When you say "bound to follow the moral law" does that mean they have no free will? And are perfect moral agents? Because that isn't the case (Humans for example). You're right, humans do butcher other humans, which doesn't make us bound to follow the moral law correct?

OK so I've just searched a bunch of web sites looking for what symptoms of cannibalism are and except for kuru the human form of mad cow disease I couldn't find much.

Of course now if my house is ever raided and they check my search history not only will they be breaking down my walls and tearing up my floors looking for hidden "rooms" but
I'll have holes all over my yard as well.

Are you expecting a fundamental shift in human nature? In human biology? I don't think eating, fucking, sleeping, working, and dying are going anywhere any time soon. What do you see as being the necessary progression of Rights, and of human nature?



If all moral agents have a duty to follow moral law, they also have the right of being treated according to moral law by all other moral agents.

Yes I think what evolution has produced, while mind-blowingly complex and interesting, is exceedingly unfortunate, and I think there is nothing intrinsically preferable about the way animals currently are. If we have the technical capacity to succeed where blind Darwinian evolution failed, we should. Sensibilities regarding suffering are more well-founded than fetishization of Darwinian life.

Obviously there are major technical hurdles in accomplishing this but in years of espousing this idea I have yet to come across a good argument against it being ideologically sound, outside of knee-jerk hurrah-boo responses.



I can think of theoretical (though perhaps impossible) situations where this may not be the case. A highly advanced AI that isn't a subject of experience could be a moral agent but wouldn't need to be treated according to moral law. This obviously requires certain theories of consciousness to be true as perhaps all information processing systems have consciousness, so I don't know if it's even possible. But in theory, being a moral agent doesn't necessitate being a moral end and being a moral end doesn't necessitate being a moral agent.

I think our relationship with our nutrition is drastically going to change and very soon will be different than growing plants and raising livestock. An end of food may happen. Fucking is changing everyday, especially reproduction. Think of the future of designer babies with improved genetics. Dying has drastically changed over the past two centuries, and while people used to die in their homes surrounded by loved ones or drop over wherever they stood now people die in facilities designed for facilitating death, surrounded by technology and professional staff tending to the dying. Even the process is different to us; it was the spirit leaving the body before, and now it is a process of organs shutting down until cognitive functioning is gone. Working has definitely changed and will keep changing rapidly. Sleeping? Maybe we will figure out this dream thing and be able to do therapy in our sleep eventually.

While those fundamentals won't exactly be going anywhere, they will definitely change fundamentally from time to time.

As for duty, it is a moral duty to follow the moral law, not a legal duty. The idea of sanctioning people who do not respect the rights of others is a legal idea and not a moral idea. There needs to be a loosely agreed upon sanctioner for that to happen. Kant talked about a City of Ends, where everybody followed the moral law and legal law was unnecessary. His version of Utopia.

This post was edited by Skinned on Oct 14 2014 12:33pm

Morality is centered on reciprocity, so its very relevant.

Non-human animals are not moral agents and do not behave by human moral norms. That puts them outside the moral paradigm.

Applying these human concepts to agents outside the human frame is a mistake. It's an abuse of morality as a biological mechanism for socializing human behavior.

Yes, absolutely.

All animals need to be given personhood status.

Humans are not special.

This post was edited by inkanddagger on Oct 14 2014 12:35pm

It should be like that episode of South Park with PETA in it.

In crude evolutionary terms it's centered on reciprocity, but at its core, it's centered on doing the right thing regardless of reciprocity.

Applied universally. I think the ability to think in universals over particulars is important here as a qualitative cognitive level. Humans didn't get universals down until the beginning of recorded history.