We RECOGNIZE what has value. We DON'T CHOOSE or determine what has value, or what is HIGHER or SUPERIOR.
Some animals, especially the more intelligent, actually know that humans are superior to them. It's not just that we're humans that we think humans are superior.
Some dolphins and whales know that humans are superior. There are certain behaviors from some animals which show that they have an awareness of human superiority, especially the higher more intelligent animals.
Such as? Can you give an example of this?
Note that I am not asking you if humans or animals are inherently more valuable, and how we humans know that. What I am asking is
how the animal itself knows that the human is inherently more valuable, as you have been arguing.
There are anecdotes of dolphins protecting humans in some cases. Rescuing a human or protecting a human from being attacked by sharks.
http://www.afd.org.au/images-and-vi...st-friend-stories-of-dolphins-rescuing-humans
There's no indication that they do this for animals other than humans.
The way dogs respond to humans clearly shows that they have high regard for what the humans want. And in some cases they risk their lives, even sacrifice themselves, serving humans.
This doesn't mean they're thinking the thought "Humans are superior to other animals," but they have some intuition or instinct that the humans are special and should be served or protected in ways that don't apply to other animals.
If we say we value animals with whole body fur over animals without such, then ultimately it will be apparent that it is just our own preference to do so for our own benefit, . . .
But in that case it's just the higher human value, and thus the human pleasure, which takes priority.
Well, that is what drives pretty much everything we do, and determines how much or little we value everything that we interact with.
No, in some cases we protect animals which don't give us any pleasure. Our pleasure is a major factor, but we also believe animals have some intrinsic value for themselves.
We protect some endangered species which give us no pleasure, like the condors, which are ugly. Preserving habitats and other conservation measures are not done only for human pleasure. That's one motive, but we also do it out of guilt, or moral obligation to recognize that other species also have intrinsic value, regardless of any benefit we derive from them.
We try to determine how much pleasure it will give us (or how much pain we can avoid by engaging in it). We each seek satisfaction and value that as our goal, and the method used and how we actually acquire satisfaction will vary from human to human, and even animal to animal. Every organism is a little bit different, even if we have a lot in common.
But human pleasure/satisfaction is not the only aim in the way we treat animals. We recognize that they have intrinsic value separate from the pleasure or convenience we gain from them.
Laws protecting livestock animals are done for the welfare of those animals and can cause a higher cost which consumers have to pay. Obviously the motive for these laws is not human benefit, but the welfare of the animals. Much animal protection activity has nothing to do with human pleasure, but just with doing what we feel an obligation to do for their benefit.
The more intelligent animal is the one which is "more valuable to the universe" or has the higher intrinsic value.
Note that it is you who is saying that, and putting those words into the mouth of the universe (so-to-speak). The universe has never uttered those words though, you are just interpreting the actions in it that way.
Again, these words are in quotes, meaning they're not to be taken literally. This was your phrase originally, not mine. I adopted it from you and assumed your meaning overlapped with my understanding.
The phrase refers to our recognition of value which is a fact of life which we did not establish. We do not give the value to the other animals, but rather, we recognize that other animals have value just as we do. Our value is greater, but those animals also have value, regardless of any benefit we gain from them. We have to respect their value, even if it means a SACRIFICE on our part in some cases.
Where does this value of other animals come from? Intrinsic value? How do we recognize it? Whether this can be answered or not, it is a fact that this value other than our benefit does exist. Virtually everyone knows it.
The only people who don't recognize this intrinsic value in other animals are generally the same people who don't recognize such value in other humans. This intrinsic value in the other beings cannot just be something we invented or chose in a subjective manner. It is a reality in the universe, like all other facts which we did not invent but which we accept or recognize.
But we also know that higher intelligence or higher thinking activity has greater value than this or that hair color. The human aesthetic satisfaction has a certain value, and the thinking-judging-believing activity is on a higher level of value.
We humans may commonly value intelligence more than hair color, but that is a value that we are assigning it ourselves, as whichever characteristic we expect to give us greater satisfaction.
No, we don't assign this value. It is a fact of life, or a reality, which we recognize. Intelligence does have greater value than hair color. We do not have any choice to deny this fact. Virtually everyone recognizes this fact of life.
To deny this, you have to give an example of someone not recognizing it and putting more value on hair color than on intelligence. Is it possible to give such an example?
If there is such a scenario, it will be a judgmental one in which you are actually condemning the one who makes this choice of putting higher value on hair color than on intelligence. It will be someone you are insulting and condemning and calling a fool. That is the only kind of example you will offer. And as such, you are saying this person is making a false choice and should be condemned for it.
The universe, or any deity inside or outside of the universe, has not declared intelligence or hair color either as being more valuable.
Nor has the universe "declared" that the sun is farther away from us than the moon. So then, it's our choice that the sun is farther from us than the moon? We made that so by deciding it, or choosing it?
Whether or not such an entity has declared it, we do know that intelligence is more valuable than hair color, just as we know other facts of life. You can't give an example of anyone saying otherwise who is not a fool in your judgment. We know this just as we know Albert Schweitzer was a more valuable human than Adolf Hitler.
It is actually you (and other humans) who are deciding that, . . .
No, not "deciding" -- RECOGNIZING this fact. Do you claim you can make Adolf Hitler to have been a better person than Albert Schweitzer by deciding it? This is just a whimsical choice any of us can make, deciding which things were good and which ones bad? We can decide that it was good for a million people to starve in a famine? We can decide that was good?
. . . and then declaring that the deity has, as sort of an attempt at making it sound more authoritative.
Whether the deity has decided it or not, it is a fact, and we recognize it.
Or if not, then there is NO SUCH THING as "value" or "good" at all, in any form, and nothing in the Universe matters, nothing in life, nothing ever matters. Which cannot be so, because if nothing mattered, then we would make no choices whatever, including the choice to post messages on this website.
If ANYTHING matters at all, then intelligence matters more than hair color. To deny this is to deny that ANYTHING at all matters. And you can't do this, because as soon as you "deny" anything, you're making a choice to do something, and you can't choose to do something unless doing it matters. Any choice you make automatically makes whatever you're choosing matter. You can't CHOOSE to do it if it doesn't matter for it to be done.
You just need to realize who is actually deciding and determining your beliefs and values that you hold.
Some "beliefs and values" are chosen by us. And in some cases these beliefs and values are wrong or false. This is when there's doubt about what is best. We often do not know what is better, or what will produce the better outcome. So we can make a mistake, or it's ambiguous, and so we try to figure it out and make a choice, because the facts are not certain, or there's doubt.
But other "beliefs and values" are dictated to us by the facts of the universe, such as the benefits of intelligence.
What we are choosing is to RECOGNIZE certain truths or facts or realities. And we can be mistaken in some cases, because we misperceive what is happening.
But we are not creating the world or choosing what is fact, nor what has value. I never had any choice to make intelligence more important than hair color. I may have thought hair color was more important when I was 2 years old -- that's not certain. At that age there can be major misperceptions.
But we all figured it out, or came to realize that intelligence was more important, without making a voluntary choice to have this be so. No one ever made a free choice to have intelligence be more important, anymore than they made a free choice to decide that Washington was the first President or that 2 + 2 = 4.
Do you remember ever choosing to make intelligence more important than hair color? Have you thought of reversing that decision and making hair color more important? Why don't you consider changing the priority and having hair color be the more important? Why do you reject even the possibility of changing this and giving the priority to hair color for a change? You could at least experiment with it and make hair color be more important.
Any choice we make to give priority to A over B can be reversed if we wish. Nothing forces us to stick with a choice, if that was really a choice we made.
Some realities are so obvious that there is no decision to recognize it, but it's just imposed onto our awareness by brute force.
But for those that are not so obvious, where the truth could be this way or that, and there are alternative possibilities we're not certain about, then we make a choice what to believe. And likewise the values. Either way, whether scientific facts and math and historical events, or value judgments: they're true or false, we know some for sure, and where we "choose" this one or that, it's because of the less certainty, not because "facts" are essentially different than the values.
And for obvious facts/values, such as the higher importance of intelligence over hair color, there is no ambiguity and no voluntary choice to make, because we know for sure that intelligence matters more than hair color.
The "values" and "beliefs" which are optional, or voluntary, are the ones where there is ambiguity or uncertainty, and so we choose, not deciding what is true or good, but guessing, and we might guess wrong.
But many of the values or beliefs are certain and are not subject to any choice by us. Pain is bad and pleasure good. Knowledge is good, new technology, conveniences, physical strength, amusement/entertainment, etc.; health is good (not being sick or deformed or disabled, etc.) -- these are definitely good -- high value recognized by everyone because there's no ambiguity.
It isn't about our deciding what has value, but RECOGNIZING the actual values that exist, just like facts exist regardless of our choosing them. For either the facts or the value judgments there can be ambiguity and uncertainty and error, but for the part that is certain there's no ambiguity or error.
Yes good point.