Subject:
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Re: Validity testing (was: 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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Thu, 5 Jul 2001 17:14:40 GMT
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Viewed:
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1434 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> Now, if I in my role as owner of that property, exploit it by, say, smashing
> a rock with my hammer to make gravel to decorate or improve another part,
> there is no "might makes right" involved. As long as I have clear title, and
> there are no deed restrictions, it is mine to do with as I wish.
>
> If I similarly exploit a clearly non sentient organism and rightless, a
> blade of grass for example, there is no difference. This neatly extends to
> any other organism that doesn't have rights. No might makes right involved.
> It's simply a case of exploitation of resources that belong to me.
Aha... now we've reached a potential crux. What do and do not have rights?
Does a dog? How about a baby? Does a retarded human? Cro-magnon man?
> The only time that "might makes right" is involved is if I am exploiting
> something that has rights. In which case it's a different scenario not a
> boundary condition. Important distinction.
Alright, I guess I'd dispute this, but only insofar as I think animals have
rights. I just don't value their rights ("food animals") enough to prevent
myself from killing them for food.
> Killing ones own food animals for food is not an amoral act because it is
> not *amoral* to wish to sustain yourself with the fruits of your labor.
> Rather, it is profoundly moral to wish to live and to further that end in a
> non violent non rights abrogating way. Not amoral, not immoral, but moral.
I'd call it amoral (assuming no rights, etc). For the sake of example, let's
say I eat some salt. I don't think we'll have anyone arguing that the salt
has any rights/moral awareness/self-awareness/desires. I'd call eating the
salt an amoral act. Why? Mostly because I don't associate my own happiness
as something *moral*. I just associate that with personal desire. And as I
said elsewhere, I think morality is *social* desire. Hence, when more than
one being's desires come into play, and one party can recognize as valuable
these desires, then it becomes a moral issue.
I guess the way I see it is better exampled not by saying "moral" and
"immoral" so much as "heroic" and "evil". Someone who is *moral* is not
actually indifferent (I.E. not in moral violation) but is actually a *good*
person-- doing charitable and just acts, rather than living on the border.
And I have a hard time judging eating salt (or being cruel to it) as either
"heroic" or "evil". It just doesn't register on the scale.
> Now, I would be happy to eat steak grown in a vat (from an original donor
> cell) rather than sliced from carcasses, and would welcome such a
> development, but that's not here yet.
Woah! Wait a sec! You would *welcome* such a development? Why? Just because
you wouldn't have animal rights activists attacking you? As judging the act
of killing an animal for your own food to be moral, wouldn't artificially
generated food have *exactly* equal moral implications? Why prefer one to
the other unless there's actually some *negative* value associated with
eating previously living meat?
DaveE
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