Are animal rights arbitrary?

[BestCenter]

I found this somewhere online once-

There are many reasons I don't subscribe to the animal rights concept. One is that the animals we award rights to is completely arbitrary. I've had a mouse infestation lately and I've decapitated close to a dozen mice with wire traps. Living, breathing, intelligent mammals who meant me no harm or malice. Do I deserve to die in a car crash? If not, how many dead mice equal one dead dog? Would the situation be different if I killed the mice with a tiny little chainsaw?

Does it have a good point?

[China_cat]

1. In a way.

How many of those who scream about animal rights refuse to call an exterminator for roaches? And if they actually carry through their position to that extent, how many people still visit them?

[BestCenter]

2. Though to be fair, invertebrates aren't considered in the same way

except by perhaps some people, such as Jains.

And it's not as if anyone cried when humanity wiped out the entire species of smallpox.

[ThomCat]

3. Animal rights doesn't claim to be an absolute possition.

At the very least, the vast majority of animal rights supporters don't claim to be absolutist.

We have recognized that respect for animals is arbitrary, long before you did. Why are pets adored but other animals slaughtered? That's arbitrary.

The idea behind animal rights is to avoid harming animals unnecessarily. Avoid killing animals if unnecessarily. Respect animals as much as you can, not as much as is convenient. It will always be arbitrary, but raise the bar as high as you can so that you do as little unnecessary harm as possible.

All things considered, the person who causes less harm and less death is the better person.

[Imperialism Inc.]

6. Thanks for that eloquent statement of principles. NT

[phantom power]

4. Lots of issues swirling around.

There's the weighing of an animals rights with human rights. For example, should we allow mice infestations to protect their rights?

There's the weighing of suffering. For instance, should I break their necks quickly, or dismember them with a tiny chainsaw?

There's the underlying question of whether different species suffer different amounts. If I kill a mouse, did that incur less suffering than killing a cow? Or a dog? Or a dolphin?

[sinkingfeeling]

5. No, the person doesn't have a point. Decapitating mice is not a humane way to deal

with a mouse infestation. Nor is a chain saw.

[BestCenter]

7. He brought up chainsaws

because the discussion was riffing off of an incident where some sick bastard in South Africa decapitated his dog with a chainsaw, and later died of a car accident. Someone was questioning whether or not such an inhumane person deserved to die.

The other person was not saying that people should kill mice (or dogs, for that matter) with chainsaws, but he was questioning what to base animal rights on. Hence, the statement about arbitrariness.

[Javaman]

8. Here is something I wrote a while back about horses and cows...

Javaman (1000+ posts) Fri Sep-08-06 03:04 PM
Response to Reply #84

Right there with you...

We slaughter cows who have just as much right to live as a horse, but no one goes crazy over that.

Horses are just as exploited and used as cows are yet, they are held up to a higher regard, because?

Up until about the 1920's, horse meat was eaten fairly regularly in this nation.

Given that fact, I find it interesting that as cars become more prevalent in society, eating horses went down while eating cows went up. One would think that since horses were no longer being used as beasts of burden, by and large, they would easily become a big part of the human food chain.

Go figure.

So, let me get this straight, the slaughtering of horses is bad, the slaughtering of cows is good, the slaughtering of just about any other animal that isn't on the endangered species list is also good.

But horses are off limits. Okay, I'm good to go now.

oy.

[Nihil]

9. Hell, *human* rights are pretty damn arbitrary ...

... so at least there's some form of consistency here ...
:shrug:

[hunter]

10. You are correct. Human rights are arbitrary.

That's why animal rights are so important. If animals have no rights then it's a much smaller leap to humans having no rights.

Animal abuse is a common symptom of sociopathy. If you have no empathy for animals, you are much more likely to have no empathy for people.

The human institutions that really piss me off are those that deliberately seek to break the natural empathies and affinities humans have for animals. The guy who's arguing most vehemently that animals have no souls and that animals exist to use as humans see fit is too often the same guy who is molesting or mistreating children.