“I only care about animal rights because animals are alive”
1. Imagine seeing someone take a sledgehammer to a beautiful statue. How do you feel?
2. Someone swats a mosquito. How do you feel?
In this context, I think the word rights is doing a lot of work that your question is not capturing. While seeing someone destroy a beautiful stature would feel worse than seeing someone swat a mosquito, this in no way indicates that I care about “statue rights.” I acknowledge that the word rights is kind of fuzzy but here’s my interpretation:
I feel bad about someone destroying a beautiful statue simply because a) I find the statue beautiful and view its existence as advancing my values with respect to beauty and b) I express empathy for others who care about the statue. It doesn’t have a right to exist; I would just prefer it to and ascribe a right to living beings who have similar preferences to have those preferences remain unviolated.
I feel bad about a mosquito getting swatted insofar as the mosquito has a right to exist—because its own preferences and individual experiences merit consideration on their own grounds.
Also, do you bury or eat the dead? (Animals, not humans. What about pets?)
If you bury the dead for the sake of deceased, then you grant the dead rights—and I think many people do this. But if you bury the dead for your own sake, then you do not—you are just claiming that you have the right to bury the dead or that the alive have the right to ensure the burial of their dead bodies.
If you bury pets but not other animals, it is not the pet that has the right to be buried; it is that pet owners have the right for their pets to be buried.
Destroying a multicentruy church by dropping artillery sheels on it can be seen as a serious level norm violation even one where risking human lives to lessen it can be expected.
One could also comparer breaking a live leg vs breaking a wooden leg. Does it matter if the subject is alive? The role of serving life isn’t neccesarily connected to being live in itself.
One could argue that the level that a particular gas is a greenhouse gas could be seen as a kind of moral role giving / determination.
In this context, I think the word rights is doing a lot of work that your question is not capturing. While seeing someone destroy a beautiful stature would feel worse than seeing someone swat a mosquito, this in no way indicates that I care about “statue rights.” I acknowledge that the word rights is kind of fuzzy but here’s my interpretation:
I feel bad about someone destroying a beautiful statue simply because a) I find the statue beautiful and view its existence as advancing my values with respect to beauty and b) I express empathy for others who care about the statue. It doesn’t have a right to exist; I would just prefer it to and ascribe a right to living beings who have similar preferences to have those preferences remain unviolated.
I feel bad about a mosquito getting swatted insofar as the mosquito has a right to exist—because its own preferences and individual experiences merit consideration on their own grounds.
If you bury the dead for the sake of deceased, then you grant the dead rights—and I think many people do this. But if you bury the dead for your own sake, then you do not—you are just claiming that you have the right to bury the dead or that the alive have the right to ensure the burial of their dead bodies.
If you bury pets but not other animals, it is not the pet that has the right to be buried; it is that pet owners have the right for their pets to be buried.
Destroying a multicentruy church by dropping artillery sheels on it can be seen as a serious level norm violation even one where risking human lives to lessen it can be expected.
One could also comparer breaking a live leg vs breaking a wooden leg. Does it matter if the subject is alive? The role of serving life isn’t neccesarily connected to being live in itself.
One could argue that the level that a particular gas is a greenhouse gas could be seen as a kind of moral role giving / determination.