I am not really talking about restitution. If you abuse your dog, I shouldn’t have a claim to a monetary restitution simply by taking the case to court. Similarly, if a person is murdered and has no legal heirs, restitution is moot. Or if the heirs are themselves the killers… Society at large, however, is surely interested in justice and preventing moral hazards for the future violation of rights. Thus, it chooses to punish the perpetrator.
Anyone can bring forth the case. One logic might be that allowing rights violations in such specific cases sanctions further rights violations. Since everyone has rights and injustice threatens these rights, enforcing someone else’s rights can legitimately be perceived as protecting one’s own. A simpler logic is that people don’t like injustice and choose to punish it…or people like punishing injustice.
For animals, I am talking more about protection. I believe animals have a right to be spared unnecessary pain. Thus, anyone can enforce that right on behalf of a dog. They could steal your dog from you vigilante style. This might cause further conflict, however. Courts are used as independent third parties who can wisely determine who is right and wrong and sanction force, such that conflict is reduced and justice is served, both in the current case and future ones.
To be clear, civil cases are not what I’m talking about.
I agree that torture is morally worse than death. I agree that death likely involves pain and the animal does not consent to it, which may be considered immoral. However, I think that such pain can be considered morally insignificant compared to the benefits, which do not take as much of a moral value as an economic one. I admit the moral inconsistency.
If you want a threshold, it is simply a judge’s discretion per a given case. But it all breaks down. If the decision is unpopular, it may go unenforced, and it may be disregarded by future decisions. If it is unpopular and enforced, there may be violent protests and riots. Or the enforcement firm and court could go bankrupt. We can’t firmly predict these things and determine what is best for any given society in advance by a set of universal rules and principles.
There may even be a utilitarian case against a moral foundation that has better principles. For example, we could claim it is morally correct to abolish taxation and government as we know it overnight. Yet, this would likely drive many people into panic or outrage, such that a lengthy era of violence would ensue. Perhaps there is a more desirable means from here to there, even if less moral in principle. (I do not necessarily believe abolishing gov’t overnight would be a bad thing, but you can see the argument.)
I can only tell you my own subjective beliefs and that I employ resources to see that they are followed. If others employ greater resources such that practically my beliefs are unenforceable, I still would not consider the ruling order of the day moral, just as I do not consider democracy moral. Others, however, would see it as moral. Principles and methodologies can help create consistent visions of morality and help people change their moral beliefs, but the root of moral opinion is subjective and individualist.
It implies a lack of consent, from the point of view of the victim, I agree. But it falls back to property and self-ownership as the moral basis. We could then ask why property or self-ownership are moral. Ultimately, morality, like all human desire, is emotional, not rational. What is the rationality of survival, or of prosperity? There is none. We simply subjectively prefer them given alternatives, but there is no rational explanation why. There is no rational basis to explain why we dislike pain and enjoy pleasure - it simply is what it is. (Note - this does not mean I’m a nihilist, or a hedonist, or whatever else you might infer.)
I don’t think animals can recognize the concept of life forms or that life is good in and of itself. Thus, they cannot consent to or argue against being killed. However, they clearly recognize pain and do not consent to it. I am not arguing for an animal’s right to life, only its right to be spared unnecessary pain.
Note, this is different from simple response to stimulus. For example, a plant grows towards light. Thus, we could consider it desires light, and would not consent to being denied light. Yet, plants are outside of this discussion. They do not feel pain, because they do not have a nervous system. Maybe the difference is purely one of perspective, not fundamentals, but simply put, I have no empathy for plants’ desires, whereas I do for animals. Note: I do not and never will “torture” plants. However, I view them solely as a means and not an ends.
Yet, most of society believes it is moral for other people to pay taxes against their consent. Most people believe in moral duties, with or without the consent of the actor. (I do believe in moral duties; however, I do not believe they can ethically be enforced violently.) We could say most people’s “morality” is simply wrong. Or we can simply say that others have different moral beliefs than ourselves.
Moral beliefs are not confined to the parties involved in a conflict, either. In fact, conflicting parties often seek 3rd parties to learn their moral belief about the particular case. The “losing” party may or may not drop the moral belief that was found in error. The beliefs of 3rd parties often play a greater role in determining our rights, or at least enforcing them.
A given moral methodology might tell you whether something is right or wrong according to that framework, but it cannot dictate a universal morality. There are many methods of determining morality, such as utilitarianism and deontological ethics. Also, we can judge by intentions or consequences. Or we can go by our gut. The methodological means are useful to attempt to universalize moral principles, but they cannot dictate morality.
If I accept moral methodology A and you a conflicting methodology B, we will arrive at conflicting moral judgments. Who is right, and who is wrong? One of us must prove the morality of our methodology. Now we’re in a circular logic. We cannot determine the morality of the methodology by using the methodology upon itself. There must be subjective reasonings why we each chose different methodologies. One could even start with a moral belief and work backwards to create a methodology that finds such a belief as correct.
So while there is no “right” and “wrong”, generally the moral structure favored by the majority of society will shape the legal arrangement of that society. Democracy may not be “right” from our perspective, but it is our reality, given the moral opinions of most of society on it.
Judging morality from owner’s consent implies that property rights are always moral - that they trump other moral concerns. I don’t think this is always true (however, it is so often true that I am indeed a libertarian). There can be cases where property rights are violated without immorality. Of course, this is only if you allow room for subjective beliefs on morality. If your methodology to determine morality is based upon firm property rights, their violations will always be deduced as immoral.
Also, moral judgments are the most conflicting for parties involved. Thus, morality shouldn’t be dictated by the aggressor or victim so much as an independent third party. The victim surely feels his aggressor’s act is morally unjustified - he does not consent to it. But a third party can disregard such if there are more pressing moral values.
Consider a man A who is trying to kill himself and is stopped by another man B. B has moral intentions, does not realize the man is trying to kill himself, etc. Basically, a third party completely exonerates him from any wrong-doing, even if A believes B improperly acted on his property against A’s consent. So who is correct, A., B, or the third party? They likely all have different moral beliefs on the case. Can the judge determine who is right or wrong, or does he simply offer his own moral opinion? He may use principles to determine his opinion, but how can we be sure the principles themselves correctly determine morality? Ultimately, we simply agree with them.
I didn’t mean the full vegan platform of giving animals all human rights wins. I simply meant that if you want the most consistent ideology, you either accept that animals should never be intentionally delivered pain, or that animals are the complete property of their owners and can be inflicted with pain to the owner’s desire. Few people, however, would outright accept such an ideology, instead favoring the compromise position I advocate. Although their desires conflict (they want to eat meat but they don’t want to harm animals), they seek to minimize the degree to which they do.
I don’t believe wild animals should be given a right to freedom, property, life, etc. I believe they can (and in most cases should) be owned, and the owner should accept liability for damages caused by their animals. I just don’t think owners have the right to purposefully inflict pain on their animals where can be avoided, although I do grant a limited buffer in using animals for common, non-controversial human ends, such as labor and food sources.