I missed this yesterday. Stephen Green presents the best strategy, ever, for showing up to a debate about animal rights.
The ensuing discussion on Stephen's post includes this comment: *
Further, what is it that gives dogs or any other animal "rights?" Did they fight and sacrifice for those rights? Did their ancestors debate the meaning of freedom or what it was to be a person? No, of course not. To exercise rights (not on an individual level, but in a more general sense), there has to be the capacity to understand and protect those rights--and understand and protect the responsibilities that come with them.
As I have pointed about before (people think I'm kidding about this, but I'm not; at least, not always) we might well live to see the day when computers will argue among themselves about what rights, if any, humans should have. Some go so far as to argue that we should be lavishing rights on animals now to set a good example. After all, if we currently don't view animals as worthy of rights, how can we expect post-singularity intelligences to give them to us?
John Smart suggests that this is a bad analogy, however. The superintelligences won't view us the way we do animals; we'll be so slow and stupid compared to them that it makes more sense to think of us as plants. Anybody for plant's rights out there? Any vegans? Anyone?
That's too hard, I think. It may very well be true, but it's difficult to go on with any discussion at that point. If we are as plants to them, there is precious little point in our trying to get our heads around the thought processes that they will employ in deciding what to do with us. (This is also true if we are as Shih Tzus or Cocker Spaniels to them; but like our pets, we can at least pretend to understand what's going on.)We're at their mercy.
We should be humane in our treatment of animals, all animals. We are in a position to show them more kindness than nature is likely to or than they would show each other if left to their own devices. I think we should show animals kindness not because they have the right to expect it, but because our being kind is the best thing for both them and us. From their standpoint, the benefits of our kindness are obvious.
The benefits to us? I'm just predisposed to think that kindness is a good direction for us to go in an evolutionary sense. I can't prove it, but I believe it. (And no, in saying that we should be kind to animals, I am not contradicting my endorsement of Stephen's debate strategy. His gruffness isn't really aimed at animals. It's aimed at people. We should be kind to them, too, but we have struggled for and earned the right to free speech. That sometimes gives us the right to say things that are offensive to others. Thus the blogosphere.)
Anyway, I think the argument quoted above is a good basis for determining our approach to animal rights, and I hope that our descendants use something similar in deciding how to deal with us. On that basis, what rights do dogs have? What rights have they struggled for? From an evolutionary standpoint, they have struggled for the right to exist. All species have done that, and we should respect it. The basic right that animals have is to exist and to evolve. Moreover, dogs have struggled — on their own at first, but later with us taking charge of the relationship — to be friends with humanity. Our histories are linked. Dogs have earned the right to be part of the human story.
In relation to animals, we also have certain rights. We have evolved to consume animals for food and to make other uses of them. We have the same right to eat meat as a lion does to eat a zebra. We have the same right to use animals to work for us and to provide us other products as a mouse does to build a nest in our homes. We also have the right to get rid of the mouse. (The species has earned the right to exist; individual mice have not.) If, out of kindness, we choose to live symbiotically with the mouse or to dispose of it in as humane a way as possible, I think we're on the right track. We want to temper the exercise of our rights with as much kindness as we can. But if we decide that the mouse has rights equal to or greater than our own, we are arguing with the very evolutionary processes that enable us to make the argument. In other words, if the mouse had rights equal to ours, it would be able to argue for them itself.
So if we're lucky, the AIs will grant us the right to exist (as a species if not as individuals; that's a little worrying), the right to develop and improve ourselves, and — I hope — the right to be friends with them and to be part of their ongoing story, even if only in the same sense that my potted fern is an ongoing part of my story.
* The comment came from our good friend, Zombyboy, who has more on animal rights over on his blog.
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