Locustman wrote:
That's a simplistic overview. If what you're saying about the less intelligent species on the planet not having rights were true, you and I would have the moral right to kill and eat anyone whose IQs are lower than ours.
Not true. Differences in IQ does not change the fact the humans are self aware, intellectually autonomous and capable of abstraction. This is true over a wide range of IQs. For mentally ret*d or disabled people we protect them by a social convention. Which is what Rights are, a social convention. You could slice and dice a human any number of ways and not find a Right in his physical corpus. That is because Rights are abstract rules we agree to apply to humans.
We make no such agreements concerning the animals of a lower intelligence although we do have rules about inflicting pain gratuitously. In general, inflicting pain out of malice, neglect or cruelty is legally actionable in most civilized countries.
ruveyn
26 Jun 2009, 4:46 pm
