What is life?

[turil]

So, animal rights and veganism are primarily about respecting and valuing life. But what is life? Why is it so special that we want to give living things certain basic rights

Comments

[kejlina]

I can't speak for anyone else, but to me, animal rights and veganism are primarily about not causing pain and suffering. There's enough of that in the world without my contributing to it.

Animals are the only group that I am aware of that is capable of suffering, and it is the only group within my power to avoid causing suffering to. In order to avoid killing plants or bacteria, I'd have to allow my own life to be extinguished - and even that wouldn't completely avoid killing anything else, because, as a human, my digestive tract and my skin are home to billions of normal flora.

Non-earthling life doesn't enter into the equation because I don't live my life in a way that would affect anything on any other planet.

[ryansmithxvx]

i think the argument from sentiency is a very powerful one for determining life and respect: if something can feel and experience pain and has desires to avoid that pain, then those desires are to be respected as far as is possible. given that animals are the only one of those 5 classes which have demonstrated that they can feel and experience pain, that is why we extend the concept of animal rights but not plant rights.

[stonewall_jenny]

yeah, agreed.

[ushitomo]

I think the distinction needs to be made between life and sentience. I don't have the same respect for all life (which by current definitions would include anything comprised of at least one cell) that I do for life which can have sophisticated experiences (while all actions can surely be boiled down to a stimulus-response system, those which involve a central nervous system are evidently complex enough to deserve a certain amount of respect). I also see this as being about suffering. Instead of thinking of it as about reducing suffering, though (which to me implies that I'm going above and beyond some normal state and taking action), I think about it as avoiding the creation of suffering (because I don't think I should have the right to create it in the first place).

[roboticminotaur]

Vegans do draw a line between beings that deserve moral consideration and those that don't. Often meateaters will jump on this point and claim that vegans are arbitrarily priveleging some life forms over others. Vegans typically respond by trying to say what it is about animals that makes them worthy of special treatment. I think this is the wrong way to respond to the challenge (or, at least, definitely not the only way to respond).

The challenge is that veganism draws an arbitrary moral line among types of life. The response I prefer to give is that maybe it does and maybe it doesn't; but either way, vegans are in the same boat as omnivores on this issue. Put another way: meateaters draw the same line as vegans, so if vegans are arbitrary, then so are meateaters; equivalently, if meateaters are not arbitrary, then neither are vegans

[ugly_fruit]

this is a very interesting arguement, thanks for posting it.

[the_dilettante]

other people are putting it better than i could, especially pre-coffee, so i'm just going to say -- i agree that it's a capacity for experience and suffering that's important, not "life".