Who said there have to be natural rights? |
Who said there should be mathematics?
Mathematics does not pre-exist you or me. It's a consequence of our ability to reason, not that which we're dependent upon to reason. The same follows for the rest of human nature.
Um, wrong again.
Ayn Rand != definitive or final source for debates on epistemology.
Then there are no natural rights then, thanks. |
Non-sequitur.
NO U
The money, time, and most importantly emotional energy that a person spends on a pet is inevitably taken away from another human being.
That's according to your goals. Some other people's goals don't always follow yours. For example, a stock breeder would probably devote his life to the animals he breeds. They may not be his highest value, but they are part of his highest values in comparison to other values.
I might not be a world-class programmer today if my parents had gotten me a kitten instead of a lego set (a very difficult thing to acquire in Russia at the time) when I was a kid. I know plenty of people who waste so much "love" on their pets they could have adopted several undernourished human orphans for whom that love would make the difference between life and death, between first-world economic opportunity and third-world squalor... Etc.
If it wasn't for my love of animals, my studies into artificial intelligence wouldn't have been as fruitful. But neither here nor there the point of this reference is that actions follow values, not values follow actions. Look deeper than your assessment, then you will find something meaningful in all human action (*hint* Action Axiom *hint*).
Pet ownership might just be a "gateway drug" to the "animal rights" insanity, but that is a sufficient reason to call it immoral.
That's equally as dumb as saying that pot is a gateway drug. In fact the entire argument of gateway anything relies on the premise that things are driven by the same values.
A good example would be the interest in the slaughtering of animals. Most people think this is a definite sign of sociopathy, but in reality some children are more interested in what goes on in the animal and then become doctors (for humans or animals). Some may become prize hunters. Others become butchers. At the end of the day, the interest is just that; an interest, which no one can deduce without further study the source value(s) of it (or them).
You make the same mistake of taking a surface expression (a behavior) as an intention (or value).