...And those who find farming practices wrong should become vegan. ... so far I can put a man and an animal side by side and find their reactions to certain acts are vastly different. The way they treat themselves and others of their own species are vastly different. Until that changes, I will preserve humane behavior for humans.
1) As stated the animals kill for survival, when humans do the same, no issue.
2) What you see as normal to animals, is actually seen so by a minority of humans:
Islam 1600 mil: Halal: slaughter be done in a way that was least painful and most merciful to the animal:
http://www.shariahprogram.ca/eat-halal-foods/islamic-guidelines-slaughtering-animals.shtml
Hindouism/Buddhism: 1500 mil: The principle of karma
In 2 out of 3 the owned creature can recognize the wrongness of being owned and defend its freedom. ..., but it can't explain (even in thought) why it wishes to be out of its enclosure, or why a large enough enclosure would prevent it from fleeing. A human subjugated on an entire planet will still rebel.
I'm still missing your argument.
1) You seem to claim to understand everything an animal thinks, yeh right ....
2) You come again with the same premiss: you need to understand, you need to be able to explain, ... Why???
A right is something that can be defended I see no reason you have to do it yourself => that is why a dead mans rights are defended, a baby is defended, I forgot last time someone with an IQ of 60, ....
Animals are not capable of recognizing their right to liberty and therefore do not have it.
Why do you need this premiss? For a right to defendable you do not have to understand it, someone can defend it for you.
On the flip side, humans are capable of understanding the right to property,
Take me out of Humanity, see last bit of the post.
.... In the minds of the people at the time, slaves weren't people. They were animals. They were dumb, spoke a silly language, were incapable of caring for themselves.
Just my argument, the value statement that humans are more valuable then animals is similar to the value statement Ariens (I'm one) are more then all the rest. It is a value statement that is not needed, it is subjective and has nothing to do with Objective Natural Rights.
And if they did enslave us then that is proof that humans are actually more intelligent than them; clearly they don't respect and probably don't understand our right to liberty.
Yet you enslave animals as human, not understanding their right to liberty. The aliens are as dumb as you.
Are we talking mental capacity here? This statement alone solidifies and reinforces my belief that rights are not universal, but instead a reflection of what different societies believe should be upheld as their most important values. ...
I agree that if mental capacity is needed to have rights, that the definition of mental capacity is subjective, so the subjects that would have rights, would be a subjective group. Actually groups are always subjective, even if grouped on objective criteria (blacks vs whites or humans).
But that misses the point: we can explain a lot of things with logic (using the correct premisses) animals might not be able to explain it, maybe not even reason in it (Goldfish), still logic applies to them. If a right is something you can defend, you can logically derive rights out of that definition (without an other premiss).
The believe is if you can defend something or not. You can logically show that to believe you can not defend anything would mean there would not be a word like right, the understanding of the word right shows logically that you should believe in it.
So rights exist and come logically out of the defintion that you can defend them, logic makes it universal, innate, objective, ....
Again everything written down are laws, they try to capture the rights, but miss. They do not prove natural rights do not exist, they only prove they are hard to capture in language.
If it's really that simple, then show me. Plenty of people here are ready and willing to say rights are subjective, that they don't apply under certain circumstances, to different intelligence levels and what have you. And yet, those same people are saying they're also universal?
I understand your confusion, that is part of my fight. Where some understand the logic, they miss the subjectivity of the premiss that they bring in.
I reject 2 common premisses:
1) Humans have more rights then others because they think more conceptually. They do, but it is irrelevant.
2) Property is natural. e.g. Pierre Proudhon: land itself cannot be property.// Nozick: if I mix my labour with something unowned we might just as well view this as a way of losing my labour rather than - with Locke - as a way of gaining the other thing
Human rights are subjective, but are a logical following if we value our own lives.
Natural rights coming out of logic and a minimum set of premisses are objective, universal, innate, ...
Out of that logic comes that if you value the right to live, your life should be something you can defend, you must expect others to value the right for your life.
If they did not value that right, you could not defend your life.
Logically if you have the right to live, the others have it as well, since they can defend it on the same basis as you.
Now where it becomes subjective is the defintion of what is the "right to live". I for example find this a very bad language, that causes more confusion then it brings light on rights.
It may have been explained many times... But there are 1170 posts in this thread.
Discussion helps more then encyclopedic knowledge. Discuss! Explain your premiss, explain the logic in play. It will help you without the others agreeing.
S...there is no objective reason why I am obligated to aknowledge other rights rather than my own if I don't want other people to value my life and my rights.
Objectively it makes your crazy. If you do not want to be able to defend your rights (others value it) there is a logical contradiction to the defintion of a right.
P.S.: I think you are not crazy, but you have a languige issue on the topic.
...In western civilization, we place the highest values on individual sovereignty. Not all cultures believe that to be important, and therefore live by a different moral code.
Strangely enough individual rights stand up in collective view societies. Actually we have many collective view actions in our individual view society.
Many people are heros, they risk their own life to safe people of the society. If they did not cause the threat they have no responsibility to do so, they act for the good of society.
In collective view societies, people will expect more heros, that is OK, but they will not oblidge people to offer themselves, they will not choose who has to be the hero,... the individual has the right to decide to be the hero or not.
There is a different moral code (expecting more heros), but both must respect natural rights.
Are human rights fixed, permanent and immutable, across time and space?
Human rights is a polluted term, see UN Human Rights wish list. Natural rights born out of pure logic are fixed, permanent and immutable, across time and space.
Is it likely that the human rights as envisaged in the 22nd Century will differ from those we recognize today?
Yes and lets hope that people move to Natural Rights. We should help them to do so.
But if human rights were totally objective and fixed, it may be appropriate we should preemptively condemn those in the future who would challenge or change our fixed definitions?
Are you a reincarnation of Stalin? He pulled this off.
1) You have your rights (sorry Danoff), nomatter what, that is what innate means, you only have to be to have them.
2) You can only be punished when you violate the rights of others. People (see Martin-Zimmerman thread) seem to punish people when the person is not violating rights, that is wrong.
So you can not preemptively condemn!
The ten commandments
Probably a better effort at rights then modern legislation.
Good is not an absolute truth. ... What some people consider good others may consider bad.
Good might be the hero example above, collective societies might find it bad not to be a hero, where others do not care.
Rights violations everyone should find bad, otherwise they will be illogical (which is often the case).
The actual values you hold, no. I think we're very much in line on that front. The only thing I disagree with is the idea that they're universal and unchanging.
Values are subjective. Rights are objective.
Judgements are concerning rights conflicts, so what rights violation you value over the other rights violation. Judgements are subjective linked to value.
It is very difficult to think about rights and not imply a judgement.
So check if you are not thinking judgements are not universal and unchanging, judgements based on universal and unchanging rights.
... Did someone get to decide that killing another man is wrong?
I wanted to use this as an example for the above.
"Killing an other man is wrong" it seems like a universal thruth and I believe it is based on what I call "You have the right not be imposed anything on your property when you are innocent".
Your property = your body here (the only property I found)
The "when you are innocent" is a lot less universal though:
* self defence when a burglar pulls a knife at you
* death penalty for a psychopatic serial killer
So the right will not evolve through time, but the judgement on "innocent" certainly will.
Because it means that sentience endows us with cosmic difference from all the other animals that are incapable of realizing their own and others existence. I don't believe there is a difference.
Indeed if someone thinks differently should explain what logic requires the difference? The premiss that this makes a difference.
...Sentience endows us with the ability to understand the nature of our actions. That's it...
Indeed we understand rights better, as we understand the rights of animals better. It does not change the rights, it does not give us more rights. That's it ...
Understanding what is does not change what is.
I never claimed it did. How does this rebut anything?
👍 for ShobThaBob
Danoff you do claim it changes something: If you understand rights they apply to you. If you do not understand rights they do not apply to you.
The rights do not change, why would the applicability of the rights change?
If there was harmony, and no discord, do you think there would've been a revolution splitting off the US from Britain? ...
Do not believe that recognising rights will lead to no rights conflicts. I believe that even with perfect described natural rights, we will have conflicts and subjective judgements. I do not believe that can be solved, since free will will mean people will want conflicting things.
Not believing in free will again would be illogical seeing the definition of rights.
... Should Resident # 1 be considered "moral" or "immoral" when she declined to sell or give any of her fresh-water to the other five islanders?
The issue here is property, as stated above I reject that premiss (and I'm not alone).
N.B.: I have been thinking about a system without property and at this moment do not see it as possible. I have strong tendencies towards communistic systems, but those seems against the right that you can profit of the fruit of your wealth creation.
I approach this question differently. Adam was the first man and he claimed paradise for himself. Then Eve came and he taxed her so she could barely survive for the use of his paradise. To get rid of some debt she had sex with Adam. Twins were born and Adam had 3 tax payers now.
Anything wrong with the story? According to rights Adam, Eve and the twins had equal right on the paradise. It did not matter when or where they were born. So Eve and the twins went to the paradise creator to get a judgement and she judged they were right. So they taxed Adam retro-actively for all he used in Paradise. Adam asked for judgement to the paradise creator, who put them on earth and said judge for yourselves here, I'll keep paradise for myself.
