Guest guest Posted February 17, 2006 Report Share Posted February 17, 2006 > he innocently asked if it's not ok to kill mice, is it ok to kill fleas? Where is the line drawn at? Well, the honest and practical answer is that everyone will draw their lines differently. For some, their line is a circle, as described by Albert Schweitzer: "Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace." Rather than try to explain it myself, let me sharing some thinking from someone who has already pondered a similar question -- Tom Regan, a philosopher who also wrote a book called The Case for Animal Rights: 4. Where do you draw the line? If primates and rodents have rights, then so do slugs and amoebas, which is absurd. Reply: It often is not easy to know exactly where to "draw the line." For example, we cannot say exactly how old someone must be to be old, or how tall someone must be to be tall. However, we can say, with certainty, that someone who is eighty-eight is old, and that another person who is 7'1" is tall. Similarly, we cannot say exactly where to draw the line when it comes to those animals who have a psychology. But we can say with absolute certainty that, wherever one draws the line on scientific grounds, primates and rodents are on one side of it (the psychological side), whereas slugs and amoebas are on the other -- which does not mean that we may destroy them unthinkingly. Source: http://www.cultureandanimals.org/animalrights.htm Cheers, Tammy Bay Area Vegetarianswww.BayAreaVeg.org Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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