The point is this: without agreement on the rights of people, arguing about the rights of animals is fruitless. 73) It leads the discussion to extremes at the outset: it invites you to think that animals should be treated either with the consideration humans extend to other humans, or with no consideration at all. This is a false choice. Better to start with another, more fundamental, question: is the way we treat animals a moral issue at all?
Many deny it. 74) Arguing from the view that humans are different from animals in every relevant respect, extremists of this kind think that animals lie outside the area of moral choice. Any regard for the suffering of animals is seen as a mistake -- a sentimental displacement of feeling that should properly be directed to other humans.
This view, which holds that torturing a monkey is morally equivalent to chopping wood, may seem bravely logical. In fact it is simply shallow: the confused center is right to reject it. The most elementary form of moral reasoning -- the ethical equivalent of learning to crawl -- is to weigh others interests against ones own. This in turn requires sympathy and imagination: without which there is no capacity for moral thought. To see an animal in pain is enough, for most, to engage sympathy. 75) When that happens, it is not a mistake: it is mankinds instinct for moral reasoning in action, an instinct that should be encouraged rather than laughed at.
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