I was having a discussion about this in another forum. Thsi is my last entry in that:
"To me it just seems that animals cannot be protected essentially if we are to continue the way of life that we have. And i do not view their lives as important enough so as to actively force a change in our way of life.
Sure, cosmetics can be argued to be of lesser importance than an animal life, but in my opinnion this is arguable: i do not view a woman who only cares about how she looks as something exceptionally positive, but she is still a human being, and that makes her more important in my eyes than an animal.
I can only accept some value in animals in regards to their relationship to humans. For example if you owned an ape, and you loved him, then it follows that if someone harmed him he should be penalised by law, but not because he harmed the ape; he should be penalised because indirrectly he harmed you, another human.
Can you elaborate a bit on your view that animals should be valued, apart from their place in the ecosystem?
Even a less sentient human is still a human. Children with mental deficiencies, for example, can be very primitive intellectually, but they are still part of humanity, and this makes them in my opinnion distinctly superior to any animal, nomatter how healthy and relatively intelligent it is"
The other person was arguing that a healthy ape coudl be more sentient than a diseased/mentally handicapped human, and therefore the act of using that ape as a laboratory specimen was less virtuous than using that human in its place.
But in my view if we opened this Pandora's box there would be myriads of problems, so all humans should be seen as equal and protected under the law.
What do you think? Should animals have any rights? Should we view them as something distinct that our means of gaining something pleasant out of them?
"To me it just seems that animals cannot be protected essentially if we are to continue the way of life that we have. And i do not view their lives as important enough so as to actively force a change in our way of life.
Sure, cosmetics can be argued to be of lesser importance than an animal life, but in my opinnion this is arguable: i do not view a woman who only cares about how she looks as something exceptionally positive, but she is still a human being, and that makes her more important in my eyes than an animal.
I can only accept some value in animals in regards to their relationship to humans. For example if you owned an ape, and you loved him, then it follows that if someone harmed him he should be penalised by law, but not because he harmed the ape; he should be penalised because indirrectly he harmed you, another human.
Can you elaborate a bit on your view that animals should be valued, apart from their place in the ecosystem?
Even a less sentient human is still a human. Children with mental deficiencies, for example, can be very primitive intellectually, but they are still part of humanity, and this makes them in my opinnion distinctly superior to any animal, nomatter how healthy and relatively intelligent it is"
The other person was arguing that a healthy ape coudl be more sentient than a diseased/mentally handicapped human, and therefore the act of using that ape as a laboratory specimen was less virtuous than using that human in its place.
But in my view if we opened this Pandora's box there would be myriads of problems, so all humans should be seen as equal and protected under the law.
What do you think? Should animals have any rights? Should we view them as something distinct that our means of gaining something pleasant out of them?
If someone was to treat an animal in a savage way, hurt it for fun, make it suffer for his own pleasure etc, then i would advocate therapy for that person, not jail. But even if the animal was killed in the process i would still advocate the same. That is if the animal was his to begin with, if it beloned to someone else there should be a fine.
