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The recent popularity of "designer" dogs, cats, micro-pigs and other pets may seem to suggest that pet keeping is no more than a fad. Indeed, it is often assumed that pets are a Western affectation, a weird relic of the working animals kept by communities of the past.
About half of the households in Britain alone include some kind of pet; roughly 10m of those are dogs while cats make up another 10m. Pets cost time and money, and nowadays bring little in the way of material benefits. But during the 2008 financial crisis, spending on pets remained almost unaffected, which suggests that for most owners pets are not a luxury but an integral and deeply loved part of the family.
Some people are into pets, however, while others simply aren't interested. Why is this the case? It is highly probable that our desire for the company of animals actually goes back tens of thousands of years and has played an important part in our evolution. If so, then genetics might help explain why a love of animals is something some people just don't get.
[...] The pet-keeping habit often runs in families: this was once ascribed to children coming to imitate their parents' lifestyles when they leave home, but recent research has suggested that it also has a genetic basis. Some people, whatever their upbringing, seem predisposed to seek out the company of animals, others less so.
Is the desire to keep pets really hard-wired in our DNA?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by acid andy on Sunday October 01 2017, @03:01PM (7 children)
I'll agree that the term "human rights" is a poor choice of words to apply to animals. But if humans deserve rights then logically other animals do too. Perhaps anyone who thinks otherwise is unwilling or unable to think outside their own point of view of the universe and try to see things through another animal's eyes. The problem is at the moment too many people let their ethics be defined by someone else's umbrella of "political correctness". Discriminating against another race or another gender is politically incorrect and the consequences of doing so are enshrined in law. Some other species do have some much more limited protections under law at the moment, but beyond that most people are just fine with humans harming animals.
People need to stop blindly accepting only the law and their education as a substitute for ethics. Laws can be unethical and ethics can determine behavior in the absence of laws. Ethics are arguably not something that can be universally agreed upon, but that's no excuse not to have any at all. They should at least be consistent.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 01 2017, @07:12PM (6 children)
Can you clearly state the logic that led to your conclusion?
Which "rights"; define "deserve"; and which animals (all, CNS-possessing, vertebrates, "cute" animals, etc.)?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by acid andy on Sunday October 01 2017, @07:33PM (4 children)
I personally believe that humans deserve rights because humans are thinking and feeling entities that are capable of experiencing pleasure and suffering and are capable of decision making which requires a certain amount of freedom to exercise. There's a substantial amount of evidence to support the hypothesis that other animals are also thinking, feeling entities capable of experiencing pleasure and suffering and of decision making. You ask which rights. I'm not sure, but personally I feel that the right not to be intentionally injured or killed (at least in most circumstances) would be deserved. The question of which animals is a difficult one also because there's no clear dividing line between species, so by default it's easiest to just say all of them. Your suggestion of the requirement for a central nervous system is a good one though as I struggle to see to what extent something can match the criteria I wrote for thinking and feeling without one, but maybe I'm just being narrow minded!
If humans deserve rights but animals don't then that implies there's some crucial difference that separates humans from animals. Certainly that was a widely held view historically, but I don't think many scientists hold it now. It smacks of the same kind of self absorption that led people to believe that the Earth was the center of the universe.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 4, Informative) by aristarchus on Sunday October 01 2017, @09:10PM (3 children)
Peter Singer [petersinger.info] calls this "speciesism", the belief that your species is somehow "better" than others.
Except most "animal rights" theories are based not on a notion of desert, something belonging to an individual animal, but instead on the principle that suffering is a malum in se, or just plain wrong, and therefore is to eliminated or minimized. The Jain and Buddhist doctrine of ahimsa is the same thing, which is good, since Buddhists in any case do not believe in souls, even animal souls.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Sunday October 01 2017, @09:47PM (2 children)
Thanks aristarchus. I had a feeling the ability to experience pleasure or suffering was key here and the reduction of suffering does seem to be the goal of most rights. According to utilitarianism, a right should apply to all species that benefit from it via reduced suffering or increased pleasure, provided that application does not increase suffering or reduce pleasure by a greater amount for another species.
Someone might make a case that increased intelligence increases the capacity for suffering due to reflection on the suffering causing further mental anguish. The principle you raise that all suffering is to be minimized renders that irrelevant, except when weighing the suffering of one or more individuals against those of another.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Sunday October 01 2017, @10:57PM (1 child)
Yep, this is where the khallows of the world will get their panties all in a bunch. Utilitarianism has no intrinsic problem with allowing the suffering of some, as long as it produces more happiness for a greater number of others. In other words, it would be moral to sacrifice a minority for the benefit of the majority. Ursula K. LeGuin's short story, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas [utilitarianism.com], poses this problem rather starkly, by adding the requirement that those who benefit have to acknowledge that they do so on the suffering of others.
But the entire discussion brings up the more "wholistic" side of "animal rights", things like "Deep Ecology" [deepecology.org]. In Deep Ecology, rights belong to an ecosystem, which has, I guess, a right to viability and even flourishing by the simple fact that it exists. If individual animals, or populations of animals, threaten to upset the balance of an ecosystem, they have no rights and can be dealt with to restore the system as a whole. These kinds of debates come up all the time when there is talk of culling deer herds due to overpopulation, to avoid a starvation die off and the increased damage to the ecosystem as a whole. Animal rights people sometimes seem to think that deer, individual deer, have a right not to be killed. Some may think that this is misplaced anthropomorphism, but the implications are reversed if we treat humanity as just a part of an ecosystem. (Who said that!!!! I did not mention AGW!!!) Especially with the amount of ecological destabilization that pets and domesticated animals do, at the behest or laissez-faire of humans.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday October 03 2017, @11:24PM
Generally this happens when human interference has disrupted an ecosystem. The best option of course would be to reintroduce the natural predators to cull the deer herds, but people tend to be terrified of predators so we end up with a sort of farming of deer by and for people. The natural ups and downs of the cycle are disrupted that way and the ecosystem still suffers, those little ups and downs in predator/prey populations are an overlooked vital part of the natural cycle, human management of such things has a long way to go in understanding the actual process.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Sunday October 01 2017, @08:03PM
As for a definition of "deserve", well it's an ethical concept. Other people have already written far more on the philosophy of ethics than I ever could.
To state my point more clearly: If someone accepts that humans deserve a particular right then they should also accept that another species deserves that right if that species possesses equivalent qualities relevant to their enjoyment of that right or their suffering at being deprived of it. For the purposes of the logical argument, it doesn't matter what the "right" is nor what "deserves" is understood to mean nor which species it is, so long as those terms apply in a similar way to other species as to the human.
Obviously humans are awarded some rights that wouldn't benefit some other species. What I'm getting at is I believe humans have enough in common with other species to make many "human rights" relevant.
I should also point out when I mentioned the right not to be killed, I wasn't suggesting that other species should be arrested and punished when they predate. That wouldn't be workable and would just cause more harm. That raises an interesting problem though, that if we say violations of rights should only be opposed when committed by humans then it raises a lot of similar questions about what the relevant differences are between humans and other species. In that case perhaps the difference is that a lot of humans don't have a great need to inflict harm on other animal species and they can conceptually understand a right.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?