4 ms·

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

by 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.
- n3rdy 14y ago
  > How do you know animals are born with such rights (or if humans are, for that matter) In my world, the only obligations anyone or anything has, are to defend yourself, and to treat others in the manner that you would want to be treated. Exploiting a superiority over another species just because you can, in my opinion, is an indication of that one hasn't transcended inferior instincts. All personal opinions of course, I could be wrong about everything.
  - icebraining 14y ago
    Does that apply to plants? They're species too.
    - aerique 14y ago
      For a lot of people it applies to plants as well. I wouldn't for the sake of it willfully maim or destroy a plant. That said, I'm also not the kind of guy that watches his footsteps to avoid stepping on ants or grass.
    - n3rdy 14y ago
      It could apply to anything, I've heard of vegans who go as far as not using anti-bacterial soap because they don't want to kill the bacteria, or not eating honey because they consider the honey as stolen property belonging to the bees. My point is in order to do something you wouldn't like done to you to something else, not out of necessity, but just because you feel like doing it, you may have missed an update or two from evolution's package manager.
  - akiselev 14y ago
    "just because you can" Yeah screw trying to provide consistent source of protein for 7 billion people. We torture and mutilate cows and chickens just because we can.
    - n3rdy 14y ago
      That wouldn't fall under the umbrella of "just because you can". Just because you can means, you don't need to, but you do it anyway, because you can. I'm also arguing that it is not necessary to be cruel to animals, even if you have to eat them. Beating and torturing a chicken doesn't provide any more protein than if you treated it humanely and slaughtered it in a quick and painless way. You can even argue that being a part of our diet actually benefits the species as a whole. You don't see cows and chickens on an endangered species list, but you don't see them in the wild either. To go even further, we will eventually have the ability to create synthetic meats that don't require us to slaughter animals.
jtheory 14y ago
This is a pretty common view -- and it's how the language of rights works, really (you have the right to X, all humans have human rights, etc.), but it's not true. The language is misleading. Think about what rights you have when you're alone. None whatsoever -- rights only apply when you're interacting with others! Rights are behavioral rules that we agree on, encoded as if they were inherent to people because it's simpler to think of them that way (and our society benefits from the misdirection, on the whole). Rights are things that thinking beings can "respect" in others (and follow the behavioral rules), or not -- this works the same for respecting human or animal rights -- but they are a completely human construct.

by n3rdy 14y ago

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.

n3rdy 14y ago
> How do you know animals are born with such rights (or if humans are, for that matter) In my world, the only obligations anyone or anything has, are to defend yourself, and to treat others in the manner that you would want to be treated. Exploiting a superiority over another species just because you can, in my opinion, is an indication of that one hasn't transcended inferior instincts. All personal opinions of course, I could be wrong about everything.
- icebraining 14y ago
  Does that apply to plants? They're species too.
  - aerique 14y ago
    For a lot of people it applies to plants as well. I wouldn't for the sake of it willfully maim or destroy a plant. That said, I'm also not the kind of guy that watches his footsteps to avoid stepping on ants or grass.
  - n3rdy 14y ago
    It could apply to anything, I've heard of vegans who go as far as not using anti-bacterial soap because they don't want to kill the bacteria, or not eating honey because they consider the honey as stolen property belonging to the bees. My point is in order to do something you wouldn't like done to you to something else, not out of necessity, but just because you feel like doing it, you may have missed an update or two from evolution's package manager.
- akiselev 14y ago
  "just because you can" Yeah screw trying to provide consistent source of protein for 7 billion people. We torture and mutilate cows and chickens just because we can.
  - n3rdy 14y ago
    That wouldn't fall under the umbrella of "just because you can". Just because you can means, you don't need to, but you do it anyway, because you can. I'm also arguing that it is not necessary to be cruel to animals, even if you have to eat them. Beating and torturing a chicken doesn't provide any more protein than if you treated it humanely and slaughtered it in a quick and painless way. You can even argue that being a part of our diet actually benefits the species as a whole. You don't see cows and chickens on an endangered species list, but you don't see them in the wild either. To go even further, we will eventually have the ability to create synthetic meats that don't require us to slaughter animals.

jtheory 14y ago

This is a pretty common view -- and it's how the language of rights works, really (you have the right to X, all humans have human rights, etc.), but it's not true. The language is misleading. Think about what rights you have when you're alone. None whatsoever -- rights only apply when you're interacting with others! Rights are behavioral rules that we agree on, encoded as if they were inherent to people because it's simpler to think of them that way (and our society benefits from the misdirection, on the whole). Rights are things that thinking beings can "respect" in others (and follow the behavioral rules), or not -- this works the same for respecting human or animal rights -- but they are a completely human construct.