The common theme that runs through these posts is the lack of respect that humans have for the environment. In prompt four, my response had to do with this idea of speciesism. Speciesism is the idea of giving different values and rights to living things based off of what species they belong to. All animals regardless of what species they descend from have inherent rights. HUmans should not be allowed to assign animals and different species different rights or rights of lesser value because we look at other species as lacking a sense of rationality and ability to function and interact in daily life.
My response in prompt 5 argues against the idea of speciesism by mention what i have just mentioned in the above couple of sentences.
My position through these two posts as well as many of the other ones have stayed rather consistent. I fully believe that animals should be given equal protection. Not only is it a moral and ethical issue, but the greater good of nature and our environment is in jeopardy. Humans are oblivious to the fact that we are essentially destroying our environment little by little. We dont realize it, but we are hurting ourselves because we are breaking down nature and parts of the ecosystem with our actions. Eventually, at some point all of the things that we get from nature and the environment that allow us to go about our daily lives and that help us to function will be limited and then subsequently gone.
Some of my later posts have reinforced the ideas that I had in the beginning of this class. Like i said, I think i have stayed pretty consistent and just built on the ideas that I had initially. I've been able to pinpoint and define where I stand on environmental issues since my early posts.
http://leahheis.blogspot.com/2012/01/prompt-4.html
http://leahheis.blogspot.com/2012/01/prompt-5.html
response to: http://parenethical.com/phil149win12/prompt-12-connecting-the-parts/
Nice post :] I admire your feeling of consistency throughout the class as I feel as if I've been somewhat all over the board at different times! I must say I disagree with the ethics of treating animals and humans equally (see my blog lol) We aren't equal. Nor do we occupy the same biological niches. What makes us think that in order for something to feel as if it's treated fairly we must subscribe it to our system of right and wrong? Given our track records with war, etc we don't do very well with that. Isn't it an inherently speciesist idea that we believe in order to give something value we must treat it the way humans think is right? We're all different and I don't think we'll ever be able to say concretely what's right for another species based on what we feel is right for ourselves.
ReplyDeleteI feel like I was in the same boat as you with staying pretty consistent on how I felt about the topics discussed during this class. I feel like animals deserve rights but I also feel like nature deserves some respect as well. It's hard to choose between two such difficult causes, but ultimately, I decided that ecological ethics is more important that individual ethics, which rejects specieism as well. Animals definitely have inherent rights, but I believe they vary by degrees. I would be curious to know which ethic you felt closest to - animal or ecological. You had said that animals are worthy of righs not only because it's an issue of ethics and morals but because the greater good of nature was in jeopardy. It's interesting you see it this way. It seems like you see it being a top-down approach whereas I see it down-top, but we still feel the same way about the issue haha.
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