“Children have limited freedom of action and thought until they reach adulthood.”
They do, yes, by law. This does not mean they have it by right.

“The comatose have limited freedom of action and thought because they are in a coma (!).”

The right to liberty means freedom from force imposed by others. The fact that you yourself are in a coma does not mean others are imposing force on you.

I’d have to await your evidence on the matter.

If by ‘evidence’ you mean a logical argument derived from the facts of reality, I’ve already provided this.

Children beyond a certain age do begin to exhibit rationality (although it comes slow because they have to form concepts bit by bit) and thus have rights (ONLY those beyond a certain age), but the rights of the comatose only come from the fact of previous and potential future rationality (sleeping along similar lines), but to what purpose, by what standard, do you regard “criminals” (assuming of course objective law, so we’re talking murderers and thieves, not pot smokers and businessmen ) as having rights? And considering how rights are an ABSOLUTE principle, how do you propose to limit them, concretizing a contradiction?

Rights are a principle that sanctions an entity’s moral freedom of thought and action. Children have limited freedom of action and thought until they reach adulthood. The comatose have limited freedom of action and thought because they are in a coma (!). Criminals have little (or no) freedom of action because they are under duress, because they are paying the price for their crime. For example: a robber forfeits his rights when he steals and must be punished by the Law, however in some instances he still maintains limited rights (limited freedoms), such as the right to not be killed or otherwise harmed, whilst he serves his sentence etc.

”

I’d have to await your evidence on the matter. Children beyond a certain age do begin to exhibit rationality (although it comes slow because they have to form concepts bit by bit) and thus have rights (ONLY those beyond a certain age), but the rights of the comatose only come from the fact of previous and potential future rationality (sleeping along similar lines), but to what purpose, by what standard, do you regard “criminals” (assuming of course objective law, so we’re talking murderers and thieves, not pot smokers and businessmen ) as having rights? And considering how rights are an ABSOLUTE principle, how do you propose to limit them, concretizing a contradiction?

So if you’re saying that animals don’t have rights, then presumably neither do these categories of humans ?

Professor Marc Hauser recently presented his new theory, which postulates four key elements differentiating human cognition from animal cognition. Notably–as I have stressed in the past as well–Hauser regards human cognition as being not merely higher up on the same scale of cognitive complexity in comparison to that of animals, but as being of a fundamentally different nature in itself–in his words, a “great cognitive gap”

http://ergosum.wordpress.com/2008/02/19/human-and-animal-cognition/

Also, none of this is mystical. In fact, it is self-evident everytime you use your mind to think in conceptual terms.

Finally, your “simple” argument that we care about only humans because we are humans and not other organisms begs the moral question at discussion here: the question is *why* should we not grant rights to organisms that we do not call “human”? Why should non-human animals not have rights? And your answer, presumably–and too simplistically–is because we are humans and they are not.

This is a sensitive subject for many people and I think it clouds judgement. For instance, I haven’t said anything unscientific about animals’ neurological capabilities. So I am not rejecting science at all!

There is no scientific evidence that there is a range of “rational” behaviour – make sure you’re talking about the same thing. The ability to problem solve, or make low-level volitional choices is not rationality. Just having a degree of intelligence is not rationality either. A sliding scale of intelligence? Yes, of course. I never denied this. But rationality? No.

Show me an animal (any animal) that fundamentally processes its experiences through the method of logic, and forms ever-increasing concepts (for which a language is necessary), has the fundamental ability to both understand and control its actions, and is therefore morally accountable – and I’ll concede the point.

There is no “ideological mysticism” at all – if anything, that is exactly the expression to describe those who believe that animals have Rights. These people think that Rights exist in a vacuum, or can be given or taken away; or that things have intrinsic value.

In all this discussion (68 comments now) not ONE person has provided an objective stable definition of Rights, and justified them philosophically with reference to reality. Your suggestion that we care more about humans because we’re humans might be right, but that isn’t an argument in favour of human rights.

Human beings are fundamentally creatures that survive on their faculty of reason – we think and plan long term, we are not driven by instinct from one meal to the next, one tree to the next; we need a code of ethics to guide our decisions; we can differentiate between right and wrong – and because of all this we are responsible for our actions; we must be allowed the total freedom to reap the benefits of our free willed rational decisions, and must not be protected from the consequences of irrational evil actions. (That’s where Rights come into it).

Show me one respected scientist who disagrees with this.

I don’t always with Wikipedia, but this is what it has to say: Reason and logic can be thought to be distinct, although logic is one important aspect of reason. But the tendency to a preference for “hard logic,” or “solid logic,” in modern times has incorrectly led to the two terms occasionally being seen as essentially synonymous (see Reasoning) or perhaps more often logic is seen as the defining and pure form of reason.

However machines and animals can unconsciously perform logical operations, and many animals (including humans) can unconsciously associate different perceptions as causes and effects and then make decisions or even plans. Therefore, to have any distinct meaning at all, “reason” must be the type of thinking which links language, consciousness and logic, and at this time, only humans are known to combine these things.

Rationality is the virtue by which one achieves reason, something that only humans can perform. Again, show me a published respected scientific paper that disagrees with any of this.

evanescent, your explanations and definitions of animals and their neurological capabilities differs utterly from mainstream science. I don’t know, it seems hypocritical to denounce pseudoscientists like creationists and ID people, and then in the next breath reject science yourself.

The scientific consensus is that there’s a range of “rational” behavior in primates, and that our particular rationality is derived from our specific kind of anatomy–an anatomy that only differs in degrees from our closest phylogenetic relatives. Your dichotomy into “perceptual” versus “conceptual” thinking is contradicted by all of the relevant literature. There IS a scale. It may not be a completely continuous scale (which is impossible anyway, since genes are discrete, not continuous), but there’s definitely a scale.

There’s a much simpler explanation for why we should care about humans more than chimpanzees or other organisms: we are humans, not those other organisms. Why do you have to add all of this ideological mysticism into it? We’re humans, and that’s why we care about humans. Seems simple to me.

If you read the article, then I do explain why animals have no rights and only humans do. Rights are a moral principle that sanctions an entity’s freedom of action in a social setting. The freedom of action to make moral choices only applies to moral beings, morality being a code of rational values to guide actions. This disqualifies animals. Freedom is irrelevant to an animal.

I disagree with you regarding the nature of intelligence. The human mind is rational and conceptual. This is rather different to an animal’s fundamentally perceptually mind. So it is not a measure of degree on a sliding scale, but rather, animals never make it onto the “human” scale.

Now, should another organism evolve to the point where it was a rational being, then it too would need to discover a morality to guide its actions. Therefore it would require the freedom to pursue this morality and would have Rights.

But to say that only humans have rights and that animals have none whatsoever seems odd to me. On the one hand, we are animals. Fundamentally, our morality and reasoning differs from theirs only in degree rather than in kind. And claiming that only humans have rights begs the question “what is human?”. If another organism were to evolve our level of reasoning, would it then acquire rights? What about a synthetic intelligence?

Oh this is too funny. We humans do this very thing too! Wonder if we learned from their behavior. Yet I wonder: have they really resolved their differences or maybe they have weakened their drive through sexual activity. Well, whatever works. HaH@!

Good bye.

I hope the lifestyle comes together for you at some point.