As i read through Silliman's second and third installments in his book sentience and sensibility, i came across the idea of equality within categories and equalities between categories introduced by one of his characters; Manuel. This stirred up some thoughts in my head and i decided to make it the topic of my next blog entry.
Why do we have to categorize things into different groups? As a scientist, or better yet a student in field of science, i understand that grouping plants and animals under kingdoms,phylum, orders, families and so on help us identify and study them but i don't see why we have to let this segregation affect our moral value and thus morality! We,differentiate these organisms and to some extent support speciesism; organisms on higher evolutionary levels like the angiosperms (flowering plants) and vertebrae (vertebrates) tend to take their evolution as synonymous to superiority. This is topic for a different conversation and maybe a different blog so back to my focus here.
Manuel; one of Silliman's characters in his book talks of equality within categories rather than equality of categories and i disagree with the former and agree with the latter because i think the former to some degree justifies or supports speciecism and is against all what animal ethicist and other equal right activists stand for. To my understanding, equality within categories talks of treating all members of lets say the Canis familiaris (domestic dogs) be it a poodle, pitbull, German Shepard, terrier, retriever and what ever specie we keep as company equally. Meanwhile, equality of all categories at least to my understanding talks of treating members of the the Canis familiaris (domestic dogs) and the Canis lupus (wolves) fairly.
If this is the case then why does an individual of Manuel's stature; one who talks of sentience for rudimentary organism and value for plants and inanimate talk of or at least support subjective equality? Shouldn't we be in favor for an equality that treats all species of the dog fairly, shouldn't we support equality for all animals and not subject some to laboratory usage (guinea pigs and mice) and hold others ( cats and dogs) dear to our hearts? Better yet, why do we even have these categories? Why don't we regard dogs (wolves, foxes, domestic dogs and even hyenas), cats ( domestic cats, lions, jagaurs, sabre-tooths and cheetahs) and mammals (whales, humans, horses, bats) simply as what they are; ANIMALS and treat all equally!!!!
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2 comments:
"...shouldn't we support equality for all animals and not subject some to laboratory usage (guinea pigs and mice) and hold others ( cats and dogs) dear to our hearts? Better yet, why do we even have these categories? Why don't we regard dogs (wolves, foxes, domestic dogs and even hyenas), cats ( domestic cats, lions, jagaurs, sabre-tooths and cheetahs) and mammals (whales, humans, horses, bats) simply as what they are; ANIMALS and treat all equally!!!!"
You raise some important questions here, most notably the justification for distinguishing levels of value -- and therefore degrees of human obligation -- within the animal kingdom. Silliman's position is this: while all sentient nonhumans are deserving of equal consideration of similar interests, some animals possess a greater variety and number of interests/capacities that, when added to the mix, make their interests trump the interests of less complex beings when (and only when) the two are in conflict. So, concretely, if I must choose between saving a dog or a mouse, all other (extra-moral, extra-intrinsic-value related) considerations aside, I must choose the dog.
thanks for your comment; it certainly makes things clearer!
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