If a human being has the intellectual level of a cow, either due to perhaps severe mental retardation or being in a permanent vegetative state, is there a difference between consuming him and consuming a cow? Does a lack of awareness, or a level of awareness equivalent to animals that are deemed to be acceptable to eat, mean a lack of rights? Does an individual with the intellectual capabilities of animals we raise for food have the same rights as those animals? Should a mother be allowed to sell her sufficiently developmentally disabled child, or a child in a PVS, off the the butcher to be turned into sausages?
All human beings have the same rights.
why?
People Burgers!
Because any line that would separate worthy human beings and unworthy human beings would have to be arbitrary. Each such line would be as good as every other such line.
Humorous.
If you take the Rothbardian view it depends on the potential of that person to eventually reach the point of social maturity. Although I doubt that he imagined the taste of human sausages.
But are people who have the same understanding of their environment as a lower life form or perhaps no comprehension/awareness whatsoever human beings? Is being human simply down to genes and DNA?
Let’s assume for that we agree that the line for people who are aware is too tricky, but then what about people in a PVS? How does somebody in a PVS have an rights? And if they don’t have any rights should people be able to eat them?
I don`t know much about PVS and what it entails. Is it like your brain is irrevokably dead, but like the cells in your hands are still alive? But if you are intent on eating human flesh I can say that corpses are property of their kin, so they could eat them if they wanted to.
Yeah Rothbard was a bit of a fundamentalist on these sort of issues.
Not a doctor, but it’s not the same as brain death. The patient is awake, but unaware; think Terri Schiavo.
There’s an instance of question begging in the implicit assumption that it’s morally acceptable to eat cows, but let’s ignore that for the moment and focus on the more relevant question of whether there’s a difference between mentally disabled humans and nonhuman animals with the same levels of awareness, sensory capacities, etc.
I would argue that there is, and that the only distinction made between them is an arbitrary speciesist one. There are some who claim that there is no moral fault in subjective preferences for our own species, but this simply mirrors the claims of those who assert that there is no moral fault in subjective preferences for our own race or countrymen. Both have identified an arbitrary division between sentient creatures, but don’t argue in favor of its preservation with very persuasive analysis. At any rate, moral reasoning is by its very nature intended to be objective.
The claim that legitimate distinctions between groups of humans cannot be drawn is not convincing. We already draw distinctions between the mentally able and the mentally disabled in our treatment of them, so examining those differences in determination of moral value does not cross any new frontiers in that vein; it merely applies ethical analysis to areas that some are squeamish about approaching.
In addition to all this, it’s worth noting that even if there’s no legitimate difference between the moral value of mentally disabled humans and the moral value of nonhuman animals with similar levels of awareness et al., the perception that there is will cause complications nonetheless. Since people tend to value mentally disabled humans more than livestock, killing the mentally disabled as one would kill an animal would cause significantly more suffering because it would emotionally harm those who cared for the mentally disabled human killed more than they ever would a cow.
So what? F**k them! Who cares about their “emotional harm”?
Who is really being squeamish here?
Turn it down a notch, ok?
Well, there is a difference, as can be seen by looking at the canibals in the south pacific, eating human beings might give you kuru, something I wouldn’t like to have as a disease.
Now more serious.
The question what a human being is or is not, does not depend on some arbitrary definition of intelligence by some, proclaimed Expert. A human being is simply a human being because it is the offspring of two other human beings. Full stop.
If we agree that the best way to avoid conflict is the NAP (None aggression principle), than it follows, that you commit a criminal act if you initiate aggression against an human being. I would strongl consider slaughtering a human being for gourmet reasons as a breach of the NAP.
All the rest is an argument about faulty premises. Should group A outlaw yaddyyaddy.
Next, because animals are not human, hence a cow is not the offspring of 2 other human beings but of a bull and a cow, they are outside of the concept of the NAP, as the NAP is a concept that is invited by “humans” to help solve conflicts between “humans”. So, no rights for animals at all.
Does that mean you can slaughter, torture and keep animals under brutal conditions? Well, that is up to you, as it is an ethical question. I wouldn’t, because I belive that life is something to respect -not sure I would use this ethic in the jungle while all kinds of bugs try to enter my body through each possible orifice to make me their dinner, though.
Animals may have some way to solve conflicts between them, which in fact they have, but that is not our business but theirs.
It is sheer arrogance to claim animal rights. Has any urban do-gooder ever asked an animal if it wants to agree to it? Nature is not a nice Disney style environment for urban and sub urban humans to relax in. It is a brutal, unforgiving environment in which humans have been able to extend the borders where the real natur sets in, to a place too far away for most western humans to ever encounter.
Still you.
Emotional pain is quite a valid form of suffering. Is there a difference between physical and emotional pain? Both are caused by various chemical reactions in the brain.
[8-)] I used the censor stars.
So? It is a valid form of suffering, thats great. Why should I care?
But let me try to guess. You need suffering to be the morality yardstick in order to justify depredations. Not having a car “causes” great suffering to a touchy-feely guy who doesn’t have a car. So he has license to steal one from a guy who has ten cars and will barely notice one is missing. Am I right?
Glad you weren’t serious, but in case there’s anyone who wanted to pick up on that, consumption of various animals can cause illness or allergic reactions of various sorts, but that doesn’t render consumption of them unethical.
This is still mere assertion. That humans are members of the species homo sapiens has been acknowledged; what has not been addressed is the relevance that their DNA has to their ability to suffer. Also problematic would be the “intelligent Martians” scenario. If there were aliens that possessed the same sapience capacities as humans (watch Avatar again and again and again), would that not be relevant, or would they simply be excluded from moral consideration by virtue of being non-human?
I hope you’re not trying to make an ethical claim on that basis, as it would be a fairly straightforward naturalistic fallacy. The nature of the “animal rights” that most advocates seem to focus on are intended to increase “welfarist” rights that minimize animals’ suffering rather than anything comparable to civil rights and liberties. This means that the ability to make informed and rational decisions and conceptualize any theory of “rights” is irrelevant to the manner of rights in question anyway. It is enough that they possess sufficient levels of sentience to suffer from certain actions. As I’ve tried to emphasize, human infants and the severely mentally disabled are acknowledged to possess “rights” in regard to their intuitive interests in the avoidance of suffering (primarily in the realm of physical pain), and since various nonhuman animals possess awareness and sentience levels that rival or exceed those of those groups, it is only arbitrary speciesism that excludes them from having rights.
As the prevention of suffering is an intuitive moral interest of all sentient beings, you see. Just sayin’.
Is that touchy-feeliness? Or is that straightforward application of economic rationality? Not come across diminishing marginal utility before?
The third time that you should mention this, without ever having replied to my post addressing this in the other topic.
Sure it is. Self-inflicted emotional suffering over nothing. No sympathy from me.
And in any case sympathy can not be ground for moral considerations.