Thursday, February 5, 2015

I Dub Thee Human


In response to the following article I posted:
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10206089793113528&id=1523406287&_rdr#

The author agrees with many of the points I have previously made, however I think he misses a critical point. He suggests we must redefine everything as "human beings" if they are to be regarded as possessing natural rights. Which is simply silly. I do not imagine a dog must be defined as a human being to allow for the possibility that the dog may have some rights.
Is it not much more reasonable to accept the point that because animals posess all the abilities and emotions which we possess, although at a much lower evolutionary level, therefore, they have rights although that those rights are less than ours.
I do not perceive that it is necessary to turn a dog into a human being in order to acknowledge that it has rights. Many have already pointed out that we need only concern ourselves with the rights of sentient beings. That is to say, beings which feel, that have a sense of self, and which can suffer or feel pleasure. There is no need to create a forced choice false dichotomy of nothing has rights except human beings, therefore we must redefine animals as human beings if we are to contend that they have rights.

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