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While the Latin term itself originates in scholasticism, it reflects the Aristotelian view of man as a creature distinguished by a rational principle.In the Nicomachean Ethics I.13, Aristotle states that the human being has a rational principle (Greek: λόγον ἔχον), on top of the nutritive life shared with plants, and the instinctual life shared with other animals, i. e., the ability ...
He argued that non-human animals can reason, sense, and feel just as human beings do. [9] Theophrastus did not prevail, and it was Aristotle's position—that human and non-human animals exist in different moral realms because one is rational and the other not—that persisted largely unchallenged in the West for nearly two thousand years.
The claim that only sentient beings have interests has also been questioned as a person in a coma is not sentient but is still being cared for. [4] Philosopher Gregory Bassham has written that "many environmentalists today reject sentientism and claim instead that all living things, both plants and animals, have moral standing".
Discussion of moral agency in non-human animals involves both debate about the nature of morality and about the capacities and behavior of human and non-human animals. [ 12 ] [ 13 ] Thinkers who agree about the nature, behavior and abilities of different species may still disagree about which capacities are important for moral agency or about ...
Animal consciousness, or animal awareness, is the quality or state of self-awareness within an animal, or of being aware of an external object or something within itself. [ 2 ] [ 3 ] In humans, consciousness has been defined as: sentience , awareness , subjectivity , qualia , the ability to experience or to feel , wakefulness , having a sense ...
Animal rights is the philosophy according to which many or all sentient animals have moral worth independent of their utility to humans, and that their most basic interests—such as avoiding suffering—should be afforded the same consideration as similar interests of human beings. [2]
A related counterargument from Roderick Long is that a being can obtain moral agency by developing a rational capacity, and from there on has full moral agency even if this capacity is lost or diminished: That is why a cow has no rights, though a human being reduced to the mental level of a cow does have them.
Scheler defined the human being not so much as a "rational animal" (as has traditionally been the case since Aristotle) but essentially as a "loving being". He breaks down the traditional hylomorphic conception of the human person, and describes the personal being with a tripartite structure of lived body, soul, and spirit.