Please post a response to the question: Do the Kanamits have a moral obligation to humans? Explain.
Take a short ethics quiz: Click here
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Please post a response to the question: Do the Kanamits have a moral obligation to humans? Explain.
Take a short ethics quiz: Click here
I would say no on the grounds that we as humans do not have a moral obligation to those things which we consume. Or do we? What makes humanity (humans) any more worthy of a moral imperative than any other living organism? Maybe it is just the “Circle Of Life”.
Thanks, Larry, for your reply. If you were a student of mine, I would give you a good score! If humans are capable of moral responsibility and of demonstrating behavior that exemplifies respect for each other, they likely do so because of the perception that human beings are, in some sense, “special.” What makes them special is the set of attributes that constitute what it means to be a “person.” Generally, “other animals” are not thought of as persons (the exception being my dog) since they do not possess (essentially) characteristics commonly associated with “personhood.” Yet, one finds among the “4-leggeds” for example, plenty of instances in which it could be said that these “non-humans” exemplify forms of ethical or virtuous behaviors–making the hard-line moral distinctions between “them” and “us” more permeable. And so, it would seem, it becomes more plausible to widen the ethical circle so as to be more inclusive of other creatures, including possibly those flourishing from, let’s say, exoplanets.
My question is: is the situation existing between the Hanamits and humans not unlike this. In terms of technical achievement, these extraterrestrials are superior. However, it would also seem that the differences, as perceived from the moral angle, between them and us are not as great, as say, between us and livestock. Of course, we (or at least I am) are left with a bit of a problem. I’m guessing that, at the very least, Mr Chambers (who is about to become the ingredient in someone’s soup) might want to try, at least, to convince the 9 foot tall Hanamit that there is something wrong with eating humans. The problem is: by parity of some hypothetical reasoning, might there not also be something wrong with what humans engage in with respect to certain of their preferred eating habits–on analogy.
This whole line of “inquiry” if it may be called that, was recently stimulated by a re-read of Melville’s Moby Dick:
“But no doubt the first man that ever murdered an ox was regarded as a murderer; perhaps he was hung; and if he had been put on his trial by oxen, he certainly would have been; and he certainly deserved it if any murderer does. Go to the meat-market of a Saturday night and see the crowds of live bipeds staring up at the long rows of dead quadrupeds. Does not that sight take a tooth out of thecannibal’s jaw? Cannibals? who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgment, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy paté-de-foie-gras.”