Some of you will be guffawing to your Objectivist selves saying, "Self, how ridiculous this JCFolsom is! Everyone knows animals have no rights! They think not, they communicate not, they can enter into no agreements. They work by pure instinct, not rationality; they are no different than the robotic toys that imitate them, purely property." Please correct me or add justifications if I'm wrong or understating the case.
Yet, methinks we can demonstrate quite clearly that at least some animals can indeed think, communicate, and even enter into agreements. We shall take as our example that oldest of human allies, the dog. What other animal so clearly feels as a dog? Evident in them is anger, fear, joy, and affection. Those who deny it are committing the opposite error to anthropomorphizing, discounting all human-like features as mere deceptions because that fits more neatly with their pre-conceived worldview. Taking this position, you may as well count all other humans as philosophical zombies, too, and thus justify slavery.
Animals also enter into agreements. Dogs on a show room floor expect and receive treats, above and beyond the food needed to keep them healthy, for performance. That this agreement was not spelled out in words makes it no less real. Humans can and do come to such agreements. If the trainer consistently failed to produce treats for performance, the dog would cease performing in a nearly perfect example of inter-species trade.
Dogs can also solve problems, figuring out how to unlatch gates and the like with the rather dissimilar tools at their disposal. Their ancestors in the wild, wolves, learn via experience the best strategies to capture their prey, and coordinate with other members of their packs to do so as well. I have seen stories of certain types of birds and primates grieved unto death at the loss of a mate or mother, too depressed to eat or otherwise care for themselves. Elephants have been observed blocking the roads of poachers with logs, and caressing the bones of their dead.
Is this complicating for our activities towards animals? You're damned right it is. Nonetheless, I believe the case can be made that any being that acts primarily from its own motivations cannot be truly owned, in that ownership implies primary control. Indeed, methinks this is the only real argument against slavery, including that slavery which a person enters into voluntarily. The one who sells himself into slavery does so fraudulently, whether he realizes it or not.
I'll leave it there, for now. Fire away!
Do you believe animals are self-aware?
Don't allow leftists to play games with definitions! Some of the libertarian-leaning leftists at this forum will try to redefine "left-wing" back to its original defition (Third Estate, limited government, free-markets, laissez-faire reforms, etc.). Fine! We non-leftists can't stop them from using their own personal definitions; they can use whatever labels they want to describe any concept they want.However, they have the audacity to then use their personal definition of "left-wing" (remember, the original definition, which is no longer valid) to prove that modern leftists are more libertarian than modern rightists! They will say that libertarianism is "inherently leftist" (again, using the original, no longer valid definition), and use that to insist that we should prefer and side with modern leftists over modern rightists.
Question their motives.
Ego:Do you believe animals are self-aware?
What is self-awareness? That's a sticky topic. I believe some are. I don't believe too many animals suffer from existential angst, or ponder greatly the purpose behind their existences. Then again, I really don't think most people do either.
This will go nowhere unless you define what is morality first, or what is necessary for one to be a moral agent such that they may possess rights.
I cannot be caged. I cannot be controlled. Understand this as you die, ever pathetic, ever fools.
Irenicus' Diaries.
Do animals have consciousness?
Jon Irenicus:This will go nowhere unless you define what is morality first, or what is necessary for one to be a moral agent such that they may possess rights.
Alright, let's try this one on for size. An entity (hopefully none here would say that only members of the human species can have rights regardless of the capabilities of other beings we might encounter) which acts in a self-directed fashion that we have reason to believe is not an entirely mechanical reaction to stimuli (at least no more or only by degree more so than human actions) cannot be owned, because primary control of its actions is self-generated.
What I will mean by morality here is not taking actions that violate the non-aggression principle. Before anyone gets all up in my grill talking about reciprocity and such things, children, the retarded, and the insane cannot necessarily be expected to understand or respect the rights of others at all times, either (and it is foolish to expect even the adult and able to all the time), and most of the arguments used against animals will apply just as much to them.
When pressed, some will say that indeed, children and the mentally handicapped (only for brevity, not for political correctness, though I suppose I ruined brevity with this comment) have no rights. Which would imply that they are eligible to be property. So, I can enslave the severely retarded without harming a moral agent. Or, for that matter, kill and eat them. Yum.
Ego:Do animals have consciousness?
Consciousness of what? Again, this is an amorphous word. They have a degree of consciousness, rather differing degrees of consciousness for different species. Such variation can be found, not only between humans but for a single human within a lifetime.
If animals do have consciousness, even a limited version, then I'd say that we treat them the same as we would treat a human with severe mental disabilities.
I strongly doubt that animals have consciousness, purely because the idea of incremental consciousness makes no sense to me. That would imply that even a calculator (or a rock) has some degree of consciousness.
The question of animal rights in an anarchist society is irrelevant. They have no rights in an anarchist society. Animals have no way of hiring someone to protect their rights or to have their rights recognized, even if we could somehow establish that they have them.
"Most voters know nothing about how markets work—or even that they work..." Sheldon Richman
Ego:If animals do have consciousness, even a limited version, then I'd say that we treat them the same as we would treat a human being with severe mental disabilities. I strongly doubt that animals have consciousness, purely because the idea of incremental consciousness makes no sense to me. That would imply that even a calculator (or a rock) has some degree of consciousness.
This is untrue. Rocks and calculators act solely upon inputs. Calculators are the more illustrative example. A calculator, or any computer, takes an ultimately human-derived input, puts it through an algorithm determined entirely by humans, and spits out an entirely predictable response. It is deterministic.
Conscious beings, however, can, in the presence of identical external stimuli, act in an unpredictable, yet nonetheless non-random fashion. Unpredictable meaning that it seems to match no algorithm, and non-random in that it fails statistical tests for randomness. Humans can act in this way. So can some animals. One thing to remember about consciousness is that one can never prove its existence, except experientially. I know I am conscious, but to describe what that means rather closely resembles describing red to a blind man.
The question becomes, I guess, do I believe that my 20-year-old crochety white dog that thinks she's a human actually enjoy her coffee? Does she just stimulus-response react to it, or does she experience it? What do you think? I think that dogs and indeed probably animals down to a rather lower level of intelligence than that actually experience things. They are not merely machines.
Spideynw:The question of animal rights in an anarchist society is irrelevant. They have no rights in an anarchist society. Animals have no way of hiring someone to protect their rights or to have their rights recognized, even if we could somehow establish that they have them.
That's nice. Reason #386 why I'm not an anarchist.
JCFolsom: That's nice. Reason #386 why I'm not an anarchist.
Of course this begs the question, how are a child's rights protected in an anarchist society? Or do they even have rights? I mean, if the right to life is a "natural" right, then don't children and animals have a "natural" or inherent right to life as well? If so, how can those rights be protected without government?
Spideynw:Of course this begs the question, how are a child's rights protected in an anarchist society? Or do they even have rights? I mean, if the right to life is a "natural" right, then don't children and animals have a "natural" or inherent right to life as well? If so, how can those rights be protected without government?
They can't. Thus government. The US, flawed as it was, was created as a Constitutional Republic to prevent, in part, the tyranny of the majority. Majorities are rarely the ones in danger, government or no. Rather, it is minorities, those outvoted or outmanned, that are constantly at risk.
JCFolsom: They can't. Thus government. The US, flawed as it was, was created as a Constitutional Republic to prevent, in part, the tyranny of the majority. Majorities are rarely the ones in danger, government or no. Rather, it is minorities, those outvoted or outmanned, that are constantly at risk.
I think it is better said the "weak" are constantly at risk, since sometimes the "weaK" can be the majority. Federal government decisions are made by a paltry ~550 people in the U.S. And the approval of only ~300 are needed to make law.
Regardless, how can the "weak" be protected in a free society?
I agree, anything that acts soley upon input (in other words: a soup of chemicals) isn't conscious.The question is: at what point do organisms cease to be chemical reactions? If humans didn't have consciousness, I would assume that we too are simply complex chemical reactions.
It's certainly possible to create a computer that is as complex as the human brain (it would be huge and expensive, but it's still possible). That computer would still be a computer, though, and it wouldn't be conscious. It doesn't make any sense to me that complexity leads to consciousness, so I hesitate to assume that animals have any.