Should human and non-human animal life be valued equally?

[Still]

The only reason why some animals are considered lesser than humans is to keep the outdated and cruel practice of animal agriculture alive. If you start giving some thought to the value of pigs, cows, chickens etc., then you might question why society considers it okay to torture and kill them. Also, think about why the same people outraged about the thought of eating dogs have no qualms about stuffing their faces with ham sandwiches.

[Lysandre, the Star-Crossed]

4 hours ago, Still said:

The only reason why some animals are considered lesser than humans is to keep the outdated and cruel practice of animal agriculture alive. If you start giving some thought to the value of pigs, cows, chickens etc., then you might question why society considers it okay to torture and kill them. Also, think about why the same people outraged about the thought of eating dogs have no qualms about stuffing their faces with ham sandwiches.

The valuations of this things are subjective and rather arbitrary...

[Sarah-Sylvia]

@Lysandre, the Star-Crossedeverything is subjective. It's more practical to consider shared values.
When it comes to valuing life, it's best to apply it accross the board (to be more consistent ), else there's all sorts of exceptions people could make. If someone believes their own lives respected (so, not just killed, etc), then value should be put there in general.

Besides care I see it as part of virtue in general, and integrity of what's valued, which is a pretty big thing. Even besides that, the more someone has it, the more people will be safe, so even if someone just wants to apply it to themselves and those they care about, it's to their benefit to extend it outwards. The more respect there is for living beings even if they're different, whether it's less intelligent or whatever else, the more it protects any being that could somehow be different or an exception.

[GingerRose]

On 5/8/2022 at 7:38 PM, Lysandre, the Star-Crossed said:

Title says it all, let's hear those arguments folks.

No, from a nature background, equality wasn't ever in the cards until we evolved. I think we could limit the suffering of other animals at our hand when able and find alternative ways to co-inhabit our spaces with them, but for us to survive in the evolutionary goal, we can't be one in the same. This goes for other animal's view of us. We cannot even see those of our species as equal to us but in eyes of our kin.  To award another species as equal would be so foreign. We only credit the species that have eyes and a voice to cry and whimper, but we neglect that life lives among other entities of fungi and plants, how bizarre it may be to consider them our equals...

[GingerRose]

On 5/8/2022 at 8:27 PM, Sarah-Sylvia said:

I still think an interesting question is when it comes to babies, because they're not yet intelligent or as aware. So if people care about babies, then can they justify how animal life would matter less? Since animals feel as well.

 

I like this comparison and hadn't yet come across it. Thank you.

I suppose that is another reason babies are seen as less when it comes to abortion, our kin, so beloved yet, lacking in its potential brain complexity. Making its connection to us somehow distant, as we are or have the capability to be towards other animals. Otherwise, I think the action of aborting to be unfathomable for the typical human brain.

 

 

[MarRister]

4 minutes ago, GingerRose said:

I suppose that is another reason babies are seen as less when it comes to abortion, our kin, so beloved yet, lacking in its potential brain complexity.

This is off topic a bit, but to me the argument around abortion isn't about what value that unborn baby has in the slightest, it is the value given to women. I don't think that baby is 'less' just cause it isn't born yet, but the thing is, the woman carrying that baby is not 'less' than that baby, the baby is not even a separate entity yet. It cannot live without the mother, their lives at that point are essentially one. They should get to choose what they want for their life, because their life has value. Overriding someone else's bodily rights, to have an unwanted baby born is hardly about seeing every life as equal. Especially when no one seems to care what happens to that baby once it is born. 

[GingerRose]

16 minutes ago, MarRister said:

This is off topic a bit, but to me the argument around abortion isn't about what value that unborn baby has in the slightest, it is the value given to women. I don't think that baby is 'less' just cause it isn't born yet, but the thing is, the woman carrying that baby is not 'less' than that baby, the baby is not even a separate entity yet. It cannot live without the mother, their lives at that point are essentially one. They should get to choose what they want for their life, because their life has value. Overriding someone else's bodily rights, to have an unwanted baby born is hardly about seeing every life as equal. Especially when no one seems to care what happens to that baby once it is born. 

I like.

More pleasing comparisons keep stacking upon each other. Thank you for this viewpoint. It might show that we lessen value of entities and those not considered as such (putting the value on the mother rather than the babe). I can't say anymore because I'll start diving into off-topic entity philosophy. Nonetheless I appreciate the new thought.

[Guest]

if nonhuman animals should be valued equally to humans, then we would be upset about how all these damn lions are eating the poor zebra. 

 

if nonhuman animals should be valued equally to humans, then we wouldn't have pest exterminators. We would accept bedbugs and roaches with love.

[gndrqrd]

Obviously we have a duty as humans to treat animals ethically in honor of keeping the Earth and our ecosystems healthy and balanced, but I've always found the super pro-animal liberation crowd to be very odd. Animals are not humans and we know this because they are unable to justify the morality of things, unlike us. While we're twiddling our thumbs about the ethics of eating livestock, animals are just out killing and eating each other because that's what we were all meant to do.

[Tetus]

30 minutes ago, gndrqrd said:

Obviously we have a duty as humans to treat animals ethically in honor of keeping the Earth and our ecosystems healthy and balanced, but I've always found the super pro-animal liberation crowd to be very odd. Animals are not humans and we know this because they are unable to justify the morality of things, unlike us. While we're twiddling our thumbs about the ethics of eating livestock, animals are just out killing and eating each other because that's what we were all meant to do.

I’d just like to put in some bumpers here and point out that “the way things are” != “the way things are meant to be”. 
 

Animals do kill and eat one another. Whether that’s intended behavior, much less good or bad, is very much an open question.

 

I tend to think that animals aren’t morally culpable because they lack moral agency and self-awareness, but we don’t really know that for sure, as we still don’t really know what’s going on with human consciousness or phenomenological experience. I do think humans have moral agency, so I think we should certainly consider the way we treat animals and take it seriously. 
 

Some level of human primacy is pretty much inevitable, as even if we all go vegan, we will have to do agriculture and housing and things, none of which benefit animals, and many of which will have adverse impacts for them. That’s not to say animal rights shouldn’t be considered, but I don’t think we should pretend they have an equal spot at the table while human beings are dying of starvation and exposure.

[GingerRose]

On 5/12/2022 at 2:05 PM, Burgundy Ashe said:

damn lions are eating the poor zebra.

Interestingly enough, we only give a damn if these humans eat a cow. Out with the carnivores and omnivores! Heinous natural diets!

[Sarah-Sylvia]

It's wrong in one sense for animals to attack and eat other animals, but it's not immoral since they don't have the capacity to understand or even for carnivores to change their diet, etc.

Some people might also bring the natural balance, since having too many herbivores would end up killing them anyway from overeating. I think it's a flaw of nature

 

Humans have the capacity to be healthy on a plant diet and also replant, develop sustainability and more.

[MarRister]

2 hours ago, Sarah-Sylvia said:

It's wrong in one sense for animals to attack and eat other animals

In what sense is this wrong? I don't understand this view point at all. Would it be more right if every single animal who consumed other animals were to suddenly sprout your specific human sense of morality (completely subjective btw) and literally starve/malnourish themselves for the good of not causing suffering to another creature, but instead just all cause suffering to themselves and cause an ecological cascade that would cause even more animal suffering and leave this planet entirely dead except for maybe, maybe some microorganisms here and there that don't feed on other organic matter? Or well, I suppose until all those moral creatures die and then things that weren't originally eating other animals start eating each other again through evolution due to the fact that livings things are just too nutrient dense to ignore as a food source... For things to live, things need to die.

 

The concept of looking at nature being flawed for this, I just don't have words.. I can't actually find any to put my thoughts together properly on how flawed I think that idea even is. Flaws are entirely a human concept. It is almost like (not the wording I really want, but best I can think up right now).. who do you think you are to call literally everything around us, that is us, that made us, that is every organism (alive, dead, extinct, yet to exist), that is every rock, every body of water, every part that is this entire earth, even what is outside of this earth, flawed. Nature has no right or wrong, it is not perfect or imperfect. It is a force, not a being or something that can be compared to some moral framework of one tiny speck of a human in one tiny spec of living beings that ever existed or ever will in one tiny spec of time that is so utterly inconsequential to what nature is. I think it is our self-distancing from actually existing with other creatures, with the elements, with life and death as it is, in any sort of harmonious way that gives us these weird perspectives, like we are above nature, better than it, or outside of it in some fashion, when we are just as much produced by it and at its whim as anything else and we always will be no matter how much we may like to deny it. We live in this world, and hiding from the reality of nature or thinking it can be a fantasy of all sunshine and rainbows doesn't help us be 'better'. These so called flaws are not fixable, there is no state without these 'flaws' in our world, they are what they are, and I think it is far better to embrace that, then try and pretend it doesn't exist, or somehow shouldn't exist. Don't eat meat if that is what you feel is best for you, but I think to project that onto anyone or anything else is flawed. 

 

If you think it is great that you can think like you can think, can talk about morals, can see just how 'wrong' it is to kill and eat other animals, just know that the reason you are like that.. is because we at some point in our evolutionary tree branched out in our diets and started diversifying more, including, hunting and killing other animals. This helped us get our nice big brain we seem to think is so superior. Sure we don't need to eat meat always, but we started eating it for a reason, and we can do our best to not eat it for a reason, however, I think that fundamental reason will still be there in times of strict survival or in certain environments. Not to mention there is a whole lot of killing that goes on in the world that has nothing to do with eating at all, some of it seen as being moral in a human sense, some not. 

[Sarah-Sylvia]

Like I said, nature's flawed. Someone can say something is wrong to say it could be better/right. Like, having carnivores to eat herbivores is a crappy way of balancing things XD.

 

[MarRister]

33 minutes ago, Sarah-Sylvia said:

Like I said, nature's flawed. Someone can say something is wrong to say it could be better/right. Like, having carnivores to eat herbivores is a crappy way of balancing things XD.

 

My point is though, it can't be 'better' or 'more right'. There are no flaws to fix.

[Sarah-Sylvia]

2 minutes ago, MarRister said:

My point is though, it can't be 'better' or 'more right'. There are no flaws to fix.

Very much disagree.

I'd say more but I didn't feel like your points were in the ballpark of what I could sensibly go over. Not without a lot of time, and I'm not really up for it for now.

[MarRister]

Okay, I'll just add a comparison that popped into my head. I think saying nature is flawed, is like saying rain as a weather system is flawed because it makes things wet and you personally don't like that, it'd be better if rain stopped being wet and ruining things. Or gravity should be better on earth, because it isn't working well for you, we should fix that. 

[Sarah-Sylvia]

7 minutes ago, MarRister said:

Okay, I'll just add a comparison that popped into my head. I think saying nature is flawed, is like saying rain as a weather system is flawed because it makes things wet and you personally don't like that, it'd be better if rain stopped being wet and ruining things. Or gravity should be better on earth, because it isn't working well for you, we should fix that. 

You think the things you do but doesn't mean someone sees it the same way. The way you talk on things it makes someone's argument fit inside a certain box, and it would take too much time to point everything out that's not like that (or part of a different viewpoint). And not a right comparison here either because of that.

 

[MarRister]

I know I can be a bit forceful in my debating sometimes, I don't mean to make it sound like I have the only right view on this in my explanation of how I see it. I think our views may just come from very different personal definitions on what nature is. 

[Sarah-Sylvia]

I wasn't feeling it last night but I'm sure there's some things I 'can' say, with some things that stood out to me.

 

I think it doesn't really serve much to talk too much about someone's view or morals as being 'personal'. When there's too much focus on subjectivity it can make it seem that someone can't hold or entertain multiple views or a grander one, or even can feel like 'oh that's just your own take and it's not like that for real'. But even saying that is one take, and makes assumptions, including on what's absolute. But the thing is everything we'll say is subjective, but it can be based on wider context, since everything is relative. And that's really important because it depends from what place someone is talking on something to be wrong or right. So does it fly above nature to say something is wrong or right or moral or immoral? Well yeah sure in most or atheistic contexts, because nature is just following the physics, it doesn't have an intention then, it just is. So obviously when we're talking about morals, we're not talking about it from that naturalistic context, we're saying it from either a human or at least conscious beingness one.

 

So yeah, when someone would say something is flawed in a system, it's not from the naturalistic viewpoint besides certain spiritual views. I could say I can hold a spiritual view, but I don't need to to just shoot the shit from a designing point of view, especially since I wasn't being fully serious (which would've hoped the emojis showed a bit, but anyway), so saying it's flawed is maybe half joking, but I could say more on the case of if nature would be designed to have more thriving and less suffering especially with conscious beings, whether it's taken hypothetically or spiritually or just thinking in terms of designs :P. It wouldn't be in the context of 'if we made changes to nature right now', because it's currently in its balance, and so changing too many things could end up in ecological problems or some species dying out. I think it's interesting to think about if someone cared so much to the point of saying we should kill all the carnivores, I think it could make sense if it wasn't that it would also cause problems in the balance, and also I like cats xD.

Anyway, on is it wrong of animals to attack and eat other animals, the way it can be taken (I did say 'in one way'), it's that they also experience pain and can be unhappy, etc, so if they 'did' have the capacity, it would be better for them to not do that. But obviously again nature's balance would be a challenge to figure how to balance, probably better left alone for now xD, and it's kinda hypothetical because they're likely not going to evolve to be able to have that understanding, though.. I mean it's not impossible.. in an even wilder thought, what if genetic manipulation could somehow change things.. and urh.. well I don't really trust humans to do that well xD. So anyway.. yeah it's not a context that's the most relevant for now :P.

 

So, in other words a lot of it is relative, a lot can definitely diverge or change depending on the context. Not that it can't be personal too for some things, but like I kind of mentioned in my first post it's important to consider our shared values, having lived as humans, we know what pain and suffering is, and we know what death means. We have hearts, and that's why we care. We at the very least care about our own lives, and those close to us. Extending that to other living beings to reduce suffering and create more thriving environments for others makes moral sense, and even logical sense when you consider that the environment ends up affecting you back. I mean in terms of human environment, since the animals likely won't change how they eat. But how we treat animals can also have meaning to how we treat each other, especially because animals are conscious living beings too, but have less capacity to understand. Well what about humans who are thought to be less intelligent, and things like that ? Is it more ok to treat them badly? I doubt most people in modern times would think so, so that's why most people can technically understand the point, because of the value, including to care for those that are less fortunate. All it takes is to extend more of that outwards, so that it covers animals.

 

In my stance on animal rights, at the 'very least' we should cause less suffering. Better practices in how we treat them. To me it's not about a black and white wrong/right, but that if we can reduce suffering, then why not, it'd be better :P. (going along our shared values)

 

That's about what I can think to say for now

[SorryNotSorry]

On 5/8/2022 at 5:38 PM, Lysandre, the Star-Crossed said:

Title says it all, let's hear those arguments folks.

I don't see why not, as long as mosquitoes and coyotes are kept far away from us humans.