I watched this video lecture the other night on the concept of moral status from WiFi Philosophy's series on Khan Academy (a great online resource for learning a lot of different things). The video brought up a lot of issues and made me think about how we perceive rights and life.
What constitutes a thing to have moral status? What gives it a right to live free from suffering, discrimination, or prejudice? Obviously, most people would agree that human beings have rights to freedom and equality. Racial equality, gender equality, religious equality. These are things we hear about often. But what about other species?
Speciesism can be viewed as a form of discrimination as much as racism can be. "We can kill and eat pigs because they are lower forms of life. It's their natural place in the food chain." Why are they lower forms of life than us though? Because they don't think like we do? They don't write novels or make great works of art or conduct scientific experiments? Because they don't have feelings like we do? Well, some people can't think beyond the level of a pig; some people have mental health issues that prevent them from having a high level of cognizant thought. A lot of people can't read or write, a lot of people don't create art, and a lot of people aren't intelligent enough to conduct scientific inquiries. And some pigs probably feel a great deal more than some people (sociopaths anyone?). Is it ethical to kill and eat people with mental health issues? Most would agree that it is not.
So what makes us think we are better? Why do human beings believe we are so special? Is it just because we push our own psychological projections of uniqueness onto other beings similar to ourselves or that we perceive they experience emotions like we do (like our pet dogs)? If that is the case, then we only attribute rights to things we feel deserve rights because we care about. Then moral status is a highly subjective concept based on the distributor and not on the being who has the rights,
Maybe it is subjective though. What do you think? Why do we treat non-human animals as if they have no rights? Why do we treat some non-human animals different than others? Watch the video below and maybe it will give you something to think about today. How does this challenge your beliefs? And what are you going to do about it now?