Animal Rights
gregladen | June 11, 2015We hear this all the time. Pig physiology is like people physiology. Pigs and humans have the same immune system, same digestive system, get the same diseases. Pigs are smart like people are smart. Pigs are smarter than dogs. And so on. Ask a faunal expert in archaeology or a human paleoanatomist: Pig teeth are notoriously like human teeth, when fragmented. Chances are most of these alleged similarities are overstated, or are simply because we are all mammals. Some are because we happen to have similar diets (see below). None of these similarities occur because of a shared common…
gregladen | June 20, 2012Duluth, a second tier Minnesota city on Lake Superior, has been flooding. This is a little unusual; heavy rains following a period of saturation have caused a local river that is usually not even heard of to grow very large and cause flooding that a lot of people haven't seen before.
The polar bear and the seal were able to leave their enclosures in the high water. The bear was darted and is safely put away somewhere, the seal is said to have taken a stroll around the neighborhood. But the barn animals, apparently including cattle, ovicaprids, and donkey have all perished in the flood.
This…
gregladen | November 18, 2011Tradition. Not just a song from Fiddler on the Roof.
You know the refrain: "The Papa, the Papa! Tradition." It's a great play but it is firmly rooted in the patriarchy, as "tradition" often is.
There are many ways to define "tradition" and we can look it up somewhere and have a flameware over dictionary meanings if you want. But instead I'll tell you what I think the word means, roughly, generally, and subject to revision.
First, "tradition" is a feature of culture that simply refers to practices that are habitual. A subset of "traditions" are formalized or regularized, like holidays in…
gregladen | March 25, 2010.... Continued ....
So, what rights to what animals get?
When Charlton Heston's character in Planet of the Apes came across that great edifice of Western Civilization and realized that the old Orangutan was right ... humans are fundamentally destructive of themselves and their near relatives ... he replicated in the fictional future what Louis and Mary Leakey did when they came across the skull of Zinjanthropus at Olduvai Gorge, in the 1950s, at a spot now memorialized by the famous Olduvai Plinth. Well the Leakeys thought they were looking at a human ancestor at the time, and therefore…
gregladen | March 21, 2010Continued from Part 1 ...
Animal rights are arbitrarily granted or assumed
If human rights are arbitrarily assigned, so are animal rights. The argument has been made that animals with certain properties ... sentience (the definition of which moves somewhat), phylogenetic closeness to humans, or the ability to feel pain, etc. ... should share some protections against painful procedures, death, or being caged because of those properties. Sorry, but no. While it could be argued that the more human a non-human animal is the more like humans they should be treated, that simplistic view in and of…
gregladen | March 20, 2010What rights should be afforded non-human animals, to which animals, under what circumstances, and why? What are the criteria for such decisions? What should those who disagree with the status quo do?
In my view, some rights should be given to some animals, depending on circumstances. I believe the criteria for this decision are more arbitrary than one might think, but a phylogenetic (anthrocentric) model is arguably useful for some, but not all decisions. Individuals involved in the discussion often inappropriately characterize the positions of others at the expense of reaching some kind…