend this as an introduction, a jumping off point. Regardless of the utilitarianism, the idea of extending our ethical frameworks to animals because they suffer, then considering evidence that they suffer, is a compelling proposition.
jonah 14y ago
> Animal rights is one of the biggest swept under the rug > ethical issues of our day, and one in which I see lots of > smart rational people stumble over themselves to justify > their habits (or uncomfortably turn a blind eye). Another, probably larger one, is abortion. Otherwise progressive, considerate people rationalizing that it's alright to kill people just because they're not born yet. It's generally inconsistent with the other positions people who support abortion take.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  Without wishing to get into that whole debate, abortion is something that is fairly well discussed here in the UK and as far as I can tell even more so in the US. Most people tend to have some opinion on it. Animal rights seems to be something that even people who often have strong opinions tend not to discuss.
  - jonah 14y ago
    I see your point. Some similarities though are that we need to speak out for the people and animals who can't defend themselves and the opposing sides on of each issue tend to talk "past" each other.
- eurleif 14y ago
  Do you think abortion is wrong from the moment of conception? I think a zygote is clearly incapable of experiencing suffering, just like an animal clearly is capable.
  - jonah 14y ago
    I think capability to feel pain is the wrong criteria. Following that line of thinking, would it be OK to kill someone while they were anesthetized? They wouldn't feel pain. It's the destroying of a genetically unique individual human that is the issue. No matter how far along the continuum of development they are.
    - 14y ago
pron 14y ago
This is actually a very complex issue. I want to share my perspective on eating meat, but before, let me just say that human values change quite often, and it's perfectly possible that 50 years from now, society will judge our meat-eating culture just as harshly as we judge slavery today, and I could be completely wrong. Now, I think this issue is best split into two parts: treating animals and killing them. The first part is much more clear-cut: many farm animals are treated cruelly (mostly in the dairy and poultry industries), and this should change. The issue of killing animals is complicated. About a year and a half ago, the magazine I used to work for sent me and a photographer on a hunting safari in South Africa. I went there half expecting to write about the cruelty of man and the beauty of nature; I expected to write about the evils of hunting. Only problem is -- the trip changed my mind. So much so that my vegan editor decided not to run the story (I would share it, only it's in Hebrew and my English isn't good enough for me to translate it all). 1. Pain and suffering Oh, the hunters (most of them, really) were just as cruel as I had expected. But nature was far crueler. The simple truth is this: no animal dies a dignified death in the company of family and friends. The lucky ones get a bullet or fall prey to leopards. The less fortunate are eaten by hyenas who eat the poor animal, starting at the stomach, while it's still alive. The rest die slowly of starvation, lying exhausted while vultures pick out their eyes and jackals eat their legs. 2. Death and destruction The main issue, as I see it, is this: every creature, large or small, every organism, living on this planet kills others. From bacteria and plankton to blue whales: their mere existence means death to others. It was once believed that nature is harmonious, that all animals and plants live with one another, each having its place in the ecosystem. But this is false. It was found that if you visit, say, a forest, and take inventory of its flora and fauna, then come back 70 years later, the picture will be completely different. As a general rule, species don't live with other species in harmony. They compete, and some come out victorious. Then you have people. Like all other species, we, too, cannot avoid killing other species. What, you want to eat legumes instead of meat? Well, antelopes cannot live in a field. They can, however, live among free-range cattle. And those antelopes, buffalos and leopards that would die because you want to grow a wheat field will die a far more horrible death than cattle in the abbatoir. You say we turn a blind eye to the pleas of the cows? What about that of the antelopes? When agriculture was invented and people started planting fields to sustain a huge human population, many animals were condemned to death -- and those weren't farm animals. It's just that we feel disgusted when we see the blood. Western civilization has slowly tried to distance death and gore from our lives. But it's absolutely impossible to avoid it. We can only push it further away from us. 3. Meat The question of eating meat, while a moral one, is different from that of slavery because of the role meat has played in our own evolution. There is no doubt that meat has played a crucial role (though there is duscussion about the magnitude of its importance). Only meat was nutritionally dense enough to support a very energetically wasteful brain, and said brain evolved (in part if not mostly) for the purpose of hunting animals. It is little wonder that all primitive art depicted hunting. The first stories were about hunting, animals, and the gods, demons and monsters our forefathers encountered while hunting those animals. They were told around the fire where the meat was cooked. Also, there are several cultures that are entirely meat-eaters (the Inuit) and don't consume vegetables at all. To the best of my knowledge there have never been vegetartian societies. Now, this does not mean that the question of the morality of meat-eating should not be asked, only that it touches our very core. Lastly, I just want to go back for minute to the issue of animal treatment. There is little doubt that chickens in industrial poultry farms are treated badly. They suffer. But growing free-range chickens and cows is so much more expensive (I think). This would mean that only the rich could afford "ethical" meat. Industrial farming allows even the poor to have it. This, however, does not mean that we shouldn't do our best to improve animals' living conditions in areas of the world that can afford it.
belorn 14y ago
I wrote about this a while back on a other thread. One answer I have received to the question about "why is it perfectly moral to eat animals", was that the ecology balance in nature would break down if humanity suddenly stopped eating meat. Not only have we forced our self to be part of almost everything, but our actions have cemented us to a central position. Farmers has chased away predators to the point where hunters are needed to maintain balance in many forests. Some lakes are so polluted with nutrients, that you need to maintain fishing just to keep some species from extincting other less common fish species. This doesn't address however why breeding animals for meat is fine. This is speculation, but some local farmers might say that as long the animal can live a happy life, then why shouldn't we eat them. The farmer job is to maintain a happy flock of chickens/cows/turkeys, and makes sure it stay healthy and in appropriate size. If they do that, then morality should be on their side. Farms that do not maintain a happy flock, or farmers that exploit and treat animals cruelly should not be allowed to have animals. We do not need to stop eating meat to get this result, as it just common sense. If a person beats their dog, or strangle kittens, we do not propose to stop allowing people to have cats or dogs. We just put the cat strangler in jail, or have large fines applied to the guilty person. The problem regarding "factory farming" is that we do not enforce such policy.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  I don't know how effective it would be to enforce such a policy. If you put up strict welfare requirements on farmers in your country then people would simply buy cheaper meat from elsewhere without the regulations. So it's actually more effective to have low welfare requirements that are only slightly better than those abroad in order to keep prices competitive so that people buy from the farms with marginally better conditions. The only other solution would be to impose a high import tax on meat from countries that did not meet the same standards.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    English pig farmers faced this for a while. Vegetarians pushed for stricter welfare requirements, but then did not buy the product. English people for a long time were buying Danish bacon, thinking it was higher quality. (Luckily, Danish farmers voluntarily moved to higher welfare standards, and now English bacon has got a better reputation.) > So it's actually more effective to have low welfare requirements that are only slightly better than those abroad in order to keep prices competitive so that people buy from the farms with marginally better conditions. I think it's better to have decent welfare standards, and then to educate consumers about the differences between local farms and distant farms. Scandals like the "horse meat in ready meals" help to educate consumers about the importance of knowing where meat is produced. Import duties are also helpful, but there are problems with world trade organisations.
gadders 14y ago
I remember listening to a Teaching Company course on philosophy and something they said about Nietzsche stayed with me. As I understood it, he said that we (as humans) are too close to some issues to effectively judge them philosophically, and one of the examples given was the eating of other animals. I understand that people are a meat-eating species, but we can work around that if necessary. Does the fact that it's our "nature" excuse us from responsibility? Just to add my current position: I'm a meat-eater.
tomjen3 14y ago
Is Singer the philosopher who wants to give rights to monkeys? I tend to see his name plastered over animal rights debates.
tassl 14y ago
Our habits, the way of living, having computers, cars, houses, roads... is killing more animals in quantity and variety (and in a more cruel and irremediable way) than they're killed for food. Everybody in this thread, giving the "right" conditions would kill/eat any kind of animal (I would go farther and include humans [1]). At the end, it only depends on the circumstances (and I would cite Ortega i Gasset here: "I am myself and my circumstances"), and even if we deny it, giving certain circumstances we would have been nazis, assassins, or (almost) anything we can imagine. At the end of the day, it is just a matter of setting the bar. For some, the logic choice is to be vegetarian or vegan. I have read in this people describing this diet as healthy, and some that don't understand how people eat meat. My answer is that being a conscious choice, I am healthier when I eat meat. Eating grain/soy/dairy products basically affects negatively my body, my mood while eating meat optimizes my lifestyle. So for me the bar is set pretty low. Also, I probably understand healthy living in a different way than most people here, and I am convinced that a vegetarian/vegan diet is far from being healthy. In any case, my choice goes for grass-fed, range/pasture free animals. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Andes_flight_disaster#Cannibalism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Andes_flight_disaster#Cann...

dsl 14y ago

I'm curious where animals get rights from in the first place? Serious question.

salmanapk 14y ago
From having feelings? WTF is wrong with you people.
- hkmurakami 14y ago
  crap sorry I meant to upvote you but misclicked and downvoted you. I'll go upvote a random different post of yours to compensate. I'll also add that animals can feel 'pain'. The world is a better place with less overall pain.
- Volpe 14y ago
  There are lots of ways to express how we should treat eachother (and animals), other than "Rights". Being able to think outside of the existing paradigm of rights based thinking is not something that is "wrong" it is actually more 'considered' than knee jerk assertions.
glesica 14y ago
That's a tricky question. Start with a different, and probably easier (for many people) question: where do humans get rights? There are many possible answers. Some people think our rights come from God (or gods), others take different approaches. Ultimately it's just a matter of deciding what is important and "true". You have to invent your own axioms in some sense, I think. So, once you've done that, you can use those axioms to decide whether or not animals have rights.
smtddr 14y ago
To answer your question, first you'll have to tell us where you think humans get their rights from. For me, I'd say that animals, humans and the general respect for all life comes from (not so)common decency and/or religion.
- lostlogin 14y ago
  Religion is a great hinderence to human and animal rights in my view - too much personal responsibility is passed off.
davekinkead 14y ago
Rights are the correlative of duties and obligations. If people have a duty not to X, then who ever that duty is owed to now has a right to X. As a being capable of moral reflection, I think I have a duty not to inflict, or support the infliction upon, other beings capable of feeling pain and suffering. Thus, other beings have a right not to be inflicted with pain and suffering, from me at least.
- tantalor 14y ago
  > pain and suffering As far as you know.
  - a_bonobo 14y ago
    Depends on your definition of "suffering" - if it's >Physical suffering or discomfort caused by illness or injury it has to be communicated to you, which in the case of animals is quite hard. On the other hand, if you define "suffering" as >an unpleasant situation causing signs of distress that is avoided by the sufferer, then you can make better predictions, because "avoidance" or "distress" are easier to measure.
  - colanderman 14y ago
    Ignorance is a poor excuse for moral blindness. If I am about to demolish a house, it is my moral duty to ensure that the house contains no occupants. It is not sufficient to claim "as far as I know the house is empty, therefore I needn't check". Similarly, if you make any moral claim predicated on the assumption that animals do not experience pain (or experience it to a lesser degree than humans), the burden is on you to demonstrate as much. If you do not take religion or the supernatural as an axiom, you face a very difficult proof due to the physiological and evolutionary similarities between humans and other animals.
    - icebraining 14y ago
      How does that work if we could (can?) not prove that plants and the other sources of food can feel pain? Does eating at all become immoral?
jonmrodriguez 14y ago
From a utilitarian standpoint, lets suppose that a human can feel +/- 100 utils, a pig can feel +/- 50 utils, and a chicken can feel +/- 20 utils. Even with these anthropocentric weightings, factory farming might be causing enough suffering to switch life on earth from net positive happiness to net negative.
- icebraining 14y ago
  How says pigs get points?
  - lilsunnybee 14y ago
    Because they have a nervous system and the same brain as you as far as registering nerve impulses. If you've ever had a pet, they give all indications that they are suffering when they're in pain. If they give all indications of experiencing pain and suffering, though they cannot communicate this to us, the simplest explanation is that they feel pain and suffering.
telesphore 14y ago
Your question misses the point. Animals may not have the rights we grant a human, some would argue that they have no rights. But that does not mean that we then have the right to treat that creature with arbitrary cruelty. In fact, we don't allow arbitrary violence to be performed on inanimate objects, for instance you might get in trouble for damaging the Statue of Liberty. We decide what we will allow based on our own convictions, morals, customs, religion, etc. Many, likely most, people would agree that torturing animals,even those destined for slaughter, is wrong.
- icebraining 14y ago
  In fact, we don't allow arbitrary violence to be performed on inanimate objects, for instance you might get in trouble for damaging the Statue of Liberty. That's not a right of the object, it's a right of the people who own the object. If I make a replica of the Statue, I can do whatever I please with it, including burning it to the ground.
twentysix 14y ago
We endowed it upon them. These rights apply only in human - animal relations and not animal - animal relations. Carnivorous animals and other plants are free to do as they like to their fellow beings. But, from what I know animals rarely abuse other animals for no reason. Usually there is a good reason for them to attack another animal like food, territory, self defense or if they are ill( elephants in musth, rabid dogs and wolves). What am trying to say is that animals get rights from the same place that we get rights, laws and social norms. Animals are farmed and killed for us to eat, the least we can do is to treat them with respect while they are alive. I am sleepy.
- intended 14y ago
  From what I recall there are definitely cases of animal animal abuse - as in one animal torturing another for amusement. For the life of me I can't remember the exact incident. I do know of 1 monkey which decided to tease the ever living daylights out of a tiger/lion though.
  - sxp 14y ago
    Cats have a habit of playing with their food while their prey is still alive. If that cat was a human, then what they do would probably be classified as animal abuse.
  - boon 14y ago
    Is that really abuse? Play is one of those behaviors that animals exhibit to prepare for dangerous encounters. Arguably, that is just as important to their species survival.
  - tomjen3 14y ago
    Dolphins are rapist and attack their fellow dolphins for fun.
- zizee 14y ago
  > But, from what I know animals rarely abuse other animals for no reason. Not trying to undermine your point, but wanted to point out that animals aren't always as noble as you suggest. Ever seen a cat playing with a mouse? http://youtu.be/O0qMT2YBIcg?t=27s http://youtu.be/O0qMT2YBIcg?t=27s
fleitz 14y ago
The same place we do, natural law, note that under natural law we can do whatever we please. The underpinnings of non-fiat social contract is the idea that we give up certain rights to the state, namely the right to commit violence against others, in exchange for protection of the remaining rights. In all honesty though we get our rights from wherever we can convince others that we have those rights, for example in the UK if you're born to the right parents you have the right to live in buckingham palace. They claim those people get those rights from God.
n3rdy 14y ago
Nobody and nothing gives you rights. You are born with them, and its up to you to assert them for yourself. Nobody is obligated to protect your rights for you (and vice versa), but they can do so voluntarily. Looking at it like this, it makes animal rights a matter of morality. An animal cannot defend its own rights, so they depend on humans to voluntarily defend their rights for them. Nobody is obligated to do so, but its reasonable to believe the world would be a better place if we treated animals better.
- 1123581321 14y ago
  How do you know animals are born with such rights (or if humans are, for that matter), and if they want to exercise them the way you exercise what you believe to be yours? A somewhat facetious take on it from Chesterton: But what do we mean by making things better? Most modern talk on this matter is a mere argument in a circle -- that circle which we have already made the symbol of madness and of mere rationalism. Evolution is only good if it produces good; good is only good if it helps evolution. The elephant stands on the tortoise, and the tortoise on the elephant. Obviously, it will not do to take our ideal from the principle in nature; for the simple reason that (except for some human or divine theory), there is no principle in nature. For instance, the cheap anti-democrat of to-day will tell you solemnly that there is no equality in nature. He is right, but he does not see the logical addendum. There is no equality in nature; also there is no inequality in nature. Inequality, as much as equality, implies a standard of value. To read aristocracy into the anarchy of animals is just as sentimental as to read democracy into it. Both aristocracy and democracy are human ideals: the one saying that all men are valuable, the other that some men are more valuable. But nature does not say that cats are more valuable than mice; nature makes no remark on the subject. She does not even say that the cat is enviable or the mouse pitiable. We think the cat superior because we have (or most of us have) a particular philosophy to the effect that life is better than death. But if the mouse were a German pessimist mouse, he might not think that the cat had beaten him at all. He might think he had beaten the cat by getting to the grave first. Or he might feel that he had actually inflicted frightful punishment on the cat by keeping him alive. Just as a microbe might feel proud of spreading a pestilence, so the pessimistic mouse might exult to think that he was renewing in the cat the torture of conscious existence. It all depends on the philosophy of the mouse. You cannot even say that there is victory or superiority in nature unless you have some doctrine about what things are superior. You cannot even say that the cat scores unless there is a system of scoring. You cannot even say that the cat gets the best of it unless there is some best to be got.
captain_mars 14y ago
Let's assume that animals don't have any rights. Still, they do feel emotions such as joy and fear, and physical sensations such as pleasure and pain. And how we treat them does have an effect on which of these they are going to feel. Would I go out of my way to cause pain to an animal? Would I go out of my way to prevent pain to it? On what basis should I decide? I think everything we do says, "this is who I am". That is, through every action (or inaction), we make a statement about how we perceive of ourselves. If I perceive of myself as a kind person, I would be conflicted about doing anything that I know will cause pain to another sentient being. If I have low self-esteem and don't think of myself as a particularly nice person, I might not make much of an effort to regulate my behavior to account for the effect it might have on others. So, I would say that we forget about "animal rights", and think only about whether our actions truly reflect the kind of people and the kind of society we wish to be.
jtheory 14y ago
Oh man, I love this discussion but I'm late to the party. Before the animal question -- where do people get rights? "Rights" are absolutely not inherent to anyone or anything... though it serves our society if people believe that rights are natural and inherent. The language of rights reinforces that view, but it's obviously false if you think it through; they're a language construct around a behavioral guide. In reality, a single entity (person/animal/etc.) has no rights whatsoever. What "rights" do you have when you're alone? They only serve any purpose when you're interacting with others. Rights are something a thinking entity recognizes (acts as if they exist) in others. If you "recognize" a right in another entity, you guide your behavior to avoid violating that right. So generally non-humans aren't capable of respecting human rights -- your dog can't personally understand that the mailman has a right to unhampered movement in public walkways. But that's irrelevant to whether "animal rights" can exist -- if a thinking person recognizes that an animal has a right (to no undue suffering, whatever), that animal now has that right. In the eyes of that one person, anyway. The animal rights struggle is generally about getting more people generally to respect rights in animals, and then enshrining those rights in law (to force recognition of those rights even in people who don't intellectually agree the right is merited). I love thinking about this stuff because the language is so misleading -- I was confused about rights for many years, before I finally sat down and mapped out what actually happens IRL when various rights were respected, violated, etc..

Falling3 14y ago

I'm completely with you on your first sentence. I experience this first hand on a regular basis. Ironically, you point to Peter Singer after mentioning animal rights and you specifically point out his utilitarian stance. Singer (despite having brought many people into the Animal Rights world) is a utilitarian. He does no believe in rights. In fact, he has recently softened his stance even further - see the "Paris Exception".

EdSanchez 14y ago
Indeed - If you want true animal rights read Gary Francione's books, essays and blog. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=gary+francione http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3D...
- Falling3 14y ago
  I second Francione. He's definitely an impassioned proponent of true rights.
siglesias 14y ago
I agree with you, but I only intend this as an introduction, a jumping off point. Regardless of the utilitarianism, the idea of extending our ethical frameworks to animals because they suffer, then considering evidence that they suffer, is a compelling proposition.

jonah 14y ago

> Animal rights is one of the biggest swept under the rug > ethical issues of our day, and one in which I see lots of > smart rational people stumble over themselves to justify > their habits (or uncomfortably turn a blind eye). Another, probably larger one, is abortion. Otherwise progressive, considerate people rationalizing that it's alright to kill people just because they're not born yet. It's generally inconsistent with the other positions people who support abortion take.

jiggy2011 14y ago
Without wishing to get into that whole debate, abortion is something that is fairly well discussed here in the UK and as far as I can tell even more so in the US. Most people tend to have some opinion on it. Animal rights seems to be something that even people who often have strong opinions tend not to discuss.
- jonah 14y ago
  I see your point. Some similarities though are that we need to speak out for the people and animals who can't defend themselves and the opposing sides on of each issue tend to talk "past" each other.
eurleif 14y ago
Do you think abortion is wrong from the moment of conception? I think a zygote is clearly incapable of experiencing suffering, just like an animal clearly is capable.
- jonah 14y ago
  I think capability to feel pain is the wrong criteria. Following that line of thinking, would it be OK to kill someone while they were anesthetized? They wouldn't feel pain. It's the destroying of a genetically unique individual human that is the issue. No matter how far along the continuum of development they are.
  - 14y ago

pron 14y ago

This is actually a very complex issue. I want to share my perspective on eating meat, but before, let me just say that human values change quite often, and it's perfectly possible that 50 years from now, society will judge our meat-eating culture just as harshly as we judge slavery today, and I could be completely wrong. Now, I think this issue is best split into two parts: treating animals and killing them. The first part is much more clear-cut: many farm animals are treated cruelly (mostly in the dairy and poultry industries), and this should change. The issue of killing animals is complicated. About a year and a half ago, the magazine I used to work for sent me and a photographer on a hunting safari in South Africa. I went there half expecting to write about the cruelty of man and the beauty of nature; I expected to write about the evils of hunting. Only problem is -- the trip changed my mind. So much so that my vegan editor decided not to run the story (I would share it, only it's in Hebrew and my English isn't good enough for me to translate it all). 1. Pain and suffering Oh, the hunters (most of them, really) were just as cruel as I had expected. But nature was far crueler. The simple truth is this: no animal dies a dignified death in the company of family and friends. The lucky ones get a bullet or fall prey to leopards. The less fortunate are eaten by hyenas who eat the poor animal, starting at the stomach, while it's still alive. The rest die slowly of starvation, lying exhausted while vultures pick out their eyes and jackals eat their legs. 2. Death and destruction The main issue, as I see it, is this: every creature, large or small, every organism, living on this planet kills others. From bacteria and plankton to blue whales: their mere existence means death to others. It was once believed that nature is harmonious, that all animals and plants live with one another, each having its place in the ecosystem. But this is false. It was found that if you visit, say, a forest, and take inventory of its flora and fauna, then come back 70 years later, the picture will be completely different. As a general rule, species don't live with other species in harmony. They compete, and some come out victorious. Then you have people. Like all other species, we, too, cannot avoid killing other species. What, you want to eat legumes instead of meat? Well, antelopes cannot live in a field. They can, however, live among free-range cattle. And those antelopes, buffalos and leopards that would die because you want to grow a wheat field will die a far more horrible death than cattle in the abbatoir. You say we turn a blind eye to the pleas of the cows? What about that of the antelopes? When agriculture was invented and people started planting fields to sustain a huge human population, many animals were condemned to death -- and those weren't farm animals. It's just that we feel disgusted when we see the blood. Western civilization has slowly tried to distance death and gore from our lives. But it's absolutely impossible to avoid it. We can only push it further away from us. 3. Meat The question of eating meat, while a moral one, is different from that of slavery because of the role meat has played in our own evolution. There is no doubt that meat has played a crucial role (though there is duscussion about the magnitude of its importance). Only meat was nutritionally dense enough to support a very energetically wasteful brain, and said brain evolved (in part if not mostly) for the purpose of hunting animals. It is little wonder that all primitive art depicted hunting. The first stories were about hunting, animals, and the gods, demons and monsters our forefathers encountered while hunting those animals. They were told around the fire where the meat was cooked. Also, there are several cultures that are entirely meat-eaters (the Inuit) and don't consume vegetables at all. To the best of my knowledge there have never been vegetartian societies. Now, this does not mean that the question of the morality of meat-eating should not be asked, only that it touches our very core. Lastly, I just want to go back for minute to the issue of animal treatment. There is little doubt that chickens in industrial poultry farms are treated badly. They suffer. But growing free-range chickens and cows is so much more expensive (I think). This would mean that only the rich could afford "ethical" meat. Industrial farming allows even the poor to have it. This, however, does not mean that we shouldn't do our best to improve animals' living conditions in areas of the world that can afford it.

belorn 14y ago

I wrote about this a while back on a other thread. One answer I have received to the question about "why is it perfectly moral to eat animals", was that the ecology balance in nature would break down if humanity suddenly stopped eating meat. Not only have we forced our self to be part of almost everything, but our actions have cemented us to a central position. Farmers has chased away predators to the point where hunters are needed to maintain balance in many forests. Some lakes are so polluted with nutrients, that you need to maintain fishing just to keep some species from extincting other less common fish species. This doesn't address however why breeding animals for meat is fine. This is speculation, but some local farmers might say that as long the animal can live a happy life, then why shouldn't we eat them. The farmer job is to maintain a happy flock of chickens/cows/turkeys, and makes sure it stay healthy and in appropriate size. If they do that, then morality should be on their side. Farms that do not maintain a happy flock, or farmers that exploit and treat animals cruelly should not be allowed to have animals. We do not need to stop eating meat to get this result, as it just common sense. If a person beats their dog, or strangle kittens, we do not propose to stop allowing people to have cats or dogs. We just put the cat strangler in jail, or have large fines applied to the guilty person. The problem regarding "factory farming" is that we do not enforce such policy.

jiggy2011 14y ago
I don't know how effective it would be to enforce such a policy. If you put up strict welfare requirements on farmers in your country then people would simply buy cheaper meat from elsewhere without the regulations. So it's actually more effective to have low welfare requirements that are only slightly better than those abroad in order to keep prices competitive so that people buy from the farms with marginally better conditions. The only other solution would be to impose a high import tax on meat from countries that did not meet the same standards.
- DanBC 14y ago
  English pig farmers faced this for a while. Vegetarians pushed for stricter welfare requirements, but then did not buy the product. English people for a long time were buying Danish bacon, thinking it was higher quality. (Luckily, Danish farmers voluntarily moved to higher welfare standards, and now English bacon has got a better reputation.) > So it's actually more effective to have low welfare requirements that are only slightly better than those abroad in order to keep prices competitive so that people buy from the farms with marginally better conditions. I think it's better to have decent welfare standards, and then to educate consumers about the differences between local farms and distant farms. Scandals like the "horse meat in ready meals" help to educate consumers about the importance of knowing where meat is produced. Import duties are also helpful, but there are problems with world trade organisations.

gadders 14y ago

I remember listening to a Teaching Company course on philosophy and something they said about Nietzsche stayed with me. As I understood it, he said that we (as humans) are too close to some issues to effectively judge them philosophically, and one of the examples given was the eating of other animals. I understand that people are a meat-eating species, but we can work around that if necessary. Does the fact that it's our "nature" excuse us from responsibility? Just to add my current position: I'm a meat-eater.

tomjen3 14y ago

Is Singer the philosopher who wants to give rights to monkeys? I tend to see his name plastered over animal rights debates.

tassl 14y ago

Our habits, the way of living, having computers, cars, houses, roads... is killing more animals in quantity and variety (and in a more cruel and irremediable way) than they're killed for food. Everybody in this thread, giving the "right" conditions would kill/eat any kind of animal (I would go farther and include humans [1]). At the end, it only depends on the circumstances (and I would cite Ortega i Gasset here: "I am myself and my circumstances"), and even if we deny it, giving certain circumstances we would have been nazis, assassins, or (almost) anything we can imagine. At the end of the day, it is just a matter of setting the bar. For some, the logic choice is to be vegetarian or vegan. I have read in this people describing this diet as healthy, and some that don't understand how people eat meat. My answer is that being a conscious choice, I am healthier when I eat meat. Eating grain/soy/dairy products basically affects negatively my body, my mood while eating meat optimizes my lifestyle. So for me the bar is set pretty low. Also, I probably understand healthy living in a different way than most people here, and I am convinced that a vegetarian/vegan diet is far from being healthy. In any case, my choice goes for grass-fed, range/pasture free animals. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Andes_flight_disaster#Cannibalism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Andes_flight_disaster#Cann...