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 23:15:53 GMT
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Viewed:
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1545 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> 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
Long as its a 12 long technic axle so it can bend a bit.... 8?)
> 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.
I think this is all consistent with my (current) view that we don't have any
"fundamental" rights. They're all derived from our (collective) experience
over the ages of living in social groups. And because many other animals
also live in social groups, I'd be very surprised if some of them don't have
some sort of idea of "rights" within those groups. I reserve the right to
change my mind though 8?)
> Note that when faced with gray areas I tend to advocate erring on the
> conservative side a bit just to be safe.
I think the way people lean when faced with grey areas goes a long way to
defining their character. I probably lean even more conservatively than you
8?) and I also think people tend to lean further towards conservative as
they grow older - the need to explore becomes less than the need to look
after one's family (or whatever else you look after). Of course there's
always exceptions to every rule 8?)
ROSCO
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