I draw a distinction between the usefulness of a being to others and the usefulness of the being as a whole. The instance that came up today was the value of a weed in a garden versus the rest of the plants. If we were to say that the plants have a purpose for the owner of the garden, whether they are being grown for the purpose of nutrition, such as vegetables, fruits and spuds, or for the purpose of aesthetics, such as roses, shrubs and herbs*. The plants are therefore given an indirect moral value to the owner of the garden, meaning it would be objectionable if a person was to come along and destroy the garden. The distinction drawn for weeds is then that they have two differences from that person, the first being that they cannot understand the consequences of their actions, such as taking nutrients away from the other plants and therefore causing them to die, and the second being that they cannot suffer when harm is caused to them, making it more morally acceptable to kill them than a being that can feel harm. What I mean by this is a person can understand why killing the garden is wrong, because they can understand the grower's reasons for making the garden in the first place, whereas the plant cannot. But, the person would suffer if violent attempts were made to stop them, whereas the plant would not, which is why we draw the moral distinction of a wrongness in killing a human for trampling your garden but much lesser of a wrongness in uprooting weeds to save the gardener's plants from wilting.
This discussion can now enter the realm of property rights, and where the distinction is drawn there. When a person buys a piece of property with the intent of growing a garden in a specific area, what exactly is it that they are purchasing? Is it purely the soil on which boundaries can be placed? What about the plant life? We usually say that the plants are a part of the property as well, because they live and thrive there. What about the insects and other life forms we usually disregard because of their lack of ability to suffer? Does buying a property of soil mean that you then own all the insects that live in that area? And what about the more cognitively advanced animal life? If there are birds nesting on your property, are they your birds? Do we draw a distinction as to whether or not the animal can leave of it's own accord? The bird can choose to fly away. The bugs can choose to fly as well, and if they are without this gift, they can crawl or squirm or slither or whatever system of movement they happen to possess. But the tree cannot. The tree is a more permanent fixture; the only mobility it happens to be capable of, while still retaining the ability to live, is if another being uproots it from its current location and replants it in another. Does this mean that we can apply property status, and therefore indirect moral status, to another being simply because of how mobile it is?
Q: Where do we draw the lines between ownership and the moral ramifications of claiming something as property?
*I list herbs as aesthetic because they are pleasing to our senses. We can eat herbs such as basil and bananas, but I tend to think of an herb garden as something designed to please taste and smell. The roses and shrubs are in this category for their obvious aesthetic relationship to sight.
(Of course, if we go further, and include potentially hallucinogenic or otherwise mind altering herbs, that becomes another discussion which I have chosen to omit for the time being).
Where do we draw the lines between ownership and the moral ramifications of claiming something as property?
ReplyDeleteim not sure what this question is asking exactly but i will respond to it by saying that if you have a tree in your garden you own that tree. by ownership, this implies that you are responsible to protect it, it does not mean that you have the right to damage that tree for no reason (so i suppose that is where i place the boundary of ownership and the moral ramifications of claiming something as property). As the owner of your garden though, the question of what is under your ownership does intrigue me. do you own the bugs? or the birds? i beleive no. we cannot own other sentient beings. even a mother to her son, she does not own him. we can only care for other beings if we choose to, we cannot restrain a bird from flying away but if it is on our porch we can feed it. but as i apply this philosophy to the tree i think it is the same, we cannot stop the tree from doing what it wants, whether its growing (or running away if it had legs) because we cannot pose our will on anything else without moral ramifications.
now, with that said, humans pose their will upon other beings all the time so how is this right? i answer that question by saying no action in the univers is absolute in its moral goodness or badness so one must decide. for example, you must decide whether you kill the tree or let it live, the decisions seems simple unless it poses a threat. but if it does pose a threat, the bad morals of killing a tree can be overridden for the the benefits of its death.
I like this response, as it separates the moral ramifications from the legal ones. I agree that should be a difference, and that simply owning the land that a tree grows on does not make you it's god, it makes you its keeper. So can we say that our legal jargon may have blurred the boundaries between ownership and moral responsibility? I think so, because so many things that we own we have complete control over because we do not see a moral responsibility to it (such as a car or toy or coffee mug), but in trying to apply ownership to something living, such as a tree or pet, is a different matter. You do not, in good conscience, control the immediate life or death of the being, you are simply responsible for it, in both its own well-being and the well-being of those things which it may affect during its life.
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