Animal Rights II
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What emotions do animals feel? This discussion came about as an extension of our talk from the first Animal Rights episode. Today we talk about what emotions animals are capable of, animal intelligence, and just what separates humans from animals.
About The Author
levi
I am the coyote of the group! This means I am the handsome one, the intelligent one, the one who says all sorts of positive things about himself because he can even though he may be stretching the truth a little. When I'm not hosting or editing the show, you can find me writing the next great furry novel.
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Interesting talk, I know you guys have covered a few things so I’ll go by one by one, with anthromorphism yes, people do that to a degree, but I think animals especially complex mammals like dogs, don’t do everything by instinct, they can think about things, and have some autonomy of their own, and can make decisions, its just that they don’t make complex decisions that we do, they are individuals in their own right to a degree, just not as complex as humans. Dogs are brilliant in terms of reading human emotions and body language mainly because they co-evolved with us for the past 15,000 to 30,000 years ago or more.
In terms of religion from a Muslim perspective well I did sermons related to Islam and animals in the Muslim furs group, as far as I know, I would admit yes, humans have been put at a higher rank as God’s stewards on Earth, which with this power to make moral decisions, comes with great responsibility, which our rights, and the rights of animals get it from God, we are permitted to use animals for our benefit but we cannot neglect or abuse them. With for example eating meat, in my opinion I think its permissable the same way that other animals eat prey, there’s a saying from Imam Ali(Muhammad’s cousin) who said that God provides sustenance to every living being, humans in the grave become food for the worms and returned to the Earth when they pass(at least their bodies). I do believe both humans and animals do have a soul, but the nature of the animal soul in the Qur’an was never clear, and as Levi said, is much more complex than we imagine, and even among animals they are clearly not equal to each other, there’s definitely a hierarchy. As far as moral codes go, well animals act according to their nature, God gives every living creature a natural law to follow, and its different from species to species, so for humans we’re given a natural law, the main difference is that we can choose to follow it or not.
And also they are things that are universal among humans, taking anthropology they are 67 cultural universals, meaning things that every culture holds like metaphors, controlling fire, marriage, trade etc you can see the whole list here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_universal
Would this be considered instinctual?
To conclude this issue is definitely not black and white, and its definitely more complicated as some people make it out to be, definitely liked the discussion.
Here’s some relevant articles if you guys are interested in reading:
Relating to dog emotions- http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/opinion/sunday/dogs-are-people-too.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Relating to dog ethics- http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-ethical-dog/