Ethical Contemplation...for bio
14 Oct 2004 12:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mayoraaseiUnfinished. But just a thought.
It is difficult to provide a truly objective perspective when discussing animals. Being humans, we are able to only look at things from a human’s perspective, and this is often dictated by the culture in which we had been brought up. Ethnocentrism remains a common attitude, implying that racial bias is still deeply rooted in the social subconscious – perhaps the first step would be for humans to accept others of their own species as equal before we can overcome anthropocentricism.
The idea of an alternative to anthropocentricism evokes the question of whether any other species would even consider such a question. If Darwinism were true, in that the role of each organism was to reproduce and ensure the long-term survival of the species, then all animals are ultimately and fundamentally only focused on the survival of their own species. To argue that we should consider practical alternatives to this self-centrism – such as within environmental planning and development – because it is within our power to, is probably within itself an anthropocentric perception that we, as a superior race, have the right to pass our human-based jurisdiction on our environment.
A compromise can be reached, however, if we find it in the consideration that “animals are sentient beings”. It does not, unfortunately, deliver us entirely from anthropocentricism or resourcism. Laws can be passed to restrict the economic and legal access to experimentation with animals; and to protect animals from wanton harm. There is space for research to find a substitute for experimentation on animals – cloning human tissue for experimentation, for example, but that that is an entirely separate ethical issue altogether.
As to replacing anthropocentric examples within our languages, human language is ridden with prejudice. Many animal-related words constitute insults when calling another human by it: words like pig, bitch, cow, bird-brained, sheepish; but to use the analogy of ethnocentrism, this is no more than racial slurs inflicted upon each other by different cultures. Through government policy, education, and progressive human rights movements, racial prejudice has eased, and the same strategy could be – and is being – applied to animals. Perhaps animal-related insults will also come to be regarded as “politically incorrect”.
Yep, you guessed it, total BS. Oh wait, that's an animal-related-insult/politically incorrect.
I hate bio. *Stabs*
It is difficult to provide a truly objective perspective when discussing animals. Being humans, we are able to only look at things from a human’s perspective, and this is often dictated by the culture in which we had been brought up. Ethnocentrism remains a common attitude, implying that racial bias is still deeply rooted in the social subconscious – perhaps the first step would be for humans to accept others of their own species as equal before we can overcome anthropocentricism.
The idea of an alternative to anthropocentricism evokes the question of whether any other species would even consider such a question. If Darwinism were true, in that the role of each organism was to reproduce and ensure the long-term survival of the species, then all animals are ultimately and fundamentally only focused on the survival of their own species. To argue that we should consider practical alternatives to this self-centrism – such as within environmental planning and development – because it is within our power to, is probably within itself an anthropocentric perception that we, as a superior race, have the right to pass our human-based jurisdiction on our environment.
A compromise can be reached, however, if we find it in the consideration that “animals are sentient beings”. It does not, unfortunately, deliver us entirely from anthropocentricism or resourcism. Laws can be passed to restrict the economic and legal access to experimentation with animals; and to protect animals from wanton harm. There is space for research to find a substitute for experimentation on animals – cloning human tissue for experimentation, for example, but that that is an entirely separate ethical issue altogether.
As to replacing anthropocentric examples within our languages, human language is ridden with prejudice. Many animal-related words constitute insults when calling another human by it: words like pig, bitch, cow, bird-brained, sheepish; but to use the analogy of ethnocentrism, this is no more than racial slurs inflicted upon each other by different cultures. Through government policy, education, and progressive human rights movements, racial prejudice has eased, and the same strategy could be – and is being – applied to animals. Perhaps animal-related insults will also come to be regarded as “politically incorrect”.
Yep, you guessed it, total BS. Oh wait, that's an animal-related-insult/politically incorrect.
I hate bio. *Stabs*
