poll: animal rights and vital needs

[Stijn Bruers]

Hi all, I'm doing a research on the ethical consistency of animal rights activists.

Background: animal rights based on antispeciecicism is a very consistent theory, but most of the activists have troubles when it comes to moral dilemma's where vital needs are in danger, the "emergency scenarios". Let's talk about three scenarios, and keep in mind the anti-speciecist viewpoint. In particular, consider an animal and a seriously mentally disabled orphan whose illness cannot be treated by current means. (the reason why I want you to consider this disabled human is not important now).

Scenario 1: eating meat (hunting) for survival.

-do you tolerate that lions eat zebras, or should that be forbidden? (knowing that carnivores need to eat meat to survive)

-would you tolerate the hunting done by a human population who survives by hunting? (suppose we find a population who will die if they don't eat meat)

-would you tolerate cannibalism done by a human population who survives on human meat? (suppose we discover a population who eat mentally disabled humans, and who will die if they don't eat them)

Scenario 2: experimenting

-do you tolerate experiments on animals if we are pretty sure that this will help humans?  (and let's be honest, such situations are very well possible)

-do you tolerate experiments on mentally disabled orphans, if you can save the lives of other people by that?

Scenario 3: organ transplantation

-do you tolerate the killing of an animal (e.g. a pig) to use its organs to save some people by xenotransplantation?

-do you tolerate the killing of a mentally disabled orphan to use its organs to save some other people? (i.e. use its heart, spleen, liver, kidneys to save the lives of five other people).

 

So, feel free to answer, and preferably to state why you would tolerate or forbid something. (especially if you give different answers I'd like to receive more information about your choices)

I cannot give you much more details on the background of this research (because that might influence you).

 

 

 

[Kate✯GO VEGAN+NOBODY GETS HURT Ⓥ]

Hello Stijn. I'm responding here higher up because I'm not being given the option of replying directly below your last comment. Thanks for providing the link to your website which has more information about what you refer to as "tolerated choice equality". From reading more about it I still think that this "tolerated choice equality" is a misnomer, which would more accurately be defined as a means of defending inequality and injustice, and therefore should not be confused with a principle of equality.

You say: Take again the burning house dilemma. You have time to save only one: my child or your child? You save your child. Is this discrimination of other children? Yes it is, if you would not tolerate my choice to save my child. If you would say to me: "Stijn, you should have saved my child, because the interests of my child are more important and my child has more intrinsic value and has a stronger right to life etc etc...". But if you say "Stijn, although I'm sad that my child died, I understand your choice to save your child", then there is no discrimination between our children. There is still an emotional inequality, but a tolerated choice equality."

I understand why you offer this hypothetical, it illustrates your point well. In such a situation I can see it may be possible that I could implore you to save my child (I'm a nonbreeder so I'm having to use my imagination here). If I did so I hope I would not ask you to save my child if I believed that it would be at the expense of saving your child. Even if I did so it would not be because I thought my child had a greater right to life than your child. I know that they would both have an equal right to life (unless perhaps if one child were known to be a murderer, etc, then perhaps this could have an effect on their right to life). I would understand that you would likely miss your own child more than you would miss mine, so I would understand your decision to save your own child in preference to my child, or anyone indeed anyone else's child.

If the situation were different and both of the children were your children, and you chose to save one over the other perhaps because you felt closer to one child than to the other then this also may be understandable and "tolerated". If however you were to argue that your preference for one child over the other gave that child a greater right to life than the other then I would disagree. Irrespective of what those children may mean to you their right to life would be equal.

Thank you

Antispeciesist greetings

[Stijn Bruers]

ok, now, ad a black person (from africa) and a white person (from europe) to the list you gave. What will the order be? Can you imagine a white guy saying that he feels more empathy with the white person and that he puts the black person next? Wouldn't that be strange?

[Eduardo Terrer]

La empatía requiere que seamos capaces de entender y ponernos en el lugar del otro. la empatía no requiere conocer el lenguaje. De hecho, hay humanos que establecen una primera conexión con algunos no-humanos mediante una única mirada, unos ojos que, de repente, activan un interruptor.Que tengamos mayor comprensión subconsciente del lenguaje humano (verbal y no verbal) no implica que desarrollemos mayor empatía. Yo, por ejemplo, antepongo a un perro/gato antes que a un humano, por conexión, por comprensión, porque a nivel emocional profundo me despiertan algo que no me despiertan los humanos (aunque haya casos y casos) y su sufrimiento me afecta más, la mayoría de las veces, que el de los humanos.La empatía es la conexión. Ser capaces de ponernos en el lugar del otro.Muchos humanos, desde que son pequeños, conectan mejor con otros no-humanos.
Pienso que tienes una forma de sentir que intentas extrapolar pero creo que estás obviando que tu forma de sentir no es la misma que la del resto. La emocionalidad tiene muchas y muy profundas peculiaridades para cada uno de nosotros.
Podemos hablar de empatía, de despertar empatía. Pero no debemos confundir la empatía con la simpatía y otras características emocionales.Del mismo modo, podemos afirmar que necesitamos la empatía, pero no podemos afirmar qué grado. Creo que la empatía no es lo que sentimos, si no el mecanismo que nos permite sentir algo según percibimos en otro un tipo de estado emocional.Lo que sintamos al conectar mediante la empatía empieza y acaba en la mente de cada humanos y, por tanto, es subjetivo y, por tanto, no lo podemos clasificar según una escala general (objetiva).
Empatía (=) puente, conexión que permite sentir nosotros identificando sentimientos de otro.Empatía (Not=) los sentimientos que sentimos al identificar sentimientos en otro.
Por eso creo que no es correcta la afirmación que haces, al intentar equiparar la proximidad biológica que tenemos con alguien con los sentimientos que nos despierta y el grado de preferencia que tenemos con dicho individuo ante otros.

 

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Empathy requires that we be able to understand and put ourselves in the place of another. empathy does not require knowing the language. In fact, there are humans that establish a connection first with some non-humans with a single look, eyes that suddenly trigger a switch. 
We have subconscious understanding of human language (verbal and nonverbal) does not imply that we develop greater empathy. I, for example, prepend a dog / cat rather than a human, for connection, understanding, deep emotional level because they wake me something I do not wake up humans (although there are cases and cases) and their suffering affects me , most of the time, that of humans.
Empathy is the connection. Being able to put ourselves in the place of another. 
Many humans, since they are small, connect better with non-humans. 

I think you have a way of feeling you try to extrapolate but I think you're ignoring the fact that the way you feel is not the same as the rest. Emotionality has many peculiarities deep for each of us. 

We can talk about empathy, to awaken empathy. But we must not confuse empathy with sympathy and other emotional characteristics. 
Similarly, we can say we need empathy, but we can not say how much. I think empathy is not what we feel, if not the mechanism that allows us to feel something as we see in another type of emotional state. 
What you feel when you connect through empathy begins and ends in the mind of every human and, therefore, is subjective and therefore we can not classify as a general scale (objective). 

Empathy (=) bridge, a connection that allows us to feel other identifying feelings. 
Empathy (Not =) the feelings we feel when we identify feelings in another. 

So I think it is correct to state that you do, when trying to equalize the biological closeness we have with someone with the feelings that we wake up and the degree of preference that we have with that individual to others.

[Stijn Bruers]

I also see 3 mammals and an insect. And also 4 animals. And I don't see a dog, I see a golden retriever. And a white human.

 in other words: I see races, I see species, I see classes, kingdoms,... I see all kinds of biological categories.

But that's besides the question :-)

But the point is: our empathy cannot be speciecist by nature, it can only become speciecist by cultural indoctrination with an ideology. I mean: we can feel more empathy with our own species, but also with our own race, our own family (great apes), our own order (primates), our own class (mammals),... So what are we? racist? Speciecist? Familyist? Orderist? Classist? Kingdomist? Everything? :-) Putting it this way, you see such a thing as speciecism is nonsense. It's too arbitrary.

In fact: empathy is not correlated with any biological classification. If you feel more empathy with a human than with a dog, it is not because a dog is of another species, because the dog is also of another family, another order,.... In part it is related with physical and behavioral similarities, and these make up a continuum. I can feel more empathy with a dog than with a seriously mentally disabled human. And I can also feel more empathy with such a disabled human than with a normal human.

So you are not a speciecist, Andrew :-) Your empathy is not influenced by an ideology. I guess...

[Maynard S. Clark]

Will the world see peace is WE (a small percentage) just refrain from doing violence in OUR share of the space-time continuum?

During the 1960s and 1970s, faith communities that committed themselves to PEACE used terms from the Vietnam war (the War in Southeast Asia) and termed their buildings and communities 'a DMZ' - a demilitarized zone.

 

How effective are WE (by our not doing violence)?

 

How tempting it must be for those who want to have an impact to want to scale up their own use of power, rather than to back off.  But 'escalation' of violence seems to make things much worse (or does it)?  What is effective, and what did Mohandas K. Gandhi teach about Satyagraha?  Is that morally and strategically TRUE, or is it not?

Feel free to friend me and connect with me.

 

One answer I've found and tried effectively over these years is community organizing, vegetarian (read vegan) community organizing.  Bringing together they SYNERGIES makes HUGE differences in the qualitative transformations we can make happen, nonviolently.

 

Maynard

[Lottie Jones]

Animal experiments helping humans? For a genuinely scientific approach to medical research I recommend the following excellent medical website!

 

http://www.safermedicines.org/