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 19:35:09 GMT
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Viewed:
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1556 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, David Eaton writes:
. I'm asking Larry where his line is, because I believe his
> stance *does* in fact require a line, even if he can't pin it down (as he
> has admitted).
I'd agree that there needs to be a line or gray area or something.
I sense I am about to well and thoroughly wrap myself around an axle so I
reserve the right to retract anything that subsequently is shown to lead to
contradiction (1).
OK, I am not sure I know where the line is. I'm not sure that all rights are
at the same line either. For example, take cows... I've been saying that I
feel I am completely within my rights (and NOT as "might makes right" sorts
of rights, either) to kill and eat cows. Cows don't have the "life, liberty
and pursuit of happiness" right that I ascribe to people.
Yet I still think that cows have something akin to a right, when viewed in
the context of their interaction with moral beings, to not suffer
excessively. Cows in nature are in a "might makes right" system and may well
be tortured (inadvertantly or not, I'm not sure. Are cats moral enough to be
deliberately cruel?) by a lion when brought down and eaten alive on the
veldt. But cows that we have taken as our own... WE have a responsibility as
moral beings to see to it that their lives are as pain free as is reasonably
practical and that we ought to slaughter them in as humane a way as possible
(2).
Is that a *right of the cow* or just an *obligation on us* because we're
moral? I am not sure. After writing all that I'd tend to lean to the latter
but I don't know. If it's just an obligation on us, is it OK that an amoral
(not fully developed) person is cruel to his cows? Society seems to say no.
But that person doesn't have the obligation, right? so that seems a
contradiction.
OK, well that didn't work very well.
Try an infant baby... We hold that freedom of assembly is a fundamental
right here in the US. Does a baby have that right? Not really, it's
constrained for safety's sake by parental guidance from wandering where it
would and investigating what it would. Else it wouldn't live to be an adult
and be able to boycott lunch counters that discriminate. :-) Clearly parents
abrogate things that would be rights for adults in the interests of being
good parents to their not yet fully developed children.
Yet a baby still has the right to life and liberty. I would think we'd all
agree that most any good moral system should say that babies ought not to be
murdered out of hand. Whether one ought to give max life support to or
euthanize a critically deformed child is a different question. (No idea of
the answer at the moment.)
So ya, I guess there are some gradations of rights. Not sure though. I can't
tell you what the line or even the gray area boundaries are, either, other
than the very broad "rocks don't, and moral humans do" metric which is too
broad to be of much use.
Note that when faced with gray areas I tend to advocate erring on the
conservative side a bit just to be safe.
1 - note to the audience, I am acknowledging that I do sometimes contradict
myself and invite correction. Good debaters do that if they are trying to
gain clarity and not just score points. It's what the Daves are currently
doing, seeking clarity, not just sparring for fightings sake. Contrast that
with other styles you may see around here, though.
2 - note that we have had a lot of allegations of routine cruelty by some
folks, none of which have really been questioned as to whether they are
valid or not... I'd be interested in some cites... Balance that with the
lone statement by Duane (which I give a GREAT deal of credence to) that they
treated cows pretty darn well on their farm/ranch. This squares with my own
limited observations of farming, most farmers and small ranchers don't seem
to be routinely cruel to their animals. They're moral, after all.
++Lar
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