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Subject: 
Re: Did animals have rights before we invented rights?
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.off-topic.debate
Date: 
Tue, 3 Jul 2001 15:28:12 GMT
Viewed: 
973 times
  
In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Scott Arthur writes:
In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek writes:
In lugnet.off-topic.debate, David Eaton writes:
In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Scott Arthur writes:
In lugnet.off-topic.debate, David Eaton writes:
Chris:
Neither the lion nor the wildebeest is concerned with
morality.  It is an action completely without moral regard.  It is
therefore amoral.  But not immoral.

Scott:
I agree.

My position is that we should not infer human characteristics on animals. We
should judge them by their standards - not ours.

No no, your position on whether animals are moral/immoral OR amoral. Do you
think they are moral/immoral or amoral?

Good restatement. Good luck getting a straight answer though.

Larry,
At this point I am tempted to dig up all the old posts you have not answered
- where the questions were *very* direct. All those ones were you were
unable to justify yourself. Unable to back you own argument. Unable to show
us your strengths as a critical thinker. But, you will be glad to hear, I >won't.

I for one would actually like to see you do that. Demonstrate away....



I agree that we ought not to infer or impute human characteristics of
animals unless they are demonstrably present. That's why I think of animals
as amoral, because I tend to (with some room for doubt) hold morality as a
human trait. To say something is amoral is not a judgement, it's merely
saying that morality doesn't apply to that thing. That is, that we are not
applying a human characteristic to a non human thing.

The arguments or examples advanced for some animals being moral seem to
focus on animals most like us, as Frank said... animals that have
significantly well developed higher brain functions, animals that you can
argue don't live completely in the present but can anticipate possible
futures (beyond "the rabbit will come out of this hole"), animals that have
some sort of proto-society (packs or herds with dominant members) and so forth.

I COULD just take that as my escape clause and say that when I said animals
are amoral I didn't mean these sort of animals that have some human traits,
because they're not quite fully animal.

But I won't. I'll instead ask what is necessary for morality to develop?
Here are some possibles: Reasoning ability, the ability to think in the
abstract, Language, the ability to understand consequences, the ability to
use logic...

Language 1st I expect, the others require language to really take off. At
least that is my understanding our minds, I think!, need a language to be
able articulate ideas.

Speaking of language, could you try re-stating that again? That is a very
difficult sentence to read - and I wouldn't want to put words in your mouth.


Scott A

Not an exhaustive list, and some duplication is present. Not
sure that's a well formed way to look at the question either. Might spark
some thought. This sort of addresses Ross's questions (and I liked Chris's
answers) but at a more building block level.

Leave it to Larry to bring this all back on topic... "Building block level"
indeed...


<snip>

++Lar

-Duane



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Did animals have rights before we invented rights?
 
(...) Why? He's done it before. Why enable him dodging a simple yes no question by urging him to indulge himself rather than urging a straight answer? Besides, I freely admit that I don't always have all the answers nor do I always answer every (...) (23 years ago, 3-Jul-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Did animals have rights before we invented rights?
 
(...) Larry, At this point I am tempted to dig up all the old posts you have not answered - where the questions were *very* direct. All those ones were you were unable to justify yourself. Unable to back you own argument. Unable to show us your (...) (23 years ago, 3-Jul-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)

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