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 20:10:24 GMT
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Viewed:
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1464 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> 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.
That's my view as well-- they've got "rights" but their rights aren't nearly
the same set of rights as we ascribe to humans. They're very diminished.
> 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.
I'd say the latter. We have an obligation out of our own moral senses.
Without such moral senses, it'd be "fine" (I.E. not *IMMORAL*-- just amoral)
for us to do whatever we wanted.
> 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.
I don't think there's much of a contradiction. Only levels of complexity. Is
that specific person *immoral* to do such? No. Are *we* immoral for allowing
him to do it? Yes. Are we *very* immoral? No. Only slightly. On the other
hand, if we were merely trying to "wash our hands of it" and purposely
*tried* to find people who were amoral to cows, just so we could have steak
dinners, that's even more immoral of us, because we're trying to avoid a
moral burden.
> OK, well that didn't work very well.
I disagree. I think it worked all too well :)
> 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.
I'd agree. And again, I'd be of the mind again to say that our moral
obligations are 100% self generated-- meaning they have the ability to even
extend to rocks if we chose to view them socially. However, since we *don't*
usually have such a vision, rocks don't have "rights".
But, to further that example, let's say Bob the artist has the option to
destroy the rings of Saturn. For arguments sake, we'll say that there are no
negative side effects. Bob wants to spell out his name where the rings were,
and he's got the money to provide EVERYONE ON THE PLANET with monetary
compensation for whatever "value" they would have gotten out of looking at
the rings. Would you associate any moral value with his destruction of such
a natural phenomenon? I would.
Why? As I've said, I think morals stem from our association of our *own*
desires with the desires of others, even if those desires aren't present.
And personally, I think that humans often "personify" the universe as
"desiring" to be "natural". "It's the way nature intended", etc.
Basically, I'm trying to show that morality is a complete fiction generated
by our minds-- however, that's not to say that morality doesn't have
universal similarities where it *does* exist, nor that it's useless. It's
merely completely a product of our own minds, and only important to those
who have a concept of it.
DaveE
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