Dolphin Slaughter

[Matt]

that was gross.

[CindyKate]

I'm not an animal person either, but feel terrible watching things like this.
I grew up in a farm village and saw pigs slaughtered as a kid, somehow that was kind of entertainment to me (and most other kids), as there wasn't much else going on. You'd think kids have softer hearts than grownups.

It got me thinking though, about how our compassion for animals comes about. I watched some talks by people like Richard Dawkins, who try to explain the origin of human ethics and morality from a biological and evolutionary point of view --his so called meme theory. Like how dolphins/whales do not abandon their wounded, or how honey bees sacrifice themselves for the colony, that sort of things. Basically the pressure for survival through evolution codes into our genes those attributes that improve your chance of survival, both physical and ethical, both for the individual and for the collective.

However, these seem to limit you to be good only toward your own kind. Are there similar arguments or evidences that make you sympathize for different species? That makes human love and protect members of their family, then members of their tribe,community, then their race, different races, and even different species?

[Fool]

Arguments?

There are philosophical arguments in Ethics that carry ethical obligation to other species. Peter Singer would be the guy on the top of that list today. He's a utilitarian (preference utilitarian) which says that suffering (or displeasure) is defined as bad (or a negative thing) for any being that suffers and so humans have an obligation not to make animals suffer. Under this system animals don't necessarily have a right to live, just to not suffer. So its not a bad thing to kill animals if you can do it in a pain-free way. It also says that if the positives gained from the killing are greater than the suffering of the animal killed, then the killing is ultimately a moral act (so if a starving family kills their cow in an non-brutal way to feed themselves, that is a moral action).

Utilitarianism can also be used to defend obligations toward people of other races and communities as you've asked.

Outside of that, only thing I know that specifically addresses animals is the basic anthem of animal right which says all sentient things have a right to their continued sentience. There are probably more though, Ethics is a broad subject and inter-species ethics was never an interest grabber for me.