Last year Leona Helmsley left $12 million to her dog, Trouble, setting off a heated courtroom battle. California just passed a proposition that says farm animals must be humanely caged. The legal line between humans and animals is blurring further everyday. When it comes to "animal rights," should your cocker spaniel be entitled to the same freedoms and protections as your kid?
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Agree
Rights
Animals moral rights are important and protecting endangered species is as well. But legally they do not deserve the rights we posses. I dont think animals have the rights of humans as legally presented under the Constitution.
- Pedro
February 11, 2009 9:41AM
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Immoral to withhold legal rights from moral rightholders
Pedro,
Of course nonhuman animals do not have the same legal rights as humans. That was my point. The abolitionist AR movement seeks to change that by encouraging humans to recognize what you yourself suggest you believe: that animals have moral rights.
It would seem immoral to me to recognize that nonhumans are morally relevant yet exclude them from protection under the law, don't you think? What valid argument can you present to suggest that nonhumans do not deserve basic legal rights, such as the right not to be be property? Humans have that legal right, and I have yet to find a non-arbitrary justification for withhodling that legal right from nonhumans.
That said, as I believe I mentioned way back in November, nonhumans have no interest in certain other human rights. Moreover, they may have other moral rights that merit legal protection that we do not possess. While humans and animals share some fundamental interests in common (e.g., avoiding pain, continued existence, etc.), that doesn't mean that all our interests are the same, and that of course means that nonhumans would not necessarily be granted all the same legal rights as humans if we they were given the legal right to be protected by legal rights in the first place (for instance, it would be absurd to speak of the 'right' of dogs to vote).
- Eric Prescott
March 6, 2009 6:37PM
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sor666
This argument is completely logical to me. The only point I find difficult is- that nonhumans do not have an interest in protecting the rights of humans or other nonhumans- so therefore why should humans have such an interest? This is the most crucial response one gets from those who argue against granting basic rights to animals and one I have never been able to argue except to suggest that we have a 'duty of care' to animals which they do not have towards us.
- sor666
May 6, 2009 4:43AM
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Contractualism
Contractualism: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/contractualism /#ConProAni
This is a bit simplistic for the sake of time, but we don't ignore the interests of human babies, the infirm, or the mentally incompetent even though they may (or do) not have an interest in respecting (or even the ability to understand) our moral or legal rights. Similarly, there is no justification for us to ignore the interests of nonhuman beings simply because they are unable to consider ours.
- Eric Prescott
May 6, 2009 5:25PM
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Moral agents
Yes, this seems logical to me. But what about Tibor's argument that because animals do not act morally (in the human definition of moral) towards other animals, animals are not moral agents, while the concept of rights only applies to moral agents.
- sor666
May 11, 2009 5:48AM
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Read The Case for Animal Rights
I think you'd be interested in Tom Regan's The Case for Animal Rights. He deals at length with this question, so you'd probably be better off reading his explanation than whatever summary I could drum up.
- Eric Prescott
May 11, 2009 7:31AM
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What is this stuff about contractualism?
1. Eric Prescott links to a portion of the SEP article on contractualism. But why? Contractualist moral theory has very little to do with what sor666 asks, unless Prescott (or someone else) is assuming that contractualism is the correct moral theory. Since contractualism has never been mentioned (and nothing anyone says even hints at contractualism, really), I'm at a loss. The reference comes out of nowhere and seems to explain nothing.
2. In the relevant part of Scanlon's book (i.e., the parts the SEP article is referencing), Scanlon in fact *rejects* the idea that we have moral obligations to non-human animals but *accepts* the idea that we have moral obligations to human infants. (For Scanlon, morality, in the relevant sense, is the domain of 'what we owe to each other'.) Scanlon believes that there is a principled distinction between the cases. So now I'm extra baffled by what purpose the SEP article/contractualism could be serving in Prescott's argument. Isn't Scanlon's position exactly what Prescott wants to deny? (And, again, why is he talking about contractualism anyway?)
3. Then, in nearly the same breath, Prescott requests that sor666 read Regan's work. But this (unintentionally? intentionally?) suggests that there is at least some sort of connection between Regan's work and Scanlon's work. (Why else should sor666 read both the SEP article and Regan's work to find Prescott's answers to deeply related questions.) Of course, there is no tight connection between Regan's view and Scanlon's view. So why is Prescott picking from both theories without ever explaining the relationship?
4. More importantly, why isn't Prescott *explaining* anything about the ideas to which he is referencing? Simply dropping names and buzzwords, and telling people to go and read a book, does not seem very helpful to me. Indeed, it strikes me as an act of avoiding response while making it appear that one has responded.
- DJLanglois
June 4, 2009 11:22AM
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