that is not morally relevant, unless you can give an argument why being human is morally relevant. The problem is: it is an arbitrary criterion, because being human is one of the many possible ways to be. One can also be white, male, simian, primate, mammal, vertebrate,…
Why did you say “Pigs, cows, and chickens are not human” instead of “Pigs, cows, and chickens are not white” or “Pigs, cows, and chickens are not primate” or “Chickens are not mammals” or…?
Well then, how would you like it if people enforced their values on you?
You can point at differences, but not at morally relevant differences if you point at arbitrary differences. Your difference between humans and cows was arbitrary because one can equally take many other possible differences. For example humans and cows are not invertebrates. Males are not females. Cows are not chickens. Humans are not plants.
neither was that mentally disabled human
that is not true. Cows have higher (emotional,…) intelligence levels than some humans. There are cows, pigs, dogs and chickens with higher mental capacities than some disabled humans. Some adult humans have a mental age of a baby of 3 months, whereas the mental age of pigs can reach a child of 3 years.
that is not morally relevant. It is too farfetched to claim that a sentient being (with the mental capacity of a chicken) deserves basic rights when that being has close family members who could have gotten fertile offspring with someone else. The right not to be used against ones will does not refer to fertility of offspring, so offspring is not relevant for this basic right. The right refers to ones will, so having a will (being sentient) is relevant.
a human-chimpansee hybrid is not unlikely, given the fact that lion-tiger, dolphin-killer whale, horse-donkey, lama-camel, sheep-goat… hybrids are all possible.
And all the interlediates between a human (you) and a cow once existed. Take the time travel machine and take all our human and cow ancestors to the present and put them in a row. You are on the far right, next to you is your mother, your grandfather and so on, till the common ancestor of you and a modern cow. This ancestor is in the middle of the row, and continuing to the left, we end up with a modern cow. In this row you are not able to point at a boundary between humans and non-humans. If you are human, the so is you mother, and so is your grandfather,… You could breed with someone a bit further in the row, who lived 1000 years ago. And that person could breed with someone further in the row who lived 2000 years ago, and so on.
What if all thos intermediates still lived? You cannot base the idea of human rights on the arbitrary fact that intermediates no longer live.
Yes, and species != order
and species != phylum
and species != genus
and genus != class
Why do you focus on species?
If your friend is forced to chose between eating his neighbour’s baby and a mentally disabled orphan baby from another continent, with another skin colour and with a short life expectancy, which would he choose? Would you disagree if he chooses the orphan baby? Would you say that your friend is a racist when he chooses to eat that baby with the other skin colour?
I don’t know that person, so it is impossible for me to compare that person with livestock.
I do know that some humans exist who are less intelligent the chickens.
Concering insulting people: I can easily reply that you insult chickens.
But the question is: who deserves basic rights such as the right not to be used against one’s will. Are we allowed to arbitrarily select a group of individuals who deserve this right? Or are we going to avoid any kind of arbitrariness by granting this right to really everyone?
I am a foster parent of a mentally disabled human, my sister works in an institute for mentally disabled humans, I spent a lot of my youth on a dairy farm, I do a lot of investigations about livestock farming, and I am familiar with agricutural science and with cognitive science.
“Humans have special intrinsic value” is no more or less arbitrary than “life has special intrinsic value”, Earthheart. All moral systems start with similarly arbitrary assumptions. I accept that life has special intrinsic value, and that human life has special intrinsic value beyond other life. There’s nothing special about the first assumption as opposed to the second.
simply saying that it is morally relevant to you does not make it morally relevant.
Do you agree with these (cfr REDACTED
When it comes to respecting the basic right (not to be used as merely a means), a criterion or property is morally irrelevant to a higher degree if more of the following conditions are met:
- the property is arbitrary (there is no non-circular rule that selects the property out of a multitude of similar kinds of properties), or
- the property is not intrinsic (it does not refer solely to the individual possessing the property), or
- the property is inherently difficult to detect, define or delimit (the property is non-empirical or there are no scientific criteria and methods – not even in principle – to clearly see whether the property is present).
When it comes to respecting the basic right, a criterion is certainly morally relevant in relation to an equal treatment and moral evaluation between individuals, if it is an identifiable or measurable (i.e. empirical) property that:
- we could derive from an impartial (non-arbitrary) point of view (the moral viewpoint), and
- is clearly related (i.e. not in a far-fetched way) with the notion of the basic right,
- follows from moral virtues or valuable feelings (i.e. emotions that are important in our moral decision making, such as emotions that motivate us to help others or to respect rights), and
- does not satisfy any of the three conditions of moral irrelevancy.
I do not assume that animals and humans are equal, I derived it from more basic moral assumptions, the same assumptions that you have.
agree.
Both our ethical systems are equally valid, on the condition that both are equally coherent (consistent, non-arbitrary)
Not the same basic moral assumptions, since one of mine is “humans have special intrinsic value over all other creatures on Earth”.
I did not claim that they are going to fix everything.
for all the claims there are either scientific studies or logical arguments.
feel free to refer to studies or arguments that indicate that one of the benefits is not true.
if you know of any possible side effects, please feel free to share.
a lot of the benefits that I mention are perfectly in line with e.g. utilitarianism or any other coherent ethical system that we can value.
some mentally disabled humans have the mental age of a baby of 3 months. Chickens are capable of solving puzzles etc that a baby is not able to solve. The same goes for developing friendships, counting, taking care of offspring, passing knowledge…
I’m sorry, but we are discussing the moral and ethical equivalence between humans and animals, so would you mind actually answering the question I asked instead of dancing around it?
I derived the proposition that animals are equal to humans, based on our shared moral values (moral assumptions) and some factual knowledge about biology (evolutionary biology, neurobiology).
Our shared moral values are that we should not discriminate, that we have to avoid arbitrariness in selecting the group of rightholders, that a property is certainly morally (ir)relevant if… (see http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=18628375&postcount=67)
So, we have for example the basic right not to be used against one’s will. You value this right. But how do you know whether individual A gets this right and B does not? How would you decide who gets this right?
Is one of them human? That one gets the right to use non-humans for their own purposes, though this does not include cruel treatment (but can include slaughter for food and other resources). That’s one of my most basic moral assumptions.
it is not fair to simply deny someone’s values. The animal values his well-being, the things that he wants.
the tiger does not understand the notion of rights, but his hunger indicates that he wants food in order to live.
The tiger should not force his value on his prey, but we can both easily find a “justification”: for the tiger, killing is neccesary for survival. For you it is not.
why did you actually refer to the tiger when you were forcing your values on a pig, not a tiger? The animals that you eat did not force theoir values on you, they did not attack you, so you still have no reason to force your values on those innocents. If you want to eat hungry tigers that attack you when you need that meat to survive, go ahead, but don’t force your values on innocents…
The Mathusians were consistently right in pointing at the fact that natural resources are finite. The claims where Malthusians were consistently wrong are not relevant, because I do not make such claims.
indeed, such claims have to be derived. Staring with our moral values and scientific knowledge, we can derive a claim that comes pretty close. But the actual claim is that everyone and everything, without any arbitrary exceptions, is equal in basic rights such as the right not to be used against one’s will. This claim best fits our shared moral value that we should avoid any discrimination such as racism, sexism or speciesism.
I would not like it. That is why I am consistently against enforcing one’s values.
that is true. Taking “all humans” or “all living beings” as the group of rightholders is arbitrary. I give the basic right not to be used against one’s will to everyone and everything, including all non-living things. No arbitrariness. Of course, a right not to be killed is trivially satisfied for a non-living thing, so it is easy to give this right to non-living things. Similarly, the basic right is trivially satisfied for non-willing entities.
If you are allowed to choose your victims arbitrarily, then so am I and so is everyone, and you cannot want that.
that is not true. A moral system that says that everyone and everytging gets the basic right is less arbitrary than a system that says that all and only homo sapiens get the basic right.
nm
I was talking about the right not to be used against one’s will. Where is the reference to humans in this right? How do you know that this right only refers to humans (instead of e.g. mammals) if the word human does not even appear in its formulation?
if you are allowed to refer to an arbitrary group in your formulation of a right, then so am I. Then I am allowed to consider the right to use non-white people for my own purposes, as slaves. Or the right to use iiandyiiii…
Everyone already is “allowed” to do this. Since most life requires the use of other life, then a judgment about which sorts of use are allowed and which are not is “arbitrary” (as are all moral assumptions).
Why is this “less” arbitrary? Seems just as arbitrary to me, especially when you’re assigning rights that are irrelevant to various things (e.g. the right to not be killed to things that are not alive).