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Randarkman posted:Because its not a human. Why would you need any more reason than that? Why is that human, with the intelligence level of a chimpanzee, worthy of more dignity than the chimp? They both have the same level of awareness and capacity to contribute to society so why not treat them the same? If we treat the severely mentally retarded as persons than there is no logical reason to extend the same protections against abuse and the same rights to a comfortable life to our closet cousins.
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Dec 6, 2014 05:53
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JawKnee posted:Given that it would be humanity granting the concept of 'personhood' as it relates to humanity to these creatures, I think it would probably require a level of language comprehension that could pass some kind of basic tests to even begin that. Because an animal with a sense of self may be suffering needlessly by human actions if it doesn't have the rights of personhood and a situation like that is immoral under any humane metric.
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Dec 6, 2014 08:04
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blowfish posted:Animals suffer needlessly in nature every single day by the millions. What should we do about that? Nothing because it's outside of our power, but if it's within our power to stop suffering in any form I would say that as rational beings we have a moral imperative to stop it.
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Dec 6, 2014 11:48
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blowfish posted:...so should we set up an organisation to stop chimp-on-chimp violence or orcas eating blue whales alive? I'm pretty sure we could if we gave enough of a poo poo. No, but we should certainly afford protection to animals that we feel the need to put in captivity, certainly the more intelligent of them at least.
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Dec 6, 2014 12:03
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blowfish posted:Why not? It's ~within our power~. Because it's not exactly a problem we created and are therefore responsible for, whereas when we take an animal out of it's habitat or breed it in captivity we should have a moral duty to make it's life comfortable since the humans responsible for the situation would be responsible for any suffering.
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Dec 6, 2014 12:12
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blowfish posted:Ok so according to that logic I should just keep driving when I see the car in front of me do a hit and run instead of stop and help since I am not responsible for the situation (as long as I don't run the person over again myself I take your point, and it actually does poke a rather good hole into my argument. It just seems that we should at the very least not be intentionally cruel to other life forms in our care that can feel pain. I would argue if we assign value to the life of a severely mentally disabled human we should assign the same value to the life of an animal of similar mental capacity. Of course that opens up a further problem of if animal suffering is actually wrong or if it's just part of nature and our causing suffering is no different from any predatory animal. Which I will admit is an argument with some strength behind it.
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Dec 6, 2014 12:33
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).