How far does our ethical community extend / Do plants have rights?

[Alpha]

Most of us take it for granted that human beings are beings which hold ethical value in and of themselves. We don't do sick laboratory experiments on human beings without their permission. We don't cut off nerves to people's legs, and open their skulls to sever connections to spines, as is actually happening to three monkeys as I right this.

However, most of us eat animals. All of us eat plants. Most of us are willing to accept some degree of environmental degradation so that we can live what we consider to be materially-superior lives. Need paper, cut tree.

It's prima facie simple, and we operate by it. But it's worth deeper consideration. Why don't plants have ethical status in Western societies?

The oldest and most prevalent view of who has moral standing is the belief that only human beings have moral standing; only human beings ultimately count in matters of morality. This anthropocentric or "human centered" conviction is usually linked to the idea that only creatures with the capacity to reason (perhaps as expressed through language) have absolute value and consequently they are the only creatures whose well-being ought to be taken into account for their own sakes.

The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, for example, viewed nature as a hierarchy, believing that less rational creatures are made for the benefit of those that are more rational. He wrote "Plants exist for the sake of animals, and brute beasts for the sake of man." In a similar vein, the seventeenth century philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote that "So far as animals are concerned, we have no direct moral duties; animals are not self-conscious and are there merely as a means to an end. That end is man." For these thinkers, therefore, only human beings have moral standing, so the welfare of other creatures matters only if they are useful to humans.

So let's say that you accept that only humans matter in a moral calculus. But which humans? Only the rational ones? Right, so cross off foetuses, babies, toddlers, the mentally-disabled, drug addicts, some elderly people from our list of ethically-considerable beings. Not to mention past and future generations of humans.

See how this is getting troubled already? You (probably) intuitively accept that some human beings without the capacity to reason are ethically-considerable. So why not plants/animals/nature more broadly?

In the eighteenth century the view that only humans count was challenged by several philosophers, including the utilitarians Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. According to these philosophers our only moral duty is to maximize pleasure which they claimed is the only fundamental good, and to minimize pain, the only fundamental evil. In making moral decisions, therefore, we have to take into account all creatures, rational or not, that have the capacity to experience pleasure or pain. As Bentham wrote, "The question is not, Can they reason nor Can they talk, but, Can they suffer?"

This sentience criterion is also the position taken by Peter Singer:

He says that being sentient is both necessary and sufficient for having interests. (In other words, the class of sentient beings and the class of beings with interests is the same class.) Compare a stone and a mouse. There is nothing I can do to the stone that matters to it. It can't feel pain. It can't be deprived of liberty. But a mouse can feel pain, and pain is bad, so what I do to the mouse matters to it. Since the mouse has interests (specifically, an interest in not suffering), it has moral status. This is not to say that the mouse has the same interests as a human.

...

Since plants are not sentient, they lack interests, according to Singer.

This perspective is troubled by the existence of non-sentient animals, like some species of jellyfish, oysters, worms... but also:

Some humans, on the other hand, such as fetuses and humans in a persistent vegetative state, are not [sentient]. Most controversially, this means that infants with anencephaly, a developmental disorder where the child is born with just a brain stem and no mid-brain or higher brain, have absolutely no intrinsic moral status. If the parents consented, they can be used as a source of organs for transplant, even though they are not dead. Hence the shocking aspect of Singer’s beliefs: it is wrong to eat a cow, but it is sometimes ok to kill a baby.

This perspective, of course, has been challenged.

Judge Richard Posner of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit debated the issue of animal rights in 2001 with Peter Singer. Posner argues that his moral intuition tells him "that human beings prefer their own. If a dog threatens a human infant, even if it requires causing more pain to the dog to stop it, than the dog would have caused to the infant, then we favour the child. It would be monstrous to spare the dog."

Singer challenges this by arguing that formerly unequal rights for gays, women, and certain races were justified using the same set of intuitions. Posner replies that equality in civil rights did not occur because of ethical arguments, but because facts mounted that there were no morally significant differences between humans based on race, sex, or sexual orientation that would support inequality. If and when similar facts emerge about humans and animals, the differences in rights will erode too. But facts will drive equality, not ethical arguments that run contrary to instinct, he argues. Posner calls his approach "soft utilitarianism," in contrast to Singer's "hard utilitarianism." He argues:

The "soft" utilitarian position on animal rights is a moral intuition of many, probably most, Americans. We realize that animals feel pain, and we think that to inflict pain without a reason is bad. Nothing of practical value is added by dressing up this intuition in the language of philosophy; much is lost when the intuition is made a stage in a logical argument. When kindness toward animals is levered into a duty of weighting the pains of animals and of people equally, bizarre vistas of social engineering are opened up.

Which entities have moral status, and why? Assuming that some entities have moral status and others do not, what's the morally relevant difference? What is it that all the entities with moral status have that all the entities without moral status lack?

Is it as simple as being a member of the species Homo sapiens? If so, would you deliberately harm an innocent cat? If not, do animals have rights? If so, why not plants? If it's because plants are not sentient, do non-sentient humans have rights? Is that because they are members of the species Homo sapiens...?

Disclaimer: I stole from blogs and stuff, yeah. What are you going to do about it? I listed the sources and this isn't a college essay. I'm not trying to prove a point, just start a discussion.

Disclaimer 1: Oh God. This is terrible. I'm sorry if this just comes across as ramblings. That's because it is and because I really haven't got the energy to write this at the moment. I know a few of you take an active interest in philosophy (and at least one other in 'the rights of nature'). I'm looking at you to save this

[Heartless Angel]

I got the strange feeling someone was looking at me... weird. Well anyways...

Without even being familiar with any of these other theories, the first thought that came to mind for a qualifier for having some moral status was sentience. Apparently that has been a relatively common first thought amongst philosophers. I'd also wager that is what earlier philosopher's meant by capacity to reason, but simply lacked the knowledge of the brain functions of lower species who couldn't come right out and tell them they were sentient. Religious beliefs of the era primarily associated with the reason theory supported a belief that man was the only intelligent being created, and that animals were pretty much food with legs placed here for us to hunt and eat and make jackets out of. Were Socrates and Plato born in Europe in the 1900s, they'd probably be on board with the sentience theory as well, as they were both highly rational people, and evidence indicates that they were overall ethical people as well, they simply lacked much of the information we now take for granted.

This perspective is troubled by the existence of non-sentient animals, like some species of jellyfish, oysters, worms... but also:

Some humans, on the other hand, such as fetuses and humans in a persistent vegetative state, are not [sentient]. Most controversially, this means that infants with anencephaly, a developmental disorder where the child is born with just a brain stem and no mid-brain or higher brain, have absolutely no intrinsic moral status. If the parents consented, they can be used as a source of organs for transplant, even though they are not dead. Hence the shocking aspect of Singer’s beliefs: it is wrong to eat a cow, but it is sometimes ok to kill a baby.

This perspective, of course, has been challenged.

I'm not really seeing the problem here honestly, but that's because I don't factor emotion in to my views. I don't see any flaw in the reality that the sentience rule leaves a few animals out. The animals that get left out, don't care. They are, by nature incapable of caring that they are left out. Saying a baby with no brain has rights, is objectively no different than saying my car has rights. The two have the same intellectual capacity, the same sentience, the same desire to be protected by morality, the only difference is that the baby has a cute face that causes people to develop an emotional attachment to it, making some people uncomfortable with treating it as a non sentient being. The primary reason we try to extend human rights to nonhumans is that we try to anthropomorphize them. That is, we see something, we identify that it has life, and we then try to find common ground between its kind of life, and our own. We have an inherent belief that all life is somehow like us. This is simply not the case. In the case of animals, we look into their big puppy dog eyes, and see mental functions that may or may not be present. Now I'm not pro cruelty to animals or anything, but the fact that they have life does not necessarily mean they have the same form of life, requiring or desiring the same ethical protection. In the case of jellyfish, we look at an animal, and think of our puppies, because they're animals too. We look at the obvious thing in common, and ignore the world of difference separating them. Our puppy whimpers and is hurt if you kick it. It has some level of emotional reaction to this. It's mental growth will be affected in some way by this experience, and will change the course of its mental development for the worse. The jellyfish on the other hand doesn't really give a flying **** if you kick it. It isn't even aware of the fact. Kicking a puppy is cruel, kicking a jellyfish is no more cruel than kicking a rock. Neither the jellyfish nor the rock notice or care that you have kicked it. If no torment has been inflicted, one can hardly consider the action cruel. There is no need to have moral rules in place to prevent cruelty against something which by its nature is impossible to be cruel to any more than you need to impose a penalty for violating the unbreakable laws of physics. The rule CAN'T be broken, because the jellyfish CAN'T suffer. One can't attribute all human qualities to anything that has some commonality with a human. The puppy is the same as we are in the ways that matter, the jellyfish is not. The exclusion of the jellyfish is logical.

Now in the case of the baby with no brain, this is a bit more difficult to accept. While it has MUCH more in common with a human than the jellyfish, it too is NOT the same in the way which matters. It possesses some properties of life, it possesses human appearance, many structural similarities to a human, but one thing which it is inescapably missing is humanity. While a biology textbook might still classify it as a living human being, it is lacking in the essential qualities of a person, primarily sentience. It is therefore not in need of the same moral protection as a person. But, the emotional human species doesn't like to accept that, because we see so many things we have in common with it, and not enough of the things we do not. The qualities that MATTER here are the ones we are NOT seeing.

Computers have many commonalities with the human brain. Why do people then not think that computers are entitled to moral protection? Because tehy don't look alive. It doesn't have the responses to stimuli we expect of a life form we try to anthropomorphize. It has some things in common with us, but not the right things to evoke that human response.

I recently made a post in a thread titled Murder, Arson, and Jay-Walking, my analysis of rules on that topic applies quite nicely here. When determining whether or not a rule need be followed, I ask myself two questions.

First, for what reason does this rule exist?

And second, does this reason currently apply to me?

For what reason do we have moral rules? To protect the interests of those the rules protect. Does the thing the rules now attempts to protect HAVE interests to protect? If not, the rule does not currently logically apply. This line of reasoning is likely where the sentience theory came from.

Insofar as I agree with morality in general (which is to say not at all, I'm a moral nihilist), I would tend to agree that only sentient beings need be protected by it.

[Lacquer Head]

Plants have rights...whist endangered. Personally, I don't mind if people kill an animal for resources. As long as they utilize everything. Either way, no matter how small, I tend to feel compassion towards anything living, I even tend to feel bad about harming a plant. It doesn't scar me for life or anything, but I prefer to not have to in the end. But regardless of ethics, plants aren't sentient. Nothing more, nothing less. Still not sure what you mean by "moral" rights though...

Morals are subjective and don't deserve to even be considered as "rights" But in the end, no matter what, animal or plant, we need both to live. It's a necessary part of survival, kill or be killed.

[Heartless Angel]

Plants have rights...whist endangered. Personally, I don't mind if people kill an animal for resources. As long as they utilize everything. Either way, no matter how small, I tend to feel compassion towards anything living, I even tend to feel bad about harming a plant. It doesn't scar me for life or anything, but I prefer to not have to in the end. But regardless of ethics, plants aren't sentient. Nothing more, nothing less. Still not sure what you mean by "moral" rights though...

Morals are subjective and don't deserve to even be considered as "rights" But in the end, no matter what, animal or plant, we need both to live. It's a necessary part of survival, kill or be killed.

Rights are a derivative from human morality. Without a perceived sense of what is right and what is wrong (which aren't ENTIRELY subjective, there is a limit to what a normal person will believe is right or wrong, all are in some way anchored to a common psychological construct of our species, see my previous ramblings on the connection of morality to the psychological hierarchy of needs), we wouldn't have ideas of what we should or should not be entitled to, what we should or should not do to animals or plants, or anything else. Endangered plants aren't protected because they have some inherent right to be, they are protected because people decided that they should (should being an operative word because it indicates a normative claim, one rooted in philosophy of ethics and morality) be. Partially because there is a pragmatic purpose to preserving certain species, and partially because human morality gives people some inherent respect for life, again rooted mostly in the nature of a human to try and find common ground between itself and other life forms, which leads them to want to extent their morals to protect them. Morality and compassion are irrevocably intertwined, and both are constructs of the subjective whims of man.

Nothing really NEEDS to live. In the grand scheme of things, the universe wouldn't be different in any significant way if every living thing on this planet ceased to be. Ethics and morality and compassion are never a matter of true needs, simply desires generated by our minds (which is what the hierarchy of needs refers to). Plants don't even apply to the hierarchy, because they lack sentience. They don't have any needs at all. They don't need to live, WE need them to live. So in the case of plants isn't even a matter of rights, but of what we want for ourselves.

[Lacquer Head]

I was discussing legal rights more than moral rights. I thought that's what the question was, whether or not plants should be protected.

As for trying to save endangered species, I think it's more to prevent ecological balance tips. If one species disappears, others will boom and others will die and so on. Well, that's the excuse governments use, gotta make it look like they give a **** about something while the rain forests get eradicated.

[Heartless Angel]

Laws are even worse, laws are constructs of human morality enforced. There is of course a pragmatic purpose to laws, but they're all ultimately based upon what people WANT the world to be, a normative idea, a construct of morality. We give legal rights to people and things because we believe they should have them, because we've tried to extend our morals to protect them, and then we go on to enforce our subjective values.

[Lacquer Head]

Well, it's really mixed. It's like, morality mixed with "why the **** is this law in place, allmywat.jpg" the hidden ingredient being corruption and capitalism of course...if it's in America at least.

[Heartless Angel]

Not all laws exist for a profit or political agenda, many are simply an attempt at enforcing our values upon the world. Many of course ARE the result of corruption, but corruption isn't inherent only in capitalism. Any system in which a person or group of people holds power, corruption is inevitable.

[Lacquer Head]

That's why I put "at least in America" I remember the rest of the world isn't capitalist lol although money is still there to corrupt everywhere. Although it isn't as strong or blatant as capitalism, I just can't trust the majority of laws to be legitimate. But back to the subject at hand @_@

Not based on a moral standpoint, but laws in a lot of countries need to be reformed in regards to plants and animals. Though we have to kill plenty to survive, those should always be bred for such, and replaced as well. The various economic destruction being done to forests and etc for housing is going to hurt us in the long run. So besides the moral standings people have on the issue, we need various regulations for out OWN preservation.

[Order]

First off,
I haven't read anything in here yet, but I will eventually.

Apparently, it has been proven that plants feel pain in some loose sense of the idea.
Do they deserve rights?
Nope.

Does that fact make vegans silly to me?
Moreso than before I knew that.