Animal pain, suffering, and death: why does it matter?

[mrgold]

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Death is the end of all things - there is nothing after that. There is no soul, no heaven no hell. This is true for all life. Knowing this is all you need to know in order to understand why an animal's death matters. It is the end of its existence for all time and that matters to me (most of the time).

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This the same moral relitvists' arguement I had in my add on post. Your post can be boiled down to the last sentance "it matters to me." Good for you, but honestly, I dont care unless you provide a real reason. Why does it matter that a "life" is ending?

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When attempting to make moral decisions the first questino I ask myself is what do I value? What scenarios are preferable to me over other scenarios? The answer is simply that I value my own happiness and well beeing, I value good food, I like playing basketball and poker, I care deeply for family members, etc... I can then reseaonably assume that every other human beeing has certain preferences and values and care about things in a way that I do. Therefore I consider the morally good option to be the one that gives the most people the most happiness (basic utilitarianism). Ending a life is thus bad in that it eliminated all future positive expereiences a particular individual can have (which is especially worrisome if you don't buy into an afterlife).

In making decisions about the validity of animal rights the important question for me is the level of cognition and abillity to perceive pain and pleasure in a way that is similarly meaningful to a human. Obviously I cannot generalize that my perceptions of pain and pleasure are felt in animals nearly as well as I can that they are felt in all humans. So for me the question is one of biology and a creature's rights are entitled to progressively more consideration as they are of higher intelligence.