It is arbitrary. I accept that. I totally accept that. But it is what it is. Most people feel something when they see a dog being kicked or beaten on - similar to the way they feel when they see an innocent human being kicked or beaten on. It’s just the emotion of what occurs.
I don’t really think there is a morality, to be honest. This may sound contradictory, but I don’t think it is because when I see something as wrong or something that really makes me respond it’s based on an instinct of compassion and empathy that I think is pretty inherent in most human beings and all men - noting the difference between a biological homo sapien and a soulful, conscious man with the characteristics of humanity.
“Morality” is just a convenient word to refer to all those reasons why a given action is a better or worse idea to do. The reasons mostly closely associated with most people’s morality are things like how well said action harmonizes with their empathy and sense of justice, how well society works or doesn’t work if such actions are allowed, etc. Unfortunately, what is gained in convenience is lost in clarity, and before you know it people forget that the shorthand is just a shorthand, and start imbuing with it mystical qualities. Hence the rights / natural law / morality arguments always feature a bunch of smart people chasing their tails semantically.
And? Emotive reactions are not relevant. I don’t find it awful. Actually, to me it’s rather funny. I could find human mutilation humorous as well, but that wouldn’t mean anything in regards to the legal validity of it.
Well if we’re gonna be for barbarism, as a card carrying masochist myself, I wouldn’t mind watching your flesh stripped from your body while you’re submerged in a vat of acid. Cliche, I know, but good fun none the less.
Do you have no more respect for sentience than to that of mere carnalism?
So you hold up animals as being superior to human beings? Their “rights” take precedence to ours? You would go through the trouble of jailing or possibly even killing a fellow human simply because they did some cruel things to animals?
You, my friend, are no different than the kind of people who stone homosexuals or maim adulterers. You do not care about justice or what is right, you care about having things done which fit with your own aesthetic preferences. I love animals, especially dogs. I own a beautiful black lab and I would be devastated if someone harmed it as seriously as the dog in the picture. That does not mean that I have the right to attack those who abuse their animals.
This entire fiasco arises from the misunderstanding of individual rights. There are many different approaches to rights, e.g. a priori ones like Hoppe’s argumentation ethics and more empirical ones like natural rights. Ultimately, however, no animal we know of has any rights. Nobody has been able to construct any such proof for animal rights. The fact that people like you want to initiate aggression against your fellow man is what disgusts me.
Yeah, I’m sensing people don’t want to talk about this, which is why I’m asking for a link - no need to comply if you don’t want to. I’ll look for it on my own.
Curlz has no problems with dogs being sent to the gas chamber. So, I don’t think that dogs have any rights in Curlz’ world. Plus, Curlz doesn’t believe that humans have rights either, since he wants to attack humans who don’t obey Curlz’ desires when it comes to owning dogs.
What that means is that Curlz is highly confused, or worse, not that there’s no such thing as natural human rights.
You could as well argue that if Curlz couldn’t understand 2+2=4 that would prove maths doesn’t exist…
If that’s his position, then presumably he thinks dogs should (for the purpose of not offending his empathy) have the right not to have their ears lopped off, but should not have the right not to be executed outright. That would be an odd position, but it’s his own personal sense of empathy we’re talking about, so we have no way of refuting it (no way of refuting the notion that he feels strong empathy for a mutilated dog but not an executed one - since we can’t look inside his head).
If Curlz truly believes dogs should have the right not to have their ears cut off (even by their “owners” [if he accepts that dogs can be rightfully* owned]), then he would be inconsistent if he didn’t consider the act of cutting off a dog’s ears an act of aggression (presumably warranting punishment).
*Again, if we dispute this we’d have to ask, “‘Rightfully’ for what purpose?”
I’m not saying natural human rights don’t exist (or that they can’t be meaningfully defined), but that the word “right” implies some purpose(s). So if we talk of whether something has rights or not, we’ll typically have to make sure we’re agreeing on what the implied purpose of the right is. If Curlz defines the purpose of his proposed rights for dogs as “to avoid offending my (and I assume other people’s*) sense of empathy,” then it’s hard to argue against him because we can’t go inside his head and verify the nature of his sense of empathy directly. We can of course inform him if our sense of empathy disagrees, and point out that his sense of empathy might extend to butchered cows and pigs if he gave it some more thought. We can also point out to him that society may not work as well if we are punishing people severely for making cosmetic changes to pets, and try to get his sense of empathy tingling for little girls who may have their parents taken away for clipping Fido’s ears.
*Judging by the way he posted the OP as an appeal to our emotions, it seems he’s assuming our senses of empathy agree with his
I disagree. My motivation for not swimming in shark-infested waters is not appropriately called morality.
This motivation is given far too much attention. Social engineering is not a fundamental part of individual humanity. A morality based on social engineering is a peculiar artifice, useful only for would-be philosopher kings.
This reminds me of Jacob Bloom’s “morality is just a proxy” argument. I think this makes the same mistake as saying, “Love is at bottom about propagation of genes, so we might as well abandon all the romantic crap.” Just because you can recognize the system you are part of, doesn’t mean it necessarily makes sense to try to escape that system.
Do you mean me, or can I answer Lilburne? I don’t think anyone here is trolling, with the possible exception of Curlz. It seems to me everyone is engaged in quite civil debate at this point.
Good point. I would add that, if Curlz, impelled by his outrage, took it upon himself to Karate chop the dog mutilator and rescue the carved up pup, then justice, according to his heart, would be served. If a squad of Rothbardians then jumped him, forcing him to return the dog and pay restitution, what would that be?
Some might join the squad in order to be consistent with their apriorist natural law ideals. This in turn might be motivated by a desire to be consistent, and to not be forced to throw out the whole “libertarian society” baby with the “intuitively strange justice” bathwater. If that were the case, only a Benthamite (greatest good to the greatest number) third party observer would regard the apriorist Rothbardian motivation as any more valid than the moral indignation of Curlz.
Some might join the squad out of his own indignation: over violation of property rights. But if that indignation is “learned” from reading a lot of Rothbard and Hoppe, then that doesn’t seem any more valid than indignation over assertion of property rights “learned” from reading a lot of Marx and Engels. One might say Curlz’s indignation is “learned” from watching 101 Dalmations too many times. But I strongly suspect that indoctrination isn’t needed for such a sense of moral outrage to arise in response. Similarly, I strongly respect that a moral imperative to protect the relevant property rights of puppy mutilators would not arise without indoctrination.
In a society expunged of the “lifeboat lie” (that the state’s evils are necessary else the lifeboat of society will keel over), I suspect that Curlz would have a bigger posse on his side, that he would be limited by a moral society to a proportionate response to the puppy mutilation, and that such breaches of Rothbardian propertarian theory would not open the backdoor for the reentry of the state. If anything, I think a greater threat would come from a Private Defense Agency that proclaims that it has the only valid derivations from aprioristic natural law, and that any outrages it commits are justified by pure deductive reason.
This topic is one that I can’t say I have a strong opinion on yet.
Here’s a trail of thought I’m exploring: can some animals have some rights? (But not others?) Can this vary based on the norms of a society?
If we agree that the possession of rights requires responsibilities or duties, which to reference an example is what I think the US founders felt was implied when they specified the rights that citizens have, does this mean that the source of rights comes from the necessity of adhering to certain rules or responsibilities?
Obviously, animals don’t have nearly as many responsibilities as humans, so if they do have any rights, it should be fewer than humans. But some of them do have rules of behavior and expectations that they must abide by, complete even with consequences should they break those rules. Which animals have behavioral rules and expectations that they must abide by varies based on cultural and societal norms.
So since some animals are expected to behave in certain ways (which can vary by society and region), does this entitle them to certain rights in exchange? I would not think that a small set of basic rights (for some animals, again depending upon societal norms) necessarily excludes animals from being property, but perhaps they are a different type of property than an inanimate object is.
This is a fresh idea that only recently came to mind so if there are any stupid or glaring holes in my line of thought here, point them out for me.