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Example research essay topic: Humans And Animals Jeremy Bentham - 1,872 words

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Animal Rights From the earliest times men have been co-existing with animals. Their relationships had several stages of development. At the beginning, animals were food and clothes for men. Later, animals guarded people and were their helpers.

It is evident that these changes have been depended on mans perception of the surrounding world together with the development of his consciousness. Nowadays, people take a lot of animals at home. Animals have become mans pets. Recently, psychologists have introduced the theory that pets are very good for us.

The basic meaning of pet is an animal people keep for emotional rather than economic reasons. A pet animal is kept as a companion, and people all need companions to keep them feeling happy. But pets offer them more than mere companionship; pets invite people to love and be loved. Many owners feel their pets understand them, for animals are quick to sense anger and sorrow. Often a cat or a dog can comfort people at times when human words dont help.

People feel loved, too, by the way pets depend on them for a home, for food and drink. Dogs more than other animals look up to their owners; it makes them feel important and needed. A pet can be something different to each member of the family; another baby to the mother, a sister or brother to an only child, a grandchild to the elderly; but for all of people pets provide pleasure and companionship. It has even been suggested that tiny pets should be sent as companions to astronauts on spaceships, to help reduce the stress and loneliness of space flights. In this Plastic Age, when most of people live in large cities, pets are particularly important for children. Learning to care for a pet helps a child to grow up into a loving adult who feels responsible towards those dependent on him.

But there are a lot of examples of human cruelty and injustice, such as transplantation of animal organs or hunting as a pastime. For example, the idea of putting pig part in people is not a new one; physicians have long used porcine heart valves and hormones in people. But with the advent of fetal-cell research, the practice has reached a whole new level. Today, researchers are testing fetal-pig cells as a treatment for a range of brain conditions not only stroke but also Parkinsons disease, Huntington's disease, epilepsy, chronic pain and spinal-cord injury.

Though only a few dozen patients have received brain cells from fetal pigs; but preliminary studies of Parkinsons patients suggest that pig cells may work as well as those from human fetuses. Transplant able pig organs could generate billions for biotech while extending thousands of lives. But what would the net effect be? Many experts worry that cross-species organ sharing could trigger plagues by infecting people with obscure but transmissible pathogens. But there is another side of the question. Is it humanely to take a life of an animal with the purpose to save a life of a human being?

May be more lives would be saved for less money by improving access to basic health care. From the early times, hunting, shooting and fishing have been considered one of the favorite pastimes among some members of the higher social classes and some people from lower social classes. Animal-lovers strongly oppose to them. The League Against Cruel Sports was organized in Britain. It wants to make illegal hunting, shooting and fishing competitions. The campaign has been steadily intensifying.

There are a lot of questions that should be answered, such as: What is the role of humans in the Nature world? Are they only viewers or judges? Do they have any right to control or manage the lives of other life forms? Where is the border between the man and the animal? According to the concept of animal rights, all or some animals should have a right to possess their own lives.

Philosophy of animal rights is based on rejecting that animals can be treated like capital goods or property for the benefit of people. It should be pointed that animal welfare is quite a different thing. Animal welfare means to prevent cruelty and animal suffering. Animal rights give specific moral rights to animals. It does not mean that human and non-human animals should have equal rights in all spheres of their activity. Certainly, for example, animals have no right to vote or to be elected.

There are a lot of discussions about animal rights. Some activists are sure that only sentient or self-aware animals should be given the right to possess their own lives and bodies. Do animals think, or do they act merely from instinct? These questions have been debated by many people.

Dr. Blair, a former director of the New York Zoological Park, has spent many years as a companion of animals. He has worked with them for many years. Dr. Bliar states, It is my judgment that all animals think.

When we see animals showing affection, sympathy, jealousy or anger, can we doubt that there are thoughts accompanying these feelings? (Frey, 1980) Dr. Bliar believes that the ten most intelligent animals are: the chimpanzee, the orangutan, the elephant, the gorilla, the dog, the beaver, the horse, the sea lion, the bear, and the cat. Opponents of animal rights base their arguments on the morality. They state that reason is not the only thigh that adjoins humans and animals. The morally relevant differences between humans and animals should be taken into account.

It determines the rights and interests of the both. Opponents state that animals have no ability to use language, have no self-consciousness, do not possess a soul. Most of all, they have no ability to recognize the rights and interests of others. There are a lot of distinguishing features.

But, frankly speaking, such criteria can be hardly applied to all humans. Another point of view states that animal rights should be extended to all animals, even if they have no developed nervous systems or self-consciousness. A lot of experiments were made by scientists to prove express emotions resemble to human. In the 70 s, Martin E. P. Seligman carried out an experiment with dogs.

He demonstrated that helpless animals behaved as severely depressed humans. The scientist wrote: So there are considerable parallels between the behaviors which define learned helplessness and major symptoms of depression. Helpless animals become passive in the face of later trauma; they do not initiate responses to control trauma and the amplitude of responding is lowered. Depressed patients are characterized by diminished response initiation; their behavioral repertoire is impoverished and in severe cases, almost stuporous. (Seligman, p. 19) It should be pointed that animals with simple nervous systems, like jellyfish have, have basic reflexes but cannot lead their actions or plans to a logical conclusion.

But the biology of mind has many unknown. Scientists are unable to state confidently that other animals have no mind. One of the neuroscientist's, Sam Harris, emphasizes: Inevitably, scientists treat consciousness as a mere attribute of certain large-brained animals. The problem, however, is that nothing about a brain, when surveyed as a physical system, declares it to be a bearer of that peculiar, inner dimension that each of us experiences as consciousness in his own case... The operational definition of consciousness... is re portability.

But consciousness and reportabiltiy are not the same thing. Is a starfish conscious? No science that conflates consciousness with reportabilty will deliver an answer to this question. To look for consciousness in the world on the basis of its outward signs is the only thing we can do. (Harris, p. 21) The scientist argues that though people know a lot of about anatomical, physiological, and evolution development of themselves and other animals; they have no idea why the processes have happened. Sam Harris assumes that human thoughts, moods and sensations can be characterized as qualitative; and remain an absolute mystery.

It is evident that the animal rights debates root in moral and scientific aspects of the issue. The relationships between human and animals take their origin in prehistory and traditions. Modern debates about animal rights are dated back to the 4 th century BC and the earliest philosophers. Athenian, Aristotle, wrote that non human animals took lower row in the Great Chain of Being, because they are considered to be irrational. Aristotle was sure that irrationality was the only reason that animals had no interests of their own.

According to the concept, animals exist only for human benefit. But later, in the 6 th century BC, a Greek philosopher and mathematician, Pythagoras, proved the transmigration of souls. In the 17 th century the dissections about animals and their role in human life took place in France. Rene Descartes, the French philosopher, thought that animals had no souls. Thats why they could not think or feel pain. His contemporary, Jean-Jacques Rousseau did not agree with it.

In the preface of his work Discourse on Inequality (1754), the philosopher pointed the fact that... man starts as an animal, though not one devoid of intellect and freedom. But it is known that animals are sensitive beings, and "they too ought to participate in natural right, and that man is subject to some sort of duties toward them, " specifically "one [has] the right not to be uselessly mistreated by the other. " (Rousseau, preface) The Scottish writer, John Oswald, wrote some works in which he discussed the problem of man's natural sensitivities. The writer assumed that man is kind and compassionate by nature. In his works The Cry of Nature or an Appeal to Mercy and Justice on Behalf of the Persecuted Animals Oswald argued that the brutalization of modern life made man inured to these sensitivities.

The same conception was noticed in Hindoo customs, India. John Oswald was a vegetarian. He was sure that flesh-eating made a lot of harm to man. He became cruel and blood-thirsty.

Oswald wrote in his "Cry of Nature": "Sovereign despot of the world, lord of the life and death of every creature, -man, with the slaves of his tyranny, disclaims the ties of kindred. Howe " er attuned to the feelings of the human heart, their affection are the mere result of mechanic impulse Such are the unfeeling dogmas, which, early instilled into the mind, induce a callous insensibility, foreign to the native texture of the heart; such the cruel speculations which prepare us for the practice of that remorseless tyranny, and which palliate the foul oppression that, over inferior but fellow creatures, we delight to exercise. " (Oswald, p. 35) The English philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, was a representative of modern utilitarianism in the 18 th century. According to his concept, animal feel pain as human do. Jeremy Bentham pointed that people should treat other beings with the ability to suffer, not the ability to reason.

He stated that babies and disabled people are not treated with reason but with compassion. The philosopher argued that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum are not the only reason for neglect. He argued: What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty...


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Research essay sample on Humans And Animals Jeremy Bentham

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