Another source of light pollution

On Fri, 02 Feb 2018 20:08:09 +0100, Paul Schlyter
wrote:

A law against cruelty to animals does not mean that animals have
rights.

From a human perspective it certainly does.

I disagree. We have laws here in my state against defacing natural
features, such as rocks or trees. Does that mean rocks and trees have
rights? I think that's stretching the definition a lot farther than it
can reasonably go.

On Fri, 02 Feb 2018 16:46:31 -0700, Chris L Peterson
wrote:
On Fri, 02 Feb 2018 19:56:58 +0100, Paul Schlyter
wrote:

On Fri, 02 Feb 2018 07:56:47 -0700, Chris L Peterson
wrote:
On Fri, 02 Feb 2018 09:31:25 +0100, Paul Schlyter
wrote:

So your rights are merely a concept in theoretical philosophy,
with
no implementation in the real world?

There is no suggestion within moral philosophy that rights are
merely
"theoretical". The question is one of what they are (the
definition
problem) and where they come from (the origin problem).

Has the definition problem been solved? Or do philosophers still
don't know what rights are?

These things are not strictly solvable, because rights are not
matters
of fact. They depend upon definitions, and because those are always
value based, there will never be agreement.

Which means that the WWII Nazis had the right to do the Holocaust:
their value system said so, and they even had laws supporting that
right.

On Fri, 02 Feb 2018 16:48:24 -0700, Chris L Peterson
wrote:
There is no legal right not to be killed

In some countries there is, but the US is not among those countries.

On Fri, 2 Feb 2018 15:22:59 -0800 (PST), Quadibloc
wrote:
On Friday, February 2, 2018 at 12:08:12 PM UTC-7, Paul Schlyter
wrote:
On Fri, 02 Feb 2018 07:58:45 -0700, Chris L Peterson
wrote:

A law against cruelty to animals does not mean that animals have
rights.

From a human perspective it certainly does.

Maybe the law against cruelty to animals is only there to allow the
authorities to have a pretext to lock up sadistic people before
they
graduate to humans, and is not there because anyone (among those
making
the laws, that is) really cares about animals.

So even the most outrageous tortures done to animals for some
legitimate
practical reason would remain perfectly legal.

You're speculating.

Also note that the reason for torture is to make the subject of the
torture suffer. When would that be a legitimate reason?

On Fri, 02 Feb 2018 16:50:09 -0700, Chris L Peterson
wrote:
On Fri, 02 Feb 2018 20:08:09 +0100, Paul Schlyter
wrote:


A law against cruelty to animals does not mean that animals have
rights.

From a human perspective it certainly does.

I disagree. We have laws here in my state against defacing natural
features, such as rocks or trees. Does that mean rocks and trees
have
rights? I think that's stretching the definition a lot farther than
it
can reasonably go.

Rocks cannot suffer. Animals can suffer.

On Saturday, February 3, 2018 at 6:59:30 AM UTC, Paul Schlyter wrote:


Which means that the WWII Nazis had the right to do the Holocaust:
their value system said so, and they even had laws supporting that
right.

Value system indeed, they borrowed directly from the empirical notion of sub-human or anthropomorphous as it was called in mid-19th century academic circles. If the Nazi ideology was an application then the operating system is Darwin.

“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.� Darwin

What was anthropomorphous in the 19th century (negroes, aborigines, famine Irish) became untermensch (Jews, disabilities) in the 20th century and foetus (developing child) in the 21st century and each term bound by extermination or the turning of a life into a corpse for some political/social excuse..

On Saturday, February 3, 2018 at 12:07:19 AM UTC-7, Paul Schlyter wrote:
On Fri, 2 Feb 2018 15:22:59 -0800 (PST), Quadibloc
wrote:
On Friday, February 2, 2018 at 12:08:12 PM UTC-7, Paul Schlyter
wrote:
On Fri, 02 Feb 2018 07:58:45 -0700, Chris L Peterson
wrote:

A law against cruelty to animals does not mean that animals have
rights.

From a human perspective it certainly does.

Maybe the law against cruelty to animals is only there to allow the
authorities to have a pretext to lock up sadistic people before
they
graduate to humans, and is not there because anyone (among those
making
the laws, that is) really cares about animals.

So even the most outrageous tortures done to animals for some
legitimate
practical reason would remain perfectly legal.

You're speculating.

Can you say "LD50"? I knew you could.

In any case, since I am responding to the claim (law against cruelty
to animals) -- (animals have rights), I don't need to prove that my
proposed rationale for laws similar to those we have now is the actual
one, as to refute that claim, I only need to show that it is not
necessarily true in all _possible_ cases.

John Savard

On Saturday, February 3, 2018 at 12:09:29 AM UTC-7, Paul Schlyter wrote:

Rocks cannot suffer. Animals can suffer.

That's true. But since there are laws against defacing rocks, although
rocks, because they can't suffer, can't have rights, then while
animals could have rights, because they can suffer, for animals to
have rights is still not a necessary condition for a law against
cruelty to animals to exist.

That law could have been enacted based on a rationale which did not
involve ascribing rights to animals.

Possible such rationales:

Humans form emotional attachments to animals. Threats to injure their pets, therefore, could be used for blackmail; thus, laws governing the treatment of animals need to be more severe than other laws relating to damage to property in order to more effectively deter such actions.

Animals are living beings that resemble humans. A law prohibiting cruelty to animals gives the authorities the power to intervene when someone with sadistic tendencies begins to practice his arts on animals which are easier targets than humans.

It is sufficiently unclear as to whether animals have rights that at least some voters either think they have rights, or at least that their interests have some value. A law accommodating this belief doesn't restrict individual liberty in a significant way, and so is a useful investment in social harmony, given a diverse, pluralistic society.

So there are all kinds of scenarios under which a society could fail
to acknowledge that animals have rights, and yet enact a law against
cruelty to animals. (Whether or not they do in fact have rights,
however, is too complicated a question for me to really begin to wade
into.)

John Savard

On Saturday, February 3, 2018 at 3:42:30 AM UTC-7, Gerald Kelleher wrote:
On Saturday, February 3, 2018 at 6:59:30 AM UTC, Paul Schlyter wrote:

Which means that the WWII Nazis had the right to do the Holocaust:
their value system said so, and they even had laws supporting that
right.

Value system indeed,

You do realize, I hope, that he was being sarcastic, and he, like
you, opposes the notion that cultural relativism can embrace the
Nazi Holocaust.

John Savard

On Sat, 03 Feb 2018 07:59:26 +0100, Paul Schlyter
wrote:

Which means that the WWII Nazis had the right to do the Holocaust:
their value system said so, and they even had laws supporting that
right.

To the extent they could create, enforce, and ensure that right,
certainly. The larger society they were part of did not recognize that
right, however, viewed them as criminals, and punished them as such.