Speciesism and the Rights of Lower Animals

[Hickory]

wyssaway said:

"Personally, I have not heard a single realistic, convincing, non-religious argument for the use of non-human animals (for food, clothing, research, entertainment, etc) by humans. In fact, most of the arguments given for using animals (lower intelligence, rankings of usefullness to humans, etc) apply to marginal humans also. I'm curious what the users of this forum think."

My response:

If we apply the same standards to all animals, including humans, then we are not guilty of speciesism. It is not speciesism to treat lower animals in the same way as we treat human criminals. Simply put: lower animals do not respect our rights, so they give up any logical basis for expecting us to respect their rights. We can kill them, capture them, eat them, experiment on them, keep them as slaves, etc. The only principle limiting what we can do to them is this: we must not, by our behavior, give other, non-criminal beings reasoned grounds for perceiving a threat to their own rights. That means we can shoot a cougar that attacks our livestock, but we cannot capture it and torture it, because by doing the latter, we would give other persons reasonable grounds for thinking that we are criminally insane ourselves. (It is not an accident that serial murderers, as children, almost invariably have a history of torturing small animals.)

As far as eating meat from executed human criminals goes, cannibalism is a dangerous practice, because any diseases or parasites that the source of the meat had will be potentially transferrable to any individual of the same species that eats the meat. Eating human meat, by a human, falls pretty much into the same category as playing with a live hand grenade. Hence if executed murderers were butchered out and the resulting cuts of meat sold in grocery stores, I doubt that there would be much demand for them by other humans, though I suppose they could be included as an ingredient in dog food.

In any case, I don't see even a shred of "speciesism" in using lower animals as food, keeping them as pets, or any of the other things that you seem to be concerned about. Lower animals, by their nature, are incapable of respecting our rights, so we are not obligated to respect their rights.

And that's all there is to that story.

[Cephus]

Rights exist only where humans invent and implement them. There are no such things as rights on this planet except where we decide they exist. People need to get a grip.

[pahl]

If we apply the same standards to all animals, including humans, then we are not guilty of speciesism. It is not speciesism to treat lower animals in the same way as we treat human criminals. Simply put: lower animals do not respect our rights, so they give up any logical basis for expecting us to respect their rights. We can kill them, capture them, eat them, experiment on them, keep them as slaves, etc. The only principle limiting what we can do to them is this: we must not, by our behavior, give other, non-criminal beings reasoned grounds for perceiving a threat to their own rights. That means we can shoot a cougar that attacks our livestock, but we cannot capture it and torture it, because by doing the latter, we would give other persons reasonable grounds for thinking that we are criminally insane ourselves. (It is not an accident that serial murderers, as children, almost invariably have a history of torturing small animals.)

Wait, what? Who treats human criminals like that? And no one in their right mind would shoot me if i attacked their livestock, maybe if i showned no remorse and hissed at them they would put me in an asylum, but thats it.
And even if canabalism was not dangerous (hell, im pretty sure some chef could come up with perfectly safe ways to practice it) that is NOT the main reason we dont practice it in civiliced communities today. And i think people would find it offensive if anyone implied that.

Imo, yes we are definitely making a difference between humans and other animals JUST because we are human. Thus yes, i guess that could be called "speciesism". Its natural for us to do so, and there is no Godly or special rules that makes that fair from a perspective outside of humans.

I dont blame people for feeling bad about that, but should we feel bad about it?

[Jack]

Rights exist only where humans invent and implement them.

And we can extend them to other living beings through our capacity for empathy and compassion.

[Cephus]

And we can extend them to other living beings through our capacity for empathy and compassion.

If we choose to, certainly, but the rights are still created by us. I get really tired of people declaring X right or Y right when they simply don't exist, or who say everyone has Z right, even when they demonstrably have never been granted such.

[Hickory]

To Cephus:

You said:

"Rights exist only where humans invent and implement them. There are no such things as rights on this planet except where we decide they exist. People need to get a grip."

Then, in a later post, you added the following:

"If we choose to, certainly, but the rights are still created by us. I get really tired of people declaring X right or Y right when they simply don't exist, or who say everyone has Z right, even when they demonstrably have never been granted such."

My response:

Do the laws of physics exist, or were they merely "invented and implemented" by us? The answer: both. Yes, we have to discover what they are and express them in human language before we can make use of them, but that in no sense implies that they are arbitrary. Reality behaves in accordance with certain patterns, and those patterns are objective facts that exist whether we recognize them or not.

The same is true of rights. It is simply a fact that when two people become involved in a dispute about property, there will always exist a multitude of ways that the dispute may be resolved. Among that multitude, the vast majority will be obviously, transparently wrong; a lesser number will be wrong, but not obviously so; and a small number of similar solutions will qualify as arguably "fair" or "right"--meaning that any of them would be acceptable to a reasonable person without a lot of argument.

The point is that what is fair or right is not arbitrary. There are principles of reasoning which dictate how disputes over property ought to be resolved. Those principles express patterns that arise out of the nature of social interaction, which is as surely an aspect of reality as are the mechanical interactions of physics.

Suppose, for example, that it is 2 AM and you are sound asleep. Suddenly you are awakened by your daughter screaming. You jump out of bed and rush into her room. She is sitting up in her bed, wide-eyed, looking toward the window, and she says: "A man was leering at me through my window!" You grab a pistol and rush outside. As you round the corner of your house on the side where your daughter's room is located, you come face-to-face, from a distance of about ten feet, with a very large, very dirty, bearded man with a very big knife in his hand. Before you can speak, he lunges at you with the knife, and you commence firing. Result: he closes the distance between you very rapidly as you repeatedly pull the trigger, almost reaching you before falling dead at your feet.

The question is, should you be punished for what you did to him? You did not own his body; he did. Yet you riddled it with bullets, killing him.

The answer, I submit, is obvious, and not arbitrary in the slightest. He violated your rights repeatedly. First, he trespassed by coming onto your property without permission. Second, he invaded your privacy (and your daughter's) by window peeping. Third, he attempted murder by coming at you with a knife. The bottom line is this: he did not respect your rights, so you were relieved of all responsibility to respect his rights.

There is nothing arbitrary about that conclusion. No reasonable person would claim that there was anything unjustified or unfair in what you did, or that you ought to be punished in any way.

It is by the analysis of such examples that the principles of human rights were discovered, and those principles are fully as objective and reality based as are the laws of physics.

[Hickory]

To Cephus:

You said:

"Rights exist only where humans invent and implement them. There are no such things as rights on this planet except where we decide they exist. People need to get a grip."

Then, in a later post, you added the following:

"If we choose to, certainly, but the rights are still created by us. I get really tired of people declaring X right or Y right when they simply don't exist, or who say everyone has Z right, even when they demonstrably have never been granted such."

My response:

Do the laws of physics exist, or were they merely "invented and implemented" by us? The answer: both. Yes, we have to discover what they are and express them in human language before we can make use of them, but that in no sense implies that they are arbitrary. Reality behaves in accordance with certain patterns, and those patterns are objective facts that exist whether we recognize them or not.

The same is true of rights. It is simply a fact that when two people become involved in a dispute about property, there will always exist a multitude of ways that the dispute may be resolved. Among that multitude, the vast majority will be obviously, transparently wrong; a lesser number will be wrong, but not obviously so; and a small number of similar solutions will qualify as arguably "fair" or "right"--meaning that any of them would be acceptable to a reasonable person without a lot of argument.

The point is that what is fair or right is not arbitrary. There are principles of reasoning which dictate how disputes over property ought to be resolved. Those principles express patterns that arise out of the nature of social interaction, which is as surely an aspect of reality as are the mechanical interactions of physics.

Suppose, for example, that it is 2 AM and you are sound asleep. Suddenly you are awakened by your daughter screaming. You jump out of bed and rush into her room. She is sitting up in her bed, wide-eyed, looking toward the window, and she says: "A man was leering at me through my window!" You grab a pistol and rush outside. As you round the corner of your house on the side where your daughter's room is located, you come face-to-face, from a distance of about ten feet, with a very large, very dirty, bearded man with a very big knife in his hand. Before you can speak, he lunges at you with the knife, and you commence firing. Result: he closes the distance between you very rapidly as you repeatedly pull the trigger, almost reaching you before falling dead at your feet.

The question is, should you be punished for what you did to him? You did not own his body; he did. Yet you riddled it with bullets, killing him.

The answer, I submit, is obvious, and not arbitrary in the slightest. He violated your rights repeatedly. First, he trespassed by coming onto your property without permission. Second, he invaded your privacy (and your daughter's) by window peeping. Third, he attempted murder by coming at you with a knife. The bottom line is this: he did not respect your rights, so you were relieved of all responsibility to respect his rights.

There is nothing arbitrary about that conclusion. No reasonable person would claim that there was anything unjustified or unfair in what you did, or that you ought to be punished in any way.

It is by the analysis of such examples that the principles of human rights were discovered, and those principles are fully as objective and reality based as are the laws of physics.

[SoylentGreen]

As far as eating meat from executed human criminals goes, cannibalism is a dangerous practice, because any diseases or parasites that the source of the meat had will be potentially transferrable to any individual of the same species that eats the meat. Eating human meat, by a human, falls pretty much into the same category as playing with a live hand grenade. Hence if executed murderers were butchered out and the resulting cuts of meat sold in grocery stores, I doubt that there would be much demand for them by other humans, though I suppose they could be included as an ingredient in dog food.

Only if they eat it raw. Cooking meat is the usual method of getting rid of bacteria. I would see no reason why human meat would not have to meet the same standard of fitness that animals such as cow or sheep must meet to be slaughtered. No one expects the animal meat they buy now at a butchers to be contaminated, so why would they want to purchase human meat if it is contaminated.
And why would anyone knowingly feed meat to a dog that is diseased or have parasites. Suggesting that people should make their pets deliberately sick sounds like the work of a criminally insane person.

[Hickory]

To Pahl:

I said:

"It is not speciesism to treat lower animals in the same way as we treat human criminals. Simply put: lower animals do not respect our rights, so they give up any logical basis for expecting us to respect their rights. We can kill them, capture them, eat them, experiment on them, keep them as slaves, etc."

You said:

Wait, what? Who treats human criminals like that?

My response:

(1) "Kill them."

Lots of places have the death penalty.

(2) "Capture them."

When the police apprehend a suspect, they capture him.

(3) "Eat them."

Not nowadays, though it has been done in the past. (E.g., the Aztecs.)

(4) "Experiment on them."

Happens all over the world, including in the U.S.

(5) "Keep them as slaves."

Happens everywhere. (A convict in a penitentiary making license plates is as much a slave as a black man toting a cotton bale in the antebellum South.)

***********************

I said:

"We can shoot a cougar that attacks our livestock."

You said:

"No one in their right mind would shoot me if I attacked their livestock."

My response:

In the old west, rustlers were routinely shot or hanged, despite the fact that stealing someone's cattle was a lesser crime than simply gunning them down. People back then were a lot more sane than they are today, of course, so instances of wantonly gunning down someone's livestock for no reason came up so rarely that I cannot find any historic references to such an episode. I have no doubt, however, what the outcome would have been if it had happened: a rancher would have shot any lunatic that he caught killing his livestock, if that proved necessary to stop him, and during those times no one in or out of law enforcement would have expected him to do otherwise.

In any case, we need to clearly distinguish between two issues: (a) the question of when a retaliatory response becomes justified; and (b) the question of when a retaliatory response goes too far.

My original point had to do with the first question--i.e., with the fact that killing someone's livestock is an act which carries a built-in penalty: by violating another person's rights, you give up your grounds for complaining if the other person or his duly authorized representative (e.g., the sheriff) violates your rights. When you violate the rights of another, in short, you justify a retaliatory response on his part. That is true of a cougar, and equally true for a man.

The second question, which I was not attempting to address, has to do with the fact that even when a retaliatory response has been justified, it can go overboard. That occurs when the nature of the response is so out of proportion to the offense that it may lead reasonable people to perceive a threat to themselves. If, for example, a two-year-old toddles across your property line and you gun him down, it becomes clear that you are both insane and violent, hence a threat to others. To credibly threaten another is, itself, a form of physical assault, hence a crime. That's why, in reason if not in law, you can kill a grizzly bear that you find on your property even if he hasn't attacked your livestock: his capacity for violence is great, and it isn't constrained by reason. A human who guns down a two-year-old for a trivial infraction is a threat to others for the same reason as a grizzly bear.

Bottom line: the rights violator, whether human or animal, gives up his grounds for expecting his own rights to be respected; but that fact does not mean any and all forms of retaliation that the mind can conceive are automatically justified.

***********************
You said:

"And even if canabalism was not dangerous (hell, im pretty sure some chef could come up with perfectly safe ways to practice it) that is NOT the main reason we dont practice it in civiliced communities today. And i think people would find it offensive if anyone implied that."

My response:

The practice of eating cooked human flesh, for a human, is analogous to the practice of pointing unloaded guns at your friends: you are relying on your judgment that the meat has been thoroughly cooked, just as you are relying on your judgment that the gun is unloaded. The problem is that, (a) being human, you are fallible, and (b) the consequences of error are potentially horrendous. Result: both practices are to be avoided on principle.

As for what the "main" reason might be that people avoid cannibalism nowadays, given the fact that most people are unaware that there are solid reasons for avoiding the practice, the answer is obvious: mindless conformity. And, yes, mindless conformists do tend to become offended if it is suggested that they ought to have actual reasons for their behavior, above and beyond their desire to conform.

That is a major reason why the "modern" world is going to hell in a handbasket, in fact: most people are impervious to reason, preferring to go through their lives with their fingers in their ears and their eyes tightly shut, where criticism is concerned. Thus it does not matter, for example, how many disasters are visited on the world by the political establishment. When the next election rolls around, the yahoos in the "general public" will just elect another clown stamped out of the same mold and expect him to solve the problems caused by the virtually identical clown who preceded him. To actually escape from that self-destructive cycle before it is too late, they would have to stop copying the behavior of others, do some actual research into the causes of the problems, and think for themselves.

But, of course, they will never, ever do that.

***********************
You said:

"... we are definitely making a difference between humans and other animals JUST because we are human. Thus yes, i guess that could be called "speciesism". Its natural for us to do so, and there is no Godly or special rules that makes that fair from a perspective outside of humans."

My response:

I don't deny that a lot of people approach the "animal rights" issue from a speciesist perspective. They allege that it is OK to keep animals as pets, raise them for food, kill and eat them, etc., because being human somehow (e.g., by divine right) justifies us in doing that. My point, however, is that we reach exactly the same conclusion from the perspective of "animal rights." That is, when we apply the concept of rights to lower animals, we find that we are dealing with creatures who, by ignoring our rights, free us of all obligation to worry about their rights. Result: the "animal rights" perspective, properly understood, leads to exactly the same conclusion as the speciesist perspective: that we have the right to confine lower animals, keep them as pets, raise them as food, etc.

The fact that the "animal rights" people are for the most part clueless about what the concept of rights implies when applied to lower animals, however, does not mean all of their concerns are wrong. The fact that the inability of lower animals to respect our rights relieves us of the obligation to respect their rights does not mean we are freed of all limitations on the way we can treat them. We must, in particular, avoid cruelty, not because their "rights" require it, but because if we cross that line we give evidence that we are criminally insane, hence that we pose a threat to others, hence that perhaps we ought to be put down ourselves.

[Hickory]

To SoylentGreen:

Regarding whether it would be dangerous to eat the meat of executed human criminals, you said:

"Only if they eat it raw. Cooking meat is the usual method of getting rid of bacteria. I would see no reason why human meat would not have to meet the same standard of fitness that animals such as cow or sheep must meet to be slaughtered."

My response:

Human flesh, for humans, is an inherently dangerous type of meat. And when it is the flesh of an executed human criminal, that threat is greatly magnified: criminals, when considered as a group, are notorious risk takers who do not hesitate to violate ordinary norms of behavior. They routinely engage in promiscuous sex, both of the heterosexual and homosexual variety; they routinely do drugs, share needles, get in fist fights with other lowlifes in which blood is exchanged; they often live in sleazy, parasite-infested accommodations, or in condemned buildings, or even sleep in alleys or public parks. Result: they are an extremely high-risk group, where having of diseases such as HIV, Hep-C, gonorrhea, Herpes, etc., are concerned.

I can't speak for others, but I wouldn't eat meat of that sort on the say-so of a meat inspector or anyone else, even if I cooked it myself.

*****************

You said:

"No one expects the animal meat they buy now at a butchers to be contaminated, so why would they want to purchase human meat if it is contaminated."

My response:

I never said anyone should purchase contaminated human meat. (Jeez, talk about leaps of logic!)

Frankly, I wouldn't purchase human meat even if a meat inspector told me it was fine. Human beings, even with expert knowledge and the best of intentions, remain fallible. That's why it is prudent to cook the meat you buy in the grocery store, even if it has been given the government's stamp of approval, and even if it is not human meat.

If, on the other hand, it is human meat, and especially if it is the meat of an executed human criminal, I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole, approved or not. Again, I would never trust that it had been sufficiently cooked, even if I cooked it myself.

Bottom line: the fact that we would not be violating a human criminal's rights if we ate him does not mean there are not perfectly good grounds to avoid doing so.

*****************

You said:

"And why would anyone knowingly feed meat to a dog that is diseased or have parasites. Suggesting that people should make their pets deliberately sick sounds like the work of a criminally insane person."

My response:

That's yet another wild logical leap, and insulting to boot. I never suggested "knowingly feeding a dog meat that is diseased or contains parasites" and I never suggested that "people should make their pets deliberately sick."

What I was trying to get across is that the consumption of human meat by a dog is analogous to the consumption of beef by a human: in both cases, any parasites or diseases that the meat contains are less likely to be transmissible, because of the species difference. Result: it becomes permissible to rely on cooking to staunch any danger that may remain, even though cooking is not 100% reliable of and by itself. The point is that it is only because we avoid cannibalism that we can trust cooking to render meat safe to eat. Without the species difference, we would be relying on cooking alone, and that would over the long haul be little different from playing Russian roulette.

[SoylentGreen]

lower animals do not respect our rights, so they give up any logical basis for expecting us to respect their rights.

What rights do animals have that they are giving up by not respecting ours.

Human flesh, for humans, is an inherently dangerous type of meat. And when it is the flesh of an executed human criminal, that threat is greatly magnified: criminals, when considered as a group, are notorious risk takers who do not hesitate to violate ordinary norms of behavior. They routinely engage in promiscuous sex, both of the heterosexual and homosexual variety; they routinely do drugs, share needles, get in fist fights with other lowlifes in which blood is exchanged; they often live in sleazy, parasite-infested accommodations, or in condemned buildings, or even sleep in alleys or public parks. Result: they are an extremely high-risk group, where having of diseases such as HIV, Hep-C, gonorrhea, Herpes, etc., are concerned.

Non of those diseases would survive cooking the meat properly. You have as much chance of catching those diseases as you do catching salmonella off of a well cooked chicken.
I will ignore your obvious prejudices and ignorance of criminals and point out that just as many murderers and rapists are people who live and work and behave just as you or anyone else does.

I never said anyone should purchase contaminated human meat. (Jeez, talk about leaps of logic!)

No you said contaminated meat would be purchased.

HickoryHence if executed murderers were butchered out and the resulting cuts of meat sold in grocery stores

Frankly, I wouldn't purchase human meat even if a meat inspector told me it was fine.

Do you purchase any meat from a butcher? If so who do you think inspects the quality of that meat?

That's why it is prudent to cook the meat you buy in the grocery store, even if it has been given the government's stamp of approval, and even if it is not human meat.

very good you do understand that cooking meat kills bacteria. But for some strange reason you seem people would be prepared to eat humans raw, how very strange.

Again, I would never trust that it had been sufficiently cooked, even if I cooked it myself.

Right! So you understand that it is prudent to cook animal meat properly but can't quite figure out the same thing for human meat, why is that?

the fact that we would not be violating a human criminal's rights if we ate him does not mean there are not perfectly good grounds to avoid doing so.

And yet so far you have failed to give any. All you have done is show an extreme prejudice about criminal behaviour bordering on complete ignorance and then followed it up with an inability to understand why human meat should be cooked first.

That's yet another wild logical leap, and insulting to boot. I never suggested "knowingly feeding a dog meat that is diseased or contains parasites" and I never suggested that "people should make their pets deliberately sick."

Do you not even bother to read what you yourself write?
Your words:

As far as eating meat from executed human criminals goes, cannibalism is a dangerous practice, because any diseases or parasites that the source of the meat had will be potentially transferrable to any individual of the same species that eats the meat....., though I suppose they could be included as an ingredient in dog food.

So basically what your saying is that even though the meat is contaminated it could be fed to dogs.

What I was trying to get across is that the consumption of human meat by a dog is analogous to the consumption of beef by a human: in both cases, any parasites or diseases that the meat contains are less likely to be transmissible, because of the species difference. Result: it becomes permissible to rely on cooking to staunch any danger that may remain, even though cooking is not 100% reliable of and by itself. The point is that it is only because we avoid cannibalism that we can trust cooking to render meat safe to eat. Without the species difference, we would be relying on cooking alone, and that would over the long haul be little different from playing Russian roulette

Absolute nonsense. Breaking the species barrier happens.
http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/et9912-cn.htm

The Nipah virus that has apparently spread from pigs to humans highlights the increasing evidence that disease-causing microbes are breaking þspecies barriersþ as they cross over from animals to people.

As for eating beef have you not heard of mad cow disease?
http://chemistry.about.com/cs/howthi.../aa122703a.htm

It is not known how much beef has to be eaten to cause infection.
Nerve tissue (e.g., brain) and various ground meat products and by-products carry the infectious agents.
Muscle tissue (meat) may carry the infectious agent.
Rendering or processing foods can (with difficulty) destroy prions.
Normal cooking will not destroy prions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salmone...s_of_infection

About 142,000 (reported) Americans are infected each year with Salmonella enteritidis from chicken eggs, and about 30 die.

It's by keeping a clean kitchen, washing your hands and cooking your meat that people avoid diseases. the species of the meat has nothing to do with it.

[Hickory]

To SoylentGreen:

I am amazed that you still do not understand why I would be unwilling to eat the flesh of human criminals, even if assured that it had been "properly cooked."

I'm not going to say this again, so listen up:

"Properly cooked" is just someone's opinion, and it is routine for such opinions to be wrong. I order my steaks cooked "medium" at restaurants, meaning pink but not red in the middle, and have had them come back red and bleeding in the middle more times than I can count. Well, that's OK with beef, because virtually none of the diseases of cattle are transmissible to humans, and those which are are very rare in occurrence. The chances that I would get a steak in a restaurant carrying, for example, brucellosis, starts out vanishingly small; and when multiplied by the very small probability that that particular steak would come back to me undercooked and I would fail to notice and send it back, the danger becomes tiny beyond belief, and it is a risk I am willing to take.

If the steak is a cut taken from an executed human criminal, however, all bets are off. In that case, "properly cooked" will remain just someone's opinion, and what hugely escalates the danger is this: a steak cut from a human criminal is very likely to be diseased, and the disease is virtually certain to be transmissible to other humans, including me.

The bottom line is simple: over the long haul, we make mistakes. If we are careful, we can greatly reduce the percentage of our mistakes, but we can never reduce it to zero. That's why when the consequences of error are so severe as to be unacceptable, we act on principle. In the case of firearms, for example, the rule is to "never point a gun, loaded or unloaded, at anyone you are unwilling to kill." You can, of course, argue that if the gun is unloaded, it makes no difference where you point it, just as you have argued that if meat has been thoroughly cooked, it makes no difference whether it is from a human or an animal. However, such arguments have no power to persuade. Making them merely reveals a neurotic refusal to admit one's own fallibility--an insistence that one's decision making is perfect, that one has made no mistakes in the past and will continue to make none in the future.

If you still want to argue about this subject I suggest that you start a separate thread about it. Use "Human Flesh is Yummy, and Safe for the Tummy" as the title. I have no doubt that a hundred respondents will agree with me for every one who agrees with you. Result: you will be able to argue with them to your heart's content, and I will be free to talk about stuff that actually interests me, rather than continuing to struggle to convey this seemingly obvious point to you.

As to why you are the way you are, I have very few clues. Your handle ("SoylentGreen") is an obvious reference to cannibalism, so I guess it isn't surprising that you are dogmatically determined to believe cannibalism is a safe practice. ("Soylent Green" is a reference to a little green cracker made of processed human flesh--a sort of Ritz cracker for cannibals--as depicted in the movie of the same name.) I hope that doesn't mean you actually engage in the practice because, even ignoring the legal difficulties you may get yourself into, the health related consequences over the long haul are going to be horrendous. No matter how hard you try to ensure that your meat is "thoroughly cooked," you are going to periodically mess up, whether you admit it to yourself or not.