| I'm going to try to put in writing some coherent thoughts about this. I apologise on beforehand if it seems like rambling.
First of all, as might be clear from what went before, I do believe that humanity is a "superior" (for want of a better word) species. Not because of the reli-reasons that Chim mentioned, but based on its evolutionary success.
- no single species has so successfully adapted to as wide a range of and diverse number of environments, going from tropical rainforests over deserts to arctic lands to name the more extreme.
- when not adapting to the environment, humanity has adapted the environment on a large scale.
- there is not a single species of animal that can be considered a direct threat to humanity's survival (apart from humanity itself). But on the contrary, humanity is a threat to the survival of many other specieses.
Added to that:
- It's almost unique vulnerability and helplessness during a large part of its life is the strong point of humanity: it allows for flexibility in the types of behaviours and skills and whatever the young can learn: more needs to be learned by the young but at the same time this allows for a larger range of behaviour to be possibly learned (this of course, necessitates the intelligence and communication skills that some say set us apart). Societies & cultures can change more rapidly and drastically than genes and changes in behaviour more rapidly acquired and more easily varied. Other specieses come with far more of their behaviour patterns hardwired from birth, which allows for less flexibility and adaptation and thus a greater need for change through the genome.
- As far as I can see humanity is the only species that can consider the consequences of its actions in the long term and in the long range.
- Rights and responsibilities, two sides of the same coin, can be agreed upon amongst humans, but not amongst mammals (or tetrapods, or vertebrates) by lack of interspecies communication but also I believe, unless one can proof to me the contrary, by the absence of any capacity to fathom even the least concept of these by the other animals. So what ever we divise amongst these lines, it will have only meaning to us (even if it has consequences for the other specieses).
Now does that mean that I think that we can use animals however we please? No.
Two points:
- On the larger scale: as we are the only species that can consider the consequences of its action on a large time & space scale, we have a responsibility to balance the utility of these actions with the damage done. And I believe also that a diversity of life forms is a good thing to have around.
- On a smaller scale, we know that many animals can suffer. And I think we all believe that suffering (however much an enriching experience it might be for some of us) is in the end a negative thing not to be foisted on any living being without there being an extremely good reason.
Now from thereon I would start to build up my ethics regarding humanity's rules of engagement towards the rest of "creation".  |