As long as it remains an unanswered question, it is best to act as if the answer is yes… wouldn’t you think?
But the same goes for slavery. Some one prioritizes the labor value of someone else over that persons own values.
There is no hard logic that says a human is inherently more valuable than an animal.
In the end there is only the objectively arbitrary decision that says all men are made equal, and animals are less. That is evidently not totally true, many people are cruel and heinous, and animals aren’t nearly as heinous, but it is a moral idea that works well to create a flourishing society.
Then again Rome and Greece flourished too and produced many great values.
In the end it seems to be about power. Equality of all humans was created by powerful politician-philosophers.
There is ‘hard’ logic here, we are human and we self-value as being human because that is what we are. Valuing other humans as human too is a logical extension of valuing ourselves as human, the values-as-human-values logically transfer to other humans too.
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I don’t think so, I certainly don’t see any categories of species included in ontology or pure logic.
And experientially, I certainly feel related more to some animals than I do to some humans. It would be more natural for me to kill certain humans than to kill a dolphin.
Also, humans cannot be directly equated to cows. There is a very real sense in which humans are MORE than cows. Even though both cows and humans have value.
Thats not logically provable though, it is a value judgment based on certain valued properties. Hindus see it differently.
I believe it is (onto)logically easyto see that humans are more than cows. I would question anyone who thinks they are no better and no more than a cow.
Then what is that logic?
What are the objective values on which you base it?
You can question the hindus but that doesnt make for logical refutation.
In the end its just value judgments.
Which are what reality is made of, including scientific objectivity, which is an aggregate.
I was sadder to see my cats die than I would be to see virtually any politician die.
To me these cats were absolutely More.
My cats were more beautifully conscious than say, Chuck Schumer. They created more good.
As for cows I happen to value their meat more than their lives, but I doubt find that to be grounded in logic. Its just taste.
Scope of consciousness, understanding, conception, emotions, spiritual access, intelligence, philosophy, language, art, music, ranges of pleasure and meaning, civilization, learning, self-awareness and self-actualization, civilizational growth and a future, etc etc
Yes I certainly understand this too.
I would never kill or eat a cat.
That just goes for certain humans. Not for the kind that fills congress. They are unemotional, hardly conscious, unartistic, numb, meaningless uncivilized trash lower than most mammals.
Strangely we have evolved to value such trash, and that speaks against the objective value of humans.
I think that the best humans are higher than animals, but not humans in general
-and still, the qualities you mention are human values. Not logical ones. I dont even know what a logical value is, except ‘value’ itself.
The only somewhat logical criterium for the value of a creature that I can recognize is how deeply that creature can value.
Well, logically speaking, to have more of any of those things I listed is, objectively, to be greater in those terms. And I would argue that each of the things I mentioned is valuable and good either inherently or in the net positive.
In what ways are cows greater or more valuable than humans? Can you form a list for cows like I did for humans?
No, but Im not a Hindu. They find them angelic, I believe.
For dolphins, I can see that they have levels of joy hard to access for most humans.
And like I said all humans don’t have these qualities. Many are quite numb, uncreative and automatic, not to mention sickly cruel and dumb. That accounts for a good part of human history.
I never believed in humanity as a single coherent category.
So again, I think the best humans are more valuable than most or perhaps even all animals, but not humans in general. Or maybe even in general, Im not sure about that, but not as a hard category including all humans. So not definitionally.
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I wouldn’t claim humans are MORE VALUABLE than animals, only that humans HAVE MORE VALUES than animals do (generally speaking)… or in line with what I wrote at BTL: values have more humans than animals, or: more values have humans than have animals.
Humans are MORE in ontological senses and existential, phenomenological sense as I listed above, compared to animals which lack most of those things. They exist in greater dimensions and ways in terms of these aspects. I am certainly open to the idea that animals exist in greater dimensions and ways in terms of other aspects, than humans do. I just am not very familiar with what that list would look like (spiritual purity? lack of evil? closeness to nature?)
That is probably true.
Related question - Should we rank human societies by the amount and depth of values they have, or by whether or not they are humanist?
Is a dulled and dumbed down humanist society better than a vital classical one?
“I am certainly open to the idea that animals exist in greater dimensions and ways in terms of other aspects, than humans do. I just am not very familiar with what that list would look like (spiritual purity? lack of evil? closeness to nature?)”
Who knows what kind of beauties dolphins create telepathically… what kind of inner world large brained sea mammals have.
By another criterion, most mammals in general seem to lack most of the evils of man which causes so many to see life as suffering.
If Buddha felt that life is suffering, was he not lower than the average joyful housecat? Probably not, he brought a lot to the world.
I agree with you about the plenitude of values as a criterium.