If you go back too far, you'll likely do yourself in by consuming those whom produced those who then went on to produce you.
Old-world monkeys, as a guess at how far back some level of moral reasoning lies. |
Old-world monkeys, as a guess at how far back some level of moral reasoning lies.
Does that mean you want Mommy Government to prevent people from eating chimps / orangutans / etc today?
If you go back too far, you'll likely do yourself in by consuming those whom produced those who then went on to produce you.
This is vegan propaganda....I'm not voting. |
Old-world monkeys, as a guess at how far back some level of moral reasoning lies.
Does that mean you want Mommy Government to prevent people from eating chimps / orangutans / etc today?
I don't know-- should Mommy Government prevent people from eating two year olds today
I don't know-- should Mommy Government prevent people from eating two year olds today
Two-year-old human beings (and even 0.000000000001-year-old human beings, but not an hour earlier) have a right to life from the point of physical autonomy (i.e. birth). This should apply to all species who have the capacity to act as independent economic agents, that is pull their own weight in the economy and respect the rights of others. No species other than human currently exists that can do that. (I'd also argue against giving rights to androids and other AI entities, but that's a separate issue.)
Those rights come from them being a competitive advantage: a society that punishes the murderers of two-year-olds will do better than the one that doesn't.
A society that punishes the murderers of lesser animals will do worse - it will appease a system of demagogue politicians appealing to pity rather than logic, waste money on enforcement of those victimless crimes, encourage a black market, lose its productive members to prison, etc, etc, etc.
Not to mention miss out on some delicacies, a la Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. And, far more importantly, scientific benefits of medical experiments on chimps.
This is vegan propaganda....I'm not voting.
I submit that your use of species as the dividing line to determine who has a right to life is arbitrary.
A species does not have "the capacity to act as independent economic agents, that is pull their own weight in the economy and respect the rights of others," individuals within the species have that capacity.
A two year old-- or, for that matter, a senile 90 year old-- no more has that capacity than a chimp does.
One could say that "it will appease a system of demagogue politicians appealing to pity rather than logic, waste money on enforcement of those victimless crimes, encourage a black market, lose its productive members to prison, etc, etc, etc." about anything that they do not believe should be against the law.
Besides, do you believe in the rights of the individual, or the rights of a society?
I don't believe that scientists actually use chimpanzees for medical experimentation-- at least the kind that seriously harms or kills them. It's enormously expensive, for one thing, and unnecessary if you can use a rat instead and get just as good a result, which usually seems to be the case. If something more complex is required, they generally go for a rhesus monkey.
But I wouldn't be opposed to their gratuitous murder being against the law. If I caught someone trying to kill a chimp to have it as a "delicacy" for dinner, I would most likely do everything in my power to stop them.
If you go back too far, you'll likely do yourself in by consuming those whom produced those who then went on to produce you.
Think that'll boost the economy?