JuiceJones

Thanks for the welcomes everyone. Not at all. I see how you took that, I phrased it poorly. I simply meant, "Haha, how funny the thought of animal cruelists actually coming to defend themselves! (If there actually are some on OL, I'm surprised.) I originally intended to post concerning 'Backyard Breeders', but followed a long train of thought back to this." Never did I intend to sound like I was meekly backing away and brushing the issue aside. Yes, and I have been thinking about this. I would probably have to say it is less the plight of the animal, and more the perverse intentions and acts of the human that fuels the hate. Which gets back to the seeming methodological contradiction regarding my views on all other laws. But again, as people who do this are taking out anger on something because it is small and weak and has emotion and pain, it's as though they are using it as a replacement for small child/person, and no other property has this distinction. I find it hard to accept that this is within their right. I did learn recently that hyenas are one of few animals that begin eating their prey alive. It is disturbing to watch, and no doubt being the victim of a hyena is an excruciating death (they like that soft meat, like rectums, first, yum!). So yes, the fact it is a human is the biggest part. Good!

Haha, I understand this is a fringe issue and not a rampant problem. I was just getting annoyed reading people vehemently condemn others for accidentally letting their dogs get impregnated and overthought the whole animal rights nonsense back to this fundamental. I probably should have stuck to that for the thread. "The Anti-concept of 'Backyard Breeders'".

As an Objectivist, thoroughly committed to rationality, I, like many, have struggled with formulating an objective justification for laws preventing cruelty to animals. I have failed to find many compelling arguments within the existing discussion, and have questions I do not see posed and would love to ask the Objectivist community. A free society entails being free to make all the choices for the furtherance of our own lives, without having our rights violated or violating the rights of others, as we all know. While this is clearly just and logically defensible in just about every scenario for humans, bringing animals into the picture is the one topic that brings a lot of ambiguity to some of us who like animals and despise those who would wantonly harm them. The pervasive arguments set up the perceived dichotomy that I have much difficulty accepting or refuting. Namely, that animals must either be regarded as inanimate objects in a political sense, or possess “rights”. I would like to explore third options to this, and would ask for you to seek out inconsistencies or contradictions in my proposals. I find it very easy when tackling this subject to inadvertently make arguments that could be taken as justification for slippery slope policies leading to the wholesale regulation of livestock industries or that merely semantically try to distinguish animal “rights” from animal “protections” without a non-arbitrary and substantive difference in the morality of their application. If I witness a man torturing a dog in his front yard, my response would certainly be to violently attack the man and rescue the dog. Many could argue that by my own Objectivist standards (that animals are outside the concept of rights and are indeed property) that I am violating that man’s right to not be harmed, and am unjustly stealing his property. Is my response really just rash emotionalism? Is the value I perceive in the dog as a living being and potential loving companion to some human inconsequential, since it is indeed not my dog nor meaningful in the context of my life? Am I irrational for risking myself physically to prevent an act that is comparable to acts that are committed countless times a day in nature by animals against animals, simply because the perpetrator is a fellow man? Am I the criminal in such a case? I ask with complete intellectual openness, but find it a hard pill to swallow. The other option is to find that such a gross display of depravity is justification for the initiation of force against the man, at which point we must identify the basis for the justification, and many would at this point insist the animal does have rights. However that is absurd; animals cannot have a right to their own lives, as they cannot form concepts and merely react perceptually to their immediate needs, they kill and maim each other and are in every sense amoral. Human’s values always come before that of animals, and thus any use of them for work, experimentation or companionship, and even the eradication of unwanted populations is justifiable, thus the notion of having a “right” to that life is absurd. I doubt I need to preach any further to the choir on this subject. Many in the animal rights crowd will try to assert the notion that the capacity for pain is the root of rights, and while this is illogical, is the capacity for pain not a basis for anything? We place life as the highest value, and derive our rights from our rationally constructed moral codes, while animals simply cling to life via their hereditary tools and instincts. Mammals clearly reside in a place above purely reactionary creatures and below rational ones. Their capacity for pain and happiness does not entitle them to rights, but it does heavily influence the way we treat and interact with them. Those who like to torture them, those who value pain qua pain, enjoy doing so exactly because it is similar to the human experience; it is very much anti-life and immoral as it has no real value, despite being a moral being acting upon an amoral one. So I must ask, is it not proper for there to be “a moral principle defining and sanctioning man’s freedom of action in a” human-animal context? This is what I seek. While I support virtually no law which does not retaliate against the violation of a person’s rights, as they almost certainly entail violating someone else’s, this I feel a separate case. Since saying we should be free to act so long as it does not violate the rights of others is my utmost principle, I find it hard to accept the one deplorable hole that leaves, namely accepting animal torture as an unenumerated right. Vaguely similar to how Rand’s morality in an emergency situation is true without incurring a double standard of morality, I feel living property can be treated differently than inanimate property through law without incurring a double standard of property rights. I would only support two basic laws regarding this issue, one, criminalizing the torture or abuse of a mammal for the sake of torture or abuse itself (this would include fighting rings and neglect with the intent to let die) and two, requiring any mammal being processed for any reason to be first quickly killed. (I exclude birds because I am unsure of their brain capacity to feel pain and emotion, so until I see conclusive evidence I am not as opposed to cock fighting.) I would hate to think that my support of these laws contradicts my Objectivism. This would still leave open a lot of potential mistreatment, such as unsanitary and cramped confinement, but this is up to people to marginalize and reduce the incentive for people to farm them this way. Many fur traders have privately adopted humane treatment policies exactly because it is a marketable principle and eases the worry of potential on-the-fence fur buyers. Another related issue is the “The Argument from Marginal Cases.” I have seen this link posted in another Objectivist Living thread that digressed a bit onto the subject: http://www.strike-the-root.com/4/graham/graham1.html Now this author is clearly off on a few points. It starts off with the preposterous impression that you can be both libertarian and anarchist. But aside from those flaws, I would like to question you as to whether or not the “Normative Species” argument successfully addresses the marginal cases argument, and if not, is the marginal case argument even valid, or is there another refutation? This author’s refutation of the normative species argument is a complete straw man, as the argument proposed is to hold a debilitated individual’s rights equal to a normal individual, never would I interpret it to hold an exceptional individual down to the normal individual. Despite being one of those impossible (at least for a few more million years) hypothetical arguments, the rational monkey would be afforded all rights because it is rational, and accepting the normative species argument would not hold that the rational monkey must be treated regressively as a normal monkey. That said, I still do not find the normative species a very strong argument; it is very collective in nature, affording to some simply on the basis of being part of a group, so I feel there is a better way to justify the protection of rights of the severely mentally handicapped, without relying on the normative species argument or accepting that animals also must have rights. It seems to me that in the incidents the marginal cases argument tries to draw from, that not all rationality is truly lost. It may be hampered to the point of needing assisted living, but a basic conceptual faculty is still there, and thus so are their rights. In the cases of the completely brain dead or comatose, that person is essentially already dead, and as unsettling as it may sound, any infraction against them is going to be handled more like a property violation case by the caregiver rather than a direct infringement of rights. Does this invalidate the marginal case theory? If a third party becomes aware of the serial rape of a permanently comatose person, and reports it as they should, is the justification for this on grounds of the comatose person’s rights presumably being violated if they were to not be comatose? Or is it more like the justification I am seeking for animal cruelty laws? I am asking this to learn. If there are other good threads on the subject, I am sorry for overlooking them (believe me, I tried, the internet is overloaded with overbearing, anti-human activists with Marxist ideologies attempting to disparage and denounce any form of animal ownership. Poor people try to ask a simple question because their dog got knocked up, and the board fills up with condemnations and treating the poster as some kind of “backyard breeder” monster. It is astonishing, but for another post.) Rand was apparently a cat lover who could not fit the justification within her philosophy, and I have read that reportedly Nathaniel Branden had avoided questions related to the topic because he had “struggled” with it and eventually shelved it. I cannot let their inability to do so sway me from trying to develop it on my own (even though those are some amazing minds I am trying to outdo), just for my own philosophical completeness. Thank you all for reading this and for any serious replies.