Hi my name is Juliet and I'm an animal rights activist. Also a kitty.
foxholeatheist said:
Dessi said:
Sounds to me like you have a very loaded definition of the word "sentience".
I think we can agree that there are certain attributes which only humans possess. We are self aware and rationalizing animals. We also are capable of abstract thought and introspection. Humans are capable of complex communication, art, culture and Led Zep.
While some species may possess some of these characteristics, mostly as a matter of degree in comparison to humans, none possess them all and except for humans uniquely.
I draw the line at species specifically for something I call sentience.
The statement in bold leads to the following inconsistency in the principles you hold:
- You state that animals may have some of the traits you've described as uniquely humans, but because they don't possess them to the same degree, therefore they lack sentience, and consequently it is acceptable to kill them.
- You state that its morally wrong to kill human infants, in spite for the fact that they fail to possess any comparable degree self-awareness, rationalization, abstract thought, introspection, complex communication, art, culture, or an appreciation for Led Zep. Their lack of sentience doe not permit killing them.
The same ethic which justifies kiilling animals carries over to killing non-rational humans, the same ethic which justifies valuing the lifes of non-rational humans carries over to valuing non-rational animals. You can see why this is problematic right?
No, this is not an argument from emotion. These are exactly the principles you hold, and its not clear what rational argument can possibly justify holding both principles true at the same time. If you can't state that rational argument, you have no credible criticism of ethical veganism. If you have the argument, I'd personally be interested to hear it.
I find it interesting that you are attempting to equate the two but have to resort to using two animals in very different stages of life and thus I do not consider it a valid comparison for argument's sake [1]. If you are pretending that self awareness and an ability to feel pain are the only differences between a human infant and a deer I wonder how you would feel to see our highways strewn with vehicle mauled babies. Would it be the same as seeing a dead deer on the side of the road?
I agree, both the deer and the infant are capable of experiencing suffering/pain however this alone does not affect our collective decision to decide some animals are prey. I doubt that deer are as self aware as humans, infants up to 18 months don't appear to be self aware at all but this is a rhetorical problem specific with your example. We are speaking of degrees because of the fundamental problem of understanding the thought process of another species.
Its not clear why my comparison is invalid, you never state why in your reply.
In fact you seem to validate my example in your second paragraph when you state that infants up to 18 months seems to have no self-awareness at all, so what possible moral advantage do they have over deer? You don't justify your argument at all. At best, you wave away the justification because "fundamental program of understanding the thought processes of another species", without ever explaining why that fundamental problem
only applies to non-human animals and never to infants. So (again) what moral advantage do infants have over deer.
So would you consider early man's killing of animals for sustenance morally similar to killing human infants? How about modern humans living in climates where meat is the primary available food source (Siberia for instance). Do you view these people on the same moral plain as an infanticidal manic?
To the first question, yes. There's no obvious moral distinction between slaughtering animals and mentally similar humans.
To the second question, even the Donner party had to eat. Most people reading this post are much further removed from the state of nature than Siberians. For example, people reading this post likely live air-conditioned buildings with modern plumbing and an internet connection, they could go vegan if they felt like it, and eating animals is in the strictest sense a luxury.
To the third question, an infanticidal maniac probably acts out of malice, where the vast majority of butchers act out of ignorance. And by that, I mean most people are products of their environments and cultural norms, almost no one ever thinks about the moral implications of their diet, they don't think about really fundamental things like why human life matters -- and most, when they do, they may not care, they laugh about it, they don't change their behavior anyway. Really, the vast majority of people don't know why they believe anything.
The infant is a human which has human emotions and given a little life span, which are uniquely human. A horse, deer, cat, dog or pig does not and could not.
That family shouldn't need to do so because we can easily test this on lab animals which is another very complicated issue and I suffer from a fair degree of cognitive dissonance on. I dislike animal testing but I understand that testing is required and I would not want testing performed on humans (even though eventually it must be). Anyway, this is another silly appeal to emotion and describes a very dubious and unreasonable scenario.
I'm not making an argument from emotion. Your principles (not mine, but the ones
you've stated in your post) define a sentience criterion for killing, non-rational humans fail to meet the sentience criterion and as such are no better or worse off than animals.
With that said, consider your first sentence. Did it ever occur to you that there's a huge overlap in the emotions animals and non-rational humans experience? Pain, pleasure, happiness, sadness, satisfaction, frustration, anger, fear, curiousity, playfulness, companionship, neediness, etc. Its not clear what "uniquely human" emotions a newborn infant has that makes incomparably morally advantaged over any non-human animal.
Most vegans will swat at a biting mosquito. It's a female animal attempting to feed in order to provide nutrition to her young. If I were to gun down a young woman at the super market buying formula who cut in front of me at the check out line (ostensibly doing the same thing) that would not be OK. So there is a line most people have where one species is acceptable to kill and where it is not.
I'd wager that we agree all plant species, baring any mitigating factors such as scarcity, are fair dinkum. Also nearly all single celled organisms, Protist, and fungi. Moving on to Kingdom Animalia, the vast majority being Ecdysozoa which most people, vegans included seem to have no moral issue with killing, individually anyway. Well, that covers almost everything. It turns out we are in far more agreement than disagreement. About all that's left is higher chordates which is where we may differ.
Your statement "there is a line most people have where one
species is acceptable to kill" -- this statement is incorrect. Ethical vegans such as myself do not draw lines on species, because species membership is not a meaningful moral characteristic. Ethical vegans often defend abortion, euthanasia of people in a persistent vegetative state (as well as people who consent), and euthanasia of severely handicapped infants (e.g. anencephalic or other conditions where they never gain consciousness). Clearly, its not the species that matters, but their capacity to feel pain, pleasure, satisfaction, have interests and other capacity which shape the ways we treat them, as explained in post
#157:
Dessi said:
Ethical vegans will almost universally acknowledge that life, in and of itself, isn't valuable. Its not biological life that matters, but biographical life and life which has an experiential welfare -- like the capacity to feel pain, pleasure, satisfaction, suffering, see one's self over time, have wants, expectations, and so on.
Plants, salmonella, ants, AI opponents in video games and such have no mental life. In what way is something harmed if it has no experiences whatsoever? How do you make an argument that being killed or staying alive is in an organisms best interests if it cannot, even in principle, prefer one outcome or the other? What moral characteristics do they have at all? Name just one which makes them comparable to an organism with experiential welfare.
This is not a controversial point of view. I'm quite certain that you support abortion up to a certain point, likely support non-voluntary euthanasia for people in a permanent vegetative state -- you might have your talking point reasons in debates, but if you're anything like me, you've probably wondered what moral characteristics early term fetuses or vegetative humans even have, how do you even harm something without a mental life in principle?
Ethical vegans almost universally hold the principle that, whatever morally relevant characteristics a being has should be taken into consideration. The key here is that most or all of these characteristics people hold (e.g. rationality, capacity to feel pain, pleasure, self-awareness, seeing one's self over time, ability to reason and use logic, practice moral reciprocity, etc etc etc) cross the species boundary, animals have many of the same imporant moral characteristics that people value in humans, so animals deserve moral consideration.
Although you acknowledge the fact above, you seem to indicate that animals have a lesser degree of whatever characteristics you value, and hence have a lesser degree of moral value. I reject your argument as irrational for the reasons mentioned above, but most importantly because they're inconsistent with the ethics you hold regarding the treatment of moral agents and moral patients. Moral agents can make moral decisions about their behavior, moral patients generally can't -- this does not automatically imply that moral patients have a lesser degree of value. Think of it this way:
- an infant and a rational human have the same capacity to feel pain, so they are moral equals
with respect to pain.
- a rational human can take moral responsibility for their actions, but an infant cannot, so we may fault rational humans for the harm they cause without necessarily faulting infants.
- infants aren't capable of caring of themselves, so we have an obigation to paternalistic care toward infants that (in most non-emergency circumstances) doesn't carry over to adult humans.
- rational humans can be harmed for being deprived of voting, but infants have no conception elections or a capacity to make informed decisions even if they did, so there's not even a frame of reference to talk about the "harm" caused to infants by denying them the right to vote.
There's nothing controversial about these particular statements. Clearly moral agency is not a prerequisite for moral consideration, moral patients are considered equally with respect to their capacities. The trick is understand that non-human animals are moral patients too, and for the exact same reasons.
If you accept the statements above as reasonable, then the justification for animal rights is blatantly obvious: animal rights is nothing more than a logical extension of the principles and values that everyone already holds regarding the ethical treatment of humans.
