Animals

I uploaded this pic with the title under which I found it. Only justice can give real names.

Approach:

Animals

The term 'animal/s' is often used on this site as indicating an underlying philosophical definition, as being contrasted by the term 'human'.

Different- or other-than-human-animals

We partly use the term 'different-than-human-animal/s', which can operate in indicating a possible zone inbetween a bios-centered definition and a philosophically relatively independent AR definition.

Nonhuman Animals

When forms of discrimination of nonhuman-animal-individuals by humans, on the not-just-human-centered political scope, are talked about, we prefer to use the term 'nonhuman animal/s'.

That term allows to highlight the problematic connection between "giving a position and giving a definition", in general, as how its applied in regard to animals when seperated from certain exclusionary ranges of human self-attributions and also when used to probably seperate from ethical purpose.

This problematic connection can also be seen from the angle of the affected side as "being given a position and being given a definition".

The connection of 'human' given positions and 'human' given definitions affects nonhuman animals for example in the question relating to what can be construed under the term of 'self-authority'.

Standing under the situation of "being given and position and a definition", self-authority is set as an externalized factor to nonhuman animals.

The exclusionionary character of that enforced passivity (or not-allowing of self-determination) limits the interest-political side potentially as then being dependent on human authorization.

In front of the backround of an overall or interspecies relation-context, this aspect would generally locate itself on the socio-ethical plane.

The problem of "bios"-centeredness

We do know that it is very superficial and insufficient to speak of 'rights' and then just refer to 'some' biological data talk mostly within this context here, instead of addressing e.g. philosophical and conceptual roots of the oppression of nonhuman animals, and other issues that deal with causes etc etc...

The pattern of outlooks and attitudes of humans, into which nonhuman animals have been placed by strict definitions, is so tighly woven in the discriminatory form, that currently it seems extremely hard to break the veil of disregard in this respect.

Note:

The word "Bios" --

A definition cited from: http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/bl/uc_bakaoukas4a1.htm

QUOTE But why do the verbs "ZO" (=I am alive, I exist) and "EBION" (=I lived my life in a specific way) have different content, although they have a common etymological root? The difference between the two forms, the present tense "ZO" and the second past tense "EBION" is a tense but, at the same time, also a genuine semantic alteration of the common root "gui-". In a way the root of the second past tense "EBION" expresses a meaning slightly different from the meaning of the present tense "ZO". The past tense "EBION"and the derivative noun "BIOS" were constructed in order to indicate a new notion about life, a notion more concrete and specific: i.e., the constant purposive and therefore complete, unchangeable way of life, to live a life, as Aristotle says, in a concrete mental way (kata tina noun 1180a17 Nicomachean Ethics) "BIOS is a moral action" (bios praxis estin 1254a7 Eudemian Ethics; 1333a31 Politics).

According to Stephanus, "BIOS" does not mean just life (zoe) but a specific kind of life (bios kai to eidos tes zoes; Stephanus, Allia attulit Sallier. Ad Thomam M. Significationes vocabuli exponit Etymol. M. , p. 198, 13). That is to say, "BIOS" is a lifetime (bios o chronos tes zoes; Stephanus ibid.). It is a rational life and therefore cannot be attributed to animals (Stephanus, De discrimine inter bion et zoen sic praesipit Ammonius, p. 30, et similiter Eranius Philo p. 164 et Thomas M. p. 153) (bios zoes diapherei men epi ton logikon tassetai zoon, toutestin anthropon monon).

This different practical estimation about life was expressed by the second past tense "EBION" and the derivative noun "BIOS". QUOTATION ENDS HERE.

Visit:

The Vegan Society

Also visit:
The American Anti-Vivisection Society