No doubt. My point is that as a human you do know better. For a wild animal to ‘torture’ another animal in this fashion may not be nice or pleasant to watch but a purpose is still being served…a useful purpose (teaching its yong to hunt). For the cat that is clueless about the harm it is causing humans likewise distinguish when a person should or shouldn’t know what their actions entail. As such mentally disabled people can get a break as regards the law if they commit a crime because they simply didn’t know any better. You and me on the other hand will get nailed.
Sure…why not? Anyone can join in as far as I am concerned but I do hope for a response from Scylla in particular. I’ll respond to your answers below to show what I am thinking and see if that makes a difference to you or Scylla or whoever.
The release in the forest (or wherever) I can see. Why is shooting it yourself a problem? You can shoot deer, rabbits, squirrels…just about anything as long as it isn’t on the endangered species list. Why is your dog different? Hell, it is your dog! Anyone can take their dog to a vet and choose to have it killed by the vet what is the big difference if you choose to kill it yourself? Besides, I am sure if Scylla wanted to walk his dog in the woods and shoot it no one would be the wiser and I’d be surprised if local law enforcement found out they’d even do anything about it.
Assuming the ‘legal’ issues can be got around (which I am certain they very easily could be) Scylla chose to go to the greater effort on his part to have the dog euthanized by the vet. Greater effort not only in terms of Scylla’s time but also money he had to pay the vet to perform the service. Scylla has made a case that there is value (to him at least) to take matters ito his own hands as it details clearly what it means for him to be alive yet in this case he opted to let someone else take care of matters for him. As relates to the OP it would seem he was avoiding suffering here but I am unclear whose suffering (him or the dog) was at issue and why he would choose one over the other.
Fair enough and I agree. However, Scylla has been making the case that suffering is a fact of life. It is natural. Would it be more proper, in his view, to let nature take its course regardless of the pain to his dog or does he in fact find situations (such as this one) where again going out of his way (drive the dog to the vet and pay the vet) to stop suffering is worthwhile?
Again this goes to the would Scylla go out of his way to end suffering. I included it as distinct from the dog examples as one could claim some responsibility for the dog. The deer you have zero responsibility for. It’s just there. I added stipulation that he can’t make use of the deer in any fashion (can only leave it as roadkill) to avoid having any incentive to killing the deer beyond ending its suffering.
[sub]Along the lines of your friend Bubba a friend of mine hit a deer with his car and pulled over immediately. The deer was clearly in bad shape and would soon be an ex-deer one way or another. He called the police mostly to have the report so he could have insurance pay for the car damage but also to have the police finish the deer (he had no means to do it himself). While he was waiting (about 20 minutes) for the police to show up he said four different cars pulled over and asked to take the deer. Just out of curiosity can a motorist legally carry a deer away they hit with their car if it is outside of hunting season (or they don’t have a hunting license)?[/sub]
Ok. I see now. While it does make sense, I disagree. Like much of the PC movement what you’re describing is a form of effective blackmail. By giving in to such threats I allow the behavior to propagate.
Aldebaran:
Weeeelllllll, if we are the capable of destroying the world, I would think that would qualify us as “masters” of the earth, don’t you?
This is such a popular argument on these dies. “I have never seen it, therefore it doesn’t exist.”
Well Bubba, I ain’t never seen China. What do you think of that?
The fact is that lots of animals engage in the sort of behavior you attibute solely to humans. Your ingorance of this is not an argument.
I know Dan said it first, but I think my way has more style.
Whack:
That’s a cop out. Of course they don’t know better. They are not capable of moral action. That’s why animal rights is a ridiculous prospect.
All kinds of animals engage in this behavior. It can be quite nasty from human standards.
Well, how we got the dog was probably because some idiot set it free. The game lands were only a mile from our farm and lots of well-meaning but idiotic people would turn unwanted pets loose there. Of course these domestic animals became hungry and sick and wild and a danger to all those around. It is a bad way for a domestic animal to die. It would be unnecessary suffering and irresponsible to set it loose. We have had real problems with wild dogs.
I brought it to the vet because I didn’t want to shoot it, though shooting it probably would have been the kindest route to the dog. He liked coming with me hunting groundhogs and such so he would have been happy to see the gun and never knew what happened. He didn’t like the vet so his last moments were full of fear and confusion. I’m not sure I would have trusted myself to shoot straight.
Actually, that’s all after the fact rationalization. It was difficult for me, and frankly I never thought of any alternative to having a vet euthanize him.
I’d make the best judgement I could for the interests of my dog.
I’d be pretty leery of pulling a gun and shooting something on a roadway, but yeah, I’d finish the deer off if I could.
Ok, reading a little further, I see you want explanations. I’ll do my best.
I believe that I live in a well-conceived moral framework that is logical rational and justifiable for myself, for society, and for the world as a whole. Part of the thing that bothers me about anti-hunters and militant vegans and certain other kinds of idiots is that they operate on unsupported concepts. They form a personal opinion and beleive that personal opinion carries moral weight, and that it exists without a context.
I try to live by a morality that makes logical sense, and works. I see not way that I can confer rights to animals and still construct a rational moral code by which to live.
If I give them rights then all things become relative, and there’s no avoiding the fact that I exist simply by putting my rights before those of animals. I don’t think “my rights are more important than those of others” has a place in any form of morality.
Outside of anthropormizing, why would you confer rights to animals? Animals are not reciprocating or understanding these rights. They are not capable of being moral players? They are not members of society. They are not human. I am. I am not in the Prisoner’s Dillemma of self-interest with animals. I am in it with humans. So I would see no reason why you wuld confer rights to animals.
Similarly, nobody and nothing likes pain and suffering. Yet, they are inevitable. I beleive they are inevitable because they are relative. If you constantly encounter a lot of pain, you start to get used to it. It’s no longer as painful, relatively speaking. If you live a life of total comfort, than even the slightest discomfort will seam as agony, like that stupid story about the pea under the mattress and the princess tossing and turning on top.
Pain, suffering, comfort, pleasure are all aspects of the same thing as far as I can tell. It’s like setting the white balance on a digital camera. The funny thing about photography is that you realize light has color. Sunlight is blue, incandescent is red, flourescent is yellow. You don’t notice it because your brain automatically adjusts so you don’t see it. Take a picture indoors though, don’t color correct it, look at it under normal white light though, and you say “damn why is everything yellow.”
You color correct a print or camera for this by assuming that everything evens out in the end mathematically from a color standpoint and correcting it so it’s even. Usually this works pretty good. There are exceptions. If 99% of picture is a shades of blue, and you correct the picture for a blue cast then suddenly your blue ocean will look this sickly green and your beautiful wife showing her fish will suddenly appear to have a massive sunburn.
I think we operate much the same way as our eyes do. We correct for averages so that we will always have some suffering and some pleasure.
Consider a marathon. Suppose I followed you with a cattle prod and drove you mercilessly at a forced run for 26 miles. Wouldn’t that be cruel torture? Wouldn’t I go to jail?
But lots of people do this willingly for fun.
So pain and suffering really aren’t anything bad at all. They really aren’t things. They need a context. They are simply degrees.
Now, I think we’re overly obsessed with avoiding pain and suffering, and I really don’t grant these things the boogey-man status that everybody else does.
The fact is, that most of the time pain and suffering occur for beneficial reasons. They focus you. That can be a good thing. Let’s face it. If your ass is on fire it’s probably not a good thing to be laissez-faire or blase about it. You need to get focussed.
Suffering occurs when your pain no longer has a focus, you can no longer do anything about it, and it’s generally a pretty shitty thing from an experiencing standpoint. This doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have a purpose. It can be telling you that you better not fuck with your broken finger until it heals.
It can also be telling you that you are dying, or otherwise in serious deep shit.
Again, these are things worth knowing.
So, I don’t see any valid objection to pain and suffering. We need them. They are a measure of a relative thing, and to argue against them is as ridiculous as to argue against the concept of “cold” or “hot.”
If you’ve ever seriously suffered from severe chronic pain and think about it, you’ll realize just how incredibly relative it is.
For example, pain comes in waves. You can only deal with it for a while before it becomes overpowering and all consuming. Then a circuit breaker in your brain or something decides “this isn’t helping.” and tones it down for a while before it cycles through.
You can experience this yourself by eating a very hot pepper. Eat the pepper and just sit there. don’t drink anything or do anything. Even though nothing is changing in your mouth and the level of torture that is being inflicted on your taste buds, you’ll realize that the pain is not constant. It goes from pretty fucking bad, to not-so-bad in waves of about 30 seconds or so. I am told this has something to do with endorphins and the chemistry of your brain, but I don’t pretend to understand why it works this way. It just does.
Additionally, your personal psychology affects pain. People get painful injuries and sometimes don’t realize it until later because they have important things to deal with and don’t pay attention to the pain.
So, as far as I can tell it’s a pretty damn relative thing what constitutes pain and suffering.
So what does all this mean for the questions you asked? What does it mean about canned hunts?
Well, animals don’t have rights. An animal in a canned hunt doesn’t necessarily feel any more pain than an animal at a slaughterhouse.
I don’t have any means to judge what any particular person is getting by participating in a canned hunt. Why they are doing it. What it means.
From a sense of personal taste, I don’t like the idea. It’s not for me.
But what is my moral or rational objection?
I don’t have one.
Do you?
These other things you’ve asked me are also matters of personal choice. Personally, I would choose to be compassionate where and when I can do so, and certainly when all else is equal That’s my default choice.
I think that that’s probably a good moral choice, but I can’t prove it. Maybe somebody else can reason it out.
Sometimes I actually feel that compassion may be a mistake. I certainly try to be careful about it. A lot of harm gets done through good intentions, and I think a person needs to be very careful that what they do from their percieved perspective of good intentions does not have unintended consequences or actually cause more harm.
So, I try to be careful, be a contrarian, play devil’s advocate, and think if my “compassionate” instinct is really compassionate, or if I am just salving my own psyche.
All other things being equal I choose the path that I believe inflicts the least pain and suffering. All other things being equal I seek to ease pain.
You got to be careful about giving money to panhandling whinos. You’re probably not helping them.
There’s that probably apocryphal story about the British in WWII. Apparently their medics would succor their wounded soldiers by offering them tea.
Supposedly a lot of people with abdominal wounds ended up with colostomies or died of septicemia because of this compassion. If you think about it, it is morally indefensible. If you are trying to help, you need to be sure that you are helping. You have to know.
I’ll share one more story though this post is getting rambling and overlong.
When I worked in New York I saw a waiter set his face and head on fire serving a flaming dish. After they put him out there was a crowd of people watching him moan and writhe on the ground with second and third degree burns over his head and face.
So, while we are waiting for an ambulance this guy says “Let’s put some cool wet napkins on his face to ease his pain.” Now I have had third degree burns on my hands and new a little bit about what burns and treatment were supposed to be like, and I spoke up and said that this was a very bad idea. The guy says “Well, I’m a dentist.” Everybody there wanted to do something because this guy was in obvious pain, and the Dentist guy was older while I was only a punk of 22, and I wasn’t very assertive.
So everybody decided to put the wet towels on him, and they did ease his pain.
For about 1 minute.
I can only imagine what it was like at the hospital when they had to pull them off. I can only imagine what it was like to clean all the embedded fabric out of his burns.
I moved from the city a few months later and have never been back, but I’m told you can still see the weave of the towels in that man’s face.
If you are going to be compassionate, it behooves you to be very careful that you’re not just being selfish and easing your own sensibilities.
Scylla, it still appears to me that you are merely defining your dichotomy. If I could ask you to indulge me a little further:
This comes about specifically because you are defining yourself solely as a human. As a mammal with the ability to suffer, it is also in your interest to minimise the suffering of mammals with the ability to suffer. If the fact that you, personally, cannot become an animal is the only reason you do not extend rights to them, then one might as well deny rights to incapacitated people with XX chromosomes since you’ll never become one of them either (I’m assuming you’re male, apologies if not).
I believe the absence of moral capability is a red herring. The right not to be caused to suffer need not rely on being “of sound mind” and capable of personal responsibility, only on the ability to experience those electrochemical signals we dislike so, via similar neural receptors.
And it is these mushy, messy, biological pain receptors we are speaking of here. We are not discussing extending the UN declaration of Human Rights to animals. We are discussing the right of organisms with pain receptors not to have those receptors activated unnecessarily by those who can desist. To confer that right on only those organisms of species homo sapiens because “I’m a homo sapiens” is, I venture, as arbitrary as conferring them only on adults because “I’ve just had a vasectomy”.
Then surely you know that, in the infant’s case at least, you’re not conferring rights.
I choose not to vandalize other people’s cars because I don’t want my own car vandalized. That doesn’t mean I’m granting rights to cars; rather, I’m granting property rights to the cars’ owners.
This is an important distinction. If the protections you grant to infants are based on the self-interests of their parents, then you don’t have a basis to protect infants from their parents, as long as the parents kill the children before they become moral players.
In theory, a family that wanted to eat babies would have no restriction against doing so in an enlightened self-interest world, as long as they ate only their own children.
More realistically, enlightened self-interest gives no means to prosecute a mother who, frustrated with her children, locks them in a car and sends it into a lake. Sure, you can charge her for polluting the lake, but unless the father brings charges, that’s all you’ve got.
That deals with the “having your own kids’ rights respected” argument and the “potential moral players” argument, I think. I believe you don’t apply the “incapacitated moral players” argument to children; if you do, please explain how. And if you have another rationale for protecting children that would apply to murderous parents, I’d like to hear it.
As for severely mentally disabled folks – sure, there’s enlightened self-interest reasons for not abusing folks who once were moral players but no longer are. However, if people are born with severe mental incapacitation, so severe taht how you treat them won’t determine whether they’ll harm other people (perhaps because they’re physically incapable of harming others), then I’d see them in the same category as children under an enlightened self-interest world – except that, whereas children will become moral players if not killed first, the severely mentally incapacitated will not.
Basic social contract theory, sure – I know that stuff. I just think it’s a fatally flawed system for making moral judgements.
It isn’t in the lions best interest to minimise the suffering of a Zebra, or a chimps to minimize the suffering of a monkey. They always kill in the most efficient way they know how. But the efficiency isn’t for the sake of the victim, it’s to protect themselves from injury. So a lion kills by clamping down on his victims neck and slowly suffocating him while he is being disembowled, chimps kill by scaring monkeys out of trees and letting them fall to their death on the floor below, and wild dogs kill by taking small nips out of much larger animals and waiting for them to exhaust themselves to death.
I agree with stickmonkey, incidentally: if you’re approaching things from an enlightened self-interest perspective, you’re really only interested in protecting yourself from other beings who:
Have the capacity to harm you (including some but not all mammals); AND
Have the capacity to agree not to harm you (including no nonhuman mammals).
That makes sense, as far as it goes. My problems with enlightened self-interest is that I don’t think it goes far enough or reflects my understanding of right and wrong (inasmuch as, e.g., it doesn’t prevent parents from killing their children).
Fully aware is meant to say: to be fully aware of it that you cause the other creature pain and death.
To the cat question: No, I never witnessed it but of course I know cats do that.
And I suppose that it is true what was said here already: Many housecats seem to have lost the ability to see a mouse as food. Yet it still isn’t a play what you witness them doing. It is merely following their instinct that makes them hunt and train this hunting tactic.
Which is, as is also said here already, the reason why the critter receives prey as “training material”. Not to play with, but to become skilled in survival tactics.
Nature is where we all origin from, or is your origin on an other planet?
Why stop there? Why not classify myself as simply alive and say all living things have a right not to suffer? How then do I walk across the lawn without violating the civil rights of the grass and worms and bugs?
I merely blink and bacteria are crushed.
Nope. Sorry. It doesn’t work. I confer rights to humans because they are moral actors. Morality is a human thing. Animals being nonhuman are incapable of being moral players.
Granting rights to animals is ridiculous.
Oh I see, so when a lion bites a zebra the lion is actually violating its civil rights?
Dan:
No Dan. I confer rights to infants on a variety of levels, not simply as property.
Babies are moral actors who are simply not able at the moment to make moral distinctions, or act morally.
Let me try to explain this simply. Let’s lump children, retarded people, people in comas, etc all into one big category. It doesn’t matter whether the condition is temporary or permanent. For the sake of argument people in this group “naive person’s” meaning that they are incapable of acting morally.
If I am self-intersted (which I am) then I should prefer a society in which a naive person has additional rights. I should act and expect others to act towards such people in a fiduciary manner, that is, we are morally obligated to protect the interests of such a person.
This makes perfect sense because there are all kinds of situations and possibilities in which I am a naive person.
For example, I am naive in terms of medecine. If I am in a Doctor’s office I should expect my Doctor to act in my best interests, since I will not have the expertise to make proper decisions.
I expect an auto mechanic not to take advantage of my naivete as regards automobiles. They are required by law and ethics to serve my best interests.
A fiduciary society, one in which we are required to respect and further the interests of others (especially when they are not capable of doing so for themselves,) is a very good society for me to live in, as there are likely to be aspects or times when I or mine will need to rely on the fiduciary responsibility of others.
I must respect the interests of others even and especially when they are not capable of determining those interest for themselves.
Fiduciarly law is a whole are of law dealing with this premise.
Children also need to be protected so that they can take care of my interests when I am old and shitty and incapable of doing so for myself.
Regarding bacteria, they have no such receptors. Regarding lions, they cannot desist. Regarding bugs and worms, well, we enter the realm of what is practical: Jainism certainly is not.
Again we are not talking of all rights. We are discussing whether any punishment or opprobrium should come my way if I torture a dog (stray or not) to death.
Your little codicile of “those who can” is subject to some pretty wide interpretation.
We “can” all become vegans. And, according to this right you’ve given these animals we are nor obligated to do so.
It’s also interesting that the way you’ve worded it, it would be ok for a mad dog to attack a human (it can’t help it self.) But, not ok for a human to defend himself by striking the dog with or hurting it (since the human can help it.)
No. There is no reason why an animal has to have rights for cruelty to animals to be both illegal and unethical.
Committing an act of cruelty is enough.
You see, I agree with you philosophically, I just find it both unreasonable and problematic to confer any rights to an animal.
First, your argument about naivete: while it’s true that you may be naive about car repair, medicine, etc., all those kinds of naivete are irrelevant to a social contract. The only relevant kind of naivete is moral naivete: a creature who is morally naive is unable to respect any social contract, whereas a creature who is naive in all fields except morality is able to respect a social contract.
Part of the social contract is that people don’t take advantage of your naivete in other fields, true – but again, you cannot engage in such a contract with someone who is morally naive. Since they’re not engaging in the contract with you, it’s not in your best interests to engage in such a contract with them.
There’s a fundamental difference in social contract theory between moral naivete and any other sort of naivete. This difference explains why (in my view) social contract theory protects the very stupid and the wholly ignorant, but does not protect infants or many cognitively nonfunctional people.
You raise two other arguments. First, you suggest that you look after kids so they’ll look after you when you’re older.
I don’t see that theory as a starter: if you can coerce people into taking certain actions (e.g., not abusing and murdering their kids) so that there will be people around to look after you when you’re older, why can you not coerce them into taking other actions (e.g., having kids) to achieve the same goal?
Further, given the relative minority of people who are going to murder their kids, I think you’ll have a tough case showing that such murders are going to appreciably diminish the care you receive when you’re old. Finally, such a sucggestion has a proactive, coercive tone to it, suggesting that other people’s kids are obligated to look after you when you’re old; while current law supports this (via Social Security and other programs), I’m not sure this is a part of social contract theory.
Second, you suggest that it’s in your interests to look after the permanently incapacitated because one day you might join their ranks. To an extent, this is a valid point: if you’d want to be looked after and cared for when you’re in the final stages of senile dementia (for example), it’s a good idea to look after other folks in that situation now, and protect them from those who would harm them.
However, that doesn’t deal with those who are congenitally incapacitated. You know with absolute certainty that you’re not going to be born severely retarded; you’ll never be in that particular situation, and neither will anyone with whom you can enter into a social contract. Furthermore, you know for a fact (unless you believe in reincarnation) that you’re not going to be a six-month-old child ever again, and nor is any other moral actor. Self-interest does not lead you to protect either of these groups.
Last point: I feel sort of like a Creationist here, knocking down another theory and suggesting that my attacks on it must mean my own theory is correct. i don’t believe that currently I’m arguing for animal rights; on the contrary, I’m explaining why social contract theory is an inadequate system of ethics in my view. Explaining an adequate system is admittedly much harder, and I warn you that if and when we get to that part of the debate, I won’t sound nearly so certain of myself :).
Well, Scylla, it seems you have agreed with me that animals do at the very very least have the “right not to be tortured to death by a moral agent”, in the same way that I have agreed with you that it is absurd to enforce that right to non-moral agents such as other animals.
This does not equate to “no pain receptor activation at all can ever take place”, merely that we begin at “torture to death of a dog” and ask what level of animal complexity, practicality of avoidance and benefits of nonavoidance is reasonable to extend it to. Self-defence against a rabid dog is obviously a case where nonavoidance has benefits. Food for humans is less clear cut, but I believe still a reasonable exception. Hunting without eating the kill borders on that for which enforced avoidance might seem reasonable, and deliberate sadistic cruelty definitely requires enforced avoidance.
If you do not equate enforced avoidance to upholding an animal’s “right not to be tortured by a moral agent”, well, I can’t see the difference, and have no disagreement with you really since “unnecessary cruelty” is still being avoided at the end of the day. Tomato tomahto.
It’s also worth pointing out that the dog-attack example is fallacious: though I extend rights toward human beings (i.e., I won’t attack other human beings), I don’t extend the same rights toward a person that’s attacking me. It’s not because they’ve violated the social contract; instead, it’s because I have a right to protect my self from harm.
When I say a creature has a right not to be harmed by moral agents, such a right is prima facie: that is, they have that right as long as there aren’t extenuating circumstances. If I can only protect myself from harm by harming another being, that may be an extenuating circumstance.
It’s simply that a man doesn’t have the right to torture an animal to death for no reason.
Nor does he have the right to torture his kids to death a la what Dan is saying.
Dan:
I feel that this is kind of stupid. You’re trying to shoot holes where there are none.
It’s very simple.
It is in my interests to live in a compassionate society where the rights of those who are unable to look out for their own, are looked after by those who are able.
It is in my interests to respect the rights of congenitally damaged individuals, though I could never share their fate.
THe reason for this is so that others will respect my rights should I be in need of compassion even if there is no way that they could share my fate.
If it is excluded to things that I might suffer, than I could conceivably be excluded myself by others.
Again, Basic stuff. Society and the social contract is an exercise in self-interest.
Fine, that’s very simple - but why respect the rights of congenitally damaged individuals (even though you could never share their fate) but not the rights of dogs (even though you could never share their fate)? What’s the relevant difference between them, from a social contract theory perspective?
I don’t – do you believe in humanistic reincarnation? Otherwise, it’s pretty unlikely that you’ll find yourself with congenital mental defects.
(Just in case there’s a simple misunderstanding here, the definition of congenital I’m using is “Of or relating to a condition that is present at birth, as a result of either heredity or environmental influences” – courtesy of dictionary.com)