🚀 go-pugleaf

I wish to extend Mr. Rudman's point a bit. Moral progress within western
civ has always be achieved by an extension of rights to those previously
thought to be outside the moral community of those in power. "Savages"
were considered souless, and recently, God doesn't hear the prayers of
Jews. The nonreligious are constantly striving to develop a moral context
that carries no reference to god or religious dogma. In the past, justice
and fairness were considered constructs of christians or white europeans.
Whether other species have these concepts in unclear, but it does seem
certain that if they do, they are not the same as ours.

I agree with Rudman that this is no reason to exclude other species from
the moral construct of rights.

Some philosphers have used Heideggers concept of Being to extend rights to
anything that exists. The quality of existence in and of itself may give a
being certain rights. There is a precedence for this even in puritan
ethics and american pioneer ethics-the concept that waste is immoral. We
teach our children that it is wrong to destroy something wantonly, even if
it is cheap and no one particularly wants it. (I concede that we perhaps
have not taught this concept as well as we ought). Whether this precept is
a granting of rights to this "something" is not clear, but it could be
extended to this.

This front is a perhaps esoteric philosophical one and may not be useful
to the masses that have been mentioned. I think an additional argument is
a clear recontructuring of what humans value. Somewhere, I believe, inside
everyone, is that valueing of wilderness, of something greater and more
mysterious than oneself, of the Other. Awakening this valueing is perhaps
the most important thing we can do to win allies. Such programs as taking
inner city children on backpacking trips, the dissemination of wilderness
photos and literature, etc. Human beings need a reference point outside
themselves in order to know themselves and define themselves and knowing
oneself has always been a peculiarly and importantly human endeavor.