Anyways, the gist of the "logical" argument (which is a myopic way of looking at things to say the least) goes something along the lines of "at least x subset of animals has cognitive and emotional capacity analogous to mentally handicapped humans and/or human children, and thus should be given rights coextensive with such humans".
Obviously, there's more meat to it than that, but that's basically what it is. There's no "logic" to it either way, really; opponents of that argument counter with arguments that often boil down to "no the children and mentally handicapped should get more rights because they are humans".
This is largely about value judgments and morality, not "logic". A lot of political, philosophical, and legal things require reference to subjective factors and assumptions, and, unsurprisingly, a lot of people on Hacker News discount that realm of these conversations. I think it's a matter of competence; I've noticed when I talk to some engineers about these sorts of assumptions, they get confused and would rather discount that realm as inferior to "logic" than grapple with the stuff or learn how to become conversant in it (some engineers certainly already are).
Obviously, there are lots of issues where a an almost purely pragmatic, logical approach may be more than sufficient, but even drawing that kind of line involves making a kind of value judgment.
Well those are two separate things.
Anyways, the gist of the "logical" argument (which is a myopic way of looking at things to say the least) goes something along the lines of "at least x subset of animals has cognitive and emotional capacity analogous to mentally handicapped humans and/or human children, and thus should be given rights coextensive with such humans".
Obviously, there's more meat to it than that, but that's basically what it is. There's no "logic" to it either way, really; opponents of that argument counter with arguments that often boil down to "no the children and mentally handicapped should get more rights because they are humans".
This is largely about value judgments and morality, not "logic". A lot of political, philosophical, and legal things require reference to subjective factors and assumptions, and, unsurprisingly, a lot of people on Hacker News discount that realm of these conversations. I think it's a matter of competence; I've noticed when I talk to some engineers about these sorts of assumptions, they get confused and would rather discount that realm as inferior to "logic" than grapple with the stuff or learn how to become conversant in it (some engineers certainly already are).
Obviously, there are lots of issues where a an almost purely pragmatic, logical approach may be more than sufficient, but even drawing that kind of line involves making a kind of value judgment.