How many dogs would it need to be before the dogs live’s are worth more than a human life?
Or cats, how many cats should it take to equal a human being?
How many cats is a horse worth?
I find this question difficult.
You might be interested in the following exchange:
egs.edu/faculty/peter-singer … al-rights/
I think it’s dangerous to consider that there is a point when a number of dog lives is worth more than a human life.
However, if I had to make a choice between killing a serial killer/rapist (for whom we know is guilty of crimes) and my own pets, I’d rather kill the bastard.
It becomes even more complicated with primates.
I think that usually what matters the most when deciding our moral behavior towards others is how deep emotional suffering is one capable of, and how intelligent of a life-form it is (which usually goes hand in hand), in other words, to what extent can we identify with the other.
To be honest, if I was ever in such a situation I’d let my intuition decide, overthinking it could prove counter-produtive.
If they want to live, compared to a plant that doesn’t seem to want anything, then maybe we could sacrifice plants for the sake of animals and humans. Lab rats at least have a purpose or meaning. Selling leather and furs is no longer recessary in our present economy. We over-eat on meat. The excuses for killing something can be thin at times. I’m not into that hippy crap about not killing your own enemies, etc. but we don’t live in that kind of world.
It’s not numbers; it’s degrees of separation. Most (normal, moderately sensitive) people find it easier to kill a dandelion than a grasshopper; easier to kill a fish than a rabbit; easier to kill a deer than a chimpanzee. Dogs and cats are a special case, since we tend to raise pets to “honorary human” status: familiarity and personal affection erases several degrees of genetic distance. We also get a little disoriented by size: we tend to respect large animals more than small and we tend to value rarity (even if we ourselves made them scarce.) And, of course, none of these attitudes are shared by all humans.
There is nothing rational about our attitude to other species; it’s about self-interest, tradition and culture.
That’s a huge problem when society basically says they follow the golden rule, but in reality, they do the opposite of the golden rule.
The golden rule is for “the meek”. They’ll inherit the Earth when the aggressive are through with it.
PS If it’s not a personal question - What’s that exotic little skunk?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotted_skunk
You figure the aggressive / nasty will destroy itself or undo itself somehow?
Zorillo - love it!
Of course the aggressive will destroy themselves; that’s what they do. Unfortunately, they trash everything else. By the time we inherit, the Earth will be barely, if at all, habitable.
My dog is worth more than a stranger in Pakistan.
All the dogs in the world are worth less than my mother.
In other words, pure utilitarian calculus doesn’t work.
The argument is whether or not life has finite value, and how we would deal with that.
Yeah, it doesn’t. The value of a life depends on who is considering that life. Your life has more or less value to different people.
Would it be better or would it be worse if everything and a natural, true and absolute value?
We pass judgements and take actions according to our will and judgement.
It’s important to have justice in a society, if justice is a good thing, which at least some would agree.
Judgement becomes impossible if we simply make up values out of the air.
Value is a human idea.
Other animals form emotional attachments and have priorities, but they don’t think in terms of this many acorns for that big a burrow-hole. They protect the individuals they love, whether of the same or another species, whether blood kin or friend. They try to improve the odds of themselves and their family surviving.
Absolute value is impossible: all evaluation is more or less subjective, more or less situational, more or less biased. However, a general standard of ethics might be worth striving for. Something like the UN declaration of human rights, only for all species and landscapes.
After we start implementing the former, we might get to work on the latter. …
…sure, and the pig flew over the moon.
Is an absolute star impossible?
Is an absolute water drop impossible?
Or what about things that are both relative and absolute?
It’s hard to imagine how that would work. I know people like Peter Singer claim to believe it. To me, there seems to be something fundamentally evil about having no greater regard for your mother or lover or brother than for a complete stranger- assuming your relationship with them is the way we expect them to generally be, of course. People can become estranged.
I'm not saying these values are arbitrary, or that we make them up as we go. Relationships are real, objective things. If your mother spent 18 years raising you in a loving home, then that's a real thing that happened, and it creates real obligations, expectations, and so on that generate value. It is [i]actually true[/i] that your mother is worth more to you than a stranger, you don't pick it.
Another example would be a societal role. Imagine you’re a fireman. You get paid to be a fireman, when there’s a fireman’s ball you are allowed in, when somebody says “I sure do like firemen” you say “That’s me!” and get respect.
If there’s a fire, and you say “Meh, I’m busy”, then you’ve violated something real. A doctor or a farmer who doesn’t help put out a fire isn’t as guilty as a fireman who doesn’t help, because they didn’t take upon themselves the relationship with society of ‘being a fireman’.
You just have to know how to do it right.
I don’t know. Show me a star in a telescope (no computer-enhanced images!) and I still won’t be able to tell you whether it’s still there.
Maybe not, but there are so many varying specimens loose in the world that you’d need a standard version enshrined at the BIPM in order to refer to an absolute.
Nudity? Hot sauce? Money? Goats?
Even very large physical objects that change very slowly are only relatively stable. Nothing is absolute. Relations and processes in the natural world that are universally known are nevertheless impossible for different observers at different times to describe in the same way. Concepts that exist only in the human mind are subject to interpretation that differs by language, cultural bias, perspective, available information, philosophical bent and personal inclination. No concept is the same in two minds or two situations.
The most you can hope for an approximate general understanding and consensus.
You don’t seem to be doing any calculus here. Your statements are emotive. Utilitarianism isn’t about the greater good for any one individual, it’s about the greater good for greater number of people. If you make an attempt to look at the facts objectively, I think you’ll find that your conclusions will often differ from your initial emotional responses. For example, I love my mother more than every dog in the world by far, but I’m not so sure she is actually more valuable in terms of the greater good when you consider all the good dogs do for so many people.
Depends on the dog and the human.