stevetherawman
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Posts posted by stevetherawman
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Suppose you place an hungry ass precisely midway between two stacks of hay, equal in every respect. Make sure that an ass perceives both stacks equally. According to the 14th century philosopher Jean Buridan the poor animal will die of starvation, unable to choose which stack to approach first. From this thought experiment we could learn first that animals could choose, and if volition is an ability to choose, then they have volition. Although this is hard wired, unconscious volition, it's volition nevertheless. Second, volition presupposes an hierarchy of values. if all values are equal, no choice is possible. Such an experiment could be easily modified for humans. However, man possesses self-awareness and conscious volition and therefore is able to make non-rational, random choices, which are not related to the hierarchy of values. In any case I'm pretty sure that man in such a situation will have no difficulty whatsoever to grab the bar of gold, or just a plate with spare ribs. Wouldn't that be a proof of existence of volitional consciousness?
It's pretty much impossible to test this theory... No two haystacks could be EXACTLY the same
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Then a lion does too, and by the same source. Bear in mind we aren't talking about government securing rights. Positing a right to life is nothing more than the recognition of actions that are behaviorally correct and proper according to ones nature in order to claim ownership of ones life. That is the source of this fundamental right; ones nature, not ones legislature. Does a lion claim ownership of it's life? Try to wrestle it away from him and observe what happens.
Man can recognize a right to life, but doesn't create it by recognition or cognition. Like reality, this fundamentally right behavior is the action necessary to live shared by all living creatures; it is reality in motion. And it exists independently of man's recognition or denial of it. You might argue that man has a more advanced recognition of a right to life than a lion, but you cannot dismiss the lion's right to life without undermining your own. The right to life is inherent and inalienable by observation of reality, or it's simply a nice idea without foundation.
Ones life, as property, begins at birth and cannot be transferred or stolen. Murders and theives cannot collect lives by taking them. That is the meaning of inalienable; alienating one from ones life means death. This is an observational fact of reality, and not at all unique to the human animal. Jumping over this fact by equating conceptual recognition of life as a property, with the enactment of some right to it, will not persuade any member of the animal kingdom to relinquish their right to life. They will defend their right to life with tooth and claw, and slime you if necessary.
If rights are social permissions, then man needs to learn to play nice with those animals he interacts with.
Edit: One final thought... Were it possible to behave with a unique right to live, would that entitle one to inflict pain, suffering and death on "rightless" others? It would be a curious kind of right to life to promote that kind of anguish, would it not??
What's the point of this argument? It's total semantics. Animals don't have the ability to conceptualize. Period. If they did, they would have attempted to communicate with us conceptually by now, that has not happened to this date. Only humans so far have shown that they have a conceptual consciousness. Since the concept of 'rights' is again a concept, only humans understand rights. Therefore only humans have rights. Any attempts at proving that animals have a conceptual consciousness is just a bunch of whack job scientists trying to anthropomorphize and degrade humans down to the level of animals.
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What is the legal procedure for addressing criminal animals who violate rights?
Animal whisperers!!! ;D
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Humans having a right to life doesn't ethically prevent them from being executed when they become murders.
Death penalty is the most irrational, animalistic thing out there
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Haha maybe if apes were like the ones in the planet of the apes they would have rights, in reality they are wild animals
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Animals behave in social contexts, demonstrate preferences (free will), and distinguish between objects of reality (conceptualize to some degree). Advocates of animal rights do in fact see a difference between animals and people; animals behave more consistently towards each other in terms of respect than humans do. That is not an assault on the mind; it is an invitation to check your premises.
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Is there a distinction to be made between animal rights amd animal welfare?
HUGE. Animal welfare is the respectable notion that animals should be treated with care and respect, but that animals should be considered property to be owned by humans. Animal rights is the radical notion that animals themselves as individuals (even though animals have no theory of mind whatsoever) have rights and that any human coercion against them is immoral. The fundamental flaw of animal rights though is that if all animals have rights then a gazelle has the right not to be attacked by the lion, correct? That would be an act of aggression. Aren't humans animals too? What gives other animals the right to coerce against other animals and not us? Silly idea.
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It is notoriously hard to explain the difference between animal and human cognition. Obviously animals can abstract to some extent: they recognize the identity of a ball regardless of its size, location, color, etc (if you think of a dog) - they can even identify them based on the word you use. Furthermore the dog can understand the abstraction of "toy" which might include "ball" or "rope" or something else.Clearly animals do have some capacity for abstraction, and some pre-conceptual or even rudimentary conceptual capacity. Pre-conceptual in the sense that they can abstract and integrate categories of things to some extent, but not into a full linguistic code, and not into complex conceptual hierarchies.I think the key distinction is in Ayn Rand's careful wording: the conceptual faculty is man's *characteristic* method of cognition. That is, even if animals do have some rudimentary conceptual capacity, it's certainly not their characteristic method of cognition, but rather a very advanced, difficult ability they can perform to some small extent - whereas their characteristic method of cognition is instinct.I think her essay on The Missing Link is informative at this point, too. You can think of many people as being borderline of tending toward instinct or conceptual as their characteristic method of cognition.But even the dumbest and most mentally retarded people are capable of conceptual cognition far beyond any animal. So trying to suggest that animals can use reason and have a rational faculty is nonsense.
I wouldn't call the notion that dogs can identify with certain objects by their name abstraction though, they have just learned via memory that certain objects are characterized by humans as certain sounds.
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There ARE parallel lines between animals and humans. Humans have an intangible consciousness and animals have a tangible consciousness. The HUGE difference is that animals don't have the ability whatsoever to conceptualize and all humans do. The whole marginal humans argument is getting pretty old to be honest... Babies ARE human beings and will one day have the ability to reason just like the rest of us. Animal babies, even when they do mature, still won't have the ability to reason. When it comes to the mentally retarded it's pretty simple actually, they are unhealthy, simple as that. They are still 100% conceptual beings but lack the faculty that may give them the abilities other humans have, it is NOT their fault they are unhealthy, they didn't choose to be this way. Hope I answered your question to some extent.
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Wrong. A moral government should not initiate force against its citizens. You've accepted that it's okay, but it's not. The US had no income tax for a long time. There are ways government can earn revenue without force.
I haven't accepted that it's okay, I don't believe in taxation or government; I believe in a voluntary society based on the non-initiation of force. Show me one way a government can earn revenue without initiating the use of force. Also, what gives the government the right to rule over a stretch of land? Governments don't have property rights, only individual human beings do.
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Government, by definition; initiates the use of force to earn revenue. Therefore the concept of government or the state is not compatible whatsoever with the philosophy of Objectivism. Most Objectivists contradict themselves by saying they believe in a minimal government yet advocate one of the most fundamental axioms of the Objectivist philosophy; the non-initiation of force. It doesn't work like that.
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Was just wondering why aesthetics is part of the Objectivist philosophy and why it has anything to do with philosophy in general. Different people find different things aesthetically appealing....
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[Mod's note: merged with a previous thread. - sN]
Hey guys, longtime Objectivist here... One thing I just can't get over is the idea of animals having rights. Obviously it's ridiculous and all but how do we prove without a doubt that animals don't have a conceptual consciousness like humans and that they only exist to survive and reproduce and to fill an ecological niche? I've seen animal rights groups stating that whales, dolphins, great apes, elephants, etc. are self aware like us and can conceptualize (because self-awareness means stepping outside your body hypothetically) ... Any ideas on how to prove them wrong? Thoughts? Thanks guys looking forward to some answers.
Suffering, Free Will, Necessity
in Metaphysics and Epistemology
Posted
Suffering is not metaphysically necessary for free will to exist. The reasoning behind this is that human beings inherently (but willingly) act to attain pleasure. This would be the case even if such a thing as pain did not exist. Although it probably (most likely) needs to exist on a biological level for the survival of an organism, it has no metaphysical basis as a necessity for free will. Thoughts? Might be kind of random but it's just on my mind right now, need you guys to lighten the load for me haha
-- Steve