BenTheMan:
So apparently people are in the mood of taking everything I say seriously.
You weren't serious? Should we take everything you say as a joke, then, by default, unless you tell us you're serious?
Apologies if I don't have a logical and principled view on every aspect in my life. If spent less time trying to out the crackpots in the Physics forum, or trying to learn Conformal Field Teory, or trying to generate Yukawa couplings for heterotic string models to arbitrary order, then perhaps I could spend my days contemplating the views of animals.
I'm a physicist, too, but I manage to find time to engage with important ethical issues.
James---I will read your article and try to put whatever views I have on firm footing. This is something that, in truth, I had never considered deeply. But I am offended that you dismiss, out of hand, the view that hunting is ok as "immoral" or "unethical".
You haven't yet made an argument for why hunting is moral and ethical. I look forward to your putting your arguments on a firm footing, then.
This is probably exactly correct. I hate protestors in general that I don't agree with.
How do you know you don't agree with animal rights, when by your own words you say you have never considered the issue "deeply"?
...These arguments will not fly with me, because humans have, inherintly, more rights than animals. (Hint to James: I may argue this case based on Scienctific Advancement.)
I look forward to that discussion, too - assuming you'll be able to take time out from your quantum field theory to get around to it.
But there is a significant amount of research that NEEDS to be carried out, and using animals is the only way to do it. Much of the cancer research is done on rats because they are cheap and you can make many exact genetic copies of the same rat---they provide a good control.
Actually, no two rats have the same genes, unless they are clones. And by far the majority of experimental rats are not clones.
Should we protect the rats from being given cancer by researchers? Or what about AIDS research? Should we be worried that rats and bunnies are dying horrible deaths so that people in Africa don't have to?
If you take a stock-standard utilitarian view of ethics, it's a matter of weighing up the pluses and minuses.
In America (I think James is from Europe, because he wrote 'evangelise'), the legal situation is much different.
I'm from Australia.
I am working with a German guy and he was surprised that his coffees come with a warning "Caution: Hot". Or that the buses had this warning on the back "Vehicle makes frequent stops". Aparently there aren't such things in Germany. All of this to say that there exists a significant amount of laws in America to protect stupid people. This means that if someone feeds bleach to their kid, they may be able to sue the bleach company for not putting a warning label on their product.
That's the real reason. The warnings aren't there to protect potential victims of their own stupidity. They are there to protect against litigation. The United States is perhaps the most litigious society on Earth.
So, James. Do you believe in abortion?
Do I
believe in it? Well, it undoubtedly exists, so yes, I do believe in it.
But that's not what you're asking, is it? You need to be more specific. Perhaps you're asking whether I think abortion is every justified ethically. In that case, my answer is: yes, abortion can be justified ethically. Perhaps you want to know more: under what circumstances do I think abortion is justifiable? In that case, I suggest you start a new thread on the topic and we can discuss the matter in detail.
Suppose there were no factory farms. I find it hard to believe that Americans could still afford to buy the foods that they are buying. From a social perspective, I think we need farms which mass produce food items.
Meat is very expensive, and takes huge amounts of resources that could be devoted to producing cheaper foods in greater quantities. If meat eating was made illegal, no American would need to starve, and for many their supermarket bills would actually decrease.
If I understand the arguments correctly, James, the Principle of Equal Consideration is that anything which feels pain should be granted the same rights as, say, humans. Is this correct?
Not exactly. Nobody is arguing that animals should have ALL of the rights humans have. What the Principle tells us is to treat like as like. If animals have the same capacity to suffer pain, for example, as humans do, then their rights with respect to being subjected to pain ought to be the same as those of human beings, unless there is an ethically compelling reason not to extend the same rights to them.
So, in terms of
pain, you are right. No creature with a capacity equal to human beings to feel pain should be subjected to pain that it would be immoral or illegal to subject a human to.
If you want to look at other rights, we need to compare the relevant capacities there, too. For example, I would not advocate that cows ought to be given the right to vote. The principle of equal consideration would not apply there, since a cow's capacity to vote is obviously questionable.
If this is the case, then you cannot support late term abortions, and past the 28th week of pregnancy (or the 8th week, depending on who you talk to), a fetus must be granted the same rights as you would grant the mother, or a horse, or a mink.
Do you agree?
As a general principle, I do not support late-term abortion on demand - on exactly the basis you suggest here. However, other factors may intervene to make late-term abortion permissible in certain special circumstances.
The fact is that most Americans depend on cheap chicken and pork. So feeding people, to me, is more important than animal suffering.
Americans do not need to eat chicken or pork at all. They don't
depend on it - they just like it. It's a choice they make, and other, more ethical, choices are available.
This is a difference of opinion, and it will remain as such. Because we haven't established that animals even deserve rights, we cannot talk about these things.
The default position ought to be that animals deserve rights unless there is a good reason to withhold them. This is the standard applied to all human beings. So far, you haven't given any good reasons for withholding rights, or for putting animals in a separate moral category than human beings.
You've said you'll present arguments, so again I look forward to your analysis on this point.
One: I do not know that animals feel pain. I do not know enough on the subject of animal physiology to comment.
Do you have any pets? A dog, a cat?
If so, you could not make the above statement and keep a straight face. You would have, at some time, tripped over the dog or stood on its tail by accident, or seen it in pain.
Do you live in a city with no animals?
No wonder you have never thought about these things. You've probably led a very sheltered life, and you need to imagine what animals are like. I strongly urge you to go out and experience animals first-hand - not on television, but in the flesh. Visit a farm. Get a friend who has a dog.
If you believe in animal rights and abortion, my claim is that your philosophy is just as arbitrary and baseless as one who believes in neither animal rights nor abortion.
Explain.
I believe that suffering should not be the basis for granting rights.
You would deny anybody a right not to suffer?
Presumably, you would still not allow murder, assault or torture of human beings, at least? If that is the case, I am interested to hear where you think these rights should be grounded.
Animals cannot be functioning members of society, that is, they are not bound by any moral code, so they cannot be granted the same rights as humans.
Are young children or human infants bound by a moral code? They don't know what a moral code is, before a certain age. Is it permissible to hurt them, then? Should we all be able to torture small children with impunity, then, because they have no rights not to suffer, according to you?
It is ok for an animal to kill another animal, but not for an animal to kill a human, or a human to kill another human.
Why is it wrong for a human to kill another human, according to you?
