I really like the way this thread has developed. I would like to address several of your responses but first I would like to set up what the philosophy of ethics has evolved so far as far as rights.

What is Ethics?

Ethics is a philosophy which has predominantly focused on human beings and moral aspects of what is right and wrong or good and bad. The philosophy of ethics is to question and evaluate moral standards concerning, as Weston states, “the basic needs and legitimate expectations of others as well as our own” (2008 A21st Century Ethical Tool Box – 2nd ed.).

What are “basic needs”

Basic needs are whatever is required to sustain life such as food, clean water, protection from the elements and access to basic medical care, and freedom to develope internal potential and a welcoming environment in which to externalize that potential, fulfilling the basic need to find purpose.

What are “legitimate expectations”?
Legitimate expectations are based on the ethical principle that all humans are, by their intrinsic nature, equal to one another. To be human legitimizes the individuals’ claim to be respected by others, have the unhindered right to the pursuit of livelihood and to freely believe, think, and speak without fearing others, while striving for fulfillment and happiness. However, equality signifies a two-sided equation and individuals are not free of responsibility to ensure his or her behavior does not impede or infringe on the same, equal, legitimate expectations of others.

As I’ve mentioned the philosophy of ethics has expanded beyond the original application for humanity only because it has been recognized that this planet seems to require everything it (nature) has created in order to remain balanced. In other words no thing within our world operates without affecting other things. That is how we and all life and all the environment are interconnected.

Feel free to add, change, or discuss the explanations of basic needs and expectations.

I would like to mention that creating these definitions MUST span every socially and culturally acceptable morality. That is why the definition remains so compact. Just like our laws require a court system to interpret the law per case, so must we interpret other peoples’ morals/ethics based on their culture and not our own.

Creative wrote:



I believe your definition may be to tightly reigned. The philosophy of ethics attempts to determine a ‘standard’ morality with regards to life and those standards are based on the intrinsic value of life itself. In other words life has value because it is life and if we understand that every life has a purpose and is of value than what conditions, what rights are consistent with the value we place on life?

Ethics attempts to answer this but humans are unlike other animals because we do not simply subsist on the natural world, we create. Therefore part of ethics requires that humans take responsibility for what they create and part of that responsibility is to make sure that all life continues to be ‘valued’ and their ‘rights’ maintained no matter what it is we create. This is a higher sense of ought, own that is BOTH personal and collective—morals we can all agree on no matter what else our society or culture teach us.

But we must first have a sense of right and wrong, and that is a socially learned process and varies between people and greatly from culture to culture. So we have a personal sense of ought that is influenced by many areas but one of those areas should always include ‘ethical/moral’ consideration which spans all life.

Poison Sting



Animals (humans included) have a right to whatever is required to sustain life such as food, clean water, protection from the elements and access to basic medical care, and freedom to develop internal potential and a welcoming environment in which to externalize that potential, fulfilling the basic need to find purpose.

You may not think all that applies to non-human animals, but on this planet if humanity did not exist, every life form would automatically have these things or have a way to find them. It is humans that change this scenario for them, we destroy their environment, hunt them, experiment with them, eat them, and so on. Since we do these things, ethics says we must take responsibility for making sure that our behavior does not deny these animals the basic rights that nature has given them. We can do this and still utilize their potential to help us – we simply choose not to.

But in making the choice to see other life as commodities or resources for our use are we also making it easier to ignore or deny our responsibility to extend these same basic rights to all humans?




You have a high opinion of your self, not always a bad thing though. You see people only on the surface, but what is beneath what life did the drug dealer, ping or tyrant live? You may judge individuals, but did it ever occur to you to figure out what made them become what they are and what we might do in the future to prevent more people like them? We can put out fires but to find solutions that will work we first have to identify the source of the original problem.

Doing this digging, critically trying to understand where the real problems are and what might solve them, would help you begin to understand the interconnectedness between humans, other animals and all the environment.



They are equal because all life is endowed nature to have equal footing to have their perspective needs fulfilled. It is man that creates the most disruption to this natural endowment but takes little responsibility to see to it that nature is served.



As I have mentioned in other posts, when we use animals as helpers we often take measures to see that they are well cared for and in fact we help provide them with a bond between us and a productive life. Using animals for a function that is part of their nature is simply fulfilling a legitimate expectation for them. They have skills we need, or we would not use them, true? (interconnected?)



Of course their happiness is a concern, if they were not happy (contented) they might not be so docile, they may become ill, suffer anxiety making them unproductive, or they may not reproduce or kill their young or any number of things that would affect their usefulness to us. You look at them as a resource and all resources are ours for the taking, but we should have learned by now that all taking and no responsibility is destructive to the environment and thus to ourselves. (interconnectedness)

Bushi


Yes, I agree that is actually what ethics tries to do. What is it that is so common to all involved that should be respected as naturally valuable.

Ohh but we have decided what is moral, and immoral as a species. Everyone agrees on basic ideas of greed, slavery, rape, murder bad stuff is bad kind of mentality, p0rn ill know it when i see it, evil ill know it when . . .

Yes we humans break the mold, but my alien examples are not so much in any kind of reference to an outside agency of morality, as a possible early introduction to technology bio, or otherwise.

Heck we hardly need envision such a thing given the advancement of certain fields in recent years, it was just mind vomit.

I completely agree with Di, becuase we can understand the interconnectedness, we ARE responsible to try to maintain it the best we can.

I think if some ultra wise race of ancient technological aliens comes to earth and we figured that balance out, they would hook our benevolent @zzs up.
lol

I think I need sleep . . . haha to much overtime not enough sleep!

The problem here is a purely philosophical one.

For no matter how soundly something is proven as true, it can never be proven why it ought to be.

Bushi


It sounds simple but... For example, if you are speaking of technology, mmm did you ever see the old movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still"? An intergalactic police force of robots was created to rid the world of violence or the species that could not be swayed from it. But what is violence and against who or what would it be considered immoral?

Take the story of Sodom from the Bible (closer to home) One interpretation is that the sin of Sodom is Homosexuality. Those who might interpret the situation as having only one valid reason for Sodom’s destruction, that of homosexuality, seem to have tunnel vision or perhaps they look only at that which confirms their bias. However, much more is going on in the story which can lead to more logical interpretations.

Another interpretation is that Sodom was destroyed because of several behaviors which were contrary to moral or ethical values which were part of Jewish tradition. Humiliating enemies, by raping them, was not uncommon in groups that did not adhere to Jewish law. Also, according to Jewish law the poor were to be offered alms, which the Sodomites did not offer. It was also customary that the host in a Jewish home offered guests the best which the home had to provide, and guests were to be protected at all cost, even if that meant putting a daughter in harms way.

The fist interpretation is a dogmatic response, which eventually elicits rationalizing, or offhand self-justification. The second interpretation stops short of recognizing that Sodom was not Jewish, not familiar with Jewish traditions and were therefore being judged based on ethical principles which they did not share.

The point is, all cultures do not share the same morals so in the end who would be programming this bold new technology with CORRECT morals?

Is euthenasia murder, is assisted suicide violence?

Personally, I agree with you that technology is on the verge of being capable of giving us freedom from hard manual labor, long work days and unfulfilling jobs while still giving us a life of plenty but it may never be possible for the world to come to agreements about all moral issues. The hope is that ethics can find a standard which every person can agree with while still tolerating cultural differences. Main problem being those who are so fundamentally intertwined with dogmatic beliefs that they would be unable to tolerate these differences.

G'night - too tired myself.

I think the cultural zietgiest will evolve as our interconnectedness evolves.

I think technology is already provided that here on the internet. For me the single most important aspect of a moral decision is the ability to see things from other people's perspectives.

Its very hard to hurt some one you understand. I think if technology does nothing but make it easier for the disparate people's of earth to understand each other . . .

Not a thing I don't agree with, well said and well appreciated.

But that is not realistic or possible. You cannot understand them unless you have lived their entire life, walked in their shoes, seen felt and experienced all that they have.

I agree that we may come closer to understanding each other, but we will not achieve that unless we can be like the "Borg" (On Star Trec) and become one body/mind. Individuality would be gone.

boy, miss a day, miss a lot.


That seems reasonable. For myself, I tend to make the distinction that Ethics is the evaluation of what is right and wrong while morality is applied ethics and a moral code are the rules by which one pursues "the good". But this definition seems to cover that.


this is loaded language that I don't necessarily agree with.


Men are not equal. In America, in the eyes of the law all men are equal, but to suggest that everyone should be "respected" simply because they are human is a flawed suggestion. When police enter a dwelling where the floors and walls are covered with feces and rotted food, the children are naked and filthy and the parents are in a drug induced stupor; would you say that you "respect" the parents or the choices they have made? Respect is earned through actions not by virtue of birth.

Ethics is a determination of right and wrong. As such it requires an intellectual choice. Only humans make intellectual choices, therefore ethics is only helpful or required for humans. Animals do not have freewill. They do not make choices of right and wrong or good and evil.

This planet does not require everything that nature has created to remain balanced (and I am not even sure if the existing balance is required*). If this planet did require everything, then it would never recover from the mass extinctions of the past (There have been 5 known mass extinctions, one of which 251 million years ago destroyed 95% of all species on earth. http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/planetearth/extinction_sidebar_000907.html).

We, as humans, need certain things in nature for this planet to be habitable, but that is something completely different and leads to a different view of things.

While it is true that all things in nature are interconnected, that does not preclude change. It occurs in nature all the time where there is a shift instigated by one species or event that the surrounding species must adjust to.



I do not think this would lead to any insights or wisdom. First, the law is a strict set of guidelines. Where you were raised, who your parents are, what faith you adhere to are (or should be) completely irrelevant in determining guilt or innocence. Furthermore, to interpret other's moral code based upon their culture is good for an anthropologist but I do not believe it to be helpful here. One quick example: Where I live a man cut his wife's head off with a saw because she said she wanted a divorce. Given your ethical stance above, this would be wrong. However, this man claims that he is a Muslim and it is within his rights. Should we interpret his actions through the lens of his culture and agree with him?



There are no "intrinsic values". There is nothing that you can point to that is "good" just because it is. To be valuable, something must be good "for something". Gold has no intrinsic value. However, we have noticed that it is very stable and does not rust, that makes it good for currency. A tree is not good because it is a tree. It might be good for us because it is a CO2 scrubber or because it will aid in drainage or soil retention or makes good building materials or is an excellent resource for paper (which in itself is invaluable for transmitting information from one generation to another), but a tree is not good or bad.

When you say that something is "good" in and of itself and outside its relationship to other things... that is a religious interpretation for God.



I really agree with this (if I am understanding you correctly). We must move to an ethical understanding of the world that transcends culture, religion and society. In short, we must approach morality from our greatest common factor: being human. We must accept that even though we may have learned right and wrong from a limited cultural view point, that should not keep us from moving beyond that.
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Unfortunately, as much as I enjoy debating ideas, I am quickly running out of time to read and respond in the depth required. Since I will have to limit myself to a part time participant to this thread, please feel free to disregard my above reservations to that you may more easily form a consensus.

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* by existing balance I mean that balance is an idea, not a thing, and there are many ways to create equilibrium. If you place your finger half way along a yard stick, you can balance it there. However, you may still achieve equilibrium by moving your finger closer to one end if you compensate with weight on the other. We all know this. What makes one type of balance "better" than another?

Those who say that we must maintain the natural order of things because that is the way it was created are not really answering the question.

It is true that to alter a balance point requires an understanding of all the interacting forces, but is that an argument against the "right or wrong" of changing the balance? To me it sounds more cautionary than a charge of immorality. Change the world all you like, just understand what you are doing.

A case in point would be hydroelectric power. No one can deny that there is a huge impact on the environment when people dam rivers. However, the benefits for both power and agriculture are monumental.

Your response agrees with my position. You are suggesting that there is something "wrong" with them as they are and that they can be fixed?repaired?made better? In short, your response has led you to separate judging the actions of the individual from your vision of who the individual could be.

I have no way of knowing who they could be, but more importantly I have no way of knowing who they WANT to be. Their purpose for their own life is their decision. If I find fault with their degradation, abuse and enslavement of others... then yes, I am better than they are.

Most of this thread has been awesome - I tried to keep up with a mobile device, and didn't want to attempt to participate on that tiny keyboard.

Di, thank you so much for standing up and engaging people on the topic of animal welfare!

I don't entirely agree with your politics, but when it comes to animal welfare I am very disturbed by the 'trust' people have in the ethical conduct of our food producers.

For many of my food purchases, I make the ethically questionable decision of buying the cheapest of what is available. I am not alone in this. When we do this, we send a message (a message already being sent by the share holders) to food producers to cut as many corners as they can, and produce that food as cheaply as possible.

In the case of raising animals for food, this leads directly to animal abuse. Treating animals well is almost always more expensive than treating them as unfeeling machines. (A possible exception being: for those companies that market themselves based on treating animals well.)

As far as laws protecting animals - who here actually thinks that most companies eagerly, voluntarily follow legal guidelines, just because those guidelines are there? No! They ask themselves questions like "will we be caught?", "how much will we have to pay if we are caught?", and "how much value do we lose in public perception?" Often, if the penalties are too low, or enforcement/investigation is lacking, they will intentionally disregard the law. Its good business. Some people in business that is unethical to prioritize following 'every little law', because they think their ethical responsibility is to the share holders.

A friend of mine, long ago, had what I consider an amazing approach to the question of food and animal welfare, which I respected highly.

A legion of brainwashed vegans (whom we both worked with) harassed him, but in my view his ethical position was sound, self-consistent, based on compassion & respect for animals

He absolutely never bought or consumed any animal product from any supplier of any kind ever, with one particular exception. He loved and respected non-human animals, and was disgusted by the way they are usually treated in modern food production.

The exception: he and his family hunted.

Sky,

Your response to the question of trains and organ donors was nearly identical to my own thinking; you phrased it in terms of legal penalties, whereas my thoughts were in terms of my personal values - but maybe I haven't done enough examine the relationship between my personal values and the values implied by our legal penalties.

Although I wouldn’t have stated it quote that way, I see this as being at the crux of the matter.

As I see it, there are two key issues in coming up with a solution.

One is the breadth of one’s viewpoint. For example, a person throws a gum wrapper on the ground, thinking that it is such a small thing that it won’t matter to anyone. But that individual does not have a broad enough viewpoint to see eventual outcome that, if it did not matter to anyone, then gum wrappers would cover the earth. (Pardon the exaggeration, but this is just for the purposes of illustration.) He also does not have the breadth of viewpoint to see that that single gum wrapper actually does matter to other people.

The other is “relative importances”, which are personal, and situational/circumstantial. For example, to me, the “feelings” of the cow have a very low importance in relation to my own desire for food. And the biggest problem I see there is in the factor of “emotional investment”. Relating to the cow example, I have zero emotional investment in the cow, whereas there are (apparently) others who have a huge emotional investment there.

So it seems to me that for there to be any universally agreed upon solution to any ethical/moral problem, it would require that all the parties involved have the exact same breadth of viewpoint – which could also be stated as agreement as to exactly what all the factors are – and the exact same opinion as to the relative importances of all of those factors, of which the “emotional investment” factor is one of, if not the, thorniest.

This is essentially the reasoning behind my stance that there are and can never be any absolutes when discussing ethics/morals. Simply because they are dependent on entirely subjective factors and thus there can never be universal agreement.

(Well, I guess that’s not exactly true. In a society made up of entities that all held exactly same viewpoint on everything, and which society lived in an effective vacuum where it was the only society in the universe, then I quess you could say that the morals of that society were universal.)

Hey Bushido,

Interesting questions.

If such a perfect world existed, then there would be perfect(ed) morals and ethics but is this stagnation or the pinnacle of perfection?

I beleive that we can advance that far, but the time it'll take....

Interesting viewpoint. It made me think of something else.

There seems to be a conflict in the area of ethics.vs.evolution as regards carnivorism in humans.

I believe it is true that man has hunted for meat, as food, since – well – since there was man. (If not, then ignore the rest of this post because it is dependent on that assumption.)

So how does one reconcile the desire for meat, as an evolutionary trait, with the ethics of raising animals for food? It would seem that evolution demand that man use his intelligence to control his potential food supply in a way that would provide for maximum yield. Raising animals for the express purpose of eating them is exactly that. So in essence, raising animals for food is, however indirectly, inherent in our genetic makeup.

So questioning the ethics of raising animals for food involves questioning the ethics of evolution!

(P.S. I don't personally believe in evolution as the answer to all things living, nor do I believe in the creationist viewpoint. I'm just trying to mix things up a bit. )

Animal rights and animal protection agencies are causing a some disruption where horses are concerned. My sister has horses and it has recently become a law that they are not to be bought at auctions for the purpose of dog meat.

How nice for horse lovers right?

Here comes the problem: If a person has an old or useless horse, and they cannot sell it at auction because the dog meat buyers are going elsewhere now, what are they to do with that horse? They cannot sell it anywhere. They cannot shoot it either. If they cannot kill it or sell it or afford to feed it, what are they to do with this horse? Let it starve? Turn it loose?

These have been done. Horses are left to starve or turned loose because the owners can't afford to feed them.

Now in our state, horses have to have papers, kind of like a car. If a government official comes to your farm, you must produce a bill of sale and background about where you got your horses. If you don't have one, you have to convince him that the horse was born and raised on your property.

Soon, it will get to the point where you have to register a colt when it is born. Its ridiculous. Old nags have no where to go and nobody wants them. The only thing you can do is hope to sell your horse, or find a rescue ranch for it, or dispose of it illegally or through the black market.

You feel sorry for horses sold for dog meat? Sorry enough to open a rescue ranch and pay thousands of dollars taking care of old run-down horses? Some people have done this, but they are few and far between.

I love horses, but there has to be a better way.

I agree this is a problem, JB, in this area, too. Because of circumstances like you describe, as the economy soured and people couldn't afford to keep their horses, they would cut out their brands with a knife and let them loose - with an infected patch of exposed flesh.

There are many problems like this in all areas of 'reform' where a group legislates to 'improve' a situation and they are only looking at, or trying to address, one small part of the problem.

I've heard of companies engaged in the most ecological of logging methods being adversely effected by legislation whose purpose was to discourage un-ecological logging methods.