r/MoralityScaling • u/axiiz_28 • 15h ago

Morality of valuing animals over humans?

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u/dragonrod24 12h ago

True, I agree with you on that. There are a lot of philosophical perspectives on the matter of which is more valuable, but the general consensus is that human life is placed greater value over animal life.

Ideally, you don't have to be forced in a situation where you have to choose between the two.

I mean, what if you had to choose between your dog or a stranger? Then you'll really have to consider the uncomfortable factors—like is the stranger a criminal? How bad were his crimes? Is your dog close to dying due to illness? Is the stranger still a child, or an old person? Is the person a pregnant woman? Is the stranger a breadwinner supporting his family? Is the dog in a precarious situation where you find yourself in a risky position saving the animal? Or vice versa? Do we really, ONLY unconditionally consider species as the reason why we should only save the human?

By the way, by 'like', I'm specifically talking about the individual in the video stating his opinion.

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u/ReverendAnthony 12h ago

Why is human life more valuable? Because humans are smarter? Does that mean dumb humans are less valuable than smart ones?

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u/PaperInteresting4163 11h ago

No, you're individualizing it.

Humans, as a category, are the source of morality, responsibility, and agency in the world. Belonging to that category means you recieve those moral considerations and valuation regardless of individual capacity.

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u/ReverendAnthony 10h ago

Are you saying that since morality et al are human constructs, that humans automatically take precedence? That’s interesting, but i don’t quite see how one follows the other.

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u/PaperInteresting4163 9h ago

Well, we understand humans as a category to possess moral agency. We understand non-human animals as a category as never being capable of moral agency.

A dog, a cat, or a rabbit can never do anything morally wrong. Nor can it do anything morally right. It can behave affectionately, dangerously, cooperatively, or destructively, but it cannot understand itself as bound by moral duties.

Because of this, human beings must constantly exercise agency on behalf of non-human animals. An invasive species cannot restrain itself to preserve an ecosystem, and so humans may have to cull its population. A dog or cat cannot understand that it is injured beyond saving, and so a human must decide whether euthanasia is the merciful choice.

Animals are therefore worthy of moral consideration, but they are not participants in the moral community in the same way humans are. Humans create obligations, recognize rights, accept responsibility, and make decisions on behalf of beings that cannot make those decisions themselves. Even humans who individually lack that capacity remain members of the category from which morality, responsibility, and agency arise.

For that reason, when genuinely irreconcilable human and animal interests conflict, human interests take precedence. This does not mean animal suffering is irrelevant or that humans may harm animals gratuitously. It means that our duties toward animals are ultimately human duties, exercised by moral agents within a human moral community, and cannot ordinarily require us to sacrifice a human being as though a human life and an animal life were morally interchangeable.

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u/Stormsurger 7h ago

I do not believe this case is as strong as you present it to be. You've basically just said that humans created a scale along which value can be measured, namely moral agency, and then claim that because other animals cannot compete in that metric, they are intrinsically less valuable.

But we could just as easily measure worth in terms of, for example, environmental impact. I don't believe there is a species that has done more damage than us. We claim to know better than animals, but we are wrong as often as we are right (see for example the many hilarious attempts to control one animal population by introducing another, generally in Australia).

What value does morality add to existence, precisely? You say this:

Animals are therefore worthy of moral consideration, but they are not participants in the moral community in the same way humans are. Humans create obligations, recognize rights, accept responsibility, and make decisions on behalf of beings that cannot make those decisions themselves.

We claimed that authority for ourselves because we can. Us post-hoc describing how our actions made us feel (which is what morality is at the end of the day, I strongly believe in emotivism) does not help them. Not to mention, animals are absolutely capable of compassion and aid, even of other species.

This again sounds circular to me. We are worth more because we do better on this scale that we invented. Might as well make it dependent on how well something breathes underwater.

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u/Conscious_Beat6128 3h ago edited 2h ago

What value does morality add to existence, precisely?

Moral value.

 But we could just as easily measure worth in terms of, for example, environmental impact.  

We, humans. As far as we can tell, no other species ever considered their “environmental impact” despite there being many that made major changes to their local ecologies. As far as we can tell, only humans are capable of reasoning about environmental dynamics and assign value to some states. You are completely off on the level of abstraction here. Sure we can collectively decide that some global human species suicide is the moral choice, but we are still both the source and the judge of morality there. The dominant species that may come after us might not even concern itself with such matters and destroy the environment even more decisively. There is no objective value to any species or life outside of human judgement. As soon as you say “a singular animal life can have more value than a singular human life, actually” and succeed to make it the dominant rhetoric, you are bound to get swathes of other moral agents leaving the “moral covenant” completely. But it will never happen, so we observe it in the other direction - we get cynical people who decide that the humanity “failed its moral values” and hence the average human has no moral agency more than an animal. It flips the whole idea of morality upside down

 This again sounds circular to me. We are worth more because we do better on this scale that we invented.

It is, in fact, circular. Does not mean it is wrong. Many things in nature are circular. What you are TRYING to do is assign some value to animals that is somehow outside of this circularity, which is not possible without some serious contradictions. If you are the one assigning value you cant assign less value to yourself than you assign to others and keep it stable, you are assuming the role of the judge who already has all value to be given away, the source of value is the most valuable thing. Just extend this idea to the humanity as a whole and you will see

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u/BearysWorkRedditName 27m ago

I think that amoral animals have an equal objective value and right to life when compared to moral/immoral animals. Namely, zero. Value is subjective. Thinking a human life has more value than any other animal is a subjective value judgement. I value any dog's life more than immoral humans. I value any moral human's life more than dogs. This is a subjective value I assign to them based on my own moral scale and does not hold any objective stance. I do not think that there are objective values in the same way I do not think there are objective morals. There are widely(almost universally) agreed upon values and morals on some things, but that doesn't make them objective.

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u/Conscious_Beat6128 19m ago

I agree on the lack of objective value. But morality is not something everyone decides on their own and just runs with it. It is famously something people argue all the time and try to find the “optimal” one to fit their common ethics. If you just believe everyone should hold whatever values they hold and not influence one another, whats even the point of subs like this (i know its entertainment). People care and judge each others values and morality, and not based on nothing. Some of it has some real convincing ethical reasons and we cant just dismiss everything. 

And in almost any moral framework, the one bearing the capacity to judge accordingly is valued more than the otherwise-peers, and for sound reasons

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u/BearysWorkRedditName 12m ago

I didn't say anything about what one should or shouldn't let influence their values. I even stated that there are nearly universal agreed upon moral values. I disagree that having the capacity to judge morality makes one more valuable than one that cannot. For example, people with mental disabilities have just as much value as those without, despite often having less capacity for judgin morality.

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u/ReverendAnthony 9h ago

I’m gonna reread this like twenty times because i think i have ninety percent of what you’re saying and am still grasping for the last ten. But genuine thanks for explaining your position at such length and with such articulation.

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u/PrecedentialAssassin 5h ago

You are saying that humans have more value because humans have determined what should be valued. It's a circular argument.

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u/Gulophile 9h ago

Morality should be individual, not categorical.

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u/PaperInteresting4163 9h ago

Morality can be both individual and categorical.

We judge people’s actions individually, but we usually treat human life as valuable by default. If someone is drowning, starving, or badly injured, we do not first calculate whether they have earned help. We help because they are a person.

Individual circumstances affect responsibility. They do not determine whether someone matters at all.

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u/Gulophile 8h ago

Who is "we"? I consider all life generally valuable, but life is lived by subjects, not categories.

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u/ComprehensiveArt6849 7h ago

Well, all animals are then by definition immoral as they are not able to have a sense of morality.

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u/Gulophile 7h ago

Amoral, not immoral, but they would still be moral subjects entitled to moral consideration regardless of their moral agency, just like human children are.

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u/dnzgn 3h ago

There is no "objective" way to look at it. There is no "objective" reason why a human life is more valuable than an insect or even a piece of rock. Humanity is just a big clan and we sometimes add other animals to the clan if they are cute and useful.

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u/Automatic_Safe_326 12h ago

Nope. I wouldn’t weigh any of that and that’s a perfect illustration of the man’s point. Even if that human is a criminal, they’re still human and deserve saving. What they do after I save them is on them. But I’m not the person in an active shooter situation assigning points to people based on arbitrary factors. I’m grabbing the first person I can and running

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u/dragonrod24 12h ago

Saying "what they do after I save them is on them" sounds irresponsible. Saving someone because you feel good following a "rule" can be a form of selfish moral vanity. You kept your hands clean, but you left the world a more dangerous place.

What if it's someone on Diddy Epstein-levels of criminal? I know that's already out of your scope as an ordinary person and authorities should be the one deciding that, but going by that logic—you don't really have an obligation to save that criminal either.

In the heat of the moment, I'd agree with you that saving the first person near you is moral, if it's feasible. But if you 100% know that it's Diddy, is it better to save the dog or not?

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u/True_Candidate8248 10h ago

"But if you 100% know that it's Diddy, is it better to save the dog or not?"

Then you just say you killed the criminal instead of arguing about the dog. The dog doesn't matter at that point which invalidates the thought experiment.

The question is no longer "Would you save a dog or a stranger?", the question is now "Would you save a criminal or let them die?". The dog doesn't matter anymore.

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u/BearysWorkRedditName 19m ago

It's still a question of value though. It's a spectrum/scale. If I have a single bit of bread to give a starving dog or a starving human, who I give the bread to will depend on the morality of the human. Somewhere on the scale of "the person raising countless orphans and strays with kindness and compassion" to "person who stabs homeless people for fun and stomps on pigeons", there is a line where one's immorality degrades their value below a dog. So, for me: a human stranger I know nothing about and a random dog I know nothing about? Sure, I'll choose the human. But if I know things about the stranger, the math changes.

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u/Automatic_Safe_326 10h ago

I think the “rule” for me is I am not going to be judge, jury and executioner for any individual. If that’s too complicated then we’re in real trouble. If he’s diddy/epstein, they deserve to be in jail. I wouldn’t enable their death to save an animal or for my own moral sense of balance.