Do animals have rights? This is how the question is usually put. It sounds like a useful, ground-clearing way to start. (1) Actu

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问题    Do animals have rights? This is how the question is usually put. It sounds like a useful, ground-clearing way to start. (1) Actually, it isn’t, because it assumes that there is an agreed account of human rights, which is something the world does not have.
    On one view of rights, to be sure, it necessarily follows that animals have done. (2) Some philosophers argue that rights exist only within a social contract, as part of an exchange of duties and entitlements. Therefore, animals cannot have rights. The idea of punishing a tiger that kills somebody is absurd, for exactly the same reason, so is the idea that tigers have rights. However, this is only one account, and by no means an uncontested one. It denies rights not only to animals but also to some people—for instance, to infants, the mentally incapable and future generations. In addition, it is unclear what force a contract can have for people who never consented to it: how do you reply to somebody who says “I don’t like this contract”?
    The point is this: without agreement on the rights of people, arguing about the rights of animals is fruitless. (3) It leads the discussion to extremes at the outset: it invites you to think that animals should be treated either with consideration humans extend to other humans, or with no consideration at all. This is a false choice. Better to start with another, more fundamental question: is this the way we treat animals a moral issue at all?
    Many deny it. (4) Arguing from the point of view that humans are different from animals in every relevant respect, extremists of this kind think that animals lie outside the area of moral choice. Any regard for the suffering of animals is seen as a mistake—a sentimental displacement of feeling that should properly be directed to other humans.
    This view, which holds that torturing a monkey is morally equivalent to chopping wood, may seem bravely "logical" . In fact it is simply shallow: the confused center is right to reject it. The most elementary form of moral reasoning—the ethical equivalent of learning to crawl—is to weigh others’ interests against one’s own. This in turn requires sympathy and imagination: without which there is no capacity for moral thought. To see an animal in pain is enough, for most, to engage sympathy. (5) When that happens, it is not a mistake: it is mankind’s instinct for moral reasoning in action, an instinct that should be encouraged rather than laughed at.

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答案 1.实际上并非如此,因为它是以存在一种对人权的一致解释这一假定为基础的,而这个世界并不存在这种解释。 2.有些哲学家论证说,权利仅存在于社会契约中,作为责任与应得的权利相互交换的一部分。 3.它从一开始就将讨论引向两个极端,引导人们认为对待动物,要么像人对人那样关心体贴,要么就一点儿也不关心体贴。 4.极端主义者依据人在各有关方面有别于动物为理由,争辩说:应将动物排除于道德考虑之外。 5.这种反应发生时,并不是一种错误,而是人类用道德观念进行推理的本能在起作用。这种本能应该受到鼓励,而不是嘲笑。

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