You said the law was “irrelevant”—but there’s a sense in which we can see consensus human values about animals by looking at what the law dictates as punishment for their maltreatment. That is what I was talking about. It seems to me that the law has something to say about the issue of the value of animals relative to humans.
For the most part, animals are given relatively few rights under the law. There are exceptions for some rare ones. Animals are routinely massacred in huge numbers by humans—including some smart mammals like pigs and dolphins. That is a broad reflection how relatively-valuable humans are considered to be.
You said the law was “irrelevant”—but there’s a sense in which we can see consensus human values about animals by looking at what the law dictates as punishment for their maltreatment. That is what I was talking about. It seems to me that the law has something to say about the issue of the value of animals relative to humans.
For the most part, animals are given relatively few rights under the law. There are exceptions for some rare ones. Animals are routinely massacred in huge numbers by humans—including some smart mammals like pigs and dolphins. That is a broad reflection how relatively-valuable humans are considered to be.