Rights of Nature?

Well traditionally we gave no other creature any rights - with the possible exception of sacred cows and Janeists - who are are fearful of treading on a worm.Now we tend to like some creatures but not others. Hampsters are nice but not rats. Goldfish but not tuna. Budgies but not seagulls. And so on.We apparently care about animal husbandry for cows unless we can pretend not to know how they're actually treated. Not so much chickens.I can pour boiling water on an ants nest but not my seagulls. I can't shoot my seagulls but I can a pigeon - or a grouse, but only in season.I can catch, kill and eat a salmon - but only if I have a licence.I can take in a stray cat without notifying anybody, but not so a dog.We grant rights but they do seem at tad arbitrary. Because we made up the arbitrary rules. How else?

I don't think saying they're made up is correct. I get what you're saying but I feel it's more like we're discovering that these rights actually exist. For example, understanding that a chimp is as sentient as a 4 year old human child, we come to realize that they too have rights as living beings. Then we try to decern what those rights may be, and perhaps here is where people might "make things up" a bit.Saying we can take away rights doesn't actually mean that you took it away from someone, it means you are infringing on their rights. You can't give a right or take away a right. You can only infringe on someone's rights or recognize and respect their rights.- Oni

Oh. Then I'm perplexed as to why you would object to bestowing moral consideration through the legal mechanism of assigning rights.That's what the OP was about so that's what I thought we were talking about.....

I don't think so, what we're discovering is the need to behave a bit better.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

And I have already answered that question at least once in this thread in Message 37.My problem with using the term rights is that it implies the fiction that such rights actually exist and are a property of the object named; that humans actually have certain rights or nature has rights or animals have rights when what in reality we are deciding to prescribe human behavior.

I call woo!

This might be just semantics, but isn't better to say we are discovering that we shouldn't infringe on someone elses right to life?- Oni

Maybe, but I think there's something there. Even with something like slavery, it is evident that the individual's rights have been infringed on. So there must have existed the inherent right before someone infringed on it. Si?- Oni

Gawsh, its almost like you could believe in God. What is the evidence of these rights?

I used to. You wouldn't call the basic principle of freedom to live unimpeded by someone or some other thing elses necessity a right for all living organisms? (if not what would you call that, or do you even recognize that that exists as a quality?)Don't we recognize this basic principle then create laws to protect them?- Oni

Sure, and for millions of species, we can set millions of different standards - or we can categorize. I personally like to categorize by the number of legs. Two-legged species get the most rights. Four-legged species are for eating - but we treat them well until we eat them. Six-legged species are on shaky ground, rights-wise and any species with more than six legs is just begging to be killed on sight. Of course, legless creatures such as fish (eat) and snakes (kill) have to be shoehorned in arbitrarily.But you're not really on topic, are you? The question isn't whether "should" we "give" "rights" to "nature". It's how we can treat nature in a way that's most convenient for us.

This is probably just me, but I'm having trouble here. Sorry for being redundant with the question but you're all super smarty pants and I'd like to get a few opinions on this. Isn't it better to say that we recognize that nature too has inherent rights to live unimpeded and so we create laws to see to it that this fundamental principle (my words) is protected?Is it arbitrary like you guys are suggesting, that we create rights then assign other things these rights?Or are these rights just a basic fundamental principle of life and as super sentient, conscious beings we are just now recognizing that?Or is it that I'm smoking too much pot? *puff *puff- Oni

Yeah, I don't recognize any principle of freedom to live unimpeded. In fact, in my experience, I'm constantly fighting against nature trying to impede on my shit.

But chicken is delicious!

I don't recognize that nature has inherent rights to live unimpeded. The lion impedes on the zebra and th zebra impedes on the grass. We have a responsibility not to impede on either one too much. But are we responsible to "nature" or to our own offspring? Yes. We recognize rights when it's convenient. I recognize your right not to be punched in the face and in return you recognize mine. The social contract is full of such arbitrary reciprocal granting of "rights".We also pontificate about rights such as equality when we don't mean it. And my socks have a degree in Art History.