Exactly, to clarity, I care about humans not humanity.
I find humanity to be of no moral value, because when determining moral value I do not ask wheter one is human, I ask if they are sentient.
Humans just happen to also be sentient.
Yes, that’s pretty much the direction I go in as well. Equality of rights or of consideration doesn’t always mean equality of treatment, especially when such treatment would be irrelevant or harmful.
But @Tom_Storm raises the hard question whether there are circumstances when a human life simply must be viewed as more valuable than an animal’s.
Prehaps. Humans generally have more people who would care about their passing. Still, it is not humanity I care about. In this instance, it is the fact that their death causes other sentient beings to suffer which matters. Their humanity seems irrelevant.
Edited to be more understandable.
Unless one grants it value.
Or do you think values are the sort of things you find lying around on the ground, like stones?
No, they are the kinds of things you discover in the process of considering them, like a number.
No offense intended, but your English here makes your point hard to understand. Could you take another shot at it?
Of course, is this better?
Yes, thank you. So the death of a cat (@Tom_Storm 's example) versus the death of a human should be examined, morally, in terms of the overall suffering for other sentient beings that their death would produce. The fact that one is a human’s death and the other’s is not, would not be morally relevant, on this view.
Have I understood you correctly?
Precisely.
So let me ask a piss-poor thought experiment type question… if there is a fire and you can save either a person or a dog (but only one of these), which would you choose to save and why?
(I notice that you and Tom are having the same conversation in parallel, so I’ll let you two have the floor! But I’ll follow it.)
I would be devastated at the loss of either, as their lives themselves seem to me to be of roughly equal value.
But if I had to choose, I would most likely pick human, only because many more people would mourn their death. Still, I would make this decision only because the alternative would cause more sentient beings to suffer.
If this were not the case, and more sentient beings would be affected by the death of the dog, then I would (or at least should) save them instead.
At the same time, I do still find this to be a rather minor example; only very rarely do you have such a straightforward choice. I am far more focused on improving the conditions of other animals than on what happens in specific scenarios such as this.
Either way, it is still a good question.
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Interesting.
I would always value a person over any animal, even multiple animals. I think what we’re pointing to is simply a person’s value system, based, I guess, on commonality. We share a common form of life, with reciprocal relationships, responsibilities, interests and forms of solidarity that give human life a particular significance to me. I would save one person over 100 dogs, for instance.
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I don’t think it simply depends on what you value. If you exclude or devalue based on arbitrary traits, it has tangible consequences.
The possibility of your own exclusion.
Who knows, this choice in value might not affect you at all. But the fact that there is a chance means you ought to consider it. Especially when the only thing this requires of you is a change in beliefs.
But far more important is the impact on society as a whole. How much better will society become when moral choices are not based on any individual or group’s personal choice?
When we don’t ask religious leaders for their opinions, but consult experts, scientists, and rational ethicists to assess the best options.
When we establish as a principle that objectivity should form the basis of any serious decision. A society that cares about everyone and doesn’t marginalize based on meaningless factors.
How can you even think to harm another human if you care about even the life of a fish on the other side of the world, with whom you will never interact?
This will take a fundamental restructuring of society. But isn’t that far superior to a society organised on the principle that you can choose who you value?
And on a rational basis, not arbitrary or subjective, I see no reason why even two animals are any less valuable than one human.
You would cry as hard over a hamburger as at your mother’s funeral.
Yeah, so believable.
Just because we are the only ones who seek to know or debate the good from the bad, we are the only ones morality can apply to.
It seems morally adrift (and childish sentiment) to drag the animals and the stones into our moral quagmire. No chimp who eats the genitals and face off of his opposition commits any injustice or immorality. Chimps are sons of bitches. Just like fire is to wood. No judgment exists among chimps and wood and fires.
But we (and only we persons) introduce “is that good, or is it bad” to the situation, think long and hard about it, debate it on internet forums, judge other thinkers along with the situations they are in, and align ourselves with some ideal rule “X is Bad”, as we physically still do X anyway. This is what makes us bad or good - the self, inserted into the innocent flow of action, and the contradiction we embody between what we know, and the refutational action we take. Our knowledge has replaced our chance at innocence.
The immoral boils down to self-destruction, with the harm in the world as collateral damage (to the delight of the evil hearted).
Eating the face off another animal isn’t evil, or loving. Thinking the face of another animal should not be eaten off, but then eating the face off anyway - that is the introduction of the possibility of immorality and injustice to the world. Only we persons can do this (or appear to do this) because it requires language, knowledge, deliberation, and self-referential demonstrable intention.
If you try to equate moral evil with physical destruction, you’ve made eating fruit to survive evil (as we murder the apple to survive another day ourselves). You’ve made breathing evil (as we rob the atmosphere of its oxygen).
Only now that we have been poisoned by our knowing deliberation, can evil or injustice be born. We either align the best of our knowledge with the best of our actions intending good, or contradict this alignment instilling evil intent in our actions.
Man’s most significant contribution to the universe - the sin.
I would care just as much about two strangers dying regardless of their species.
But one of these would be someone I have cared about for years; the other I know very little about. I would care about both of them, but it should be obvious which one I would care more about.
If I had a dog and they died, this would certainly cause me more suffering than a stranger in another country, even though I would still care about both.
Again, I don’t care about their species.
Here I just have a stronger emotional connection to one than the other.
Again, I base my morality on sentience; neither a tree nor an apple is sentient. (to the best of our knowledge)
I don’t claim animals should be moral, just as I do not demand a disabled person to walk.
I care that we, who have the ability to act morally, do not “bite the face off” animals.
Also, you have still failed to account for the existence of humans who cannot comprehend morality. We care about them even if they cannot come to the same conclusion.
All species do that. We humans are the only one who seem able to overcome it, at least to a degree. (We still eat the cows and chickens.)
What we do and what we should do are two separate things. Slave owners were wrong to own slaves regardless of the existence of slavery.
But I will agree. Of course any particular animal species will value their own species over others; that is just the most evolutionarily beneficial strategy.
But again, what one does and should do are separate. As you say, we can choose what we do. Let us choose to be more moral than what we are predisposed to be.