When does killing an animal constitute murder?

One of the struggles I have with these hypothetical moral dilemmas is whether or not I would actually act in accordance with any pre-made decision that I might formulate and present here.In Onifre's dilemma, I think I would end up choosing the toddler over the 10-year-old, despite the fact that I understand the logical reasons that Onifre put forward. This is based on an initial reaction I had to the thought experiment. I think the reaction is based on a subconscious view that 10-year-olds are more self-sufficient than toddlers, and thus, may be more likely to figure out their own solution to the psychopath problem. I think this decision would hold even if I knew the 10-year-old would not find their own solution.However, my reasoning would probably be entirely different if the subjects were switched.For example, we tend to identify animals at the level of species or other "kind"; but we tend to identify humans at the level of individuals. So, if the choice is between one individual human and one individual animal, we are more likely to see the individual animal as replaceable than the individual human. But, if the choice was between two things that I view as identifiable units (e.g., an individual human vs. a species of animal), then the dilemma is more balanced from a psychological perspective.When deciding between two humans, I think I would likely rank them based on their importance to me, based on such factors as kinship, perceived importance to society, social pressures from whatever audience I might have, and, though I hesitate to admit it, probably even some superficial characteristics that appeal to me. I would likely rank all animal species in the same way if the choice was between two species of animal.When deciding between a human and a species of animal, I would simply merge the two lists. There are some species of animals that I would place higher than a larger chunk of the human species (e.g., blue jays, tigers, and Triceratops would rank quite high), and there are some humans that would rank lower than the lowest animals (e.g., Hitler and Peter the Great would rank quite low).So, I sympathize to some extent with Ringo and Jar: I hesitate to generalize, because I don't think the generalizations hold up well. Although, just based on probabilities, I would say, in most randomly-generated situations, I would give preference to the human (and I'm quite sure that this preference would increase if I had a human audience for the decision), so, if I were to generalize, I would say that I would pick a human over an animal.For instance, if the game were "random human vs. random animal species" (i.e. I don't know which human or which animal species is on the chopping block before I decide), then I would choose the random human, just because the highest humans rank higher than the highest animals on my list, and thus, the potential cost of killing the human is higher than the potential cost of killing the animal, and I don't want to risk killing my wife or children.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Crash. Not to mention essentially impossible to enforce. Where would we get the budget to investigate and prosecute all those crimes against inanimate objects?Law enforcement, in the end, is subject almost entirely to practicality, rather than absolute morality. The only moral questions involved should concern which crimes are the "worst," and thus, merit the balance of the budget and attention of law enforcement officials.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Jon. Okay. And, I still say law enforcement is more limited by practical constraints than by moral ideals. I don't understand why you want to criminalize something that you know can't be enforced effectively.Moral ideals should only be incorporated into law on the coarsest of scales. The finer the scale at which we try to enforce morality as law, the greater the impracticality, the higher the cost-to-benefit ratio, and the higher the likelihood of riots and revolts. No, I can't back this up with data, but it makes sense to me.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Straggler. I'm not sure that, in practice, people assign a "moral worth" to humans as a category. Each individual human gets its own "moral worth" score based on any number of potential criteria. But, "moral worth" of animals usually is assigned at the level of category or "kind."So, when the moral worth of a given category can only be localized to a range that overlaps the "moral worth" of another category, I can understand why someone would be unwilling to give a generic answer to the question.Maybe you should frame it as a probability. For instance, one might say that, based on some initial estimates of how they distribute "moral worth" among humans, they would favor the human over the bug in 95% of human-vs-bug pairings. This wouldn't be a definitive statement (which Ringo and Jar don't seem to want to give), but it would provide enough of a window into the person's general moral outlook to ease your mind, I think.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Straggler. From the language here, I gather that you regard at least some (hypothetical) people who value ants more than humans as sane?----- Is the ant ever relevant, then?In any pairing, there is a chance that the decider will feel indifference, abhorrence or compassion towards either contestant. You are wanting the question to be entirely about compassion---i.e., "who would I rather spare?"---but surely the question of abhorrence---"who do I want to kill?"---is just as relevant.A decision between any two contestants may be decided by compassion towards one or abhorrence towards the other. In either case, only one contestant is really relevant, but a comparison of moral value is still made. (I'm ignoring cases in which we are compassionate to both or in which we abhor both).People are generally indifferent toward ants. Thus, all dilemmas like you propose involving ants are based on how we feel about the other contestant, and not about how we feel about ants. So, the ant is always irrelevant.You would have us believe that compassion toward some humans at the expense of an irrelevant ant is evidence of the higher moral worth of those humans relative to the ant; but that abhorrence toward other humans to the benefit of an irrelevant ant is not evidence of the higher moral worth of the ant relative to those humans.I think this is a mistake on your part.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Straggler.I don't want to drag my part of this out much further. I thought I could clarify some things, but I feel like I've only made it worse, so I'll back off a bit. I think the focus on extreme cases is useful in demonstrating the point that "moral worth" varies. Whether or not it justifies the protracting of this discussion by refusal to provide a non-universal generalization is a different matter entirely.I'm perfectly comfortable saying that, in a large majority of cases, I would favor a human over pretty much any animal. Therefore, I am comfortable generalizing and saying that I assign humans more "moral worth" than animals.However, I don't really like people all that much, and I've never been very good at socializing, so my personal feelings lead me to suspect that I would often favor animals over humans in many situations where most people would find it wrong and immoral to do so. So, I feel that, even though I would usually choose the human, I would do so more because of social pressures than because of a perception of greater "moral worth" for the human.So, in terms of personal morality, I think the "moral worth" of humans overlaps more with the "moral worth" of animals that it does for other people.-----On a related note, I did a summer job with a prairie dog survey team, and we spent time mapping out prairie dog colonies and counting prairie dogs. In case you weren't aware, prairie dogs get a bad reputation for causing problems in agricultural fields and pastures, even though literally all data sets collected have demonstrated that they are responsible for pretty much none of the damage they are accused of.People shoot them and poison them all the time based on the misconception that horses and cows break their legs by stepping in prairie dog holes, that prairie dogs damage crops, and that farming equipment can be damaged by hitting prairie dog mounds. There is technically a $20,000 fine for killing prairie dogs in Utah (the Utah prairie dog, Cynomys parvidens, is endangered), but, because the people who should be enforcing it sympathize with the spurious claims of the farmers, fines are never exacted or collected.I think this behavior is morally wrong. Prairie dogs are killed and persecuted basically because of ignorance, mass hysteria and conspiracy. I don't really think it's my place to enforce it and don't really want to speak out about it, but I feel that people who behave this way are behaving immorally. People have a responsibility to validate their claims before they set out to exterminate things: it is never morally acceptable to decide to kill anything without having good, informed reasons for doing so.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Straggler. My general moral view is that intentional killing should always be justified, and that every possible effort should be made to avoid accidental killing.I don't really like or want to kill things personally, so I guess that counts as assigning all things equal "moral worth" (except for arthropods, which I kill all the time in the name of science my PhD). Admittedly, this decision may be more about my squeamishness than about morality, but I'd like to think it's my moral stance.I also believe that a one of the duties that comes with life in a society is to live up to the standards set by the society. So, since the rules of society involve greater "moral worth" of humans, I feel that it's my moral obligation to assign greater "moral value" to humans than to animals.I honestly don't think I assign humans greater "moral value" based on a system of personal morality (though, in general, humans do rank quite high), but based on a system of societal expectations. But, even if I didn't have the societal expectations, I doubt I could be a murderer, because the thought of killing things---anything---is difficult for me to deal with because of my own fear of death.However, without the pressures of societal expectations, I could easily see myself as potentially selecting animals over humans in some situations based on rather superficial reasons. I'm not particularly proud of that, but I could legitimately see myself making that sort of decision.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Straggler. No, I would not take the job. Nor would I take the job if it involved killing deer or blackbirds for research. This is because I don't approve of killing things (except arthropods for research, an exception that I acknowledged in the quoted text above).I interpret this as assigning equal "moral value" to everything, at least as far as killing things myself goes.As far as other people killing people, I think I would really only care that much under one of two conditions: (1) the person killed was somebody I knew and/or liked (e.g. grandma or Bon Jovi); or (2) it makes me worry that my loved ones or I may also be in danger of being killed.As far as killing animals to eat meat, I'm not sure I could do the killing myself, but I apparently don't mind eating an animal that someone else had killed. This appears to be an inconsistency in my moral views, because I'm pretty sure I wouldn't eat a human or approve of killing humans for food, except under extreme circumstances.So, I suppose I should state my moral views as granting equal "moral worth" to all animals (humans included), with the exceptions of arthropods (the killing of which is acceptable for the sake of research) and livestock (the killing of which is acceptable for food).

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Straggler. Can you clarify something?If I take a position against something because I'm afraid that that something might happen to me if I don't oppose it, does this still count as a moral position?Edited by Bluejay, : No reason given.Edited by Bluejay, : "a" is not a pronoun

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Straggler. I usually just try not to think about it, one way or the other.Breeding mice/rats for research seems okay with me, but probably just because I've grown up with it: I don't like the idea of doing that research personally. They also do some pretty weird stuff to mice (like make their backs grow into the shape of a human ear), which I don't like. For rabbits, chimps and gorillas, I'm reluctant to agree to it. I suppose it would depend on the research.Whenever I think of breeding humans for research, I only think of my family being taken away from me for research, and I don't like that. But, if it were happening on the other side of the planet, I wouldn't really want to be bothered about it.But, in general, I think you're probably right: I don't think humans should be bred specifically for research.----- I was talking about killing and murder specifically, though. As far as killing things goes, I am (in principle) opposed to any killing beyond the specific situations I mentioned. Additionally, I'm borderline on hunting, because hunting is necessary in some cases to maintain healthy populations and ecosystems, and I can't really blame any animal for wanting to find food, but hunting can also be unnecessarily devastating to animal populations in other situations.My views about how organisms rank in moral value will probably be different with each moral issue that's raised.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Straggler. When I say something like, "It seems okay to me, but I haven't really thought about it except to note that I am accustomed to it being this way," I don't think this counts as taking a moral stance. I feel like "taking a moral stance" refers to something more overt than this.----- Surely, if you're not disputing that my moral stance changes with each moral issue, than you will acknowledge that moral issues not related to murder should be excluded from this conversation, given that their relevance to the topic is dubious.So, there is no reason to continue discussing the breeding of things for research purposes, right?----- Can "all other things" actually be equal, Straggler?The only reasons I've given you for special pleading humans are fear for my own life or the lives of loved ones, and pressures from the society I rely on for my subsistence and livelihood.In these ways, animals are fundamentally incapable of being equal with humans: their distresses do not get translated by my human brain into potential distresses that could just as easily befall me or to humans I care about; I do not rely much on good social standing with animals for subsistence or livelihood; and I'm not even capable of perceiving any social pressures that they may be attempting to exert on my decisions, anyway.If all of these differentiating factors were absent, then I would have absolutely no problems giving the sociopath an arbitrary answer as to which of the human-animal pair should die. But, since these factors cannot be made equal, then my special pleading of humans appears to be based on little more than selfishness and cowardice.I special plead humans because I don't want to risk other humans not special pleading me in a similar situation. But, with animals, my assignments of "moral value" are a little more honest: they're not always based on what assurances or services I get out of the arrangement.If this is a moral stance in your opinion, then, yes, I generally assign more "moral value" to humans than to animals.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.