Subject:
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Re: Did animals have rights before we invented rights?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Sun, 1 Jul 2001 23:19:58 GMT
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Viewed:
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677 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek writes:
>
> Animals are amoral creatures.
>
> They don't have a system of rights (of their own invention), they have the
> rights that we assign them. Now, we can reason about rights all we want (and
> we should, it's important to treat animals appropriately) but nothing can
> change that. No amount of reasoning will get a lion to stop his charge at a
> human if the lion is hungry and clearly can win.
The only thing I'd add to that is that it's not black & white - some
creatures have what zoologists call "hierarchys" within groups (including
the aforementioned lion). This, as I see it, is a sort of set of "rights"
given to those higher up the hierarchy.
eg: Does the male of the lion pride have more "right" (in his eyes) to mate
with the females than an outsider? I'd say generally yes, but sometimes the
outsider will disagree, and a fight will ensue to decide the issue.
So I think there's a sliding scale between "rights" and "no rights" - I'd
agree bacteria are pretty much bottom of the scale, and humans are near the
top, but I'd also say many mammals (and other animals) are nearer the top
than the bottom.
Regards
ROSCO
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