Zero Beat
Cognitive Scientist
First and foremost, let's define a few words and possibly save us useless arguments. I'll just do a mini debate with myself and clear things out:
Privilege and rights. Privileges are different from rights.
Privilege= something you're granted by a higher power. The word comes form privi lege, it means PRIVate law; Lege like legislaiton. Rights are something you just *have*.
Privileges are something you are granted by a higher power. Therefore, this debate will focus on rights between the two. (human/dolphins)
Objective: Find what gives humans rights. Apply the same rules to dolphins. See if they stick. If they do, dolphins have rights.
Obviously, rule one is you have to be intelligent. Plants do not have rights and neither do rocks. Therefore, dolphins and humans both satisfy this. Rule two: You have to be self-aware. If you don't even recognize that you exist and what you are, you probably won't be able to recognize that there are certain things you shouldn't do, right?/pun
Then there's a lot of other rules that are pretty much givens in this universe. You have to be able to be injured or costed something. If nothing anyone else ever did could hurt you, you wouldn't need rights. **** like that, which apply equally.
I'll also make it a point that just because two people don't speak the same language does not mean one may murder the other, much as Americans may think so! By the same token, just because dolphins don't speak english doesn't change the possibility of them having rights. Given these facts, the default position is that dolphins do have rights, until it can be proven that they do not. <<Point of the opposition I hope to have in this topic.(If not i'll gladly close it)
Possible counter arguments while playing devil's advocate with myself:
Some people say that dolphins **** and murder, which is true, but so do humans, that's why we have short words for each of those issues. What do I mean by short words, some of you may ask.
Well, we have a short word for acetylsalycitic acid. We call it "asprin." We have a short word for the act of depriving another person of their ability to continue functioning as a person. We call it "murder." Some words are used to build larger ideas, some words are simply larger ideas. We don't really bother making short words for things we never have to think about, and we never have to think about things that never happen. If murder never happened, we wouldn't have a word for it, we'd call it the act of depriving blah blah blah..Anyway, yeah, "Humans **** andmurder too."
Another argument I thought about:
Some objections are of the structure that suddenly there's a fuzzy line if you accept dolphins having rights, do dogs have rights? Pigs? Chickens? Horses? In which case the question is, is an arbitrary line better than a fuzzy line? Knowing the DH, the likely answer would be no, arbitrary lines are teh ghey. Fuzzy lines at least give you a more realistic idea where the line is.
Note: This thread is as useless as the free will topic but in the spirit of some activity, and perhaps even kicking off the Devil's Advocate idea by RDK, let's give it a try. However, don't disagree without merit -_-. If we all come to a conclusion, I won't mind closing the thread.
Privilege and rights. Privileges are different from rights.
Privilege= something you're granted by a higher power. The word comes form privi lege, it means PRIVate law; Lege like legislaiton. Rights are something you just *have*.
Privileges are something you are granted by a higher power. Therefore, this debate will focus on rights between the two. (human/dolphins)
Objective: Find what gives humans rights. Apply the same rules to dolphins. See if they stick. If they do, dolphins have rights.
Obviously, rule one is you have to be intelligent. Plants do not have rights and neither do rocks. Therefore, dolphins and humans both satisfy this. Rule two: You have to be self-aware. If you don't even recognize that you exist and what you are, you probably won't be able to recognize that there are certain things you shouldn't do, right?/pun
Then there's a lot of other rules that are pretty much givens in this universe. You have to be able to be injured or costed something. If nothing anyone else ever did could hurt you, you wouldn't need rights. **** like that, which apply equally.
I'll also make it a point that just because two people don't speak the same language does not mean one may murder the other, much as Americans may think so! By the same token, just because dolphins don't speak english doesn't change the possibility of them having rights. Given these facts, the default position is that dolphins do have rights, until it can be proven that they do not. <<Point of the opposition I hope to have in this topic.(If not i'll gladly close it)
Possible counter arguments while playing devil's advocate with myself:
Some people say that dolphins **** and murder, which is true, but so do humans, that's why we have short words for each of those issues. What do I mean by short words, some of you may ask.
Well, we have a short word for acetylsalycitic acid. We call it "asprin." We have a short word for the act of depriving another person of their ability to continue functioning as a person. We call it "murder." Some words are used to build larger ideas, some words are simply larger ideas. We don't really bother making short words for things we never have to think about, and we never have to think about things that never happen. If murder never happened, we wouldn't have a word for it, we'd call it the act of depriving blah blah blah..Anyway, yeah, "Humans **** andmurder too."
Another argument I thought about:
Some objections are of the structure that suddenly there's a fuzzy line if you accept dolphins having rights, do dogs have rights? Pigs? Chickens? Horses? In which case the question is, is an arbitrary line better than a fuzzy line? Knowing the DH, the likely answer would be no, arbitrary lines are teh ghey. Fuzzy lines at least give you a more realistic idea where the line is.
Note: This thread is as useless as the free will topic but in the spirit of some activity, and perhaps even kicking off the Devil's Advocate idea by RDK, let's give it a try. However, don't disagree without merit -_-. If we all come to a conclusion, I won't mind closing the thread.