Would laws to protect animals from cruelty and/or neglect be legitimate in a free society?
|
|||||
|
We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people. Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house] Authors
Arts, Tech & CultureCivil LibertiesCommentary
EconomicsSamizdatistas |
55 comments to Discussion point XV |
Who Are We?The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling. We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe. CategoriesArchivesFeed This PageLink Icons   |
|||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||
Yes. laws protecting animals are in the interest of society; cruelty toward one species breeds contempt for suffering; most serial killers start off torturing animals.
Yes, for the same reasons. However, I think the idea of animal ‘rights’ is silly. You cannot have rights without responsibilities and how do you explain that to a dog or a sheep?
Any sentient creature ought to be protected to the extent of their sentience. If that means my cat is more deserving of protection than a body in a PVS or an embryo then so be it, that is as it should be.
Hmm. As a cat lover, my heart says yes. As a meat eater, my mind says no. It’s a matter of taste more than principle, this one, it seems. I don’t think it’s possible to create any consistent position in between an absolute no and a totally ALF-yes. Anything in between ends up as carefully crafting rules to sort things into preferred categories artificially.
So I’m afraid my answer has to be no. But that isn’t the least appealing to my emotional beliefs, I must say.
Well, I am only an attorney in the United States, and unfamiliar with British Law in its details, however, after careful consideration, I think the legitimacy of such a law would turn wholly on the issue of just what type of animal we’re taliking about.
define cruelty
define free society
No. It is an illegitimate imposition of will to interfere with a person’s property rights in their chattel for the chattel’s protection. Assertions of non-human rights are attempts to transfer property rights from owners to the humans asserting non-human rights.
What The Septic Isle used to be.
Demonstration:
Of course, we must start with “free” and “society.”
The society is presumably an organized group of human idividuals. They have become organized for a commonality of objectives. Those objectives impinge upon their interactions with one another and their surroundings. (sorry to repeat prior phrasings so often).
If one of those common objectives is for each individual to be “free” (in either of I. Berlin’s categories – free from or free to) it will be based on the commonality of the recognition and acceptance of an obligation – basically that others do not mess around in what another is doing. But, if in that same “society,” there is a commonally recognized and accepted obligation concerning humans in their interactions with animals, that can result in a community sense of “oughtness” (and not to) of human actions that will place limitations on some and impose futher obligations (enforcing those commonally held obligations in re: animals) on others in the society.
Now, most people would think of “laws” (which are just rules) as proceding from a “government” of the society, but it could as well be “shunning,” the cutting off of contacts, which would be by custom used to “correct” deviations from the accepted obligations, or one of many other “remedies.”
Legislation, to have the effect of Law, has to fall in that general category of being directly related to the comonally recognized and accepted obligations of the members of the society.
From that view, I think the answer would be yes.
No. It is an illegitimate imposition of will to interfere with a person’s property rights in their chattel for the chattel’s protection.
I have to disagree. Higher animals are property, but not property in the sense of a chair or a light bulb. They’re somewhere between those simple nonliving things and, say, a child. And I think most of us agree that while interference with parents is one of the most dangerous things a state can do, there is a need for rescuing children from extreme cruelty or neglect. Dogs and cats aren’t children, but they are thinking feeling beings. As such they ought to be protected from wanton cruelty. They are property, but they are also more than that.
My gut feeling is that harming dogs in any fashion is wrong; as for cats, I don’t know. They have not told me what to think.
RRS:
But isn’t this a tyranny of the majority? What if the society become increasingly vegetarian?
Would these remedies also be used to correct deviations such as violence towards other humans, including murder?
Whether you want to admit it or not, as soon as you’ve recognized that it is a legitimate domain of the state to protect the rights of animals to any extent, in order to stay logically consistent, you have to also accept environmentalist and pro-vegetarian policies as legitimate. You want the state to forcibly prevent a psychopath from harming dogs and cats even if they are his property? Fine, but then what makes it illegitimate for the state to prevent you from developing your own land because it will cause a holocaust of the local wildlife? What makes it illegitimate for the state to ban mass imprisonment and slaughter of animals for your pleasure of eating meat?
This is one of those areas where the overwhelming majority of people are so drowned in emotions that they are completely incapable of any rational thought about it. I mean, most Westerners are shocked and outraged by Koreans eating dogs, and yet they have no problem eating pigs, which are significantly more intelligent than dogs?! (As as side note, dogs have always struck me as horribly stupid in comparison with just about any other large mammals, and it also tells something about people that they mistake their stupid slavish obedience for intelligence.)
Ivan: if only my dogs were obedient, forget stupidly or slavishly:-) These buggers certainly have a mind of their own (at least two of them do – the shar pei is another story).
I agree with your overall point, although the environmental example is not a good one. You can develop your own land and destroy the wildlife on it all you want, as long as it does not affect my land that happens to be adjacent to yours, and the wildlife on it.
Ian B (no relation):
It’s entirely possible to be a meat-eater (as I am) and still oppose cruelty to animals (as I do).
Alisa:
But if the law may forcibly prevent you from harming your own dog or cat, why shouldn’t it also, at least in principle, be able to prevent you from harming whatever other animals happen to inhabit your land?
If I understand correctly, the issue of animal cruelty laws raised in this post is exactly about whether the government should be able to prevent people from harming animals even if these animals are their property. Therefore, the analogy to the freedom to destroy wildlife on your own land would be the freedom to do whatever you please to your own animals.
Reading my own posts, I now realize that it’s hard to argue about this topic from a libertarian standpoint without coming off as if had a desire to torture animals. 🙂 However, as far as I see, as soon as you admit that non-human animals have rights of some sort, you have disarmed yourself against the basic arguments of environmentalists and extreme animal rights advocates.
Why not?
Try the statement with ‘children’ instead of ‘animals’.
I thought this article in the Telegraph might be of some small relevance to (or distraction from) the discussion here on “animal rights”, responsibilities and contribution. [Hat tip to Bryan Appleyard.]
Best regards
Ivan, you are right, that example is relevant – I was distracted when I replied.
Quentin: children are human. As such, they have the same rights as adults. The only reason they cannot take advantage of some of these rights (such as property and freedom of movement), is that they are unable to bear the responsibilities that come with these rights. Eventually they grow up, and most of them become responsible enough to enjoy these rights.
The real difference between humans (including children) and animals is that we eat animals, but we don’t eat other humans – well, at least most of us don’t. That said, from a purely moral point of view, there is a big difference between killing an animal in a most possibly painless way in order to eat it, and killing it just for the sake of killing.
Now, before someone brings up fox hunting, I am still saying that animals don’t have rights. Rights are a social construct*, and animals are not part of a human society.
*This is related to Hugo’s question: it is like a contract – I respect your rights, if you respect mine. That is the ‘responsibility’ part.
However, as far as I see, as soon as you admit that non-human animals have rights of some sort, you have disarmed yourself against the basic arguments of environmentalists and extreme animal rights advocates.
But surely, Ivan, the argument should not rest upon whether it suits one’s position. That taking a certain position disarms you against the arguments of people you don’t like is a good reason not to take it, but it doesn’t make the position right or wrong on any meaningful level. The way you write makes you sound like you do have some sympathy with the animal rights movement, but simply don’t want to admit that they are right.
It is entirely possible (and I think reasonable) to have laws protecting animals from cruelty that do not depend on assigning rights to those animals. I think the environmental example is actually a very good one, but for very complex reasons that can’t be covered in a comment without writing an essay (on which coincidentally I am working)
In essence though, human well-being stems in part from our connection with the natural world. That world is of more than instrumental value to us as a species. In other words it has value that does not depend on exploitation for minerals, agriculture etc. We value wilderness for example not for its economic use, but for spiritual reasons (note these do not have to be religious).
One of the problems with Cost Benefit Analysis is that the process of assigning monetary values depends on assumptions rooted in Utilitarianism. It assumes that everything has a value and hence is replaceable, even though it is very easy to identify objects that cannot be replaced. A Turner watercolour cannot be replaced. Any monetary value assigned to it in the market place does not therefore include its entire value for how can you assign a value to total and irreplaceable loss. Environmental objects – the tall-grass prairie in the US, lowland heath in the UK, tropical rain forest do not have monetary value except as land for other purposes. We can agree a figure at which point we will allow their destruction, but we have still lost something unique and irreplaceable.
We can place it in strong relief by looking at the death of a loved one through the deliberate action of another person. The courts will assign compensation but in the case of a child, where the sense of loss is likely to be most acute, that will paradoxically be quite low. We have all heard people say – “nothing can bring them back”. The monetary value assigned through whatever formula you want can never cover the whole loss.
This is all rather off the topic, but serves to demonstrate, I believe anyway, that our relationships with other sentient beings, whether pets, cows whales or foxes, is much more complex than where they stand as property.
I have big problems with the idea of the state using violence against people for the sake of animals.
Can’t this be solved with property rights? If you want to protect animals, buy some land and fill it with animals and protect them. If you don’t like the way Fred treats his animals, make him an offer he can’t refuse.
Unless you are an anarchist, you are already on the slope of accepting the state making at least some law. How do you decide therefore which law is legitimate and which not?
Well, obviously animals can’t have “responsibilities” exactly. Whether they have “rights” is trickier.
I think it’s more a question of the rights and responsibilities of the owner of said creature(s).
If we accept that people have the right to own animals – whether pets, farm animals or working animals then they have a responsibility to look after them. If we don’t look after them properly then we should lose that right.
The extent to which the law is needed here is though debateable. Self-interest is enough generally to ensure a dairy farmer, say, looks after his cows well and people tend to take a very dim view, to the point of social ostracism, of folk who mistreat pets.
define free society
What The Septic Isle used to be.
This country has never been free. True, we’ve had periods of more and less freedom, we seem to be in a bit of a downturn (yet still more free than for most of the preceding century).
At no time in our history have all the people of this country been free. There have always been substantial groups whose lives and freedoms depended upon the whims of the ruling classes.
There’s too much nostalgia for a non-existent past in amongst libertarians.
The only way to look is forward, towards a more liberal future, extending those freedoms we have now and reclaiming those we’ve lost.
Animals do not have rights, nay cannot have rights, not because they can have no responsibilities, but because, how are they going to enforce them?
I have yet to see a Greenham Common crowd of Turkeys with placards outside Bootiful Bernard’s pad, protesting at the conditions of their fellow fowl, have you?
So all laws regarding animal husbandy are just like the rest of our laws, a social contract between humans not animals per se.
How many laws we need is debatable.
My father owned an abbatoir at one time, and I have seen plenty of cattle slaughtered.
The rules under which he had to operate became steadily more onerous until the point came where he either went bankrupt or sell up.
What used to burn him up (he was an animal lover despite his job) Was that there is one law for us and another for them.
He had to supervise Kosher slaughter (no Muslims back in the late 50s) but the method of dispatch is the same. One knife slash across the throat.
The Rabbi was often useless with a knife and dad had to finish off the animal quickly after getting the Rabbi out of the way.
What used to get to dad was that the rules he had to follow was the animal must be stunned electrically and then killed with a humane killer straight through the brain. Had dad decided to save money and do it the kosher way, he would have been prosecuted and closed down.
So the law of the land lays down a raft of regulations for most of us, but has granted exceptions for Religious reasons.
Apparently some things are cruel and prosecutable if you are an atheist, but tickety boo if your God has told you to do it that way.
In a world that recognizes perfectly individual rights in theory, unless someone is alone on the planet, they will have borders between themselves and others. We think of these demarcations of rights between individuals in many terms from property lines to swinging arms and the nose on my face.
To remain peaceful, these borders between individuals require agreement between the interacting individuals. I call this a contract or a constitution. RRS calls it obigations. But no matter how it is justified, in an individualist meta-context it must be a voluntary cooperation between interacting parties.
If I stipulate that part of my dealings with you require you to never put a tutu on sharpei, you can either accept being at peace with me and never putting a tutu on a sharpei, or you can reject peaceful interaction with me.
When enough individuals become involved in this equation, we begin using words like ‘society’ and ‘government’, but that does not change the lowest foundation being the interactions of two individuals.
The point of this comment is that various ideas of ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ are not relevant to the ‘legitimacy’ of the laws. Legitimacy derives from individuals agreeing to terms with other individuals. In an Individualist meta-context, there are no ‘good’ laws that come from the incontrovertible will of the majority, only from the controvertible. If you decide that the benefits of your citizenship are a net negative to you and you want out, then you must be allowed to opt out. But you may be expected to leave behind property that was attributed to you by that association. After all, it was that association’s definition of property that attributed it to you.
So, in summary, if your association says sharpeis may be kept as pets, but not dressed in tutus, you must decide whether caving in to that ‘law’ is worth having people agree to things they don’t care about, but you do.
Alissa:
The degree of commonality would be the determinant of the extent to which there might be a tyranny of the majority or an unacceptable abberation of an individual.
Basic to that problem is that obligations, like objectives, often conflict.
On the vegetarian example and consideration of relations with animals, we do have long-establihed Hindu communities that have evolved those commonalities.
To those discussing “Animal Rights” (and responsibilities) along with “Children’s Rights:”
As amongst their kinds, it is not evident that “rights” exist among animals (even in their organized groups). What we are generally speaking of are the obligations of humans in their relationships with animals. So too are Childrens’ Rights generally the obligations of adults in their relationships with children.
Responsibilities and commitments are only specific forms of obligations arising out of particular circumstances. All “Rights” are dependent on (positive or negative) obligations.
Your right to freedom of worship vel non is dependent on the obligation of others not to interfere with that action, etc.
To the extent the obligations are not met, that freedom is not full.
The same for speech, association, property,etc., etc.
Every “entitlement” of some requires the obligation of others to provide. Children are entitled to sustenance, parents have the responsibility (an obligation from that relationship) to provide. If they cannnot or do not it is a commonally accepted obligation in most of our western societies to meet that requirement via charities, church, bureaus, etc.
On other “entitlements,” the commonality of recognition and acceptance varies considerably – and for good causes.
I don’t think this is relevant to the original question. If animals are not to be mistreated/abused that requires those who might do so, to refrain. There is no entitlement and no obligation involved. There is only one party – the person expected to refrain from cruelty.
The only time animal rights have been introduced into this particular discussion thread it has been by people denying they exist. In this context that is a straw man.
As for human rights, for many people these too are in practice unenforceable – Darfur is a case in point. Enforceability is not of itself a defining requirement for the capacity to have rights.
Rights when used in the animal context is surely a different concept to when used in relation to humans. (Although some philosophers like Singer would disagree)
A follow up thought – if we do not protect animals by law, do not believe they can be assigned rights, but nevertheless believe we should refrain from acting cruelly towards them, what remedies do we have? It is after all clear that current laws do not prevent cruelty, so it seems unlikely that social ostracism would be any more effective.
We could argue that one of the defining characteristics of being human is our ability to empathise with animals being mistreated. We recognise their capacity to suffer pain and distress. Perhaps when people behave in inhuman ways towards animals we could also argue that they have forfeit their own right to be treated as fully human. I’m not suggesting capital punishment, just that if they are no longer fully a legal human we can reasonably use force to restrain them.
Those states which exercise capital punishment are effectively applying this principle already.
That won’t get far with those who see the rest of the planet being provided for mankind to use as they wish of course and I’m not sure that I want to give any state the power to declare anyone less than human, but is there a workable compromise?
Ian:
If animals are “entitled” to anything from humans, then indeed there is relevance.
What is the rationale for “law” other than to constrain or induce human conduct within any organized grouping? Can there be any “law” (other than Mon Droit) that is not based on the recognition and acceptance of obligations.
As you note with Darfur are there rights without the performance of those obligations (which must first be recognized, then accepted)?
The point was to focus on what we are really dealing with are the obligations of humans – not anything called “Rights.”
Rights are what people have struggled for, continue to value and insist on keeping. They are freedoms from the state. They do not come with responsibilities.
Animals cannot have a concept of freedom from the state. They cannot have rights. Any pain or pleasure they experience only has meaning for humans. Some like to eat and hunt them, others to love and pamper them. That is our choice.
Protecting an animal has a net cost to society. There are apparently two reasons to so so, one the animal deserves protection, or two, society needs to intervene to nip psychopathic tendencies in the bud.
The former, an animal has no capacity to reciprocate the protection given to it, so has to be a one way transfer which is wholly unacceptable involuntarily. People are free to allocate as much as the please to providing comfort to animals or endeavoring to alter people’s behaviors peacefully.
The latter, if it can be established that the net cost to society due to unchecked psychopaths on a rampage is more than offset with the anti-cruelty costs, creating a net savings, fine. Otherwise there is no reason to spend millions protecting animals. We should first wait until harm against a human takes place. I suspect that the cost of Timmy the Turtle Torturer becoming Tim the Serial Killer is very small.
Ham:
Well, it can serve as a reductio ad absurdum of certain opinions stated in this thread, or at least give a strong motivation to the people who wrote them to reconsider their view.
If you accept that the state may interfere to protect the well-being of domestic dogs and cats, then, as far as I see it, there is no logical reason whatsoever why it shouldn’t also interfere to protect the well-being of farm, lab, and wild animals, as demanded by environmentalists and PETA-style animal rights advocates. And while this argument doesn’t show that the positions of PETA and environmentalists are wrong, I think that it does show that the view in favor of state protection for animals is incompatible with the general libertarian position.
Not really. Frankly, I’m not too terribly concerned with what happens to animals, either those in the wild or those owned by people. Obviously, I wouldn’t enjoy watching someone torture or mutilate an animal for the sheer joy of it. However, I don’t think even this should be a concern of the government, and I have no problem whatsoever with those forms of animal cruelty that are practiced for the benefit of humans, like e.g. slaughtering and eating them, exterminating them in the wild (either because they are pest or as a side product of developing land), using them in lab experiments, punishing them physically for insubordination or during training, etc.
ian:
But consider this analogy: there are many things people do that destroy other people’s lives and make them miserable, but which are not illegal, nor should they be. One certainly has many opportunities to be a lying, cheating, manipulative, backstabbing scoundrel without breaking any law whatsoever. Social ostracism is the only check against such behavior, and this mechanism works to a certain extent, but far from perfectly, allowing for lots of unhappiness and ruined lives. Yet, legislating against such behavior in private life would be impossible except in a Pol Pot-style totalitarian state; we can only shrug and say that life is unfair.
I consider the issue of animal cruelty to be similar. Yes, social ostracism isn’t enough to prevent it completely, but if you’re going to demand legislation against it, you’ve opened the Pandora’s box by creating a precedent for the implementation of the broad PETA/environmentalist agenda. Otherwise, you just have to accept that it’s among those ugly things that simply can’t be eradicated by any acceptable means.
Ian:
Of course there is. The other party is the expecting one. Where there are more than one party, there is obligation and entitlement.
Equation of those who think animals should be treated as humanely as possible, or those who consider our environment should be a significant factor in decision making, with those who support terrorism in support of ‘animal rights’ above humans is a nonsense. It is a gross oversimplification of a horrendously complex topic.
Despite what many here appear to think, the world is not binary – there are almost always a number of options open to us and each time we choose we change the context for both our next decision and everyone elses.
Believing that we can handle every problem we face by the simple application of property rights is hubris.
Ian, no one here is equating the two, but rather pointing out the difference between the two groups. One simply thinks that animals should be treated in a humane manner (and might, at most, use peaceful persuasion to convince others), the other is willing to enforce this view on others.
To a protester: “I agree that fox hunting is cruel, but how do you propose to stop the foxes doing it?”
If the point is to prevent cruelty to animals, then logically this must apply to inter-animal relationships too (perhaps I should say non-human animals, but I’ll hope you’ll forgive me for taking this short cut) – the lion chasing the antelope, the fox chasing the rabbit, the wasp laying its eggs in the still-living body of its agonised, paralysed victim. I recall many an evening as the family sat down around the TV to listen as David Attenborough susurrated in church-like respect at the dismemberment of cute fluffy bouncy Bambi-like animals. The hyenas ripping the baby’s still-warm flesh limb-from-steaming-limb while its mother looked on. Is the idea of imprisoning carnivores for murder a practical one, though? How will they be able to conduct their defence?
On the other hand, animals can have rights and responsibilities, and do enter into contracts with humans. Look at any cat or dog who has just had the dinner off the table or crapped on the Persian carpet and you will see such a look of guilt… Rights are about social relationships. Many animals do have social relationships involving agreements, repayment of debts, dominance and submission, fidelity, parental and group responsibility, and pack law. While there is no more reason why any animal merely as such should have human rights – any more than a human should respond to ant chemical signals or any other species-specific instinct – to the extent that some animals do enter into social relationships with humans, there is a moral obligation to respect our side of the bargain. You do not take the dog’s food bowl away while he is eating.
But we’ve discussed this before. It would be interesting to sound out the good Archbishop on the possibilities of adopting components of inter-species law and cultural diversity.
Sorry, link didn’t work. Try this.
http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2007/12/the_real_debate.html
My usual response to this line of argument is that I only consider it legitimate for the state to interfere in activities in which the suffering or death of sentient animals is the primary purpose of the activity. This would cover, eg, torturing animals, bullfighting, dog-fights and hunting. When I eat meat I don’t do so in order to kill animals or express dominance over them. If meat could be produced without killing animals, I would happily eat that instead. There is no equivalent statement for someone who likes to watch dogfights.
I disapprove of those who cause injury, or pain to animals, even by neglect.
Personally I believe the individual should be free to do as they please, so long they don’t do unnecessary harm to others.
I effectively apply those same rules to animals, though animals are not human. This does not stop me eating meat. I do expect it to be kept and killed humanely though. It does not stop me training dogs, or killing mosquitoes, or confining my cat after an operation either.
Whether the state can legitimately second guess me, or force me to comply with someone else’s unrealistic (all animals are fluffy Disney animals) judgement is another thing entirely.
“…legitimate in a free society…”
Now that is a tall order…
If by “free society” you refer to one where property rights are respected as fundamental rights of the individual, then the answer to your question is NO.
Fundamental rights are indivisible, hence you should not separate your right to sell your property from the right to do whatever you want with it. If I am allowed to buy and sell animals, then no one has the right to decide if what I do with them is right or not, as long as they are my property. Introducing exceptions to this is the way in which you weaken those rights, and hence not legitimate in a free society.
As for those in this thread who allude to the emotional ties they/some people have with their pets, maybe they should ask themselves what difference is there between their possition and that of those who call for the limitation of free-speech to avoid offending others.
There is an initial choice of meta-context that needs to be made, but most people in this debate are skipping it.
Collectivist or Individualist? If collectivist, then when the government says it is criminal, it is criminal.
But if Individualist, then the muscle behind the action must be consensual. The end result may still be the government says its wrong, but the means of enforcement, and hence the nature of the government, is profoundly different. There are two obvious ways I see for enforcing animal cruelty prohibitions in an Individualist society. One is to require the member to contractually promise to abide by them as a condition of admittance into the society. They other is if the prohibitions are voluntary ones, then (barring contractual promises to the contrary), for the society under its bylaws to expel a member who violates those voluntary prohibitions.
Remember, the discussion point is not “should animal cruelty be prohibited”, but are legal prohibitions “legitimate in a free society?”
Mid,
Yes, but the question asks about animals because we want to know if animals count as free individual members of society. Are they part of the social contract? Or should they be allowed to leave?
And the other question is about the legitimate limitations on freedom. Humans are animals too, so the same principles apply. If a society were to cooperatively agree to torture, or to kill and eat some minority group of humans, would that be legitimate in a free society? Possible answers are “yes”, or “no, and nor is it legitimate with any other animal”, or “no, but it is with all/some other animals because of this distinction between humans and other animals”. The Athenian democrats had the same issue with women and slaves – the free men joined in free association to order the affairs of others, who were excluded from “society”. They even exchanged contracts to that effect. Where do you draw the boundary?
If God hadn’t meant people to be eaten, he wouldn’t have made us out of meat.
Disagree with the thought that you can’t have rights without responsibilities; my country (USA) has vast hordes of people who demand rights and take no responsibility for anything, not even their own children.
Max: this is confusing rights with entitlements.
A friend of mine went to a bullfight in Mexico. He was sickened watching ‘heroic’ bullfighters attempting repeatedly to kill the bull. Years later he was still sickened to the point of shaking. This is a tough guy who thinks nothing of humans taking danger and pain unto their own self. It was the sadistically inept torture of it.
So if we are to treat animals and humans by the same principles, are we to invade Mexico? Or would we leave them be even if they did the same to humans? Shall we prevent people who want to kill bulls that way from leaving our society (country)?
My answer is that, in respect for the principles of individualism, we must make that prohibition voluntary. We can say ‘if you want to stay in our society’s jurisdiction, here are the rules and penalties’. And then that behavior becomes a matter of enforcing the terms under which somebody joined the society.
To enforce our moral code on other individuals means we must either justify it for the common good (collectivism), or we must find a path by which one or more individuals can impose their moral code on some other individual(s). I propose that there are two paths available. One is to make a law within the association that we belong to, and hence an internal (law enforcement) matter, or two, to use our association to impose it militarily on any/every one we choose to (military). I think that in different cases, either is acceptable. And, without actually articulating it, this is approximately what Anglo political/legal systems have in fact historically done.
Mid,
I think I understand your answer, but just to clarify: you say “we must make that prohibition voluntary.” Prohibition or permission? If we voluntarily decide to keep slaves, is that OK? Or is only prohibition allowed?
You say “We can say ‘if you want to stay in our society’s jurisdiction, here are the rules and penalties'” Does that also apply to the non-human animals that fall inside our jurisdiction? Do we show them the slaughterhouse, the penalty of staying, and allow them to flee if they wish?
“And then that behavior becomes a matter of enforcing the terms under which somebody joined the society.” Does this apply to both prohibition and permission?
If I understand you right, you haven’t offered anything that makes any distinction between human and non-human animals, because your guiding principle is something else entirely. On that basis, abusing either of them may equally be either allowed or prevented, so long as all the members of the (animal/slave/wife-owning) society voluntarily agree to it.
I’m not making any judgements. Just trying to be clear.
ChrisV:
But by pursuing this line of argument, you’ve stepped on a slippery slope that makes a bobsleigh track look comfortable in comparison. 🙂
As soon as people have bought into this mentality, you’ll see the domain free of government interference rapidly shrink to nothingness. After all, what makes your pleasure of eating meat and wearing leather less whimsical than the pleasure of a hunter or a dogfighting audience? Neither is essential for survival or maintaining health (vegetarianism will arguably even improve it). And what about this banning of entertainment activities whose primary purpose involves suffering of sentient animals? Wouldn’t its logical conclusion be the prohibition of boxing and all other martial sports, and perhaps even all contact sports altogether?
It is exactly the popular acceptance of arguments like this that drives the modern expansion of the nanny-state in all areas of life. Expecting the government to stay withing certain limits because they are “reasonable” according to some abstract principle is like expecting to have a philosophical argument with a forest fire.
I don’t understand your prohibition/permission thing. The only way I can make it understandable would be that everybody would need to get permission from somewhere to do anything at all. I hardly think that can be what you mean. I do not believe we get our “permissions” from anywhere. That idea presumes a confirmed higher lifeform than the individual (The collective? somebody’s God?, ‘scientific’ government?). Rather, I believe that as a negotiation with other individuals, we can individually agree to abide by certain prohibitions.
And as for the slave question, “is that OK?”, OK with who? It is certainly not okay with me. My only decision is whether to leave an association that tolerates it or, in the case of some other society doing it, whether I want to actively interfere with them.
A mountain lion has moved into my neighborhood. It is free to leave, but has elected to stay. As long as it abides by the standards we set for mountain lions around here, it can stay. But if it violates our standards of behavior, it will be dealt with as we choose. Whether it understands or not is irrelevant, we make the rules. If it tries to register to vote, we’ll deal with that when it happens.
As for captive animals, ie cows, in some Hindu societies, cows are completely protected from slaughter, in most American societies, cows are slaughtered humanely, in Mexico and other places, they are brutally and sadistically killed. Who is ‘right’, who is ‘wrong’? And more importantly, who writes the rules?
You appear to believe there is some higher authority that must be guided to the ‘correct’ answer. I am not trying to correct a higher authority. That is why I won’t fill in the blanks on any of these questions. Because the question is based on a wrong assumption.
I believe that the individual exists and that all actions must be in that context. I choose my own values (which are actually rather conventional) and then seek association with people who most closely share them. Therefore, as a theoretical overview, what those standards are is irrelevant in regard to whether or not they are ‘legitimate’. What determines their legitimacy is whether they are individually, voluntarily, cooperatively accepted, or inescapably imposed by an external or collective authority.
And while I welcome those escaping from collective impositions, I do not see a moral imperative that I, as an individual, are responsible for their fate. Helping to escape may be a good deed, a selfish deed, or both. But to say I have an obligation to help them escape would be to hold me accountable for the actions of others (their captors).
Does that help?
Mid,
It doesn’t help, but don’t spend time trying to clarify further. The point isn’t that important.
You appear to believe there is some higher authority that must be guided to the ‘correct’ answer. I am not trying to correct a higher authority. That is why I won’t fill in the blanks on any of these questions. Because the question is based on a wrong assumption.
I believe that the individual exists and that all actions must be in that context. I choose my own values (which are actually rather conventional) and then seek association with people who most closely share them. Therefore, as a theoretical overview, what those standards are is irrelevant in regard to whether or not they are ‘legitimate’. What determines their legitimacy is whether they are individually, voluntarily, cooperatively accepted, or inescapably imposed by an external or collective authority.
And while I welcome those escaping from collective impositions, I do not see a moral imperative that I, as an individual, are responsible for their fate. Helping to escape may be a good deed, a selfish deed, or both. But to say I have an obligation to help them escape would be to hold me accountable for the actions of others (their captors).