What is the difference between a cow and a man. What makes it right for a man to eat a cow, but makes it wrong for a cow to eat a man?

How do we determine if a being deserves a right to life?

What makes humans responsible for anything, themselves, others?
Why do dogs have rights in America? Why do cats? Why not squirrels?

If we discovered aliens on Neptune that where essentially a multi cellular puddle would humanity care if it where intelligent? How intelligent would it have to be to have a right to life? How intelligent to be responsible for Neptune, and its sovereignty? Would they need to be powerful to be respected, wise, knowledgeable?

What characteristics determine these rights?

If your response is god, then please let me know how he decides.

Every sentient being has rights, reverence for life.. has nothing to do with God, just my thoughts.

people try to rationalize superiority over the environment when we can BARELY control ourselves. Even Vegetarians live in a state of denial. Granted Veganism is a lifestyle choice but still they choose to deny the face we are designed as omnivores. Lions must be lions and they are man eaters. So are sharks, hyenas, leopards, bears and a number of other animals. Like wise there are animals that are arguably nearly our equals intellectually.

Humans are just self delusional about our place in the world.

Man can digest a cow.

We do.

Neptune muti-celular puddles best not be patroleum...

What determines the rights... Should be carefull thought (actually is --- biggest weapon).

Man can also digest man. (C-J disease aside).

Man can get a lot of things in his mouth and into his belly... doesn't mean it's all good for him..

When it really comes down to it, I'm not sure I believe in 'rights', really.

But the idea of rights is necessary to curtail human greed and barbaric tendencies.

So I promote the idea of rights. I do think we should view non-human animals as having rights - ultimately for our own sakes.

Very good set of questions.

Why it's right for humans to eat cows: We are humans discussing this question. If we were a bunch of cows, we'd probably be very indignant and insulted, and discuss in those tones that the arrangment is quite grossly unfair.

How do we determine to let live or let die? By our tastebuds.

What makes humans responsible? Humans. "Responsible" is a human concept.

Dogs and cats have more rights than other animals because they can get attached to humans emotionally and socially. That gives them a level of humanness. So they have rights. (For instance, taking the fifth amendment.)

Mainly its usefulness to humans determines if something lives or dies, and of course the ease at wich we can kill it. AIDS viruses are tough to kill; unicorns were unfortunately for them a species favourtied by Greek gods to be slain at the Altar.

Anything from the planet Neptune would be cherished and if possible raised to reproductive maturity. It'll have more rights to live than the Queen of England, the President of the USA, and the Dalai Lama all put together.

The collective conscience.

I think the definition of the word answers most of those questions: “Something due to a person or community by law, tradition or nature.”

The word “due” implies some sort of obligation – that they are “owed” this right by someone. And in the case of “nature”, the idea seems patently absurd to me. As you said in another thread “evolution doesn’t care”.

So in my evaluation, “rights” are akin to morals – they are just a group agreement. Completely artificial and without any objective or “natural” basis. Whatever one decides is a right, then becomes a right in that person’s eyes. But it does not necessarily become a right in anyone else’s eyes

Do I owe it to cows to not eat them? Not in my opinion I don’t. Therefore the cow does not have a “right to life” in my view.

Yes, the cow probably has a different viewpoint. But that just illustrates the point. It is completely dependent upon personal (or bovine as the case may be) viewpoint.

The question “What characteristics determine these rights?” is really senseless, since it is not the characteristics of the object that are the determining factor. It is the characteristics of the subject.

My opinion.

historically, in this country the source of rights is existential. In reality, there is no such thing as a right (unless one is willing to use force to "defend" it).

did you watch district 9?

the seperation between man and beast is man was granted the gift of free will and free thought. it all comes down to organized chaos and how we function on a conscious and subconsious level.

does it make it okay for a man to eat a cow vs a cow to eat a man? yes.

I eat meat and never have the urge to kill the bear who ate that man who tried to pet her cub. get what I'm saying? if it can kill and eat us, then we should avoid it. just like wild buffalo ran like hell to avoid us.

we're just more creative with our hunting skills.

to expect to be the top of the food chain forever is like pretending your the hottest thing to ever hit the streets.. and stay that way.

Existential indeed.

This is a hard one but, Life is a process. We are a process. The universe is a process...................................

Kind of switched here. You start of asking about right and wrong and move to "rights". True, there is a link between a society's prevailing ethics and the rights it affords its members. But there is a difference.



I think the biggest difference would be the classification between a domestic pet (dogs and cats), livestock (domesticated animals bred for consumption) and wild animals. However, America has strict regulations on how and when any animal can be killed. You are not supposed to euthanize your own pets, there are regulations in regards to livestock and wild animals have hunting seasons (some -- like song birds -- are illegal to kill at any time).

I don't necessarily think they have rights, so much as their owners (i.e., they are property) have responsibilities.



With alien life forms (and even with some terrestrial ones like dolphins or chimps) I think it boils down to a question of sentience. I am not sure if there is a legal definition of sentience but it would probably have something to do with checking for self-awareness, communication, transfer of knowledge to novel situations, etc... But you can be sure that any legal test for sentience would be based on a human benchmark.

But about the idea of rights...

Rights are protections or opportunities afforded by a society to its members. They may be (should be??) a reflection of the society's morality, but they are not morals. If I remember correctly, morals are the behavioral rules that one must live to live a good life. So...

Ethics answers "what is good"
Morality tells you "how" to be good
Rights make sure that society will allow you to follow the "how".

If it is determined that it is good to work and own the fruits of your labor, then it will be moral to work and society will protect your right to private property.

If instead, it is determined that taking care of others is a greater good, then it will be moral to provide for those who are less "fortunate" and society will give others the right to have your property by redistributing property from those who have too much to those who have too little.

I just imagine cow like aliens finding earth and being very angry.

Man its late, I watch too much sci fi, I think I need a burger!

It all depends on who's dishing out the rights does it not?

Clearly nature doesn't respect anyone's rights.

Nature will kill or maim or starve or drown or destroy anyone at any time without any consideration of any rights.

Personified Gods don't seem to have any better morals. Look at what Yahweh did to Job! He was more ruthless than nature because he condoned it knowingly. At least according to the holy fable.

I personally feel that all living things should be respected as much as is pragmatically reasonable. For me it has nothing to do with rights.

As an example, when I was a young child there were rattle snakes where I currently live. There were enough of them around that I used to run into them quite frequently as a young child. I remember seeing them around.

But over the years the local people have been killing them every time they saw one. There are no rattle snakes around here anymore. I haven't seen a rattle snake in several decades now.

Hey, that's fine with me!

And believe me, I think about this often. What if we were to try to respect all life? Could we do it? Would it be practical?

I don't think it would. If people never ever killed a rattle snake this place would be crawling with rattlers to the point where it wouldn't even be safe to go outside! And they have absolutely NO PROBLEM biting people with their highly poisionous venom!

I think there are definitely practical reasons for killing certain animals. We could leave them be in very remote places, but it would be utterly insane to try to live side-by-side with them.

I know a couple of Buddhist monks that would disagree with you on that.

Hi Everyone,

Good philosophical topic Bushi. We might stop to consider what differences exist between humans and other animals. And then we might consider the interconnectedness of all living creatures to each other and the environment which we must all share.

Traditionally the moral aspect of ethics was concerned with the rights of humans. Specifically, what are the basic needs of humans to survive, and if all humans by their intrinsic nature (as human) are equal what can they expect of this life. This narrow thinking stems directly from some religious beliefs which invariably set humanity in a place of superiority over all other life. This way of thinking has been a tradition for thousands of years. Further philosophical thought has expanded the morals of basic human needs and legitimate expectations to all life because all life is actually interconnected regardless of the nature of our being. Consider the fact that not all humans have the same intellectual ability, not all humans have the same athletic ability, and some face other extreme handicaps, yet we do not “de-humanize” them, they are still others with an intrinsic value that makes their basic human needs and expectations of life equal to all others.

So why would humans, in all their diversity, still be superior to animals?

In this thread it has been stated that we raise animals for the purpose of providing food, as work animals, enjoyment, and for all types of invasive experimentation. In other words, just because we allow animals to breed in accordance to our wishes we have the right to mistreat them, to deny their basic needs and their particular life’s expectations. This is not an acceptable answer for many reasons.

Kant says we cannot use others as objects and be in the moral right, in other words we cannot use another as a means to an end. When we do this we are denying others inherent value, the same value that is inherently (equal) in all humans as persons. Once again, we have to question why are the basic needs and expectations of humans any greater than that of any other animal life? After all, humans can not live without the rest of the environment, including other animals. But humans can live without eating other animals so the question remains why shouldn’t we? Because according to Kant we are using others as a means to our end, we are objectifying animals making them things for our pleasure. This is why we don’t keep slaves, they are people/persons not things to serve our desires. Neither are animals, but if you think they are just objects to be used as a means to our ends, explain why their rights should be any different than our own?

Thank you.

To rise above seeing life as a commodity we must start here on this planet. A beings nature should be taken into account. It crushes my heart to see puppy mills where dogs who's nature is rejected in commercialized breeding. We can do better, most everyone I know agrees to one degree or another, this is but a single example.

What a sad legacy we would create if we hunted to extinction perhaps one of the few truly sentient races in the known universe.

A legacy our children would have to live with knowing that the possibilities of the future for intelligent beings like whales where snuffed out in the name of profit; that a sentient beings suffering was secondary to the bottom line; its future unimportant.

If human nature is soo vile . . .