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June 13: Are Animals People?


What makes people people?

    In Stem in Society we went through and looked at the qualifications for personhood and were given the choice of a couple of questions to respond to. As a person I feel qualified to talk about this subject and I feel as though I can answer all of these relatively simply so I have decided to speed run morality.



If you do not meet all the criteria for personhood, does that mean you are not a person? 





    If you do not meet the criteria for person hood then you are not a person as we have defined personhood as meeting the criteria for personhood thus if you don't meet the criteria you are not a person. I don't believe that if you don't meet the criteria for personhood you don't matter.

Do the rights of persons outweigh those of non-persons in every case? Can you think of a time when they would not outweigh them?

 

   Yes. There is no time I can think of in which a person would be outweighed by a non-person.


Where do you think the line is between morally considerable beings and non-morally considerable beings? Are trees people? Are rocks people? Is the earth a person? Is a comatose human individual a person?



    I draw the line of morally considerable as anything that meets at least one piece of the characteristics of personhood. None of the things listed above are people as they don't meet all of the criteria for personhood.


How do you treat the animals in your life - both the ones you interact with regularly and those with whom you only have a distant relationship? Is this how you think these animals should be treated? Why or why not, and what could you do differently?



   I try and not bother animals around me. I don't kill bugs if I can help it and I buy half a cow every 
year from a farmer who I know lets the cows have a nice life. I believe that I am treating the animals that I interact with in anyway with respect when I can help it. I think that I treat animals in the way they should be treated with one exception. I believe that as soon as we have fake meat that is as cheap as normal meat,  is as good for you and taste as good to you that we should swap to that instead of farming animals. Until that point I believe that it is alright to eat normal meat.

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