February 22, 2013
on killing animals
Does the notion that animals do not have an interest in their lives, that they have an interest only in not suffering, make any sense? I don’t think so. To say that a sentient being—any sentient being—is not harmed by death is most peculiar. Sentience is not a characteristic that has evolved to serve as an end in itself. Rather, it is a trait that allows beings to identify situations that are harmful and that threaten survival. Sentience is a means to the end of continued existence. Sentient beings, by virtue of their being sentient, have an interest in remaining alive; that is, they prefer, want or desire to remain alive. Therefore, to say that a sentient being is not harmed by death denies that the being has the very interest that sentience serves to perpetuate. It would be analogous to saying that a being with eyes does not have an interest in continuing to see or is not harmed by being made blind. The Jains of India expressed it well long ago: “All beings are fond of life, like pleasure, hate pain, shun destruction, like life, long to live. To all life is dear.”more from Gary Francione at The Point here.
Posted by Morgan Meis at 08:57 AM | Permalink
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Socrates: "To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they know quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?" -- Plato, Apology
Posted by: REFoster | Feb 22, 2013 5:56:17 PM
This whole article seems to hinge on the claim that death and harm are the same thing. To kill it is to harm it. It reminds of me people who are against doctor-assisted-suicide claiming that helping a terminally ill patient commit suicide is inherently harmful because death is harmful, and thus against the doctor's 'do no harm' moral code -and therefore immoral and should be illegal.
Its as intuitive as it is deceptive, and I think the author of this article understands that when he finds the whole point about 'eternal presentness' of animals to be besides the point....because, after all, there are disabled people who are 'eternally present' and we don't simply euthanize them --is this an attempt to compare a human's moral worth to an animals?
And its that comparison where the unbridgeable gap may be between the author and most people, even PETA. Its "people for the ethical treatment of animals" not "people for treating animals like people." The fact that an animal is not a human will always be the biggest roadblock to attempts to elevate the ethical status of animals --all this 'eternal present' and 'death is harm' stuff are side expressions of that gap.
Posted by: Stopher | Feb 23, 2013 8:48:15 AM
Yawn.. another carefully-ordered bunch of words conflating suffering with death.
It's quality of life that matters; I thought everyone had got that by now?
Posted by: Mick Stephenson | Feb 24, 2013 1:28:33 PM
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