Well, it's not a direct causal connection -- that's how we use "and" in English -- but basically, moral responsibility is commutative.
Bears don't have a responsibility towards us: they're bears, they don't realize it's wrong to eat hikers. And accordingly, we don't have a responsibility towards bears: If there's a bear that's eating hikers, we don't try to have a conversation with it, we shoot it and move on.
That's nonsense. A baby doesn't know right from wrong, but parents are obliged to care for it. Just because a bear doesn't have responsibility doesn't mean we can shoot it wily-nily, there has to be some justification such as in the example you mention. And commutativity is a property of operations, you probably meant that moral responsibility is a symmetric relation.
Infants have no ability to care for their parents. Do you truly argue that a child, when they become able, has no responsibility to take care of their parents, when they become infirm?
And metaphor need not hew closely to semantics, but having is, linguistically, a ditransitive operation-- technically stative, but the difference isn't important here. I may have responsibility, and I may have responsibility toward you. Responsibility may commutatively have me toward you, if that made sense, or you might commutatively have responsibility toward me, which is the more sensical. In any event, the metaphor is clear.
That infants have no such ability was the whole point of the example. Children do have such responsibilities when they have the ability.
have is actually a transitive word, not ditransitive. An example of the latter is give: A gives B to C. I disagree that there's metaphor here, commutativity is a very technical term and it relates to operations such as addition. So in fact I do think it's relevant that have is stative, because this implies it's not an operation. When speaking of ethical matters it is simply more common to use words like symmetry and reciprocity.
I'm sure I can make the case that bears are the indirect object of my having responsibility -- or rather are not -- but if you prefer, I withdraw the metaphor. The point is that it goes both ways :)
Ah I see now why you would call it ditransitivite. I believe that you would call it an argument/complement to 'responsibility', as 'have' is not an inherently ditransitive verb.
The point about whether it goes both ways is a matter of opinion I think. I feel that humans have an obligation to treat animals well, not necessarily because of how they would feel or their obligations to us, but because it makes humans look bad not to. Kind of like how a gentleman is supposed to be polite regardless of the situation.
That's a ridiculous example, and in fact it proves the opposite.
Notice that we only shoot bears that are actually eating hikers, even though no bear actually have moral responsibility toward us; that's because we as a society do feel moral responsibility towards bears (and animals in general), and therefore avoid shooting them except when required.
We certainly don't feel anywhere near the same moral responsibility towards animals as we do towards people, but we feel some. And as society becomes less religious, that'll tend to increase.
I think you're actually mistaking religious for urban. In the Bible we talk about dominion over all animals, that is certainly a part of western culture, but few people actually believes that one should walk around randomly kicking puppies and shooting kittens in the head because they can.
Instead, I would argue that this is a function of urbanization and removal of a connection between humans and animals. Animals, which provide meat, eggs, and milk are removed as the providers as such and instead these things come from the grocery store. Because of this disconnect, animals undergo a process of anthropomorphism, which can clearly be seen in the form of lolcatz.
I'm not mistaking anything, I'm drawing from an actual study[1]. Feel free to provide evidence discrediting it.
And you point out as evidence of the disconnect between the urban people and farm animals, by giving the example of the anthropomorphism of cats, which happen to be one of the few animals that actually live with people in urban environments?
I can't even comprehend such logic.
I've read over the study, and they've identified a trend, which you and I both accept as accurate. They don't, however, rule out the connection between urban environments and animal rights. As you are well aware, correlation does not equal causation.
As a member of a rural community your very livelihood is dependent on the relationship of people with animals. The doctor, the car dealer, etc all are connected to this. Doesn't it make more sense that this would have a bigger impact on how you view animal rights than what religion you are? It just so happens that rural people are overwhelmingly more religious, all I'm saying is they failed to account for a very important variable.
Rural people tend to view all animals as a resource, this includes cats as they are a very effective "mouser" or animal that kills mice. The same with dogs, as protectors of self and property. I'm willing to bet that Lolcats are overwhelmingly produced by urban folk, because they have lost this relationship with animals. My anecdotal evidence is that rural folks, and men in particular, don't find anything about lolcats funny at all. This is explained by their connection to cats as tools for removing rodents, not their religious views.
That may be so, but it doesn't change what I originally said; even if it's true, then as society becomes more urban, it'll both become less religious and more supportive of animal rights.
I don't know if religion is such an important impediment to moral responsibility to animals. I think capitalism is more important namely because of factory farming. Most people don't want to know about it and wouldn't stop eating meat or pay twice as much to avoid it. Factory farming is completely hidden from people in cities, so people don't empathize with it as much.
Yes I saw that and I'm saying that correlation might not be so important in practice, because however they might profess to feel about animal rights, most people will still insist on eating meat without wanting to know where it comes from.
Bears don't have a responsibility towards us: they're bears, they don't realize it's wrong to eat hikers. And accordingly, we don't have a responsibility towards bears: If there's a bear that's eating hikers, we don't try to have a conversation with it, we shoot it and move on.