No Arbitrary Criteria Can Be Used to Violate Basic Rights
The tired objections that animals do not deserve rights because they lack rationality, or language, or human levels of intelligence, or whatever arbitrary characteristics anthropocentric philosophers decide are important are so self-serving as to be almost comical. The obvious problem with using qualities like these to exclude animals from moral consideration is that we can almost always find humans who also lack those qualities. A great many humans lack what we'd consider to be "normal" rational faculties, yet no one seriously suggests that the mentally disabled be enslaved, or that they should be used for food or medical experiments. Similarly, you may be smarter or more eloquent or stronger than I am, yet none of those attributes gives you the right to make me your property. Why? Because in the relevant regard that both you and I share in not being the chattel of another, no arbitrary criteria -- not intelligence, rationality, language, eye color, skin color, gender, etc. -- can be used to violate this basic right that guarantees our inherent value. Those of us who are for animal rights (and not simply for animal welfare) wish to make "species" another irrelevant criterion for deciding who does and does not get the basic rights accorded to members of our moral community.
Surely, the road ahead towards giving animals more thorough membership in our moral community is a long one. Veganism -- not consuming animal products of any kind -- is certainly the first step of many in this direction, and a step that everyone can take today. In spite of what Neil the hippie might think, vegetables don't need rights, as they feel no pain, and have no sentience. Animals, however, are another story altogether.
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But what would you say to those who argue that animals do not grant basic right to life and freedom to other animals, to humans or to each other- so why should we do so for them?
I am not trying to be absurdly critical of your argument, I am merely interested in how people derive worth from various things in this world. You argue that it is so plainly apparent that animals should have rights and should be treated fairly, yet laugh away the idea that vegetables should also have rights. I am not trying to argue for rights for vegetables, but merely stating that it is apparent that animals have more rights than vegetables. Your basis for this comes from the fact that animals feel pain and have sentience. Firstly, how is the ability to feel pain any less of an arbitrary characteristic than rationality or language. Is it alright to eat a paraplegic because they can't feel anything? Secondly, how do you define sentience? Do you use that in the sense of self awareness? I doubt a fly is aware of its own existence . Are you referring to a sentience that means merely the ability to feel pain or pleasure? We have no way of knowing the feelings of another person, let alone another species. We can only draw conclusions based on reaction to stimuli. However, many things in this world will react to stimuli. Even a computer program. Something not even out of a science fiction artificial intelligence scenario, but a simple program. When you input proper data, the program responds with accurate data. When you make it try to divide by zero, it crashes. Did you hurt it? Did it feel pain and stop working? I don't see how your views of why animals should have rights differ from the views of these anthropocentric philosophers who are basing their arguments on "arbitrary characteristics".
Feeling pain and being sentient is not an arbitrary characteristic like moral agency or free will because we can prove scientifically when a being is dead or alive and we know plants do not have nervous systems (ie cannot feel pain), nor do machines. Being dead or alive is not generally a point which is not clear and which cannot be verified through measurement or science . We cannot however measure or determine morality or intelligence, with certainty. I think this is the difference.
You must distinguish between things that are dead and alive. Computers are dead- animals are alive. All animals with a sufficiently complex nervous system feel pain- including all vertebrates and some invertebrates- plants dont have nervous systems. I think this is an absurd comparison- between plants and animals and then computers.