h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Animals are here, and we are here, and they have as much 'right' to be here as us, which is none, since rights are manmade for a society. If we like them, fine, if we want to eat them, fine, there is no good and bad but thinking makes it so.
Therefore sentimentality has no place in our relationship with animals.

I have to agree. However, it's not just unnatural to be sentimental about animals from the sociological angle you suggest, but also from a biological one.

A lot of animal lovers use the argument that 'unnatural' overpopulation of the planet has led to destruction of habitats and overkilling of animals. They also claim that it is unfair and 'unnatural' to use animals to test products. They say we should be existing in harmony with the rest of nature.

Well, as far as I can see, to take that idea to its ultimate conclusion would be to live the completely natural life of a caveman (caveperson?). How much more 'in harmony with nature' can you get?

Now then, let's see - what was the role of animals when the human race lived as cavemen? Did we hug them, kiss them and give them funny little names? Did we try to stop other cavemen from killing them because they're just so darned cute? No, wait a minute, I've got it - we killed them! A lot! And ate them!

So who exactly is being unnatural?

That's all fine and dandy, and it also means when animals kill humans we have no right to complain. It's only natural, and right, and survival of the fittest is the way of life.

Exactly! Some of these animals kill humans and still some people want to save them! Tsk, tsk!

In any case, I would have thought that cases of humans getting killed by animals are so rare as to be practically irrelevent these days...

I'm curious about your use of the word 'we' in your argument. You are correct to identify 'rights' as man-made. However, there is nothing to say that 'we' should extend those rights to all humans. There is no fundamental moral principle that dictates we should do so and no Darwinistic/Natural reason why we should do so.
So who is the 'we' in your statement and why? if you mean 'all humans', then why not 'some humans', 'one human'. What is the 'natural' number of humans that rights should encompass?

I wish I knew where all these "right" thingies came from and why we're the only ones who have them. I wonder why all those poor starving people don't have rights. We have the right to use shampoo that won't sting our eyes because the stuff's been tested on countless tortured rabbits, but there are people living across the water who don't even have the right to sufficient nourishment to sustain their lives. Odd, isn't it?

This is the 'animals' forum - the 'Etheopia' forum is over there!

Over where? Over in Ethiopia? Well, the Ethiopians and you and I are animals too, so I guess we've as much business here as anyone else.

Well said, Sal!

Where's here? The world? Yes, I suppose animals do have as much business here as I do - it's just that I'm better at it. For one, I don't s**t on the floor.

And if you consider Etheopians to be animals then I am more than happy to discuss them...

Not sure what you're getting at, Mr Death.

It's not that *I* consider Ethiopians to be animals - it's just that they are animals. So am I. Are you under the impression that you're not an animal? If so, what do you imagine you are?

Well, as Clary suggests, 'rights' are utterly man made and created for convenience. However, and the point I was going to make, is that it can be convenient (to those that enforce rights) to restrict those rights to certain subsections of the human species.

Many people who deride those that support animal rights as being irrational or unnatural (whatever that is!) in this case, also seem to hold the similarly 'irrational' opinion that rights should be extended to all humans.

I you are happy to view rights as purely a convenience and not as a form of atruism, or based upon some moral prinicple, then you must accept that this convenience is contingent upon many things. Patriarchal societies are convenient, the slave trade is convenient as can be fuedal societies and class based ones. Convenience need only extend to those who have the power to implement a 'right'. In this respect, a call for animal rights is only as irrational and unnatural as the Europeans who wished an end to the slavery of Africans, men who supported the enfranchisement of women, etc.., After all, it was perfectly convenient for them to support the status quo as it was not they who bore the adversity of the policy.

Can't disagree with you about rights being man made 170249. I think I'd have to disagree with your point about rights being created for convenience though. In a lot of ways they're inconvenient. Some of the rights people imagine they have are just silly.

I guess you're approaching this from the "selfish gene" angle, are you? What you say makes sense but it doesn't quite take human nature into account. We're blessed or afflicted (depending on how you look at it) with empathy. The question about whether we're too sentimental about animals seems a bit too narrow in a way. We simply are sentimental and we can't necessarily limit that sentimentality to our closest family - as would suit the purposes of our selfish genes. Sympathy, empathy, sentimentality can be a bit "all or nothing". It depends on the nature of the individual. You have complete psychopaths up one end of the continuum and hopeless bleeding hearts down the other end. Most of us fall somewhere in between. I suppose a good analogy might be, when back in the 19th century the church elders decided they should teach the poor to read the bible, the better to control them and then it all got out of hand because the rotten ungrateful poor didn't limit themselves to reading the bible and got all uppity. You can't limit sentimentality any more than you can limit reading. I feel protective of my family, naturally enough but it spills over in concentric circles to my friends and neighbours and people in neighbouring countries - and then beyond them to my pets and the pets of my friends and family and the sheep and foxes in the nearby field.

We don't follow the dictates of logic because we're not robots. Even though the evidence seems to indicate that a large proportion of the human population are not very altruistic, most at least pay the virtue of altruism lip service. If things were as you describe them, your point makes perfect sense, but do you really think things are as you describe them?

I wouldn't disagree with anything you've just said when used as an explanation for the rights that exist at the moment. Indeed, i've argued the 'empathy gene' theory in the past as an idea as to why many humans behave the way they do.

However, my posts have not been an attempt to formalise rights and morality with any logical framework. Rather, i'm querying the assumption that the 'rational' or 'natural' boundary for rights lies between humans and other animals. Many people disregard animal rights protesters whilst simultaneously decrying the abuse of humans and talking of 'fundamental' human rights. However, the principles they generally use to justify 'human' rights and not 'animal' rights are usually flawed.

For example, natural selection is used as a justification for our species dominance. However, evolution selects individuals and not species. The species is simply a byproduct of individual selection and therefore the principle of natural selection, if used as a moral guide, suggests that you only preserve rights for yourself and those that might yield benefit to yourself.

Furthermore, natural selection is predicated upon the idea that 'benefit' is synonymous with reproduction. Reproduction benefits a gene sequence and not the individual (except in a touchy feely way!) which, to my mind renders its relationship to individual rights utterly meaningless anyway. Natural selection elegantly explains how we got here. It does not offer a mechanism for formulating a morality that we can encapsulate within law and our personal behaviour.

Ah! Ok. I think we're probably in broad agreement. Put it this way: I would say "the 'rational' or 'natural' boundary for rights" is a bit of a contradiction in terms. If that's what people are striving for, you'd have to ask what their starting point is. It would be a big challenge to find a basis for a 'natural' boundary for rights. I can't see how the starting point can be based anywhere but on emotions.