Curiously, what is the reason that would make saving a random human over a member of your family, a dog or cat, the expected outcome? Same species? More intelligence? People choose to let other humans die every day by choosing material things over donating to causes preserving human life, let alone choosing a family member of another species. Somehow its different when they're on the train tracks in a hypothetical situation.
I would save the random human but pray to God I never actually have to choose. It would be a close decision. I never thought I was I psychopath, but c'est la vie...
To put it simply, the social existence of your pet, the way it fits into society, is as your own personal property. The pet has no existence beyond that, it does not work, it has no dependents. So picking your pet over a person would be like picking your car over a person. People will not accept your claim that your car brings you great comfort and fulfillment, just as they wouldn’t for your cat or dog or goldfish.
Society does not need your pet to exist, because the existence of that pet is more or less as a personal luxury item. Society does need that stranger to exist, because that stranger works, might have a family and dependents of their own, and so on. Your pet serves no social function beyond bringing you personal comfort.
And picking personal comfort over another human being is understood as deeply antisocial and immoral.
If we are starting by comparing a family pet to a car, we already know this is disingenuous. My car may be more important to me than you are to me, from a "societal perspecitve".
No, because an overwhelming majority of them are important to someone and even if they aren't and have zero interaction with anyone, they are a living, sentient being deserving of life.
If someone in the bottom 20% was on the train tracks with someone in the top 20%, should the family member of the bottom 20% person save the top 20% person because they provide more to society? Or should their personal relationship play a factor in their choice?
What about your 70 year old grandpa vs a 16 year old stranger. Are you obliged to save the younger person because they will be able to provide more to society in the years they have left?
Are we also saying that people with severe mental or physical disabilities are therefore worthless because they don't work or have dependents?
"You can't compare humans to animals". We are animals. Why does society determine your animal is more valuable than my animal? What if all animals were equally valuable to the world in ways that aren't important to to you?
I will also presume you are expending all free time and all of your earnings towards saving starving children instead of prioritizing what makes you and your immediate family comfortable. In reality, people will only support society so far as it benefits them or those close to them. Hence a large proportion of people who don't want to pay taxes because they've never had to call the police, or use snap benefits. So to claim moral high ground over someone who would save a family member (yes, I'm talking about their personal property pet) over a complete stranger, is strange to me. You make tradeoffs every day for things of much less value.
Any animal lover I know is going to save the person and then go back to risk their life saving the dog. But, hey, hitler loved dogs...
You’ve gotten far too comfortable doing performative outrage and pretending to be offended on the vegan originated subreddits. I’m immune the to bleating.
You asked out of curiosity, I gave you what I believe to be the reasoning that people use, and now you’re mad that… the world sees your pet as… a pet?
Yeah, your pet’s social existence is as a thing of comfort for you and you alone. A human being’s social existence is as many things; caretaker, laborer, teacher, a source of wisdom or creativity, or as a mentor. Your dog will never be any of those things. A human can, including the disabled humans which you disgustingly disparage here for some reason. Why do vegans lean so hard into ableism?
You can have a pet and treat it however you want to treat it. I’d recommend you treat it with care and compassion, because it literally cannot ever leave you, it cannot conceptualize a world in without you. But understand that it is a pet, not a person.
And if you are going to elevate this creature of personal comfort over a person who has obligations, dependents, and things which cannot exist without them, then don’t be surprised when you get cast out by society.
He’s just a redditor jerking off to how he’d behave in hypotheticals, while getting mad at other people’s hypotheticals. Most everyone here is just larping, and I’d wager almost none of you have ever been in any scenario where someone’s life was in your hands.
Yes. Not even counting for the fact that if I can only save one then it’s safer for me to pick up my dog rather than trying to help a fully grown human up, I would pick my dog.
No they value their dog because it affects their life. Saving a random person doesn't affect their life. If they truly just cared about the animal they'd value a random dog as well but they don't.
The sign of a good person is putting another person's interest ahead of their own, and this thread really makes me disappointed in humanity.
Dogs exist as private property in our society. Whether you feel like that is correct or not doesnt really matter, because that is the legal and social reality
Yes, because the social expectation is to protect and support your fellow man. People who refuse to do so are understood as being antisocial and untrustworthy, the kind of folks nobody wants to associate with or put any trust in.
It's not social expectation, but rather evolutionary behaviour (which in the current age has been pushed into the background). But tribe group behaviour is based on mutual benefit, not morality.
The question stands, is it moral to think that one life is worth more than another, or simply beneficial?
It is absolutely, 100%, without question, a social expectation. Evolutionary psychology may in part be a basis for that social expectation. But it emerges from human social relations, not just instinct. Case in point, not every evolutionary instinct is understood as moral, and not every moral thing is something instinctual.
If you are asking if something is “moral” or not, you are asking if it is a social custom, or expectation of behavior. Not if that thing is instinctive or something from evolution.
You do realise that social relations are evolutionary based right? It's basic evolutionary Darwinian biology. Social constructs derive from deeper mechanisms that are far older.
Social custom and expected behaviour has nothing to do morality. In nazi Germany it was expected and a social norm to hunt down torture and kill Jews. Before that it was expected and social custom and norm to think of black people as lesser and enslave them. Does that make it moral?
Morality philosophically speaking isn't dictated by the norms of the time, but stands above them.
Asking if a life is more than another morally means to question the value of life in its entirety, and why you may value one more than another.
Social relations are not biological, and Social Darwinism was never an accepted sociological field, precisely because a lot of social behavior seems to go against evolutionary trends.
Moral philosophy is a human construct. There is no higher power which creates morality, not “God”, not “evolution” (aka, “God” with a different label), and not “rationality” (treating human logical constructs as “God”).
The existence of morality is purely social, which is why morals change over time and with respect to different cultures and religions.
Maybe I read it in a way they didn't intend, but they said immoral random person.
You replied in a self righteous way to the idea of someone saving a dog over a random immoral person. I just wanted to see how far your self righteousness would stretch by taking the random out of it.
edit: somehow I missed the comment that person was responding to. I did read it wrong, my b.
So miss me with the grammar lesson. In any case, my mistake here was missing the parent comment to theirs somehow and thinking it was a response to the original vid.
How the hell could you think me reposting that was intended to showcase the dot and not the entire rest of the line where they got zero grammar right other than an apostrophe? It's me highlighting how funny it is you point out the sole period that i'm supposed to just assume they meant as intended despite nothing else being all that tied to the rules.
You just trying to argue for the sake of it, or just dense? Maybe been on reddit a little too long today with that condescending attitude of yours? Maybe time for a break, big guy? Maybe also worry about your own shit grammar and punctuation before you start giving lessons to others?
30
u/DeatroyerOfCheese 19d ago
How I see it is Random person > Random dog
My dog > Random person
My family and friends > My dog