Should we value animals as something more than sources for us?

[El_Machinae]

So, then, what the heck is 'human intelligence'?

 

[Winner]

Hi Winner, nice to have you back

I never had a pet- or rather i did once have one, but i won't go into that - so i didnt bond with an animal as a child. This certaintly dissallowed me from feeling love for it, but also, probably, made me free of forming childish views of animals as well- not saying that all animal defences are based on childish views.

I didn't have a pet as a kid either. I visited my grandparents in the country quite often so I had contact with a wide variety of animals which were used in the way you think is good (as a resource), and I never liked it.

BTW, have you ever actually killed, skinned and gutted an animal you then ate for lunch? This has nothing to do with the... intellectual dimension of this discussion, but I'd still like to know, for illustrative reasons. I saw lot of that as a kid and to this day, I don't like to eat things like chicken legs - pieces of meat which still resemble the body parts of animals from which they were taken.

I have noticed that my view on animals, namely that they can be seen as mere resources, is connected with my overall view of life. You might recall my thread about a quote by Protagoras, according to which the measure of all things is man. From this follows that all values, intrinsic or not, are calculated by man, in regards to his benefit.
This allows us, for example, to claim that eating meat as a meal is good, since it gives us pleasure (if we eat meat and like it), and not worry about question about the animal which was killed.

Thanks, now I know another thing that the ancient philosophers got wrong

With a stance like that, you could justify practically every atrocity, including sadistic self-indulgence ("I like to torture animals, because it gives me pleasure - since I am a human, the measure of all things, I declare torturing animals is good"...)

Although personally i have little use for the cosmetic industry, i accept that there are many people who view it as something very important in their lives. And to dissallow animal testing there (somethign which probably potentially harms the animals in the lab) woudl mean that we would have even less safe products for humans, leading to possible harm for them.

I don't think so - the standard consumer protection rules would still apply. If there was no way to safely test the products (and if there were no human volunteers), they'd simply not enter the market.

Which is purely hypothetical scenario - there usually ARE ways of testing the products without involving animals, but they're slower and more expensive.

Thu again i believe that human health> animal health, nomatter that the cosmetic industry is obviously full of greed and exploits ussually (at least in dramatic cases) the vanity of people, which by itself was harmfull to them.

But again, this isn't a matter of necessity; it's just reckless self-indulgence. Would you, for example, allow hunting of a critically endangered species of leopard, because some native group of people like to wear clothes made of their pelts? Would that be a good enough reason? And let's say that for some cultural/traditional reason, the skinning needs to be done while the animal is still alive - still okay?

Because to me, this is cruelty that serves no good reason and it should be prohibited. Using cruel testing in the cosmetics industry is equally immoral. There should be some incentive to force these companies to find another way of testing their products.

You mentioned the prospect of creating a human/animal hybrid, or at least some animal with intelligence comprable to our own. Are such experiments currently allowed? Isnt the use of human dna in such cases prohibited?

Doesn't matter. It is theoretically possible, which means it will be done, sooner or later. Say, a rogue science team in Taiwan produces a chimp with enhanced mental capabilities roughly comparable to a human teenager and an ability to learn and reproduce speech. And they do it without using human DNA, so it's technically still "just" a chimp.

Now, should it be treated more like an animal, or like a human? Should we mass produce these "mutant" chimps for all kinds of tests that are too risky for humans to take, but which require active participation of intelligent test subjects? Would that be acceptable, from your moral standpoint?

In my view the creation of such a being would have effects very hard to calculate. We never had an animal as sentient as us live next to us. The alst time when two beings of somewhat comprable intelligence lived on the planet led, i think, to battle between them, and the final demise of one. Of course this would be an isolated case of a superanimal, but if it was sentient enough then wouldnt that harm it? It doesnt seem easy to be the sole member of a species that has human intelligence.

If you mean the Neanderthals, this brings up an interesting topic - suppose we find a whole group of them, perfectly preserved in ice. We clone them and thus essentially revive their species. Would they be human, according to your standards, or would you treat them as animals (= no rights, we can do whatever we please with them)?

Because as ElMach. said, it's hard to draw a line between human and non-human. If there's nothing in between, it is even more important to know where it is.

You might recall that i once had met a severely mentally handicapped child, and it was a traumatic experience for me, since i was only 11 years old. At the time i thought that such a child had no rights, due to its obvious diminished existence. However now i think that humans in such states should be protected, sure they are something "lesser" than normal humans, but they have the right to live, and sadly they can only live if they are actively protected by others.

Fine, so why shouldn't we extend our protection to, say, the three species of great apes (gorillas, chimps and orangutans) whose level of sentience approaches ours? Where's the difference? They are our closest relatives and their intelligence is comparable to ******** people or small children. And they can't survive for much longer without our protection.

It is not the same case with animals. Animals do not need special treatment, since they are animals to begin with. They seem perfectly happy in farms, i trust. Of course if you think about it it is tragic what happens there, the animal "trusting" the humans, but then all along it was raised so as to be slaughtered.

I am more concerned about the way humans keep destroying the natural habitats of animals and abuse them in multitude of ways other than as source of food/workforce. Just look at the list of endangered species - I believe all three species of great apes are on it.

---

One final thought - if an alien race which surpassed us in intelligence and technology found us and concluded that we're inferior to them and for that reason they can do whatever they please with us (farm us for food, use us as slaves or pets, whatever), would you be fine with that? After all, for them it would be perfectly natural and right - we'd be the lesser species, we'd be the ones who is defenceless and clearly mentally inferior. What would you say to your alien master, who took you on his spaceship as his pet? The conversation would go like this:

*you look up* "But this is not right! You can't take me from my family, my planet and... and treat me like an animal!"
"Why not?"
"I am a human!"
"That's a meaningless term to us."
"I have feelings! I feel pain and loneliness. I desire freedom!"
"We've encountered many species on your planet capable of feeling these emotions. You've treated them much worse that we decided to treat you."
"But that was different, because... _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _"

(fill in the blanks )

 

[Omega124]

Technically you can eat just fine without killing anything (taking fruit & nuts don't kill the plant, taking milk & blood don't kill the animal). Just saying.

Wrong, your killing stuff to eat those fruits, bugs. You failed to consider the pesticides used to kill insects that would eat the fruits (or, in some cases, the plants themselves), and even if you have an organic garden, you're going to have to kill the bugs some way, like raising ladybugs to kill and eat the bug that was going to eat the fruit. And don't even get me started on the bacterial level.

 

[Kyriakos]

So, then, what the heck is 'human intelligence'?

The intelligence that humans have is not universal, it is utterly bound to, and formed by, the human senses and the human mind. If an alien who could sense the world in 4 dimensions talked to you, chances are his way of thinking would be vastly different, and that is just an example where the alien species differs only to a degree from us.

As for animals, whereas some basic functions seem to be similar- albeit diminished- with a good example being that of a very basic organism (and thisextends to more complicated ones) the fugus, retreating it its closed-up form when faced with a hostile power, and expanding when there is no threat, on the whole the level of human intelligence is unparalleled in the animal kingdom.

From my very basic experiences with seeing great apes, i can deduce that they do indeed possess intelligence, but the lack of a language bounds these creatures to a primitive existence, in relation to humans. They can be seen as a reduced version of a human, perhaps, but that is clearly not the same as an actual human.

 

[warpus]

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?

Animals should have the right not to be unnecessarily tortured, cause that's a dick move, and shouldn't be allowed. Species that are near extinction should have certain rights as well - which is already done in most countries..

And remember, a lot of people have certain animals as companions. There is a lot that we can get out of them, other than just food.

 

[Kyriakos]

Animals should have the right not to be unnecessarily tortured, cause that's a dick move, and shouldn't be allowed. Species that are near extinction should have certain rights as well - which is already done in most countries..

And remember, a lot of people have certain animals as companions. There is a lot that we can get out of them, other than just food.

I agree that the ecosystem should be preserved. I am not particularly interested in the preservation of animal life which plays no part in it, i am indifferent to it.
As for pets, yes, i have already mentioned them, my view is that they gain worth not due to their own existence, but due to the special relationship they have with a human.

 

[warpus]

I agree that the ecosystem should be preserved. I am not particularly interested in the preservation of animal life which plays no part in it, i am indifferent to it.

What do you mean? All animals play a part in the ecosystem.

 

[Kyriakos]

What do you mean? All animals play a part in the ecosystem.

If you rephrase it as "all animals potentially play a part" i would agree, since when i wrote that i was thinking of near-extinct species that cannot, due to their very small number, play a part anymore, at least one like the one they used to play.

And by now many species have been lost, many due to man's actions too.

 

[El_Machinae]

The intelligence that humans have is not universal, it is utterly bound to, and formed by, the human senses and the human mind. If an alien who could sense the world in 4 dimensions talked to you, chances are his way of thinking would be vastly different, and that is just an example where the alien species differs only to a degree from us.

As for animals, whereas some basic functions seem to be similar- albeit diminished- with a good example being that of a very basic organism (and thisextends to more complicated ones) the fugus, retreating it its closed-up form when faced with a hostile power, and expanding when there is no threat, on the whole the level of human intelligence is unparalleled in the animal kingdom.

From my very basic experiences with seeing great apes, i can deduce that they do indeed possess intelligence, but the lack of a language bounds these creatures to a primitive existence, in relation to humans. They can be seen as a reduced version of a human, perhaps, but that is clearly not the same as an actual human.

It's clear that they're different, but you haven't given us any type of metric by which to make moral decisions - especially about hybrids! The difference between apes and humans, genetically, is a series of small changes, each of which are survivable on their own. You can stepwise convert chimp DNA into human DNA, with all intermediates capable of being brought into viable life.

Winner (and I) set a 'lower bound' of sentience, above which it becomes obviously immoral to hurt the organism, and such immorality then has to be balanced against a cost/benefit ratio. We include a 'lower bound' sufficient to capture all human persons, but this 'lower bound' will capture animals as well. This is not a bad thing, because what this means is that we'll be protecting thinking and feeling organisms from suffering.

There's no essential nature of 'being human' that can be described. The best we can do is create rules-of-thumb, and create these in such a way that we capture all potential variants.

 

[Mr. Dictator]

Life is so rare in this universe, why can't we find a way to respect all of it equally?

 

[azzaman333]

Should we value animals as something more than sources for us?

No we should not.

 

[amadeus]

I'm not a Derick Jensen fan in particular but I agree with his quote (paraphrased) that no indivudal human life is more important than that of the planet.

An eco-Mussolini, so to speak?

 

[Frank Drebin]

You cannot put the genie back in the bottle, so I think we have to accept it in some form, just like we have to accept that we are going to raise cattle and chickens for food. I think how we do both can be much improved.

I think using animals for testing of non medical items, like cosmetics etc, should not be allowed. We should test on people who volunteer and who are paid.

so you'd rather see humans forced to be test objects by their economic situation than animals?

 

[Frank Drebin]

However a murderer or rapist's life certainly is (worth less than an animal's).

this is truely appalling. it shows a complete disregard for human life. what do you want to do with murderers and rapists, execute them?
i think we should be over such barbarian practices, shouldnt we?

 

[Truronian]

It's an interesting question... in what other way can we value something other than as a source? Do we not attribute value to thing based upon their value as a source of stuff for oneself? The value of a wife lies in providing companionship, the value of a child lies in passing one one's genes and the value of an elephant lies in providing us with a biologically fascinating creature to distract ourselves studying.

 

[Birdjaguar]

so you'd rather see humans forced to be test objects by their economic situation than animals?

I'm not for forcing anyone. We currently test on humans all the time, but usually in the later stages of development. I have even been part of some of that testing.

To encourage responsibility and care in early testing, I would suggest that human subjects be used and that drug companies' pool of subjects be limited to employees and family members before testing on the general public.

 

[warpus]

I'm not for forcing anyone. We currently test on humans all the time, but usually in the later stages of development. I have even been part of some of that testing.

To encourage responsibility and care in early testing, I would suggest that human subjects be used and that drug companies' pool of subjects be limited to employees and family members before testing on the general public.

How about we restrict the testing to the CEO and VPs?

 

[Narz]

this is truely appalling. it shows a complete disregard for human life. what do you want to do with murderers and rapists, execute them?
i think we should be over such barbarian practices, shouldnt we?

Maybe they could go in cat food.

I never said I wanted to kill people, I just said I place more value on animals than murders & rapists. You think an unrepentant multiple child rapist has more value than a bunny rabbit? What kind of value?

 

[innonimatu]

Maybe they could go in cat food.

I never said I wanted to kill people, I just said I place more value on animals than murders & rapists. You think an unrepentant multiple child rapist has more value than a bunny rabbit? What kind of value?

You're right, a bunny rabbit has more value: I could kill and eat a rabbit, but I wouldn't eat an unrepentant child rapist.

 

[Frank Drebin]

who are you to assign a value to a human life?