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I have long been thinking that some sort of tiered system of according rights to different species could be a good thing. It would have to be handled very carefully and subject to constant review (as we uncover more evidence about animals' intelligences), but it would ideally provide better protections for various creatures. Something like humans and any theoretical aliens or robots we might meet/built who are self-aware, reasoning beings. Treat those as we already (are supposed to) treat our own species. Then highly intelligent animals like great apes and elephants, dolphins and whales, and some cephalopods, who we treat largely as we would treat the severely mentally disabled human, i.e. we can make decisions on their behalf because they are unable to, but we must do so with their best interests in mind, we may not eat them or test things on them (except where doing so would benefit them rather than us), and we do our best to keep them in their natural habitats or in habitats that closely resemble the ones they would live in in nature. Then we'd have the general animal population, things like cats and dogs, cows and sheep, pigs and rats, all that great swathe of animals that clearly have some intelligence as well as emotional lives, and are capable of suffering. We would be able to eat and test on these, but subject to very strict regulations and standards, e.g. any food animal would have to be allowed as full a life as possible in free-range circumstances until slaughter, and that slaughter would have to be quick and painless. Then I guess you get to really barely-intelligent animals like insects and stuff, where we don't go out of our way to be dicks, but we don't really take them into account when we do human stuff either. The part I'm unhappy with is food animals, though. I hope that will be mostly solved when we can vat-grow meat on a commercial basis; at that point we just say "Nope no killing animals for food (unless you're starving or whatever)" and it's more consistent, but I don't think vegetarianism on moral grounds has much chance of making headway before that point.
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Dec 5, 2014 15:21
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 04:13 |
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