What gets me is where these "animal rights" and "plant rights" come from. Human rights as expressed in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the US aside, the Bible agrees that God gives rights to people.
Apparently, plants and animals don't have the sensibility of any rights given to other living beings and take for food whatever they are designed to consume. Animals eat other animals and plants as they see fit without any remorse. Plants require carbon in the air and nutrients form the soil that mostly comes from the death of other plants and animals. Why do some people invent "rights" for other forms of life that aren't even observed by the rest of nature?
If they are the evolutionists they claim to be, then they will at least attribute this sensibility to some evolutionary quirk of an evolved intelligence that is actually counterproductive. Why not encourage other species to evolve by exerting our natural human predation? Won't "life find a way," to quote a popular movie about evolution? Where do they think rights come from?
This is bad news for meat eaters too- somewhere down the food chain, you're eating plants, killing so that you may live. The only innocents are the bacteria who live from deep sea sulfur vents. But of course maybe sulfur can suffer too...
From the article: "Francione offers an opposing view to plant liberation and rights. 'If plants are not sentient — if they have no subjective awareness — then they have no interests," Francione says. "That is, they cannot desire, or want, or prefer anything.'"
Yet elsewhere, when Francione has been asked why it's not okay to eat animals or use other than higher primates because, clearly, these other animals don't have the capacity to suffer like us, Francione has said: "I don't know that you can really, without making lots of assumptions, lots of normative assumptions, I don't know how you can say that the [animals] that suffer like us matter more morally anymore than we can say that people who have lighter skin matter more than people who have darker skin because they're more like us. I mean the fact that they [higher primates] suffer like us, so what?"
Looks like the "Plant Abolitionists" might want to use his same reasoning here: Why should we think animal-human suffering matters more than plant suffering? Or maybe connecting sentience with brain structure is making lots of assumptions and we shouldn't think the type of sentience had by animals and humans matters more morally than plants.
What gets me is where these "animal rights" and "plant rights" come from. Human rights as expressed in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the US aside, the Bible agrees that God gives rights to people.
ReplyDeleteApparently, plants and animals don't have the sensibility of any rights given to other living beings and take for food whatever they are designed to consume. Animals eat other animals and plants as they see fit without any remorse. Plants require carbon in the air and nutrients form the soil that mostly comes from the death of other plants and animals. Why do some people invent "rights" for other forms of life that aren't even observed by the rest of nature?
If they are the evolutionists they claim to be, then they will at least attribute this sensibility to some evolutionary quirk of an evolved intelligence that is actually counterproductive. Why not encourage other species to evolve by exerting our natural human predation? Won't "life find a way," to quote a popular movie about evolution? Where do they think rights come from?
Other links posted in the past.
ReplyDeleteIf Peas Can Talk, Should We Eat Them?
How plants warn each other of danger
This is bad news for meat eaters too- somewhere down the food chain, you're eating plants, killing so that you may live. The only innocents are the bacteria who live from deep sea sulfur vents. But of course maybe sulfur can suffer too...
ReplyDeleteFrom the article: "Francione offers an opposing view to plant liberation and rights. 'If plants are not sentient — if they have no subjective awareness — then they have no interests," Francione says. "That is, they cannot desire, or want, or prefer anything.'"
ReplyDeleteYet elsewhere, when Francione has been asked why it's not okay to eat animals or use other than higher primates because, clearly, these other animals don't have the capacity to suffer like us, Francione has said: "I don't know that you can really, without making lots of assumptions, lots of normative assumptions, I don't know how you can say that the [animals] that suffer like us matter more morally anymore than we can say that people who have lighter skin matter more than people who have darker skin because they're more like us. I mean the fact that they [higher primates] suffer like us, so what?"
Looks like the "Plant Abolitionists" might want to use his same reasoning here: Why should we think animal-human suffering matters more than plant suffering? Or maybe connecting sentience with brain structure is making lots of assumptions and we shouldn't think the type of sentience had by animals and humans matters more morally than plants.