You cannot have rights if you do not have the ability to recognize that you have those rights, because you cannot even recognize the rights of others.
(As a side note : my cat is sleeping on my desk, I don’t torture animals as hobby and if I had to personally kill cows to eat beef maybe I wouldn’t eat beef. Still people who seem more concerned about stopping farmers than stopping politicians make me nervous.)
No, the cat is sleeping on the cat’s desk. While it’s sleeping, it’s allowing you to use the desk.
Heh. Well, here’s a strange coincidence. A couple of hours ago the cat caught a dove in the garden. She didn’t kill it nor injured it - so I took the dove away from her - just like Player advocates I guess. The cat was not happy about it and meowed angrily at me for a while…
Indeed. You are lucky to have so lenient a master, Juan [:P]
See? One can be against animal cruelty without ascribing rights to animals. If animals did have rights, it would be a violation of the NAP to kill animals for food, clothing, or other byproducts. I guess, milk would still be okay, assuming the cows agreed to it, but eggs would be off limits.
Further, not only would it be wrong for humans to kill animals, it would also be wrong for animals to attack other animals. Who would enforce that? How would it be enforced? How could we force carnivores like lions and bears and spiders to become vegetarians?
BTW, the funny thing is that hardcore vegans ought to consider honey the product of animal exploitation. Indeed, a lot of agriculture comes from “exploiting” insects. Might be immoral to even eat agricultural goods then…
-Jon
Haha, so true.
All this talk about so-called rights makes my head ache.
A lot of ideas can be made to look absurd by taking them to their logical conclusion. I, for one, would not care to arrest a grizzly bear for killing fish, nor would I relish locking up a spider for trapping flies in its web.
It seems to me that while there are many who feel that animals have rights…or at least should not be tortured or have unnecessary pain or injuy inflicted upon them…the breakdown occurs when trying to set a limit on where in the animal kingdom that line exists.
For most people that line seems to hover around some capacity for feeling pain. Others seem to go with what I call the “Disney” rationale…if it’s cute and cudly then it shouldn’t be tortured, otherwise anything goes. Each person makes their own distinction, and while this is all well and good it does not lend itself well to a system of justice or an effective legal infrastructure.
What about trying to come up with a definition of “animal” so that we all know what we are talking about when we say “animal rights”? If you were creating a legal system and you wanted to criminalize the torture of dogs, but not have to arrest every person who stepped on an ant, how would you put that in well-defined terms?
I was thinking of some kind of genetic boundary…starting with Homo Sapiens and working down in similarity. Or using existing taxonomic ranks and use Phylum or even Class…say everything in the phyla Chordata. Of course this can’t just be an arbitrary distinction. There should be a rational and logical reason for why the boundary is chosen.
Any thoughts? I know that many here have subjective reasons why they think certain animals have rights and others don’t, but can we try to get those reasons more concrete?
Um… legal infrastructure? System of justice? What do you think this is, an archy or anarchy? Take your systems of justice and place them where you think appropriate. Order will be maintained by the natural inclination of people to cooperate, or at least leave each other alone, in combination with everyone being at least somewhat armed. Doubtless, there will be some guilds of adjudicators or something people could go to to solve disputes, but it will mostly be to individuals.
On the other hand, most people here (as mentioned in another thread) are actually polyarchists rather than anarchists, and they want all their archies to enforce strong property definitions, so they will likely not be so hostile to your idea of a “legal infrastructure” or “system of justice”.
Well even anarchy has a system of justice and legal infrastructure…it’s called “might makes right”. You just better hope that the group of people living down the street aren’t more heavily armed than you when you come knocking on their door and tell them to shut down their dog and rooster fighting clubs.
But that’s not the point. Even you mention adjudicators to help solve disputes. If two people had a dispute over whether torturing an animal was okay or not, where would you draw the line? Knowing that this might just create a precedent for future disputes?
If I can’t stop them, I can’t. On the other hand, I can’t stop the government slaughtering Iraqis, either, so its still preferable. On the other hand, if the person running such a operation wants not to be fed to his own dogs, he will have to keep his mob around him all the time…
That being said, I think the truer “system” involved here is “risk makes polite”. I think there would be LESS violence in general, since the immediate risk of armed individuals is a far greater deterrent than the more remote risk of being caught after the fact. Most people today go around basically helpless, completely vulnerable to someone with a gun, or even someone who’s worked out a bit and knows how to fight. With an armed populace, even if you’re the fastest gun in the West, you could always have a misfire. An armed society is a polite society. Police forces just make people complacent.
I’m thinking, for adjudicators, they would handle cases like, “This here’s my land, McCoy!”, or, to move a little closer to the topic at hand, “You fed my husband to his fighting dogs, and thus owe me some compensation.”
Didn’t you just intermix anarchy and statism?
“Might is right” is the basic slogan of group coercion, not of anarchy. Anarchy is just the opposite, “might makes NO right”, rights do not evolve from coercive power but are an inherent possessions of every human being.
So you should not blame something on anarchy which is the basic creed of the enemy and one, if not the fundamental, reason anarchy abhores collectivism and statism.
Unless I am very much mistaken, the only “rights” you have in an anarchist society are the ones you can seize and defend. Since when do inherent or natural rights go hand-in-hand with anarchy? Are you saying that in an anarchist society, if I tried to kill you (or a dog to stay OT) you would say I can’t because some greater authority says you (or the dog) has an inherent right to life?
I don’t think so. In “might makes right” I don’t mean “right” as in “I have a right to exist”. I mean “right” as in “correct” or “acceptable”. If I want to have dog fights in my house, the only way you can stop me is by using force (might). If you stop me, you have used might to make me do what you think is right. Hence, “might makes right”.
But all of this is off topic. Regardless of the type of society, each person reading this thread has to make a personal decision on where to draw the line when it comes to “animal rights”. Whether you are doing this to create a legal framework in an enlightened dictatorship or just what goes on in your house, it doesn’t matter.
For giggles, lets just assume that we are establishing a legal framework for the newly seceeded Libertarian country of New Hampshire. There is a very small central government. Justice is handled by a few large protection agencies and several private judges, who have all agreed to abide by the NAP. However, there is some disagreement as to whether animals are property or have rights. You sit on a panel of judges who are working to codify this sticking point. How do you argue?
Do you say that all creatures not Homo Sapiens are property? Do you say all living things have the same rights as humans? Why?
Or do you get more complicated, and say that only animals that feel suffering should get rights? How do you define this in a non-subjective way? Do you say that only living things that show an ability to respect others rights should get rights of their own?
It’s up to you. You are going to set the legal framework for a new society. What do you do? WHAT DO YOU DO!!! 
Nope, only if you assume the truth of legal positivism/an appeal to authority. Anarchism is predicated on the notion that aggressing (i.e. initiating force) against another is a violation of their rights, hence illegitimate. Otherwise you’re conflating rights with their enforcement. What you are speaking of is not rights, but power. It is indeed under the state that “Might makes right”, where the ruling class can hypocritically deny certain actions to its chattel whilst at the same time engaging in them, simply because it can.
-Jon
Sorry to drag up an old thread, but I came here from a link on a newer thread and this thread is quite interesting.
I tend to agree with the viewpoint that humans are animals, too, and that the differences between us and other animals are not black and white but a matter of degree.
Couldn’t we use a “fuzzy” concept of justice and apply it to this scenario? A concept where skinning an ape alive would lead to some severe penalties, while plucking off a fly’s wings probably won’t warrant any judicial action, only social ostracism? We can think about these concepts internally, why couldn’t we apply them to our legal framework?
Really? Sounds like a slippery slope to me. So, should killing an animal be a crime?
They do. If an insect or living being has been forced in the making of the product they wont use it.
In fact my Significant other doesnt use anything with shellac in or on it. To include certain type of vitamin covers.
The only things she uses that are not 100% vegan are roads and infrastructure.