ⓋObjectivist

I cover a lot of what you're saying about lions in the wild and whether animals can conceptualize above.

With all these assertions, leaps, and fallacies you could create your own moral structure. You should call it subjectivism.

Yes! Thank you

So we have a situation where it is in the lions self interest to kill and the zebras self interest not to be killed. You might say since the lion is initiating the force it's immoral but then is nature itself immoral? Well unlike a murderer who dosent need to kill to live a lion must kill. Also the lion didn't have any role or control over being in that situation. So surely the lion shouldn't have to die because it was born a carnivore. So I would say this is a lose-lose situation and thus there is no good option. And finally because of this I would say the lion killing isn't moral or immoral but the zebra protecting itself is moral. This is because the zebra didn't put the lion in that situation so it is thus not responsible for the lion having to kill and should act in its own self interest. But with the animal property rights arguement I think it is similar to children. Things like this are contractual but to engage in contracts like owning land and being able to purchase anything you want requires more developed reason. This is why children can be made to do certain things like eat vegetables by their parents. That is that their ability to give informed consent has not matured. I think of animals as always in this state for example, a child can't own property but a child also can't be murdered. I feel these are the same rights that should be applied to animals a baby can't understand the rights it has or where they come from. Does that mean they have no rights? The same is to animals we are somewhat of a caretaker we should leave them alone and not kill them but we also don't need to give them property rights or right to purchase as they can't grasp contracts.

I didn't say that knowledge means reason I said that reason can be using known concepts (knowledge) and being able to apply it to other situations which is abstraction. Animals do abstract concepts like being able to understand death. Also there are acedmeics that believe animals can abstract. For example Cameron Buckner. But really the answer is we don't fully know. Animals don't speak language (there is some evidence that ravens or dolphins have language with dolphins even giving eachother names) so it is almost impossible to test. However every day we figure out better ways to test we always get shown more abstract thinking from animals. It haven't been proven with every animal on earth but seems to at the very least highly correlate with sentience.

I think if you are doing something objectively wrong then it follows that you should feel guilty. and if you say that it's not objectively wrong then the argument goes back to does sentience lead to rights which I've already given evidence for. So no whether you should feel guilty can be said objectively.

You are creating standards on reason based on what? Where does "if they pass a maththest they can reason." Come from? Where does themhaving to research come from? Take early humans. "Make a realistic self portrait" have you seen cave drawings? "Pass a math test" they wouldn't be able to. Did we wake up one day being bale to reason? No it was with us we just haven't been able to use it in ways we do now. We usedreason back then to understand our environment and how things within it work. We used our sentience. Animals do this too. Your faulty line in the sand on what makes sentience is subjective at best. Check your premises. And yes with the acception of untouched tribes or people in extreme poverty a vegan diet can be affordable sustain the person and be healthy. Look back to my pubmed abstract.

Well I don't believe that stealing the apple is reasonable. When you steal from that women you are declaring that to you her property does not matter and she has no right to it. Imagine this today you steal instead of paying. But tomorrow she has no apple to trade because she will avoid you or not carry an apple outside of her house. You rely on stealing for your food and today you are hungry. You have made yourself a parasite and you will now go hungry and maybe even starve. You might try it with another person but the same thing will happen tomorrow and it will get to the point where everyone knows you're a thief. Now look what you've done you have destroyed your means to survival by relying fully on being a parasite and not supporting yourself. This is not in your long term interest.

Imagine reasoning with someone hellbent on killing you. Maybe you could. Now imagine you couldn't speak their language. By this logic humans can't reason. Also in the case of a python they must kill to survive and I've already covered this. Yes you can't persuade a python who you can't speak to who and who must kill to stop killing but that dosent mean they have no sense of reason. After all if they will die if they don't kill is it not reasonable for them to try to find food?

Sentience is interpretation of the world subjectively. It's not exclusively based on memory but they can use knowledge to understand how other things work and what certain things are. Ayn rand applied concepts she could remember to other things. Can she not reason? Obviously you can't trade with a dog or pig because you can't communicate with them. However is mutualism not trade in itself? Because their reason and ability to understand human concepts in limited dosent mean it's not there.

Using a gun instead of an argument requires to force others to act irrationally. One only uses force when they can no longer reason. This is because if they were using reason their arguments would win and not need to be forced. And since reason is where all morality is derived from in objectivism the only situation where you can initiate violence is when acting immorally.

Would be happy. It wasn't meant to be an unsupported claim because I was commenting on the arguement that Yaron Brook uses and the one that Ayn Rand used which is that since animals cant reason they don't deserve rights. It was more of an addition to the already existing framework. But it goes as follows. Rights are negative and are only things people can't do to you. So the question is why can't someone harm you and it comes from the ability to reason. Let me let Rand explain it: this comes from the ability to reason because it says that it is illogical or anti reason to have to use force against innocent people. But it is only anti reason because the thing receiving the force is capable of reason. This is because if they can and are being peaceful you need an arguement not a gun. My point was that this also applies to animals because they can reason. Again I'm probably not the best person to be explaining this is a very clear way because I was just commenting on existing work. Hope this made sense!

For someone who claims to follow an ideology based on reason and fact you sure do turn to emotions and ad hominem s rather quickly. It is not slow suicide it is nutritionally adequate. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19562864 Also because you consider them lower which in respect to intelligence is true that dosent mean they deserve no rights please actually read my post something I doubt you actually did. But nice job resorting to calling me a troll so you don't have to dismiss any of my fact or reasoning. Check your premises.

Source: http://mises.org/journals/liberty/Liberty_Magazine_January_1990.pdf I did not know that about Rand. I guess I should have assumed it was unlikely she was so unreasonable as to not think as animals as deserving any rights. But I strongly believe if she was alive today she would believe in an animals right to life. This is because back in her days we knew almost nothing about animal intelligence. However today we know they can reason. But with the animal property rights arguement I think it is similar to children. Things like this are contractual but to engage in contracts like owning land and being able to purchase anything you want requires more developed reason. This is why children can be made to do certain things like eat vegetables by their parents. That is that their ability to give informed consent has not matured. I think of animals as always in this state for example, a child can't own property but a child also can't be murdered. I feel these are the same rights that should be applied to animals.

Almost all animals that can effectively be studied have been shown to reason. pigs can be taught the mechanicas of a jigsaw puzzle and that the goal is to solve it and they can apply that to other jigsaws. This is reason as they are not just being taught a one size fits all principle because they can be given jigsaw puzzles that work differently than others and still figure it out with a combination of prior knowledge and things they learn as they play with the new jigsaw. Dogs can also be taught puzzles and other first principles. Most animals can be proven to reason but with some it is harder to prove like bugs or fish or just unintelligent animals. But we don't need studies to know this because given your definition of reason we know sentience requires reason. Sentience is in definition and practice taking simuli and processing it based on existing knowledge and judging and using it accordingly. This is by definition interpreting material provided by the senses.