Rights of Nature?

If worshipping nature (AKA mother Earth) led to desireable outcomes would you object to others following that path.....?

Innante rights is one thing. Rights that we might decide to bestow upon humans or anything else becuase we decide it is right or good or nice or helpful or beneficial or whatever are quite another. Do you agree that we can have human rights without them being 'innate'?Might we decide to do something similar to something else? In this example in this thread that 'something else' would presumably be the planet Earth....Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Why? Bestowed by humans - Sure. But we might place the rights of other things over our own interests and convenience. We might decide that a forest full of 1,000 year old trees shouldn't be demolished to build a shopping mall for example. We might do so on the basis that trees and the animals within the forest (or even some more abstract idea of nature) have "rights" that are more important in principle than the convenience to us of another shopping mall. And you can also say that within that society, culture or state there will be disagreements about the balance between human convenience and the rights that should be accorded to things (e.g. trees, animals, "nature" etc.) that stand in the way of human convenience.Personally I think it would be a sad world if we gave up all notion of anything non-human having the right to exist simply because it was inconvenient.Keep the 1,000 year old trees and build the shopping mall somewhere a bit less convenient I say........

It does if we convince them of that on the basis that non-human things have the right to exist (even if their existence is in some way inconvenient to human needs or desires) It has the rights we bestow upon it. As is the case with any rights accorded by any society. That's the point. Or in some more noble cases what humans can convince themselves they should do.Foe example consider the great ape project:

quote:

---

The Great Ape Project (GAP), founded in 1994, is an international organization of primatologists, anthropologists, ethicists, and other experts who advocate a United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Great Apes that would confer basic legal rights on non-human great apes: chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans.

​

The rights suggested are the right to life, the protection of individual liberty, and the prohibition of torture.

---

Now whilst it might be convenient or even beneficial to humans to treat other apes as objects unworthy of moral consideration there is a growing argument that it is wrong to do so.This an example of conferring rights on non-humans. Would you support that stance?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Can you explain why you find the idea of humans conferring the same sort of rights that we do to other humans (sometimes at least....) to non-human entities so distasteful or otherwise unworthy of support?Why would torturing a gorilla (for example) not be worthy of moral condemnation in your view?

And I'm asking why we can't as a society decide to apply the same sort of 'limited bounds' to a non-human entity (e.g in this case a gorilla) that we do to other humans?If, as we seem to agree, morality is a human social construct then why can we not as a society decide to confer non-human things with moral worth and thus bestow them with rights?You position frankly seems contradictory. On one hand the suggestion is that morality is entirely a human social construct but on the other you seem to be denying in absolute terms that humans can confer moral worth on non-human entities.I don't see why human societies would be unable to bestow moral worth on gorillas, trees, nature or indeed anything else.

So your issue is with conferring rights period. Whether it be humans or non-humans seems irrelevant to your stance.

Well frankly your blanket objection to the use of the term "rights" as applied to humans + everything else seems like a different issue to the one at hand. Maybe you should instead ask whether we can imbue things (humans, animals, trees, nature, whatever) with moral worth.The fact is that laws are often based on the idea of "rights". And as a society we can make laws concerning humans, animals and even the more abstract concept of "nature" based on bestowing these things with rights."Rights" is simply shorthand for saying that we as a society have decided to bestow some sort of moral consideration.Are you making a blanket objection to bestowing moral consideration as well?

Sure. So?It's still a case of applying the same sort of 'limited bounds' (to use jar's phrase). The bounds don't have to have the same limits in order for us to confer some sort of rights on non-human entities.The question, apparently, is whether we can confer rights on anything at all. Jar seems to say not.I say we can ultimately confer rights on whatever we deem to be worthy of moral consideration. The more moral consideration we bestow the greater the rights we are likley to confer.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

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.....

Yes I understand that you don't like the term "rights" because you think it implies something innate etc. But I'm not talking about anything innate.I'm asking if you object to the notion that society can decide to accord moral worth/consideration to things which are non-human and then make laws on that basis.Do you object to bestowing moral consideration through the legal mechanism of assigning non-human entities protection from things like torture, destruction etc...?These assigned legal protections are commonly referred to as "rights" but we can call them something else if that makes you happy.

We do indeed. Apes. Trees. "Nature" (according to the OP).Whether we agree or disagree with any specific case is irrelevant to the idea that we can and do confer moral consideration to non-human things and that we often express this legally in terms of "rights".Whether jar likes that term or not really doesn't change this...

What do you mean exactly when you use the term "quibble"....?As for why - Well why not? When jar says things like this:

quote:

---

No, I don't believe there can be animal rights or rights of nature.

---

When quite blatantly there are examples of legal rights pertaining to these things already in place - I'm going to ask whether those who say such things are disputing that these rights exist or whether they are objecting to their existence or whatever else it is they mean.

The OP is talking about laws.Do you object to bestowing moral consideration through the legal mechanism of assigning non-human entities protection from things like torture, destruction etc...?These assigned legal protections are commonly referred to as "rights" but if we remove that apparently problematic term are you OK with the idea - Or not?