Re: Humanism and Animal Rights (omitted link)

Ron Peterson wrote: 
theBeaver wrote:


Again, my original post started simply as a way of advertising a
scholarly work on animal rights.  The author has important things to
say.  Things that neither you nor I have thought of.  And he IS
addressing "what is really important" in his own opinion.  His sense of
what is important also coincides closely with my own, which in my case
IS the product of a great deal of trial and error and thought.  What is
most important is preventing avoidable pain and suffering of living
creatures, both human and non-human.  That is essence of the "big
picture".  Humanism is not fully developed until it includes non-human
life fairly in its formulations.



Pain and suffering can easily be avoided by offering instant death to
living creatures, and therefore that goal is a trivial goal, although
most of us may agree with it.


Good point, and very true. The proposed instant death would certainly be an acceptable alternative to prolonged and intense suffering, but not just for animals: Many people would (and some do) accept this alternative when it becomes clear that they are terminally ill or when their futures seem useless and pointless. I do, in fact, favor instant or painless and fearless death for all suffering animals. It cannot be explicitly endorsed for people, because then we would always be worrying about whether somebody standing behind us might decide to inflict on us a painless death. Since many animals CAN make a connection between observing the death of one of their own species, and the consequent potential for killing them or those they value, it is incumbent on us to avoid raising the same fear in them.

Humanism is a methodology, not a dogma. The author, you, and I don't
have any standing to speak for animals. Rights, as discussed by
humanists, refer to limitations on governmental power, not on the
actions of individuals. Laws are what form restrictions on individual
actions.

In the absence of law, what would restrict individual actions? Some trade-off between the goals of nonviolence (non-fatal dispute resolution is the norm among most animal species), the need for mutual support (you need others to for mutual protection against common enemies), the fact that others wield essentially the same powers over you as you over them, and normal human sympathy? Is the correspondence between these and governmental law just coincidence? Government simply codifies procedures and punishments to balance competing needs and desires. Laws enslaving negroes stand until empathy allies with the force required to change things. Laws enslaving and abusing animals will stand until they are challenged in the same way. The impetus for Good is empathy, whose origin is in individuals, such as the author, you, and me.

We ALL have the moral imperative to speak for animals, as for any who are powerless, including children. Rights, as they regard humanists, need to address not only limiting governmental power, but in which direction we should extend governmental power. If not, then we would still be enslaving people of color.

The question is whether you are concerned about individual animals or
the species. Some species are dangerous disease agents like small pox,
I hope that you aren't against wiping out those disease agents.

I am concerned about individual animals. I am also concerned about species insofar as their destruction causes suffering to individual animals and to a general diminishment of the quality of life on earth.


--
"Philosophy is a stage in intellectual development, and is not compatible with mental maturity." -- Bertrand Russell

"Philosophy, as opposed to science, springs from a kind of self-assertion: a belief that our purposes have an important relation to the purposes of the universe, and that, in the long run, the course of events is bound to be, on the whole, such as we should wish." -- Bertrand Russell

"If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Indian's view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, 'How about the tortoise?' the Indian said, 'Suppose we change the subject.' The argument is really no better than that." -- Russell

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." - Albert Einstein in Albert Einstein: The Human Side , edited by Helen Dukas (Einstein's secretary) and Banesh Hoffman, and published by Princeton University Press.

"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despiceable an ignoreable war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder." [Albert Einstein]

"I am the entire human race compacted together. I have found that there is no ingredient of the race which I do not possess in either a small way or a large way." -- Mark Twain

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." -- Theodore Roosevelt
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