All animals are part of the animal kingdom. All animals have consciousness. The same in kind (kin, kingdom of animal), difference in degrees (consciousness power). All animals have subjective preferences. All animals, think, feel and act. No matter how much the intellectuals that many anarchists or voluntarists want to appeal to their "authoritative" arguments in order to deny these realities and how our actions affects others, these realities can't be denied. Their arguments are constricted and limited through denial of reality and have not formulated a consistent philosophy.
Morality is a concept of how to value our actions with higher order consciousness abstraction of concepts. Nonhuman animals lack this higher order degree of consciousness. This does not negate their subjective valuations, their thought, emotions and actions.
Morality is a concept for us to understand how OUR actions affect OTHERS. It's not a concept to deny how our actions affect others simply because they are nonhuman. Morality applies to our actions across-the-board, whole-scale, now to the narrow selective application of human-only perceptions.
If you want to fantasize and deny that animals are their own bodies, their own property, then you can continue to deny obvious reality and live in fantasy.
Survival is not a justification for morality. Survival does not dictate morality. Morality is supposed to dictate our choices for survival. Choosing to do something to survive does not make it a de facto moral action. Someone tells you to kill someone or else they kill you. Your choice is a choice, to survive or die. To survive would not be moral to kill an innocent person in this case. Survival does not determine morality.
Take care. Peace. Upvoted.
I really don't understand your last paragraph's importance considering what Jared wrote.
I've written on this subject here: http://nicksinard.com/2016/07/26/animals-argumentation-rights/
Tl;dr: (1) Property rights are rational solutions to interpersonal conflict. Animals other than humans cannot follow these solutions purposefully by understanding their content and following them. We might get them to stop acting certain ways, but that is through training and not reason. Since they can't understand the reason behind these norms, i.e. property rights, they do not apply to them.
If an animal is rational then let it demonstrate it by entering into argumentation, i.e. an exchange of truth-claims between two or more rational beings for the purpose of finding the truth.
(2) The idea of truth only arises when argumentation exists. If there was no argumentation - that is, if we all were dogs, them the idea of truth wouldn't exist. Similarly, without argumentation there wouldn't be property rights. The idea of property rights and the truth or falsehood of them wouldn't even exist. As humans are the only animals that enter into argumentation, property rights only applies to us since we are the only ones able to conceptualize, recognize, and respect property rights.
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How do you assert the sentience of a being to which you don't have epistemic access? It sounds like you're anthropomorphising animals and assigning them human characteristics that they don't actually have.
I'm a vegan, by the way. :-)
I never said it did.
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This is reality. Science demonstrates reality. Observe. Test. Open your eyes and investigate the lives of animals. They think. They feel. I didn't say we know WHAT they are thinking or feeling in all cases, nor can we say the same for other humans. We can know that THEY DO think and feel, though.
http://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf
https://www.ciwf.org.uk/includes/documents/cm_docs/2009/b/boyle_2009_neuroscience_and_animal_sentience.pdf
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/201306/universal-declaration-animal-sentience-no-pretending
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/201208/scientists-conclude-nonhuman-animals-are-conscious-beings
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/07/150714-animal-dog-thinking-feelings-brain-science/
As for that quote, I was preempting some justifications people use to justify actions based on survival, as I have found some explanations for "Natural Law" that use survival.
And I'm 100%, and more, glad that you are "vegan".
I have spent much time and thinking to understand the depths of moral applications, without using Mises or Rothbard, etc., to tell me how it works. I know it works by how our actions affect others, that it's a concept we created to describe our actions because we can understand concepts, and that's why morality is something that applies to us, and not other animals because they lack this conceptual abstraction sophistication.
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Observing reality, shows animals feel, have emotion, and therefore think.
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I agree with @jaredhowe on this. There is no way to make a determination of whether or not an animal demonstrates sentience. More than that, if you're going to expand morality to the animal kingdom, then you have to expand bodily ownership to all animals, which makes all acts of survival on the part of carnivores immoral. If that's the case, then we're free to kill them at will, since they've already exhibited complete disregard for the consent and bodily integrity of other animals.
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As I said, morality, is a concept, that only we can understand, through abstraction, and only applies to our actions. Higher order consciousness is held to a higher standard. Just because another can't understand what we understand does not negate our understanding. Just because they can't understand how the concept of morality applies, doesn't negate how morality applies to our actions that are directed to all. Stop limiting your ability to discern how YOU should act, just because someone else can't think like you do. Put yourself to a higher standard and not engage in the fallacy of justifying your actions based on how ANOTHER acts. Oh hey look, someone else murdered someone, I guess I should just mimic them and validate that action and also engage in it. Oh hey, look, someone just raped someone else, I guess that validates my justifications to do it as well... LMAO. You need to go learn more about this subject and not engage in these fallacies.
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