OPPapers.com Essay Index >> Philosophy >> Animal Rights
We have many free term papers and essays on Animal Rights. We also have a wide variety of research papers and book reports available to you for free. You can browse our collection of term papers or use our search engine.
Animal rights What is the moral status of non-human animals? Do they have rights? This question, and all of it's complex entities, stands at the forefront among
ANIMAL RIGHTS.A PHILOSOPHICAL VIEW Do Animals Have Rights? Should animals be harmed to benefit mankind? This pressing question has been around for at least the past
animal rights Humans have rights that are either natural rights or earned rights. Natural rights are rights that every person is born with and keeps throughout his
Animal Rights Protests: Is Radical Chic Still In Style? Over the past fifteen years a powerfully charged drama has unfolded in New York's Broadway venues and spread
animal rights Animal Rights Protests Over the past fifteen years a powerfully charged drama has unfolded in New York's Broadway venues and spread to the opera houses
Submitted by ljoy1216 on February 23, 2005
Category: Philosophy
Words: 664 | Pages: 3
Views: 705
Popularity Rank: 13,747
Average Member Grade: N/A (Add a Comment / Grade this Paper)
In his Meditations, Rene Descartes argues that animals are purely physical entities, having no mental or spiritual substance. Thus, Descartes concludes, animals can't reason, think, feel pain or suffer. Animals, are mere machines with no consciousness. Use the Internet to explore the issue of animal rights. Investigate the legacy left by Rene Descartes concerning the moral status of animals.
Non-human animals, on Descartes's view, are complex organic machines, all of whose actions can be fully explained without any reference to the operation of mind in thinking.
In fact, Descartes declared, most of human behavior, like that of animals, is susceptible to simple mechanistic explanation. Cleverly designed automata could successfully mimic nearly all of what we do. Thus, Descartes argued, it is only the general ability to adapt to widely varying circumstancesĀand, in particular, the capacity to respond creatively in the use of languageĀthat provides a sure test for the presence of an immaterial soul associated with the normal human body.
But Descartes supposed that no matter how human-like an animal or machine could be made to appear in its form or operations, it would always be possible to distinguish it from a real human being by two functional criteria. Although an animal or machine may be capable of performing any one activity as well as (or even better than) we can, he argued, each human being is capable of a greater variety of different activities than could be performed by anything lacking a soul. In a special instance of this general point, Descartes held that although an animal or machine might be made to utter sounds resembling human speech in response to specific stimuli, only an immaterial thinking substance could engage in the creative use of language required for responding appropriately to any unexpected circumstances. My puppy is a loyal companion, and my computer is a powerful instrument, but neither of them can engage in a...
You must Login to view the entire paper.
If you are not a member yet, Sign Up for free!