Resolution Sep Oct 11

Minh A.
Luong & Company Tutorial September-October 2011 National Forensic League Lincoln-Douglas topic
Resolved: Justice requires the recognition of animal rights.
PlanetDebate.com 1
PlanetDebate.com / Lincoln-Douglas.com Minh A. Luong & Company Tutorial: September-October 2011 National Forensic League Lincoln-Douglas topic Resolved: Justice requires the recognition of animal rights. Dr. Minh A. Luong Author/Editor
International Security Studies and The Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy and Ivy Scholars Program Yale University New Haven, Connecticut USA
<minh.a.luong@yale.edu>
Department of Political Science and Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions and Watson Institute for International Affairs Brown University Providence, Rhode Island
<Minh_Luong@Brown.EDU>
N.B.: The views expressed in this essay and other open-source work are those of the author/editor and his research staff and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Yale University, Brown University, the U.S. Government, nor the United Nations (with which the author maintains advisory relationships in the case of the latter two).
2011 Minh A. Luong and Harvard Debate, Inc., All Rights Reserved
Minh A. Luong & Company Tutorial September-October 2011 National Forensic League Lincoln-Douglas topic
PlanetDebate.com 2
Selected Quotations
As long as people will shed the blood of innocent creatures there can be no peace, no liberty, no harmony between people. Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together. --Isaac Bashevis Singer There are many ways human beings can be guilty of mistreating animals. Perhaps even the law should make some provisions to ensure that wanton torture and mistreatment of animals are minimized. But this is not because animals have rights, which they cannot have given their nature as instinctually driven beasts instead of moral agents. Talking, therefore, about animal rights is a confusion and misguides our thinking about our proper relationship with the rest of the animal world. -- Tibor Machan, Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University The question is not, "Can they reason?" nor, "Can they talk?" but rather, "Can they suffer?" --Jeremy Bentham English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer I've always felt that animals are the purest spirits in the world. They don't fake or hide their feelings, and they are the most loyal creatures on Earth. And somehow we humans think we're smarterwhat a joke. - P!nk Contemporary singer and entertainer The life of an ant and that of my child should be granted equal consideration. --Michael W. Fox, Scientific Director and former Vice President, The Humane Society of the United States, The Inhumane Society, New York, 1990 The basis of all animal rights should be the Golden Rule: we should treat them as we would wish them to treat us, were any other species in our dominant position. --Christine Stevens Together, eco-terrorists and animal rights extremists are one of the most serious domestic terrorism threats in the U.S. today. --Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Putting Intel to Work Against ELF and ALF Terrorists, 30 June 2008 In an earlier stage of our development most human groups held to a tribal ethic. Members of the tribe were protected, but people of other tribes could be robbed or killed as one pleased. Gradually the circle of protection expanded, but as recently as 150 years ago we did not include blacks. So African human beings could be captured, shipped to America and sold. In Australia white settlers regarded Aborigines as a pest and hunted them down, much as kangaroos are hunted down today. Just as we have progressed beyond the blatantly racist ethic of the era of slavery and colonialism, so we must now progress beyond the speciesist ethic of the era of factory farming, of the use of animals as mere research tools, of whaling, seal hunting, kangaroo slaughter and the destruction of wilderness. We must take the final step in expanding the circle of ethics. --Peter Singer, Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics, Princeton University If the apes survive, it will be because we decide (spurred on by Jane Goodall) to save their habitats. And the same will be true, in time, of virtually all the larger animals. And if domestic animals are bred and cared for, it is because we have an interest in their products. In all our dealings with the animals, the inherent mastership of the human race displays itself. And this only goes to show that we alone have the duty to look after the animals, because we alone have duties. The corollary is inescapable: we alone have rights. -- Roger Scrunton, Scholar, Institute for the Psychological Sciences (VA), Oxford University (UK) and University of St. Andrews (UK)
PlanetDebate.com 3
In This Topic Briefing Cover page Selected quotations In This Topic Briefing (aka the Table of Contents) A Note from the Editor Topic in Context Strategy Notes Affirmative Negative Definitional Concepts and Definitions Positions and Argument Starters Affirmative Negative Sources Selected Evidence on the Topic About the Author/Editor and Analytic Research Team Leaders 34 36 38 43 75 76 15 23 29 1 2 3 4 5
PlanetDebate.com 4
A Note from the Editor

The Lincoln-Douglas debate topic for September-October 2011 is Resolved: Justice requires the recognition of animal rights. This topic evokes strong emotions and passions on both sides of the topic and through our extensive research, we have found very few academics and public intellectuals outside those who are self-identified advocates for their respective side of the issue who have taken a moderate middle ground position on this topic. Every PlanetDebate Lincoln-Douglas debate topic briefing is the collective product of a number of scholars, topicengaged professionals, researchers, and individuals from typical judge demographic pools who evaluate potential arguments and their effectiveness. Even though my name appears at the top of each briefing packet, it takes the combined contributions of between 15 to 20 people to produce each topic tutorial; hence the & Company part of the series name. In fact, one of the most difficult tasks in producing each topic briefing packet is to edit the material down to our target of 40 pages! Due to the difficulty in finding high quality open-source research material on the internet pertaining to this topic, my colleagues and I have focused on presenting material that is generally not available to high school debaters. We have focused on the bioethics, legal, philosophy, political science and other academic and public policy sources as well as focusing on author qualifications which we believe will be especially important when debating this topic. We have also chosen to continue to integrate extensive quotations from the leading scholars themselves directly into the topic analysis with the intent of providing direct illustrations with the least amount of interpretation to promote clearer and deeper understanding of the topic. You may notice that the quotation section for this tutorial is particularly robust and each quotation is longer than usual. This is due to our desire to adequately capture the context and nuance of each authors argument. As a result, this topic tutorial is nearly twice as long as our target length of 40 pages due to the complexity of the topic and our desire to best prepare you for this topic. I am particularly indebted to my longtime friend and colleague, Nick Coburn-Palo, doctoral candidate in the political science department at Brown University for his significant contributions to this tutorial. As a former national champion debater and coach and now emerging scholar on American political development and political theory, his knowledge on this topic along with cutting-edge insights has added a unique dimension that we hope will give you and your squad a significant competitive advantage when debating this topic. Rick Brundage, nationally recognized coach and Yale Ivy Scholars Program senior instructor, continues to play a key role on our research and analytic team here at PlanetDebate.com. This topic briefing would not be possible were it not for the many conversations with and contributions from a wide range of scholars and advocates on both sides of this question. My professorial colleagues at both Yale and Brown universities provided important insights and contributions. I am also indebted to three subject matter experts veteran advocates in the animal rights debate and a critic of the animal rights movement at a leading think tank for their invaluable feedback, insights, and suggestions. And finally, many thanks to our focus group panelists for their feedback and suggestions on prospective argument strategies. My colleagues and I thank you for being a PlanetDebate.com/Lincoln-Douglas.com subscriber and we hope that our unique blend of academic and policy practitioner approaches will give you a distinct advantage in your debate rounds. As always, I invite your comments and feedback, and greatly value your confidence in our project by using our materials to help your program prepare for each National Forensic League Lincoln-Douglas debate topic. If you have any suggestions, questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me. My email address is minh.a.luong@yale.edu. With best wishes for success as we start the 2011-12 debate season,
Minh A. Luong
Author/Editor
PlanetDebate.com 5
TOPIC IN CONTEXT In selecting the topic Resolved: Justice requires the recognition of animal rights to begin the 2011-2012 Lincoln-Douglas debate season, the coaches of the National Forensic League have chosen a resolution with an exceptionally strong literature base and a robust core of topic specific arguments and connections to broader philosophical and public policy debates. While the academic debate is complex, more so than with most issues, my colleagues and I believe the size of the necessary intellectual chessboard is well suited to Lincoln Douglas debate. The relevance of debating environmental issues would be difficult to question. The salience of the animal rights question, however, might not be as obvious at first glance. Duquesne University Professor Stephen Newmyer 1 explains its significance as follows: It will be obvious to anyone who pays attention to the media that issues relating to the treatment of animals by human beings constituted the subject of one of the central intellectual debates of the closing years of the twentieth century that shows no sign of abating in the twenty-first. One does not need to consult the sophisticated and abstractly argued treatises of ethical philosophers and ethologists, those scientists whose work entails the systematic study of animal behavioral patterns, to be aware that the questions of whether animals possess rights, what those rights might be, and what impact such rights possession might have upon human behavior, have far-reaching implications for the lives of all persons, and that those questions are currently the topic of lively debate. [Newmyer, Stephen. 2006. Animals, Rights and Reason in Plutarch and Modern Ethics. New York: Routledge. p. 4] This debate touches on a fundamental question(s) in philosophy: What is it to be human and what significance ought one attach to such a designation? In the context of animal rights, this maps well onto the issue of biocentrism, as Professor James B. Reichmann, S.J. of the Philosophy Department at Seattle University explained: Until recently, in the Western world, rights were traditionally and all but universally recognized as attributable to humans alone. Today, new winds are blowing, and we increasingly are hearing a call to extend rights to the nonhuman animal and even, on occasion, to the environment as well. Though still perhaps a minority position, increasingly contemporary life scientists and philosophers argue that the planet upon which we live belongs no more properly to us humans than it does to the animals. As a consequence, it is alleged, we humans ought to extend to them also at least some of the rights we extend to ourselves; others there are who are very vocal in contending that the
1
For a list of Professor Newmyers (and yes, there is no e between the m and the y) publications, visit URL: http://www.duq.edu/classics/dr-stephen-newmyer.cfm
PlanetDebate.com 6
environment itself is to be viewed as a subject of rights. There is, in short, a rising antipathy to a view, often characterized as elitist, which accords a privileged status to humans, often at great cost both to the nonhuman animal and to the environment. This view is often stigmatized as anthropocentric. As a corrective measure, many environmentalist ethicists opt for a position they denominate as biocentrist. According to this view, humans are to accept their place as merely one among many other life forms inhabiting planet earth, all of which compete for their share in this planets coveted by increasingly limited resources. [Reichmann, James. 2000. Evolution, Animal Rights, & the Environment. Washington D.C.: Catholic University Press. p. 2] Because so many of the best resources on this topic are available only to university students and professors, and understanding that most high school students lack access to these resources, this briefing will endeavor to expose students to sections of text from the top books and articles in the area of animal rights. In order to focus most effectively, this section will focus on the three most influential contemporary authors on the topic: Peter Singer, R.G. Frey, and Tom Regan. Their importance is explained by George Washington University Professor of Philosophy David DeGrazia: 2 Singer, Frey, and Regan have made important contributions. Much of the animal ethics literature comes close to suggesting that they have mapped out the major views in this debate; it is not unusual for an article or anthology to represent the utilitarian view, the rights view, and no otherOne of the most remarkable facts about the first generation is that they all agree upon the basic idea of extending equal consideration to animals. For the utilitarians, animals interests count equally in maximizing the good. For Regan, animals interests are somewhat more rigorously protected by rights. [DeGrazia, David. 1996. Taking Animals Seriously: Mental Life and Moral Status. Cambridge (U.K.): Cambridge University Press. p. 6-7] However, this is not to imply that these three authors constitute the entirely of the debate. Classical thought will be explored in the context of Frey. Second generation Animal Rights thought will be explored in the Argument Starter sections, as well as within the evidence set. However, it would be an injustice to overlook the importance of the British animal rights campaigners of over 100 years ago, among the most significant of whom was Henry Stephens Salt. 3 He has been recognized by both Singer and Regan as making many of the same arguments they did, far ahead of their times. Consider what Salt wrote back in 1912:
For a list of Professor DeGrazias work and his CV, see URL: http://departments.columbian.gwu.edu/philosophy/people/130 3 For a brief biography of Henry Stephens Salt, see URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Stephens_Salt
PlanetDebate.com 7
Have lower animals rights? Undoubtedly if men haveIf men have not rights well they have an unmistakable intimation of something very similar; a sense of justice which marks the boundary-line where acquiescence ceases and resistance begins; a demand for freedom to live their own lives, subject to the necessity of respecting the equal freedom of other people. [From Henry Salts Animals Rights, written in 1912, republished in the following anthology: Regan, Tom and Peter Singer (ed.). 1976. Animal Rights and Human Obligations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc. p. 173] The nuance in Salts argument is useful to consider even now, as he clarifies his demand It is an entire mistake to suppose that the rights of animals are in any way antagonistic to the rights of men. Let us not be betrayed for a moment into the specious fallacy that we must study human rights first, and leave the animal question to solve itself hereafterit is too late in the day to suggest the indefinite postponement of a consideration of animals rights, for from a moral point of view, and even from a legislative point of view, we are daily confronted with the problemanimals have rights, and these rights consist in the restricted freedom to live a natural life a life, that is, which permits of the individual development subject to the limitations imposed by the permanent needs and interests of the community. There is nothing quixotic or visionary in this assertionif we must kill, whether it be man or animal, let us kill and have done with it; if we must inflict pain, let us do what is inevitable, without hypocrisy, or evasion, or cant. But (here is the cardinal point) let us first be assured that it is necessary; let us not wantonly trade on the needless miseries of other beings, and then attempt to lull our consciences by a series of shuffling excuses which cannot endure a moments candid investigation. [From Henry Salts Animals Rights, written in 1912, republished in the following anthology: Regan, Tom and Peter Singer (ed.). 1976. Animal Rights and Human Obligations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc. p. 177-78] Having briefly considered the British influence on the contemporary animal rights movement, we will now consider three leading authors who exemplify the most prominent intellectual positions in the animal rights debate. Peter Albert David Singer Australian ethicist Peter Singer, 4 the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, has gained prominence in the world of philosophy in a variety of sub-fields including, in recent years, the emerging inquiry into cosmopolitan ethics. However, he first gained international prominence from his full-throated defense of the welfare of animals.
4
Professor Singers website at Princeton University is at URL: http://www.princeton.edu/~psinger/
PlanetDebate.com 8
Considered the progenitor of the speciesism argument, as well an innovator on suffering-based arguments, Singer offers a non-rights based defense of animals. George Washington University Professor David DeGrazia explains the primary argument of Peter Singers iconic work on animal ethics as follows More than any other work, Peter Singers Animal Liberation brought questions about the moral status of animals into intellectual respectability. In this work, Singer argues on the basis of behavioral, physiological, and evolutionary evidence that many animals (at least vertebrates) have interests at the very least an interest in not suffering. Indeed, he identifies sentience, the capacity to suffer, as the admission ticket to the moral arena. Nonsentient beings have no interests, and where there are no interests, there is nothing morally to protect. On the other hand, all sentient beings have interests and therefore moral status. Noting that leading ethical theories assume some principle of equal consideration of interests, Singer argues that there is no coherent reason to exclude (sentient) animals interests from the scope of equal consideration. Including animals does not entail precisely equal treatment. Dogs have no interest in learning to read and write, so equal consideration does not require providing them an education even if we hold that humans are entitled to an education. However, it does mean that if a human and a rat suffer equally in duration and intensity, their suffering has the same moral weight or importance. Singer employs this simple thesis in a scathing critique of common uses of animals for human purposes. He gives particularly detailed attention to factory farming and the use of animals in biomedical research, calling for the abolition of the former and the near-abolition of the latter. [DeGrazia, David. 1996. Taking Animals Seriously: Mental Life and Moral Status. Cambridge (U.K.): Cambridge University Press. p. 2-3] It is his emphasis on suffering which sets Singers work apart, as Professor Stephen T. Newmyer, Professor of Classics at Duquesne University, explains that While humans may have superior memories and more detailed knowledge of what is happening to them, Singer feels that there is no reason to conclude that animals experience pain to a lesser degree than do humans. Indeed, he maintains that their suffering may be the more intense because they understand it less. The suffering of animals has for Singer the same moral weight as does that of humans. [Newmyer, Stephen. 2006. Animals, Rights and Reason in Plutarch and Modern Ethics. New York: Routledge. p. 49] Singers theories have drawn both great praise and criticism. Among the most strident lines of criticism have been related to his comparison of speciesism to racism, sexism, and the Holocaust, which many have argued is inappropriate, inaccurate, and offensive. However, 8
PlanetDebate.com 9
supporters of Singer have offered a robust defense of the comparisons, as Dr. David Sztybel, 5 research fellow at the University of Vienna and former fellow at the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, demonstrates: The comparison in general, to the extent that it can be illuminated, cannot successfully be impugned by alleging that it glosses over particular differences, is insulting, trivializing, or put forward by those who are Nazi-like. Certainly, it would be viciously circular to assume that animal liberation is mistaken from the start, which makes the comparison offensive, and which in turn is supposed to prove that animal liberation is wrong. I conclude that if all other objections against animal liberation fail, objecting to the Holocaust comparison by itself will not vindicate the case for anti-animal-liberation. I submit the possibility that some people are deeply offended by the comparison because they are profoundly prejudiced against animals and in favor of human beings, and intolerant of those who hold opinions that are reflective of animal liberationist tendencies. If there were no such thing as discriminatory oppression, there never would have been a Holocaust, but neither could there be what animal liberationists refer to as speciesism. Far from the comparison being intrinsically objectionable, it is potentially useful and illuminating, and may help to underline the gravity of our oppression of nonhuman animals. [Sztybel, David. 2006. Can the Treatment of Animals be Compared to the Holocaust? Ethics and the Environment. 11:1. p. 130] Singers importance to modern animal rights movement cannot be overestimated. However, in terms of the current LD debate topic, he is less important than one might at first expect. The reason for his diminished importance is that he is considered to couch his arguments in terms of Darwinism and Utility, rather than the language of rights embraced by the resolution. This opens his arguments to lines of criticism which might not necessarily apply to rights-based defenses of animal welfare. Some of the potential pitfalls are explained by Professor Emeritus of English at Brandeis University Eugene Goodheart: 6 Singer presents himself as a Darwinian. Darwinism has historically been an unreliable guide in ethical matters. Consider its pernicious consequences in Social Darwinism, in which the Struggle for Existence and the Survival of the Fittest become models for economic life. Darwin and his advocate Thomas Huxley cautioned against conflating evolution and ethicsIn any case, Singer is undaunted in his attempt to extrapolate a benign morality from evolutionary theory. Has he succeeded? Only if he is allowed to pick and choose arbitrarily from its full panoply. Once invested in the theory, we cant
5 6
For an expanded summary of Professor Sztybels position, see URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sztybel Professor Goodhearts bio page at Brandeis University is at URL: http://www.brandeis.edu/facguide/person.html?emplid=8f9c3f620d81033c17c39c83e01330a940738a55
PlanetDebate.com 10
simply ignore what works against our personal desires. If Darwinism is the basis for rethinking ethics, then we will need to incorporate Natural Selection and The Survival of the Fittest in conceiving or re-conceiving an ethical system. The very fact that human beings are essentially animals (and not angels) means that they too struggle for existence. They kill animals for food, resist or trim predatory herds to protect their domestic animals, experiment in the laboratory with animals so that cures can be found for human diseases. The discrimination on the basis of species is natural according to the Darwinian dispensation. [Goodheart, Eugene. 2006. Peter Singers Challenge. Philosophy and Literature. 30:1. p. 242-43]
R.G. Frey University of Liverpool Professor R.G. Frey is considered a strong advocate of the classical arguments in favor of the existence of obligations, rights even, regarding humans which are not present among (other) animals. In order to understand his argument, it is best to consider the tradition upon which it is constructed. The long-standing position of many classic scholars is explained by the Professor of Philosophy and Biomedical Sciences at Colorado State University, Bernard E. Rollin, 7 as follows: At least since Plato and Aristotle, and even in the Catholic tradition, the notion of the soul providing the basis for excluding animals from moral concern has been given philosophical content by equating the soul with the rational faculty or the ability to reason. Humans are rational, or at least have the capacity for rational thought, while animals do not, and for this reason, the scope of morality does not extend beyond humans. This claim that only humans are rational has traditionally been linked to another criterion used to distinguish people from animals, the claim that only humans possess language or the ability to use what are called conventional signs.The position linking rationality, language, and moral status may very briefly be schematized as follows: 1) Only humans are rational. 2) Only humans possess language. 3) Only humans are objects of moral concern. [Rollin, Bernard. 1992. Animal Rights & Human Morality. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books. p. 33]
Professor Rollins webpage at Colorado State University is at URL: http://www.colostate.edu/dept/Philosophy/RollinB.html
10
PlanetDebate.com 11
For Aristotle, what one might call normative or abstract judgment is a trait which sets humans apart from animals. University of Kent scholar and critic of animal rights arguements Michael Leahy8 explained Aristotles argument as follows The implications of Aristotles account of animal experience is best brought out by contrast with that of human beings. We bring rationality, in the form of thinking and understanding, to bear upon the psychic faculties we share with plants and the lower animalsBut rationality brings with it language and the possibility of being correct and incorrectIt is purposive choice (prohairesis) of which animals are capable. As Aristotle puts it, An object of choice is something within our power at which we aim after deliberation. Deliberation is not within the power of animalsthere can be no friendship or justice towards inanimate things, and not even towards a horse or an oxPlants exist to give subsistence to animals, and animals to give it to men. [Leahy, Michael. 1991. Against Liberation: Putting Animals in Perspective. London: Routledge. P. 78-80] Building upon the concept earlier articulated by Aristotle, Kant honed his notion of a priori thought around a human/animal binary. Again, Professor of Philosophy and Biomedical Sciences at Colorado State University, Bernard Rollin, explains: Kant proceeds by stressing the human ability to arrive at what philosophers call a priori knowledge, that is, knowledge that cannot be shown to be false by experience and can be known to be true simply by thoughtThe important point for our purposes is Kants claim that only human beings can possess a priori knowledge, and only the possession of a priori knowledge can allow a being to go beyond the particular circumstances one finds in sense experience of the world and assert judgments that claim universality, not tied to specific times and places. This for Kant is the essential meaning of rationality. Since only humans can entertain, understand, apprehend, and formulate statements that are universal in scope, only humans are rational. This is because, according to Kant, animals are tied to stimulus and response reactions. [Rollin, Bernard. 1992. Animal Rights & Human Morality. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books. p. 39-40]
Michael Paul Tutton Leahy was a conservative British philosopher who, in his book Against Liberation (1991), argued that the notion of animal rights was absurd which triggered threats against him from animal rights activists. His obituaries from 2007 highlight his life and arguments against animal rights. These include The Telegraph (UK) at URL: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1553905/Michael-Leahy.html, The Sunday Times (UK) at URL: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article1890104.ece, and The Independent (UK) at URL: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/michael-leahy-450821.html
11
PlanetDebate.com 12
Frey makes his contribution to the argument by articulating these classic arguments within a utilitarian context, one which calculates utility in a substantially different way than does Singer. Professor David DeGrazia explains as follows Like Singer, R.G. Frey embraces utilitarianism, the ethical theory that states that the right action is that which maximizes good consequences. His Interest and Rights is philosophically more in-depth than most works in animal ethics. Unlike Singer, Frey argues in this early work that animals have no interests (and therefore cannot be harmed). To reach this conclusion, he begins by contending that all morally relevant interests are based on desires. Then he argues that one cannot have a desire (say, to own a book) without a corresponding beliefBecause animals lack language, they lack the beliefs requisite for desires and therefore lack desires. Thus, animals have no interests. Lacking interests, animals have no significant moral status. [DeGrazia, David. 1996. Taking Animals Seriously: Mental Life and Moral Status. Cambridge (U.K.): Cambridge University Press. p. 3-4] Since animals lack significant moral status, they also lack a utilitarian based claim to rights. Professor Louis Pojman 9 clarifies Freys position: Frey argues that rights are predicated upon beliefs and interests, and since animals fail to have these, they fail to possess rights. In order to have a belief one must be able to conceptualize and entertain a proposition or sentence, but there is no evidence that animals can do this. In order to have interests, according to Frey, one must be able to have desires, but desires also involve propositional content, beliefs, and this is something that animals don't possess. Since only beings with interests can have rights, it follows that animals don't have rights. [Pojman, Louis. 1993. Do Animal Rights Entail Moral Nihilism? Public Affairs Quarterly. 7:2. p. 168] Tom Regan For North Carolina State University Philosophy Professor Tom Regan, 10 something called subject-of-life status is of great importance in evaluation moral obligations and resulting rights claims. He explains the concept as follows: Individuals are subjects-of-life if they have beliefs and desires; perception, memory, and a sense of the future, including their own future; an emotional life together with feelings
Dr. Louis Pojmans website is at URL: http://www.louispojman.com/index.htm For more information on Professor Regan, visit these two websites: http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/exhibits/regan/ and his website devoted to resources on animal rights at URL: http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/animalrights/
10 9
12
PlanetDebate.com 13
of pleasure and pain; preference and welfare-interests; the ability to initiate action in pursuit of their desires and goals; a psychophysical identity over time; and an individual welfare in the sense that their experiential life fares well or ill for them, logically independently of their being the object of anyone elses interests. [Regan, Tom. 1988. The Case for Animal Rights. London: Routledge Publishing. p. 243.] The claim of subject-of-life status carries with it, according to Regan, a right to not be harmed by others. University of Miami Professor of Philosophy Mark Rowlands 11 clarifies: That is, being the subject-of-a-life bestows on an individual the distinctive sort of value which consists in having an experiential welfare. Therefore, at least prima facie, we fail to treat individuals in ways that respect their value when we treat them in ways that detract from their welfare. And we detract from the welfare of this type individual when we harm themAccording to Regan, therefore, we have a prima facie duty not to harm those individuals who are subjects-of-a-life. The qualification prima facie signifies that the duty can, in certain circumstances, be overridden. [Rowlands, Mark. 2009. Animal Rights: Moral Theory and Practice. London: Palgrave MacMillan. p. 68] In addition to a duty to not harm animals, in Regans account, humans also face a limited positive obligation to come to the defense of animals. The limits of that obligation are explained by Professor Clare Palmer of the Philosophy Department at Texas A&M University: 12 Two principles follow from Regans argument that all subjects-of-a-life have inherent value: a principle of respect and a harm principle. The unacquired right to respectful treatment and the right not to be harmed can be claimed by or on behalf of all subjects-ofa-life. Regan is not completely clear about what claims animals have on the basis of these rights, but moral agents certainly have negative duties not to harm or kill animals. Regan also claims that there is a duty to assist when others treat animals in ways that violate their rights. But this duty can only arise when the threat to an animal is from a moral agent, for only moral agents can threaten livesOnly (some) humans are moral agents. Consequently, there are no duties to intervene when animals are threatened by beings and things that are not moral agents. This means, for example, that there is no responsibility to intervene in predation (since predators are not moral agents and so cannot threaten anyones rights nor commit any injustice).
11
Professor Rolands maintains a blog at URL: http://rowlands.philospot.com/ and a personal website at URL: http://www.markrowlandsauthor.com/ 12 Professor Palmers website is at URL: http://philosophy.tamu.edu/People/Faculty/Palmer/index.html
13
PlanetDebate.com 14
[Palmer, Clare. 2010. Animal Ethics in Context. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 35] (N.B.: italics added by PD editor) Regan does allow for animals to be harmed, albeit in very limited situations. The narrow contours of those limits are clarified in the following statement from Regan: the onus of justification lies, not on the shoulders of those who are vegetarians, but on the shoulders of those who are notit is the nonvegetarian who must show us how he can be justified in eating meat, when he knows that, in order to do so, an animal had to be killedThat is not to say that practices that involve taking the lives of animals cannot possible be justified. In some cases, perhaps, the can be, and the grounds on which we might rest such a justification would[be] (1) that such a practice would prevent, reduce, or eliminate a much greater amount of evil, including the evil that attaches to the taking of the life of a being who has as much claim as any other to an equal natural right to life; (2) that, realistically speaking, there is no other way to bring about these consequences; and (3) that we have very good reason to believe that these consequences will, in fact, obtain. Now, perhaps, there are some cases in which these conditions are satisfied. For example, perhaps they are satisfied in the case of the Eskimos killing of animals and the case of having a restricted hunting season for such animals as deer. But to say that this is (or may be) true of some cases is not to say that it is true of all, and it will remain the task of the nonvegetarian to show that what is true in these cases, assuming that it is true, is also true of any practice that involves killing animals which, by his action, he supports. [Regan, Tom. 1976. Animal Rights and Human Obligations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc. p. 203-04] The critics of animal rights, fewer in number but no less shrill in their advocacy, have focused their responses along several lines of reasoning which have been briefly discussed above and will be further amplified in the Strategy Notes section for the negative side of the resolution. One of the most prominent critics of the animal rights movement is the conservative British scholar Roger Scrunton 13 who has written extensively against animal rights and the arguments advanced by pro-animal rights advocates such as Peter Singer. He has argued that humans alone have the ability and capability to take on duties and responsibilities and along with that, humans alone have rights. 14
13 14
Professor Scruntons personal website is at URL: http://www.roger-scruton.com/ Roger Scruton, Animal Rights, City Jourrnal, Summer 2000. At URL: http://www.city-journal.org/html/10_3_urbanities-animal.html
14
PlanetDebate.com 15
TOPIC BRIEFING AND STRATEGY NOTES Affirmative Strategy Notes 1. Moral Revulsion: The Suffering is Fundamentally Intolerable
It is safe to say that the strongest argument in favor of granting greater protection to animals is the jaw-dropping scale of damage inflicted by humans upon animals in the name of human survival and prosperity. Professor Gary Francione, 15 Distinguished Professor of Law and Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Scholar of Law & Philosophy at Rutgers School of Law-Newark, puts it in perspective: We subject billions of animals annually to enormous amounts of pain, suffering, and distress. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, we kill more billion animals a year for food, including approximately 17 million cows and calves, 102 million hogs, almost 4 million sheep and lambs, 7.9 billion chickens, 290 million turkeys, and 22 million ducks. We slaughter more than 100,000 horses per year. Every day, we slaughter approximately 23 million animals, or over 950,000 per hour, or almost 16,000 per minute, or over 260 every second. This is to say nothing of the billions more killed worldwide. These animals are raised under horrendous conditions, mutilated in various ways without pain relief, transported long distances in cramped, filthy containers, and finally slaughtered amid the stench, noise, and squalor of the abattoir. We kill billions of fish and other sea animals annually. We catch them with hooks and allow them to surface in nets. We buy lobsters at the supermarket, where they are kept for weeks in crowded tanks with their claws closed by rubber bands and without receiving any food, and we cook them alive in boiling waterIn the United States alone, we use millions of animals annually for biodmedical experiments, product testing, and educationAnimals are burned, poisoned, irradiated, blinded, starved, given electric shocks and diseases (such as cancer) and infections (such as pneumonia), deprived of sleep, kept in solitary confinement, subjected to removal of limbs and eyes, addicted to drugs, forced to withdraw from drug addiction, and caged for the duration of their livesAnd we kill millions of animals annually simply for fashion. Approximately 40 million animals worldwide are trapped, snared, or raised in intense confinement on fur farms, where they are electrocuted or gassed or have their necks brokenIn short, we may be said to suffer from a sort of moral schizophrenia when it comes to our thinking about animals. We claim to regard animals as having morally significant interests, but we treat them in ways that belie our claims.
15
Professor Franciones website is at URL: http://law.newark.rutgers.edu/our-faculty/faculty-profiles/gary-l-francione
15
PlanetDebate.com 16
[Francione, Gary. 2000. Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog? Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. p. xx-xxi] Tolerance and celebration of such often unnecessary suffering is reflective and constitutive of multiple levels of human cruelty, as the late Professor Mary Anne Warren of San Francisco State University explains: Torturing human beings, for example, is not wrong merely because it is illegal (where it is illegal), or merely because it violates some implicit agreement amongst human beings (though it may). Such legalistic or contractualistic reasons leave us in the dark as to why we ought to have, and enforce, laws and agreements against torture. The essential reason for regarding torture as wrong is that it hurts, and that people greatly prefer to avoid pain as do animals. I am not arguing, as does Kant, that cruelty to animals is wrong because it causes cruelty to human beings, a position which consequentialists often endorse. The point, rather, is that unless we view the deliberate infliction of needless pain as inherently wrong we will not be able to understand the moral objection to cruelty of either kind. [Warren, Mary Anne. 1992. The Rights of the Nonhuman World. From anthology by Hargrove, Eugene (ed.). The Animal Rights/Environmental Ethics Debate: The Environmental Perspective. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. p. 190] Arguments of academics from Aristotle to Frey are unpersuasive to this perspective. Fundamentally, advocates of animal rights tend to believe that reason (as opposed to sentience or suffering) is a poor standard for assessing moral worth. Italian Law and Sociology Professor Valerio Pocar explains: Like many other theorists, I feel that the emphasis placed upon 'reason' as a uniquely human attribute is actually not very plausible, for at least two reasons. First, this emphasis attributes 'reason' to human beings as a species, whereas it is empirically evident that many individuals who are certainly human from a genetic point of view are partly or totally lacking in it. (Without meaning to be simply ironic, I am not thinking only of people with brain damage. What passes for 'reason' often turns out, on closer examination, to be nothing more than the habits of thought favoured by culturally dominant groups; as witness the ease with which is proved possible to deny any 'reason' to women and to Africans sold as slaves. The obsessive enthusiasm shown by dominant groups for measuring the intellectual capabilities of those whom they control ought to stand as a warning against the uncritical acceptance of 'reason' as either a meaningful concept or as a marker for making discriminatory evaluations between animals and humans.) Secondly, the work of anthropologists and zoologists in recent years has demonstrated that it is no longer possible to deny the existence of forms of thought, and even the capacity for cultural transmission, in many other living species. After first 16
PlanetDebate.com 17
having denied, without any proof, that other living species may possess some ability to reason, the proponents of 'reason' have had to fall back on distinctions of a qualitative and quantitative nature without knowing exactly (and maybe not even vaguely) what reason is among human beings. [Pocar, Valerio. 1992. Animal Rights: A Socio-Legal Perspective. Journal of Law and Society. 19:2. p. 220]
2.
Moral Optimism: Rights Cement an Important, Yet Tenuous, Obligation
By tapping into compassion, rights uniquely access an internal link into justice. This makes them an appropriate mechanism for emancipation, as Paul Brett explained To have compassion is to recognize a continuity of existence with the other. It is to suffer, to feel with not just for other creatures. It is to recognize with the heart and with the head that human and animal are made of the same stuff and that moral obligation arise for thisBut there is a point beyond compassion to which the argument seems irresistibly to lead. To recognize the otherness of animals, and their place alongside human beings, is to recognize that they belong here as of right, no less than we do. It is to begin to see our relationship with animals as a question of justice. It is only with the attribution of rights to animals that a secure basis can be found on which to work out our detailed ethical obligation. [Brett, Paul. 1998. Compassion or Justice: What is Our Minimum Ethical Obligation to Animals? in Linzey, Andrew and Dorothy Yamamoto (ed.). Animals on the Agenda: Questions about Animals for Theology and Ethics. Urbana (IL): University of Illinois Press. p. 235] Rights can be a tool for progressive change. Indeed, they are necessary until people develop the desire to act on their moral impulses, as Professor Sztybel explains: However, rights need not be egoistic. They can be used to protect needs, and to guarantee that those who have the ability to see to others' needs will do so, in keeping with the famous principle of communism. The day may come when people will spontaneously respect others' needs as opportunity allows, and not need to be made to confront others' rights to have their needs met. But that day has not yet come. So rights remain a useful tool for the promotion of justice [Sztybel, David. 1997. Marxism and Animal Rights. Ethics and the Environment. 2:2. p. 183]
17
PlanetDebate.com 18
The alternative to rights protection is no panacea. It means moral concern will go unacted upon; animals will continue to be treated merely as economic commodities, as Professor Francione laments: If we can use animals for all sorts of purposes for which we would never use any human beings, then a prohibition on imposing unnecessary suffering on those beings will be meaningless. If the life of a sentient being has value only as a means to human ends, then the interests of that being will, as a practical matter, have only instrumental value as well. The alternative to the rights view is to lapse back into the pre-nineteenth-century view that animals have no morally significant interests and that humans have no direct obligations to them. We could, of course, maintain that we ought to be kind to animals, or treat them better than we currently do, because that will make us kinder people or more caring people, but not because we have any direct obligations to animals. There is, however, little realistic hope that such moral concerns alone will result in any significant improvement in animal care and treatment as long as animals remain economic commodities. [Francione, Gary. 2000. Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog? Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. p. 163] The language of rights has a particular power in the public imagination which makes it important to utilize as a platform in any effective campaign for animal welfare, as Professor Marc Fellenz 16 of Suffolk Community College notes: As a purely practical matter, to conceive of animals as the bearers of rights is to institutionalize their claim to moral concern, to recognize this status in a way that is writ large. Given the political power rights claims can wield, couching ones moral position in the language of rights can often be the most effective means of advocating it, especially to a social context where moral discourse is usually ideologically and politically combativeNonetheless, even those who are otherwise unsympathetic to deontology may feel compelled to employ terms like rights because they are so expedient. For example, Peter Singer concedes on behalf of utilitarians: The language of rights is a convenient political shorthand. It is even more valuable in the era of thirtysecond TV news clips than it was in Benthams day. [Fellenz, Marc. 2007. The Moral Menagerie: Philosophy and Animal Rights. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. p. 76]
16
The link to Professor Fellenzs book, The Moral Menagerie, is at URL: http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/39fpd3fw9780252031182.html
18
PlanetDebate.com 19
3.
Smart Definitions: Thin Conceptions of Rights
As mentioned earlier in this brief, how the Affirmative frames what it will defend as animal rights will have a huge strategic effect on the debate. One perspective would argue that the Affirmative should defend the narrowest/thinnest conception of animal rights possible, in order to evade the most damaging Negative arguments. An example of such a framing is offered from an article by Professor Pocar. The case need not be argued differently when applied to the rights of animals (and, potentially, also of other living beings, if they can feel). While it appears to be inevitable, because of the conflict of interests, that human beings should inflict suffering on other living beings, including depriving them of their lives, this suffering must be the least possible, and must in any case be supported by a proportional justification.' Similarly also, once the rights that set a limit to the suffering that can justifiably be inflicted have been fixed, the onus of proof is reversed. In the system of agreed values, the right of animals to the minimum of suffering may represent the minimum status of animal rights, without affecting the fact that the concept of suffering should be understood to have as extensive a meaning as possible and must therefore include all suffering that can be hypothesized (or, as I would prefer to say, suspected) in the light of available knowledge. [Pocar, Valerio. 1992. Animal Rights: A Socio-Legal Perspective. Journal of Law and Society. 19:2. p. 228] Such a narrow defense can take the form of a baseline; for example, Negative Rights. Just such an argument is explained by Duquesne University Professor Stephen Newmyer: Stephen R.L. Clark, for example, suggests that even if animals cannot lay claim to rights because of any intellectual endowments, they may still have at least the negative right not to be harmed. He rejects reason out of hand as a criterion for according justice to animals, remarking I have attempted to put, and rebut, the thesis that only those creatures with whom we share a community of reason should be counted as worthy of our concern. He rejects likewise the Stoic demand for a human-animal contract as a prerequisite for according justice to animals, preferring to see life as a household of differing species. Similarly, Clark discounts the long-standing emphasis on language as a prerequisite for moral considerability, arguing, Common sympathies and purposes, mutual attractions and puzzlements are quite enough to provide a mutual sense of fair dealings at least with our most immediate, mammalian kin. [Newmyer, Stephen. 2006. Animals, Rights and Reason in Plutarch and Modern Ethics. New York: Routledge. p. 50-51]
19
PlanetDebate.com 20
Sometimes a narrow defense can take the form of a mechanism for protection of animal rights. One interesting example is offered from the realm of law, by Professor Christopher Stone, might well tap into current frustration with corporate America, as Professor Rollin explains: A brilliant and accessible analysis of the logic of rights extension has been presented by Professor Christopher Stone in his book, Should Trees Have Standing? Although Stones argument does not directly deal with animals, the points he makes are directly relevant to our problemStone argued that natural objects streams, wilderness areas, forests, etc. should be granted legal standing, with guardians like the Sierra Club able to press claims on their behalf. As Stone points out, the argument that only human persons can have such rights is easily trumped by the fact that corporations have enjoyed such legal standing since early in the nineteenth century, as have ships, trusts, cities, and nationstatesIt is, as we have seen, essentially impossible to rationally deny that animals are direct objects of moral concern, so it is quite easy in this light to demand legal standing for them. [Rollin, Bernard. 1992. Animal Rights & Human Morality. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books. p. 126-27] 4. Big Paradigms: Win a Framework and Use it Against Negative Arguments
The strategic approach identified immediately prior to this was to take a narrow approach to ground (when on the Affirmative). This represents the opposite approach; making deductive, paradigmatic arguments (aka framework) in relation to the topic. Such paradigmatic questions are at the core of the animal rights literature base, as Professor Emily Gaarder 17 of the University of Minnesota Duluth explained in her recent book: I have argued that two competing frameworks exist within the animal rights movement. The first names the oppression of animals as the most crucial social justice issue of our times. This framework focuses on animal liberation as its central, indeed its only, goal. Coalitions or support of those involved in other causes are welcomed if they contribute to the overall goal of animal rights. Expressing human concerns about gender, race, or class is considered divisive to the movement, and even selfish. Focusing on ones own concern for liberation, voice, or equality is unacceptable when animals suffer the greatest oppression of all. The second framework names the oppression of animals as part of a broad, intersecting web of inequality that encompasses gender, race, class, and environmental concerns. It suggests, for instance, that patriarchal and racist though five rise to the same ideas that justify the devaluing of animals and the use of their bodies for instrumental means. This framework considers the participation of diverse groups of people within animal rights as an important aspect of the relational web. It also
17
Professor Gaarders academic website is at URL: http://www.d.umn.edu/~egaarder/Index.html
20
PlanetDebate.com 21
prioritizes campaigns and coalition building that reflects the common goals of other movements for social change. The direction of the animal liberation movement hinges, to a large extent, on which of these frameworks the movement culture adopts. [Gaarder, Emily. 2011. Women and the Animal Rights Movement. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. p. 153-54] An example of a framework that the Affirmative might utilize on this topic, although the Negative might be able to deploy it as well, is Eco-Feminism. Professor Gaarder offers an initial definition of the concept as follows: Ecofeminism argues that feminism must engage with the ethics of animals status and treatment, because all oppressions are interconnectedWhile there is no unified body of work or perspective that could be called ecofeminism, ecofeminists generally believe there are important connections between the oppression of women and that of nonhuman life forms, such as animals and the environment. Ecofeminist thought outlines the conceptual links in patriarchal thought that identity women as closer to nature and men as closer to culture. Societies that see nature as inferior to culture (most Western societies) devalue and oppress persons and groups identified with nature. These dualisms serve to justify the domination of women, animals, and the earth. [Gaarder, Emily. 2011. Women and the Animal Rights Movement. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. p. 5] The importance of gender in the oppression of animals to the point of constituting a synergistic relationship is underscored by Kelly Oliver. As many feminists have argued, however, there is more than an analogy among sexism, racism, and speciesism. Even today, the patriarchal association between women and animals is evidenced by the various names used to degrade women, including pussy, kitten, bunny, beaver, bitch, chick, fox, vixen , and cow. The connection between the degradation of women and traditional views of animals existing for mans use complicates any easy analogy between womens liberation and animal liberation. If womens subordination is in part justified by comparing them to animals, then perhaps one reason why womens liberation has continued to meet with resistance and continued to bump up against the glass ceiling is because of our attitudes toward animals and the deep patriarchal associations between women and animals. In other words, the relation between the exploitation of animals and the exploitation of women and other oppressed groups is not just a matter of analogy. Rather, the conceptual opposition between man, on the one sidethe civilized sideand animal, on the otherthe natural or barbaric side plays a central role in the oppositions between man and woman, white and black, civilized and barbaric, and so on. Until we address the denigration of animals in Western 21
PlanetDebate.com 22
thought, on the conceptual level, if not also on the material economic level, we continue merely to scratch the surface of the denigration and exploitation of various groups of people, from playboy bunnies to prisoners at Abu Ghraib who were treated like dogs as a matter of explicit military policy. [Oliver, Kelly. 2008. What is Wrong with (Animal) Rights? The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 22:3. p. 215] However, as Professor Gaarder points out, Affirmatives should be careful in deploying deductive/framework cases, as it is easy to run afoul of the internal standards of the school of thought in question. Gender is far more than a demographic characteristic of social movement activists. Just as social movements can influence ideas about gender in society, so too can societal ideas about gender shape social movements. Although this movement is focused on animals, its activists are influenced by gendered expectations and experiences. Activists operate within a sexist society, and their tactical choices and goals either accept or contest those constraintsOpponents of animal rights who respond to women with sexist rhetoric should be challenged on these grounds, instead of capitulated to by downplaying empathy or the role of women altogether in recognition of the realities of sexism. Sexualized campaigns that use stereotypical images of women have been similarly defended, on the grounds that sex sells in a patriarchal society. Yet this same patriarchal society is implicated in the values and practices of animal exploitationThe gender inequalities described in this book cannot be resolved unless the animal rights movement challenges the sexist devaluation of emotion and the sexual objectification of women that saturates our culture. [Gaarder, Emily. 2011. Women and the Animal Rights Movement. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. p. 152-53]
22
PlanetDebate.com 23
Negative Strategy Notes 1. Weak Foundation: Animals Dont Deserve Rights
James Reichmann lays out the fundamental claim, as well as explaining why such a position against rights extension is not incompatible with protecting animals from maltreatment: As stated earlier, the notion of rights makes sense only within a context of free agents who are responsible for their actions, and hence it must be limited to moral agents alone, i.e. to humans. Trading on the sympathy most humans display for various species of domesticated animals, and the pervasive conviction that it is wrong to mistreat them, Regan has sought to revamp the definition of right. He extends this revised definition to animals in an effort to provide reasoned, stable support for the above-mentioned near universal sentiment. But, as we have indicated, one does not need to attribute rights to animals directly in order to provide the latter with a shield that will morally safeguard them from maltreatment. [Reichmann, James. 2000. Evolution, Animal Rights, & the Environment. Washington D.C.: Catholic University Press. p. 308] Of course, Singer and his allies would accuse Reichmann of Speciesism. However, Reichmann is ready to answer such a charge, claiming that the argument suffers from an obvious fallacy: The underlying fallacy is not hard to uncover. Racism and sexism deny equality of nature where equality of nature actually exists, and are hence based on an untruth. But what is considered speciesism affirms inequality where equality does not exist. The fallacy feeds on the false supposition that what race and gender are to the human, species is also. Yet race and gender are accidental or incidental characteristics that modify ones humanity; they do not constitute one a human. On the other hand, species is not an accidental characteristic, but a substantial determinant of the kind of the kind of being one is. Hence, if there are many kinds of beings, then they must differ in an essential way. Some beings must simply be ontologically more than others in order to be different from them. There are no other possibilities. And if one existent differs in being from another, it profits one nothing to deny this difference in kind. It is not arrogant to bear witness to the truth, provided ones motive in doing so is to allow the truth to appear. For humans to regards themselves as superior to the nonhuman animal for reasons already alluded to, is no more worthy of condemnation than is the individual who thinks that he or she plays the piano better than someone who does not play the piano at all. Those bringing a charge of speciesism, then, against those who regard humans as ontologically superior clearly argue fallaciously.
23
PlanetDebate.com 24
[Reichmann, James. 2000. Evolution, Animal Rights, & the Environment. Washington D.C.: Catholic University Press. p. 264] Reichmann also points out that rights advocates, such as Regan, seemingly stipulate to the meaningful difference in status between humans and animals by virtue of the asymmetry of rights and obligations within their frameworks. Such ethicians are, he states, much more comfortable with the ideal of natural rights than with natural obligations. In fact, Johnson characterizes the impasse at which modernist moral theory has arrived as precisely consisting in its failure to justify the imposition of obligations. This critique scores heavily against Tom Regans theory of rights, which, while granting rights to animals, imposes upon them no obligations. Regans theory also struggles, unsuccessfully, to justify the imposition of obligation on the human to respect the alleged rights of animals. [Reichmann, James. 2000. Evolution, Animal Rights, & the Environment. Washington D.C.: Catholic University Press. p. 281]
2. Unacceptable Costs: The Obligations Created by Rights for Animals Would Result in a Disastrous Transition and Quality of Life Reduction Imagine a world in which animals had functional rights claims against humans. Even if we could somehow go back in time and start anew with such an assumption, it is far from clear that the project of human civilization would have succeeded with such constraints. After all, according to Darwin, over 99% of all species die off. Humans likely needed every edge they could get in the battle for survival. However, imagine the even greater difficulty in trying to transition to such a framework in the here-and-now. Professor Michael Leahy takes an initial shot at imagining such a circumstance, as follows: But let us, for arguments sake, concede the nutritional point. Whatever weight this would add to the utilitarian scales, would need to be colossal to offset the social and economic ills which might well follow. Frey in Rights, Killing and Suffering (1983) paints a detailed picture of the possible downfall of whole economies the minutiae of which, although hinting strongly at overkill, are nonetheless plausible enough to be disturbingIn the first place, a huge number of industries would be undermined, bringing the misery of unemployment to employees and their families where alternative jobs are not availableSecondly, our social lives would need readjustment. If it is difficult to change habits like smoking or drinking, despite the best of intentions, then to switch to nut steaks and vegetable lasagna might be just as painful, and for those forced to it because of the unavailability of meat it would also be deeply resented. Most 24
PlanetDebate.com 25
traditional French, Italian, British, American, and even Oriental restaurants would cease to exist in their present formsIn the wider context, Regan contends that, though the (economic) heavens fall there is no case for protecting society if the protection in question involves violating the rights of others. [Leahy, Michael. 1991. Against Liberation: Putting Animals in Perspective. London: Routledge. p. 214-15] Without an accurate mechanism by which to assess animal preferences, it seems fundamentally wrong to expose so many to such incredible risks based upon what is ultimately mere supposition. Professor Pojman explains as follows: The Achilles Heel in his argument is the idea of preference. How does Singer know that the abolition of factory farms will result in a net gain of preference satisfaction? Imagine the suffering that would be incurred by such abolition. Besides losing the delicious taste of meat in our diet (which by itself might not outweigh the animal's plight) hundreds of thousands of factory farm workers, transporters, business owners, and butchers would be unemployed. Their families would suffer. Social chaos might ensue. How do we weigh the preferences of chicken, pigs, and cows? Perhaps, as R. G. Frey has argued, the utilitarian thing to do would be to work for reforms in the factory farm, permitting animals more space, exercise and pleasure. [Pojman, Louis. 1993. Do Animal Rights Entail Moral Nihilism? Public Affairs Quarterly. 7:2. p. 171] For example, the Affirmative should make the Negative defend the loss of items and services produced by dint of animal testing, such as cancer treatment. Dr. David Scott, Director of Science Funding for Cancer Research UK, wrote this year that More people are surviving cancer than ever before. Thanks to decades of research, survival from cancer has doubled in the last 40 years, giving thousands of people more time with their loved ones. But this progress simply wouldnt have been possible without animal researchAnimal studies showed the benefits of radiotherapy in the early days of cancer research, and surgical techniques such as keyhole surgery were first tested in animals. Even prevention strategies such as the cervical cancer vaccine have relied on animal research, and studies in animals continue to be vital in bringing benefits to cancer patients and saving lives around the room. To give just one demonstration of the importance of animal research, survival from childhood cancer has rocketed from just a quarter of children surviving the disease in the late 1960s to more than three quarters surviving today. That amazing progress is a direct result of treatments developed through studies in animals.
25
PlanetDebate.com 26
[http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2011/06/21/animal-research-is-helping-us-beatcancer/]
3. Rights Fail: They are a Poor Mechanism to Protect the Environment and Such Attempts Will Sap Rights of Their Power to Liberate The inability to participate in the Rights Claims process ultimately render animal rights inoperable; any oppression would likely merely be replicated and more deeply inscribed, as Professor Fellenz explains: Consequently, the difficulty in applying the standard deontological theory to rights to other animals is evident: since nonhumans are not generally understood to be responsible agents, they cannot meaningfully participate in political or moral space as either the bearers or recipients of moral rights claims. If responsible agency is a necessary condition for holding unacquired moral rights, then animal rights is a misnomer. In turn, any legal or political rights a society extends to animals will amount to human largesse, and are only meaningful to the extent that they are executed through human proxy; as such, they are more likely to serve human interests and desires than animal nature. [Fellenz, Marc. 2007. The Moral Menagerie: Philosophy and Animal Rights. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. p. 79] Even if moderate advances appeared to be made on behalf of animals, it would be a pale freedom not even worth the name. Rights claims would likely simply ensnare animals in further layer of bio-power driven domination, as Kelly Oliver explains Rights defined as protections still do not address the myriad causes of oppression and denigration. They address neither material nor conceptual inequities that are part of a history of exploitative practices. Equal protections do nothing to redress the material or cultural inequities in the distribution of resources. In terms of animals, the struggle continues between environmental and business interests as to the allocation of resources for wildlife. Of course, the terms of these negotiations are always set by humans and ultimately in terms of human interests, including human interests in animals. Equal protection for oppressed people or animals does not go far enough in redistributing resources. In addition, these protective rights bring with them regulation and surveillance if not disciplinary institutions. For example, legislation protecting endangered species requires counting animals, capturing and tagging them, following them, tracking them, breeding them, and so on. Thus, even as such legislation goes some distance in liberating animals, it continues structures of power that both enable and require putting 26
PlanetDebate.com 27
up fences and manhandling them for their own protection. Given our attitudes toward animals, and the ways in which we count them, it is obvious how equal protection means increased surveillance and regulation. Even though people may not be captured, tagged, and bred in captivity, they are measured, counted, and regulated in less conspicuous ways, particularly now with the heightened security regulations in place for the sake of our protection. The ways in which the liberty and freedom afforded by protective rights also bring increased regulations are more apparent when we consider animal rights but should also give us pause in terms of human rights. [Oliver, Kelly. 2008. What is Wrong with (Animal) Rights? The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 22:3. p. 218] Making matters worse, such a failed attempt to extend rights to animals would also render rights an ineffective tool for dealing with other forms of human oppression. James Reichmann points out the danger as follows: The foregoing should make clear why, with regard to the issue of rights, the notion of personhood and its presuppositions are very much in need of a closer analysis. If personhood can be extended to some species of nonhuman animals, the pandoras box seems to have been opened, and it becomes difficult to imagine circumstances which would prevent its being extended not only to primates, but to many or all species of quadrupeds and mammals, and even beyond. In the end, the term person would come to lose its meaning, the distinction between species becomes impossible to retain, and the entire ethical project of rights be devastatingly undermined. [Reichmann, James. 2000. Evolution, Animal Rights, & the Environment. Washington D.C.: Catholic University Press. p. 245]
4. Undermines Movement: Relying on the Individualistic Tool of Rights to Assist Animals Undercuts the Momentum Toward A Meaningful Environmental Ethic Byron Norton makes the argument that the individualism inherent within rights claims is incompatible with the biocentric stance required for a necessary environmental ethic: It is worthwhile to examine, in conclusion, the deeper explanation for the failure of individualistic appeals to rights and interests as a basis for an environmental ethic. Human demands on the environment are individual demands. As the population increases, these demands are increased and a principle of adjudication is required. The animal liberation movement is based upon an analogy between human and animal suffering and its main thrust is not to provide a means to adjudicate between conflicting demands that human individuals make on the environment, but rather it introduces a 27
PlanetDebate.com 28
whole new category of demands the demand of animals. Recognition of such demands has the overall effect of exacerbating the problem. It also has the contingent effect of calling attention to destruction of habitat as one source of animal suffering, and many have seen this as a plausible route to an environmental ethic. But as the class of rights holders is expanded further and further in order to insure that environmentally damaging results affect some rights holder, more and more demands are made. Expanding the number and types of rights holders does not address the problem of deciding which individual claims have priority over others it only increases these demands and makes it more and more difficult to satisfy them. The basic problem, then, lies precisely in the emphasis on individual claims and interests. An environmental ethic must support the holistic functioning of an ongoing system. One cannot generate a holistic ethic from an individualistic basis, regardless of how widely that basis is expanded. [Norton, Byron. 1992. Environmental Ethics and Nonhuman Rights. From anthology by Hargrove, Eugene (ed.). The Animal Rights/Environmental Ethics Debate: The Environmental Perspective. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. p. 90] The debate about animal right is so incendiary that it risks distracting from, and reducing space regarding, more fundamental issues of environmental and animal welfare, as Professor Fellenz explains: This problems points toward a larger question about the ultimate usefulness of the language of rights in our moral deliberationsThe point seems especially relevant in the case of our treatment of nonhumans, where there is such considerable disagreement about where the moral limits are. Were there a consensus about what human moral agents owe to other animals, we might use the term animal rights as shorthand to convey it. But in the absence of a consensus, the debate over the philosophical scaffolding necessary to support the concept of natural animal rights seems only to divert us from the essential question of what duties we have to other animals. [Fellenz, Marc. 2007. The Moral Menagerie: Philosophy and Animal Rights. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. p. 87]
28
PlanetDebate.com 29
DEFINITIONAL ANALYSIS Justice Although the meaning of justice is undoubtedly a fundamental question in the resolution, in the animal rights debate it is debated more robustly via surrogate in this case the question of rights. This status is not surprising, given the longstanding philosophical relationship between the two concepts: Questions of justice, according to Hume, Mill, and others, presuppose conflicts of interest; there would be no point in talking about justice, according to Hume, but for the limitations of human benevolence and the competition for scarce goods. Justice presupposes people pressing claims and justifying them by rules or standards. This distinguishes it from charity, benevolence, or generosity. No one can claim alms or gifts as a right. [The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (unabridged). 1967. Vol. 3/4. P. 298] However, because it is always useful to have one, below is a good cookie-cutter definition of justice to use as a starting point. Justice 1. the quality of being righteous, rectitude 2. impartiality; fairness 3. the quality of being right or correct 4. sound reason; rightfulness; validity 5. reward or penalty as deserved; just desserts [Websters New World Dictionary (Third College Edition). 1988. New York: Simon and Schuster]
Requires Require - 1. to ask or insist upon, as by right or authority; demand 2. to order; command 3. to be in need of; need 4. to call for as necessary or appropriate 5. to demand by virtue of law, regulation, etc. [Websters New World Dictionary (Third College Edition). 1988. New York: Simon and Schuster]
Recognition Recognition - 1. a) a recognizing or being recognized; acknowledgment; admission, as of a fact b) acknowledgment and approval, gratitude, etc. 2. formal acknowledgment by a government of independence and sovereignty of a state newly created, as by secession, or of a government 29
PlanetDebate.com 30
newly set up, as by revolution 3. identification of some person or thing or as having been known before or as being of a certain kind [Websters New World Dictionary (Third College Edition). 1988. New York: Simon and Schuster]
Animal Offering an initial definition of animal is likely perilous ground for the Affirmative on this topic, as it is very easy to inadvertently link oneself to a framing Kritik, if not careful. Where to draw the line on what is or is not an animal is not just difficult for debaters, it is a problem among philosophers in the field as well. Kelly Oliver explains as follows: In terms of animals, the paradoxes of rights can be articulated thus: either the working definition of animal is so vague that it includes everything from amoebas to zebras without considering differences between them, or it uses the differences between them to continue to justify excluding or exploiting most. For example, Tom Regan defines the word animal as mentally normal mammals of a year or more, which excludes not only hordes of nonmammals but also all mammals of less than a year in age. This kind of definition not only flies in the face of normal usages of the word animal but also appears arbitrary and dangerously exclusiveIronically, the differences among species plague philosophers of animal rights who continually try to delineate which animals are most like us and which are not, and which deserve rights and which do not. This raises the challenge of adjudicating rights between different species, including human beings and other animals. [Oliver, Kelly. 2008. What is Wrong with (Animal) Rights? The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 22:3. p. 218] Indeed, this line of thought can function as a strong Negative argument, insofar as the Affirmative may demonstrate difficulty in drawing morally clear lines on the question, as Professor Louis Pojman explains in the following reductio A second criticism of Taylor's egalitarian biocentricism is this. By his logic it would be wrong for doctors to kill bacteria or viruses which are threatening the lives of humans. Why prefer a human to an HIV's existence? Of course, you could say that the AIDS patient himself has a right of self- defense to destroy the HIV, but what grounds are there for third parties, like experimenting scientists or doctors, to take sides and engage in viral destruction? Are our scientists and physicians well-paid hit men and women, hired guns to knock off innocent enemies? On Taylor's logic, the HIV virus occupies a niche in the ecosystem, and as such is just as valuable as we are. But, further, if racism, sexism, and 30
PlanetDebate.com 31
speciesism are sins, isn't biocentrism also a prejudice? Why ascribe value only to living things and not non-living things like computers, cars, mountains, rocks, stars, helium atoms, and dorm rooms? Dorm rooms can flourish and run down just like living entities, so if we accept that emendation then it is just as bad or wrong to smash a rock or destroy a computer or dorm room as it is to kill a student who lives in a dorm room. So much for the dictum "People before Property. [Pojman, Louis. 1993. Do Animal Rights Entail Moral Nihilism? Public Affairs Quarterly. 7:2. p. 182] Given the already articulated difficulty in drawing the line between animal and non-human, an issue indirectly addressed in the previous Topic in Context section, the below definition is obviously an inadequate, albeit necessary, point from which to intellectually operate. Animal - 1. any living organism, excluding plants and bacteria: most animals can move about independently and have specialized sense organs that enable them to react quickly to stimuli: animals do not have cell walls, nor do they make food by photosynthesis 2. any such organism other than a human being 3. a brutish, debased, or inhuman person [Websters New World Dictionary (Third College Edition). 1988. New York: Simon and Schuster]
Rights As the definitions offered below will illustrate, the matter of how the Affirmative frames its rights claim will be essential in determining its burden of proof. Similarly, smart Negative debaters will try to strawperson the Affirmative by attempting to require them to defend a broad conception of rights. An expanded package of animal rights will likely increase the obligations upon humans, which cannot help but factor into the debate. Philosophy Professor Marc Fellenz explains as follows: While those who have tried to bring animals under the umbrella of rights have done so with a view to solidifying their claim to moral recognition, it remains unclear whether nonhumans can meaningfully claim to have rights (say, not to be raised for food or experimented upon), whether the philosophical foundation necessary to support such alleged rights can be asserted coherently , how such rights might square with conflicting human rights, and whether such rights presuppose rather than generate moral judgments about the exploitation of animals. [Fellenz, Marc. 2007. The Moral Menagerie: Philosophy and Animal Rights. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. p. 88]
31
PlanetDebate.com 32
An especially difficult question for Affirmatives to approach is whether they will defend both positive and negative conceptions of rights for animals. The dilemma is explained by Professor of Philosophy at Texas A&M University and former president of the International Society for Environmental Ethics, Clare Palmer: A few animal-rights theorists attribute both positive and negative rights to animals. How might this work? Suppose one argued that animals have both positive and negative liberty rightsThe attribution of positive rights, then, concerns duties of assistance, benefit, protection, or a provision, alongside negative duties not to harm. However, a position that attributes both positive and negative rights to animals, coupled with the trumping strength usually attributed to rights claims, would appear to be very demanding. Suppose , for instance, we took a very basic right the right to life as a positive right and thought about what this would mean in the wild. If wild animals have a positive right to life, not only should we not kill them, but we should protect them from being killed (by other animals or harsh weather, for instance) and provide for them, for instance, if a winter storm prevents them from accessing their normal food supply. But this would require very extensive intervention in the wild, especially given the trumping strength usually attributed to rights claims. [Palmer, Clare. 2010. Animal Ethics in Context. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 34-35] Definition of Rights Generic Right n 1 a power (an ability, a faculty) belonging to a person, to bring about a change in the moral or legal situation (for instance, by creating an obligation for oneself or someone else, by waiving a claim, by authorizing a person to bring about a change, etc.). To have a right is, so to speak, to be in control, morally or legally. 2 permissibility. In this sense, to have a right to do x means that it is not wrong to do x. 3 permissibility in combination with prohibition of interference. In this sense, to have a right to do x means that it is not wrong to do x, and that it is wrong for others to interfere. [Penguin Reference Dictionary of Philosophy. 2005. P.536-37] Definition of Rights Imposition of Constraints on Collective Goals Rights impose constraints on the pursuit of collective goals. This very general characterization serves to identity in a preliminary way the moral/political function of rights, and also begins to explain their perennial appeal. [Sumner, L.W. 2000. Rights in The Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory, ed. Hugh Lafollette. Blackwell Publishers: Oxford (U.K.). p. 289]
32
PlanetDebate.com 33
Definition of Rights Constrain Utility, But Necessarily in an Absolute Sense The strength of a right is its level of resistance to rival normative considerations, such as the promotion of worthwhile goals. A right will insulate its holder to some extent against the necessity of taking these considerations into account, but it will also typically have a threshold above which they dominate or override the rightRights raise thresholds against considerations of social utility but these thresholds are seldom insurmountable. Some particularly important rights (against torture, perhaps, or slavery, or genocide) may be absolute, but most are not. [Sumner, L.W. 2000. Rights in The Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory, ed. Hugh Lafollette. Blackwell Publishers: Oxford (U.K.). p. 293] Definition of Rights Linked to Obligation and Agency Rights have as their fundamental purpose the protection of freedom, guaranteeing that the individual will be allowed to make his or her own decisions without interference, provided only that the use being made of freedom is responsible, that is, reasonable, not infringing on the ability of others likewise to make responsible use of their freedom. The protection the right provides is not physical in nature but rather moral. Right therefore, place restrictions on others, for one persons right is another persons obligation. Consequently, rights and obligations are correlative notions. One does not exist without the other. There can be no obligation where there is no right, and there can be no right where there is not a corresponding obligation. For this reason rights may fittingly be likened to a moral shield, for they provide protection to those beings who possess the power of making free choices, i.e. are self-directing. [Reichmann, James. 2000. Evolution, Animal Rights, & the Environment. Washington D.C.: Catholic University Press. p. 261-62] Definition of Rights Zone of Protection We can think of a right as any sort as a fence or a wall that surrounds an interest and upon which hangs a no trespass sign that forbids entry, even if it would be beneficial to the person seeking that entry. As one writer describes it, rights are moral notions that grow out of respect for the individual. They build protective fences around the individual. The establish areas where the individual is entitled to be protected against the state and the majority even where a price is paid by the general welfare. [Francione, Gary. 2000. Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog? Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. p. xxvi-xxvii]
33
PlanetDebate.com 34
AFFIRMATIVE POSITIONS Based on our focus group testing of potential arguments on this topic, we have found that these four affirmative positions have significant potential and resonate with judges ranging from former debate competitors to non-expert but educated professionals. 1. Animals must have the right to avoid unnecessary suffering.
According to Utilitarian philosophy, the only inherent good is the enhancement of pleasure, and the only inherent evil is suffering. If the avoidance of pain is an inherent moral good, and if justice requires that we pursue that which is inherently good, then there is an obligation to prevent the needless suffering of animals. The position that animals should not pointlessly suffer is largely already enshrined in legal regimes throughout the world. The United States bans the abuse of animals, as well as inhumane activities like dog fighting. Many countries in the European Union even require that animals in farms have a base quality of life standard. Since even legal regimes require that animals not suffer needlessly, this suggests that animals have the basic right to be free from unnecessary suffering. 2. Animals have sufficient moral standing to justify rights claims.
In order to determine whether or not animals have rights, it could be helpful to examine the basis on which humans have claim to rights. If humans and non-human animals share the same characteristics that justify the protection of rights for one group, it would make sense to extend rights to the other group because there would be no non-arbitrary way of deciding why one group received benefits and another did not. Hence, if humans and non-human animals shared the characteristics that justified the provision of rights, then not granting rights to both groups would be arbitrary discrimination, which would be unjust. Some may argue that rights stem from human rationality, but society still confers rights to infants and those that are severely mentally disabled. Others argue that humanitys capability to accomplish more than animals, which justifies differential consideration, but again, this would exclude infants and those with significant mental disorders. The one thing that all groups of humans have in common is their ability to feel pain, and their interest in avoiding it. If the moral status of rights stems from our interest in avoiding pain, and if animals can feel pain, then they should have the have their interest in avoiding pain similarly respected.
34
PlanetDebate.com 35
3. Animals have natural capabilities and freedoms that justify the protection of their rights. One justification for human rights is that humans have unique capabilities that justify the protection of our interests. Even if animals do not fully share many of these capabilities, they possess enough of them to justify some moral consideration of their interests in the form of rights. Some would argue that humans have rights because of our rationality, but animals often demonstrate creative problem solving and the ability to show base level preferences. Others would argue that only humans have language to potentially follow moral rules and create a social order, but many animals are able to communicate with each other and establish shared group expectations on a very basic level. Even if animals do not fully have the capabilities of humans, the capabilities they do possess require at least a minimal level of rights protection. Additionally, wild animals may have a unique claim to have their rights respected. Wild animals are normally free to pursue their own interests because they are also born into a state of nature. In this sense, animals born into the wild have natural freedom, and it is only when other creatures, and especially humans, intervene that they are not able to pursue their interests. If humans have natural rights because they are born free into a state of nature, then animals born into that same state should equally have their right to pursue their interests respected. 4. Protecting animal rights promotes human rights.
Even if the moral status of animals or their capability to feel pain is called in to question, there may be reasons for humans to respect animal rights. Humans depend on the environment to live, and some human activities have tremendous environmental risks. Since the ecosystem operates in a careful balance, humans should avoid potentially wiping out species of animals, as it may have catastrophic effects on other parts of the ecosystem. Additionally, human practices like factory farming cause significant environmental damage that may ultimately harm the interests of humans in the long-term. Animal rights would provide strong protections for animals that also preserved the interests of humanity.
35
PlanetDebate.com 36
NEGATIVE POSITIONS Based on our focus group testing of potential arguments on this topic, our staff have found that these four negative positions have significant potential and resonate with judges ranging from former debate competitors to non-expert but educated professionals. 1. Rights are unnecessary for animals.
One conception of rights is that they are creations that allow human society to flourish. If animals do not need the same level of protections that humans require, it would make sense to categorize those protections as something other than rights. Humans face unique challenges and have unique capabilities that make it so that rights only make sense for humans. Humans are social animals. Since human interactions are largely based on the complex communication of ideas and interests, we may need unique social protections, like the right to privacy, which animals would have no use for. Additionally, participation in institutions, such as the state, would require the preservation of basic rights, like the right to free speech, which animals would not have a use for. Just because animals do not necessarily possess rights does not mean that they are not worthy of consideration. Individuals may owe animals specific obligations, but that does not mean that animals have a right to those goods. For example, dog owners may have an obligation to give their dogs food, but this would not necessarily create an obligation on the part of the government to directly supply either dogs or dog owners with dog food. There are many special relationships between humans and animals that would require some consideration of the animals needs, but would not necessarily rise to the level of a right. 2. Rights do not apply to animals.
Rights are creations of human morality. Rights were created to serve as side-constraints to protect the unique moral status of persons. To try to apply rights to other entities besides humans would be to inappropriately apply the category of rights to beings that it was never intended to protect. If rights have meaning as a concept, they must remain as protections for humans instead of other entities. Since humans are distinct from other non-human animals, non-human animals ought not have rights. 3. The recognition of animal rights would substantially harm humans.
Currently, humans heavily rely on behaviors that would arguably violate animal rights. Many humans, especially those living in under-developed coastal areas throughout the world, depend on consuming both land and marine animals as a critical part of their diets. Making it so that those animals had inviolable rights to life would make it so that starvation would become a real 36
PlanetDebate.com 37
possibility. Even in countries that have the capability to switch to a government-mandated vegetarian diet, requiring a switch away from livestock would have a substantial economic impact that would harm human interests. Additionally, animals play a critical role in scientific research. Humanity has benefited tremendously from being able to conduct clinical trials on animals it has lead to the development of safe, effective medications, procedures, and vaccines that benefit everyone. Since medical ethics and legal regulations significantly limit the ability of scientists to test on humans, humanity would be worse off it could not perform experiments on animals. Since there is no viable alternative to animal testing, granting animals rights would hinder scientific advancement. If humans have a choice between prioritizing their interests or animal interests, it only makes sense that we prioritize ourselves. 4. The recognition of animal rights is not legally tenable.
The protection of rights must imply some kind of enforcement mechanism. If rights were merely empty moral claims, there would be no reason to grant them because they would not serve to protect an agents interests. When rights conflict in human society, those disagreements are referred to the legal system. Legal systems are grossly unprepared to protect animal rights. Animal rights would require that judges and juries would have to somehow interpret the specific interests of animals. Additionally, it may be unclear who can represent animal rights claims in court. Since many people may have plausible interests in the outcome of an animal rights issue, and since animals cannot represent themselves, it may be difficult to determine who could actually bring animal rights claims to court. Expanding legal claims to animals would also substantially increase the number of cases that courts heard, which would slow the administration of justice for both humans and animals.
37
PlanetDebate.com 38
SELECTED RESOURCES Publications: Abbey, Ruth. 2007. Rawlsian Resources for Animal Ethics. Ethics and the Environment. 12:1. Cavalieri, Paola. 2001. The Animal Question: Why Nonhuman Animals Deserve Human Rights. New York: Oxford University Press. Clark, Stephen R.L. 1984. The Moral Status of Animals. Oxford (U.K.): Oxford University Press. DeGrazia, David. 1996. Taking Animals Seriously: Mental Life and Moral Status. Cambridge (U.K.): Cambridge University Press. Donovan, Josephine. 1990. Animal Rights and Feminist Theory. Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 15:2. Everett, Jennifer. 2001. Environmental Ethics, Animal Welfarism, and the Problem of Predation: A Bambi Lovers Respect for Nature. Ethics and the Environment. 6:1 Fellenz, Marc. 2007. The Moral Menagerie: Philosophy and Animal Rights. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Flukiger, Jean-Marc. 2009. The Radical Animal Liberation Movement: Some Reflections on its Future. Journal for the Study of Radicalism. 2:1. Fox, Michael. 1990. Inhumane Society: The American Way of Exploiting Animals. New York: St. Martins Press. Fox, Michael. 1986. The Case for Animal Experimentation: An Evolutionary and Ethical Perspective. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Fox, Michael. 1978. Animal Liberation: A Critique. Ethics. 88:2. Francione, Gary. 2000. Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog? Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Francione, Gary. 1996. Rain without Thunder: The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Franklin, Julian. 2005. Animal Rights and Moral Philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press. Frey, R.G. 1983. Rights, Killing, and Suffering. Oxford (U.K.): Basil Blackwell Publishing. Frey, R.G. 1980. Interests and Rights: The Case Against Animals. Oxford (U.K.): Clarendon Publishing. Frey, R.G. 1977. Interests and Animal Rights. The Philosophical Quarterly. 27:108. 38
PlanetDebate.com 39
Galvin, Shelley and Harold Herzog. 1992. Ethical Ideology, Animal Rights Activism, and Attitudes Toward the Treatment of Animals. Ethics and Behavior. 2:3. Gaarder, Emily. 2011. Women and the Animal Rights Movement. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Goodheart, Eugene. 2006. Peter Singers Challenge. Philosophy and Literature. 30:1. Grosvenor, Peter. 2003. Why Animal Experimentation Matters: The Use of Animals in Medical Research. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine. 46:3. Hargrove, Eugene (ed.). 1992. The Animal Rights/Environmental Ethics Debate: The Environmental Perspective. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Johnson, Andrew. 1989. A Blind Eye to Animal Rights? Philosophy. 64:248. Leahy, Michael. 1991. Against Liberation: Putting Animals in Perspective. London: Routledge. Linzey, Andrew and Dorothy Yamamoto (ed.). 1998. Animals on the Agenda: Questions about Animals for Theology and Ethics. Urbana (IL): University of Illinois Press. Loeb, Jerod, et al. 1989. Human vs Animal Rights: In Defense of Animal Research. Journal of the American Medical Association. 262:19. Midgley, Mary. 1983. Animals and Why They Matter. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. Milligan, Tony. 2010. Beyond Animal Rights: Food, Pets, and Ethics. London: Continuum International Publishing Group. Mitchell, Robert (ed.). 1997. Anthropomorphism, Anecdotes, and Animals. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Narveson, Jan. 1977. Animal Rights. Canadian Journal of Philosophy. 7:1. Newmyer, Stephen. 2006. Animals, Rights and Reason in Plutarch and Modern Ethics. New York: Routledge. Nibert, David. 2002. Animal Rights/Human Rights: Entanglements of Oppression and Liberation. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Nibert, David. 1994. Animal Rights and Human Social Issues. Society and Animals. 2:2. Oliver, Kelly. 2008. What is Wrong with (Animal) Rights? The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 22:3. Palmer, Clare. 2010. Animal Ethics in Context. New York: Columbia University Press. Peek, Charles, Nancy Bell, and Charlotte Dunham. 1996. Gender & Society. Gender, Gender Ideology, and Animal Rights Advocacy. 10:4.
39
PlanetDebate.com 40
Pocar, Valerio. 1992. Animal Rights: A Socio-Legal Perspective. Journal of Law and Society. 19:2. Pojman, Louis. 1993. Do Animal Rights Entail Moral Nihilism? Public Affairs Quarterly. 7:2. Posner, Richard. 2000. Animal Rights (Book Review). Yale Law Journal. 110:3. Reichmann, James. 2000. Evolution, Animal Rights, & the Environment. Washington D.C.: Catholic University Press. Regan, Tom. 2001. Defending Animal Rights. Urbana (IL): University of Illinois Press. Regan, Tom. 1988 (1984). The Case for Animal Rights. London: Routledge Publishing. Regan, Tom and Peter Singer (ed.). 1976. Animal Rights and Human Obligations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc. Rollin, Bernard. 1992. Animal Rights & Human Morality. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books. Rollin, Bernard. 1990. Animal Welfare, Animal Rights and Agriculture. Journal of Animal Science. 68:10. Rowan, Andrew and Bernard Rollin. 1983. Animal Research For and Against: A Philosophical, Social< and Historical Perspective. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine. 27:1. Rowlands, Mark. 2009. Animal Rights: Moral Theory and Practice. London: Palgrave MacMillan. Ryder, Richard. 1989. Animal Revolution: Changing Attitudes towards Speciesism. Oxford (U.K.): Blackwell Publishing. Salt, Henry. 1912. Animals Rights. London: The Humanitarian League. Sapontzis, S.F. 1987. Morals, Reason, and Animals. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Sapontzis. S.F. 1980. Are Animals Moral Beings? American Philosophical Quarterly. 17:1. Schmahmann, David and Lori Polacheck. 1994-95. The Case Against Rights for Animals. Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review. 22:747. Shepard, Paul. 1974. Animal Rights and Human Rites. The North American Review. 259:4. Singer, Peter. 1977. Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals. New York: Avon Books. Sunstein, Cass. 2003. The Rights of Animals. University of Chicago Law Review. 70:1. Sztybel, David. 2006. Can the Treatment of Animals be Compared to the Holocaust? Ethics and the Environment. 11:1. Sztybel, David. 1997. Marxism and Animal Rights. Ethics and the Environment. 2:2.
40
PlanetDebate.com 41
Taylor, Bron. 2008. The Tributaries of Radical Environmentalism. Journal for the Study of Radicalism. 2:1. Varner, Gary. 1998. In Natures Interest? Interests, Animal Rights, and Environmental Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press. Vaughan, Christopher. 1988. Animal Research: Ten Years under Siege. Bioscience. 38:1. Wise, Steven. 2002. Drawing the Line: Science and the Case for Animal Rights. Cambridge: Perseus Books. Wise, Steven. 2000. Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals. New York: Basic Books.
41
PlanetDebate.com 42
Websites: Author interview: Bernard E. Rollin, Putting the Horse before Descartes: My Life's Work on Behalf of Animals, Temple University Press, 2006. Professor Rollin discusses his life and career in the animal rights debate. http://www.temple.edu/tempress/authors/1969_qa.html Between the Species: An Online Journal for the Study of Philosophy and Animals Between the Species is a peer-reviewed electronic journal devoted to the philosophical examination of the relationship between human beings and other animals. While most articles are ethical inquiries, others raise issues involving metaphysics, epistemology and other areas of philosophical investigation. http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bts/ Editors note: There are many more pro-animal rights websites than those who are against animal rights. Here are some of the better resources for those debating on the negative side of the resolution: STOP Animal Rights Madness Compilation website of many anti-animal rights articles and websites maintained by Canadian hunter Jim Powlesland http://people.ucalgary.ca/~powlesla/personal/hunting/rights/ Roger Scruton, Animal Rights, City Journal, Summer 2000. http://www.city-journal.org/html/10_3_urbanities-animal.html One of the most critical essays against the animal rights movement and their most prominent advocates. Roger Scrunton, Armchair moralising. Roger Scruton demolishes Peter Singer, perhaps the most famous philosopher in the world and a passionate founder of the modern animal rights movement, New Statesman, 22 January 2001. http://www.newstatesman.com/200101220048.htm This book review of Peter Singers book, Writings on an Ethical Life, is a scathing critique of Singers advocacy for animal rights.
42
PlanetDebate.com 43
SELECTED QUOTATIONS ON THE TOPIC AFFIRMATIVE QUOTATIONS

Animals feeling pain is intrinsically evil. Tom Reagan, Moral Basis of Vegetarianism, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 5, Number 2, 1975 If, then, we are rationally entitled to believe that animals can and do experience both pleasure and pain, we are rationally compelled to regard animals as beings who count for something, when we attempt to determine what we morally ought or ought not to do. Bentham saw this clearly when he observed that the morally relevant question about animals is not "Can they feel or Can they talk? but, Can they suffer!'"10 (although even Bentham fails to mention the pleasure animals may enjoy, a fact which will assume some importance in my argument below). For if it is true that animals can and do experience pain; and if, furthermore, it is true, as I think it is, that pain is an intrin-sic evil; then it must be true that the painful experience of an animal is, considered intrinsically, just as much of an evil as a comparable experience of a human being. As Joel Feinberg has noted,11 "if it is the essential character of pain and suffering themselves that make them evil, and evil not for their consequences but in their own intrinsic natures, then it follows that given magnitudes of pain and suffering are equally evil in themselves whenever and wherever they occur. An in-tense toothache is an evil in a young man and an old man, a man or a woman, a Caucassian or a Negro, a human being or a lion. A skeptic might deny that a toothache hurts a lion as much as it does a human being, but once one does concede that lion pain and human pain are equally pain - pain in the same sense and the same degree - then there can be no reason for denying that they are equally evil in themselves. All this follows necessarily from the view that pain as such is an intrinsic evil..." Discriminating against animal rights would be based on arbitrary factors. Peter Singer, All Animals are Equal, Animal Rights and Human Obligations, Eds. Peter Singer and Tom Regan, 1989. http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/singer02.htm If a being suffers, there can be no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering into consideration. No matter what the nature of the being, the principle of equality requires that its suffering be counted equally with the like sufferingin so far as rough comparisons can be madeof any other being. If a being is not capable of suffering, or of experiencing enjoyment or happiness, there is nothing to be taken into account. This is why the limit of sentience (using the term as a convenient, if not strictly accurate, shorthand for the capacity to suffer or experience enjoyment or happiness) is the only defensible boundary of concern for the interests of others. To mark this boundary by some characteristic like intelligence or rationality would be to mark it in an arbitrary way. Why not choose some other characteristic, like skin color? Preventing suffering justifies the protection of animals. Aysel Dogan, A Defense of Animal Rights, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 2010. It is not an uncommon view that interests of animals do morally matter. Many people think that inflicting unnecessary suffering on animals is wrong while humans actual treatment of animals is far from taking into consideration their pains. Every day millions of animals are slaughtered for food, sport, and fashion. Animals are generally kept in terrible conditions; they are caged in solitary narrow spaces and they are
43
PlanetDebate.com 44
transported long distances in crowded containers. Animals used in biomedical and psychological experiments to observe the effects of toxins, drugs, radiation, etc., are intentionally burnt, poisoned, irradiated, and often killed after experiments if tests made on them did not already kill them.1 Animal rights should prevent cruelty to animals. Cass Sunstein, The Rights of Animals, The University of Chicago Law Review, Volume 70, Number 1, 2003 If we understand "rights" to be legal protection against harm, then many animals already do have rights, and the idea of animal rights is not at all controversial. And if we take "rights" to mean a moral claim to such protection, there is general agreement that ani-mals have rights of certain kinds. Of course some people, including Descartes, have argued that animals are like robots and lack emo-tions - and that people should be allowed to treat them however they choose.8 But to most people, including sharp critics of the idea of ani-mal rights, this position seems unacceptable. Almost everyone agrees that people should not be able to torture animals or to engage in acts of cruelty against them. And indeed, state law contains a wide range of protections against cruelty and neglect. We can build on existing law to define a simple, minimal position in favor of animal rights: The law should prevent acts of cruelty to animals. Fulfillment of taste does not justify animal pain. Peter Singer, All Animals are Equal, Animal Rights and Human Obligations, Eds. Peter Singer and Tom Regan, 1989. http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/singer02.htm For the great majority of human beings, especially in urban, industrialized societies, the most direct form of contact with members of other species is at mealtimes: we eat them. In doing so we treat them purely as means to our ends. We regard their life and well-being as subordinate to our taste for a particular kind of dish. l say "taste" deliberatelythis is purely a matter of pleasing our palate. There can be no defense of eating flesh in terms of satisfying nutritional needs, since it has been established beyond doubt that we could satisfy our need for protein and other essential nutrients far more efficiently with a diet that replaced animal flesh by soy beans, or products derived from soy beans, and other high-protein vegetable products.[5] Factory farms cause substantial harms. Kyle Landis-Marinello, The Environmental Effects of Cruelty to Agricultural Animals, Michigan Law Review, Volume 106, 2008. While factory farms are keen on keeping production levels as high as possible, the rest of society would be much better off if we found ways to decrease production at these plants. Although increased production usually benefits the economy, it is problematic in an industrysuch as factory farmingthat externalizes many of its costs and contributes to numerous environmental problems that affect human health and welfare. Appeals to humans being intuitively more valuable are not justified. Tom Reagan, Moral Basis of Vegetarianism, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 5, Number 2, 1975 On what grounds is it being alleged that each and every human being, and only human beings, are intrinsically worthwhile? Just what is there, in other words, about being human, and only about being
44
PlanetDebate.com 45
human, that underlies this ascription of unique worth? Well, one possible answer here is that there isn't "anything" that underlies this worth. The worth in question, in short, just belongs to anyone who is human, and only to those who are. It is a worth that we simply recognize or intuit, whenever we carefully examine that complex of ideas we have before our minds when we think of the idea, "human being." I find this view unsatisfactory, both because it would seem to commit us to ah ontology of value that is very difficult to defend, and because I, for one, even after the most scrupulous examination I can manage, fail to intuit the unique worth in question. I do not know how to prove that the view in question is mistaken in a few swift strokes, however. All I can do is point out the historic precedents of certain groups of human beings who have claimed to "intuit" a special worth belonging to their group and not to others within the human family, and say that it is good to remember that alluding to a special, intuitive way of "knowing" such things could only serve the purpose of giving an air of intellectual respectability to unreasoned prejudices. And, further, I can only register here my own suspicion that the same is true in this case, though to a much wider extent. For I think that falling into talk about the "intuition of the unique intrinsic worth of being human" would be the last recourse of men who, having found no good reason to believe that human beings have an unique intrinsic worth, would go on believing that they do anyhow. Philosophy requires the re-examination of animal rights. Peter Singer, All Animals are Equal, Animal Rights and Human Obligations, Eds. Peter Singer and Tom Regan, 1989. http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/singer02.htm Philosophy ought to question the basic assumptions of the age. Thinking through, critically and carefully, what most people take for granted is, I believe, the chief task of philosophy, and it is this task that makes philosophy a worthwhile activity. Regrettably, philosophy does not always live up to its historic role. Philosophers are human beings, and they are subject to all the preconceptions of the society to which they belong. Sometimes they succeed in breaking free of the prevailing ideology: more often they become its most sophisticated defenders. So, in this case, philosophy as practiced in the universities today does not challenge anyone's preconceptions about our relations with other species. By their writings, those philosophers who tackle problems that touch upon the issue reveal that they make the same unquestioned assumptions as most other humans, and what they say tends to confirm the reader in his or her comfortable speciesist habits. The capacity to suffer is the most relevant criterion for moral standing. Aysel Dogan, A Defense of Animal Rights, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 2010. The utilitarian proponents of animal movement argue that suffering caused by scientific experiments, for example, can be allowed only if these are genuinely significant experiments (Singer 1990). The capacity to suffer or the criterion of sensibility is relevant to moral standing because, as Bentham and Mill notably pointed out, pain is evil while pleasure is good. As moral agents, our duty is to maximize happiness in the form of pleasure and minimize pain. Since animals are sentient creatures and thus have a capacity to suffer, we should give equal consideration to their suffering as human suffering. Factory farms influence global warming. Kyle Landis-Marinello, The Environmental Effects of Cruelty to Agricultural Animals, Michigan Law Review, Volume 106, 2008. Livestock on factory farms currently play an enormous role in the climate change crisis. A recent United Nations study found that livestock account for eighteen percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. In
45
PlanetDebate.com 46
comparison, all of the cars, trucks, airplanes, and other modes of fossil- based transportation combined only account for thirteen percent of the worlds emissions. Much of the livestock pollution comes from methanea greenhouse gas (emitted directly by cows and sheep) that is at least twenty times more potent than carbon dioxide. Just looking at methane alone, the 100 million or so cattle in the United States produce roughly the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions as an equal number of cars. Factory farms also create significant carbon dioxide emissions (as well as other air pollution) by shipping large quantities of feed and meat products back and forth across the country. In addition, factory farms are responsible for mass deforestation for pasture land and to grow feed for agricultural animals. Deforestation is a major contributor to climate change because it releases the carbon dioxide that is stored in standing trees. While politicians debate over what to do to reduce car emissions, the agribusiness lobby has so far quelled any debate over increased regulation of their industry, even though regulating factory farms would go much further towards averting the climate change crisis. The logic of equal rights for humans justifies equal rights for animals. Tom Reagan, Moral Basis of Vegetarianism, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 5, Number 2, 1975 Unless or until, then, we are given a rationally compelling argu-ment that shows that all and only human beings have an equal right to life; and so long as any plausible argument that might be advanced to support the view that all human beings have this right can be shown to support, to the same extent, the view that animals have this right also; and so long as we believe we are rationally justified in ascribing this right to humans and to make reference to it in the course of justifying our judgment that it is wrong to kill a given number of human beings simply for the sake of bringing about this or that amount of good for this or that number of people; given all these conditions, then I believe we are equally committed to the view that we cannot be justified in killing any one or any number of animals for the intrinsic good their deaths may bring to us. I do not say that there are no possi-ble circumstances in which we would be justified in killing them. What I do say is that we cannot justify doing so in their case, anymore than we can in the case of the slaughter of human beings, by arguing that such a practice brings about intrinsically valuable experiences for others. Differences in capabilities between humans justify the protection of animals. Peter Singer, All Animals are Equal, Animal Rights and Human Obligations, Eds. Peter Singer and Tom Regan, 1989. http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/singer02.htm Philosophers who set out to find a characteristic that will distinguish humans from other animals rarely take the course of abandoning these groups of humans by lumping them in with the other animals. It is easy to see why they do not. To take this line without re-thinking our attitudes to other animals would entail that we have the right to perform painful experiments on retarded humans for trivial reasons; similarly it would follow that we had the right to rear and kill these humans for food. To most philosophers these consequences are as unacceptable as the view that we should stop treating nonhumans in this way. Even painless killing of animals is wrong. Aysel Dogan, A Defense of Animal Rights, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 2010. Accordingly, killing animals is wrong even if it is painless because they are the subjects-of-a-life. That is, killing animals is as wrong as torturing because as being the subjects-of-a-life, they have inherent worth.
46
PlanetDebate.com 47
Animals cannot be treated simply as means to satisfy some ends. They have a value beyond any consideration of utility. All subjects-of-a-life have basic moral rights equally for him Principles of animal justice should be incorporated in legal documents. Martha Nussbaum, The Moral Status of Animals, Chronicle of Higher Education, Volume 52, Issue 2, 2006. In general the capabilities approach suggests that it is appropriate for each nation to include in its constitution or other founding statement of principle a commitment to regarding nonhuman animals as subjects of political justice and to treating them in accordance with their dignity. The constitution might also spell out some of the very general principles suggested by the capabilities approach, and judicial interpretation can make the ideas more concrete. The High Court of Kerala made a good beginning, thinking about what the idea of "life with dignity" implies for the circus animals in the case. The rest of the work of protecting animal entitlements might be done by suitable legislation and by court cases demanding the enforcement of laws, where they are not enforced. At the same time, many of the issues covered by this approach cannot be dealt with by nations taken in isolation, but can be treated only through international cooperation. So we also need international accords committing the world community to the protection of animal habitats and the eradication of cruel practices. Society would never tolerate humans to be treated like animals. Tom Reagan, Moral Basis of Vegetarianism, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 5, Number 2, 1975 Let us begin here by first considering a conceivable practice that in-volves inflicting undeserved pain on human beings. Imagine, then, the following Swiftian possibility. Suppose that a practice develops whereby the severely mentally retarded among us are routinely sent to Human Farms, where they are made to live in incredibly crowded, un-sanitary and confining conditions. Except for contact with one another, they have very little human contact. They are kept in stalls or in cages where they are fed by automated devices. Many of them are kept permanently indoors, and among those who are permitted outside, most of them are deprived of the ordinary means they might employ to secure enjoyment. And imagine, further, that the purpose of all this is to raise these human beings as a source of food for other human beings. At the end of a certain period of time, let us say, or after each has attained a certain weight, they are sold at public auction to the highest bidder and summarily carted off in loathsome vehicles to be "humanely'' slaughtered. Now, given such a practice, let us suppose that the following is true of it: The amount of undeserved pain caused to these human beings is exactly equivalent to the amount of pleasure other human beings secure as a result of the practice. The question is: would we say that this equality of pain and pleasure shows that there are no moral grounds for objecting to the practice in question? I do not think we would. I think we would want to say that this way of treating humans is not morally justified. Factory farms threaten the water supply. Kyle Landis-Marinello, The Environmental Effects of Cruelty to Agricultural Animals, Michigan Law Review, Volume 106, 2008. Factory farms also pose a major threat to the most crucial natural resource of allwater. In recent years, many scientists have recognized that we are currently facing a severe shortage of usable water. The United Nations has deemed the situation a worldwide water crisis, and the western United States is one area that is quickly running out of water. Factory farms are contributing to this water crisis in numerous ways. To begin, their contribution to climate change also contributes to the water crisis, since warmer
47
PlanetDebate.com 48
global temperatures lead to lower lake and river levels. In addition, factory farms feed their livestock vast quantities of corn, soy, alfalfa, and other crops that take enormous amounts of water to grow. In the United States, crop irrigation accounts for over eighty percent of the consumptive use of freshwater, and in many arid western states, the level increases to around ninety percent. Although some of those crops feed humans, a staggering amount (including between sixty and seventy percent of all corn and soybeans grown in the United States) feed livestock. When farmers only had a small amount of livestock many of which could graze on grassmuch of this feed was unnecessary. On factory farms, however, livestock are crammed into cement bunkers, where grazing on grass is impossible and where there are so many of them that they demand an enormous amount of feed (and all of the water needed to grow that feed). Wild animals deserve special rights. Aysel Dogan, A Defense of Animal Rights, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 2010. At the outset, it should be noted that the framework of my defense of basic rights of animals is restricted primarily to wild animalsthough I believe that with some qualifications animals in other domains may be included within this framework. Millions of wild animals are killed or wounded by hunters for sports each year. Wounded animals are generally left to die slowly from blood loss and from infections they are incurred after being wounded. Animals used for entertainment in zoos and circuses are forced to live in poor physical conditions and hardship. Wild animals are made the property of private persons by hunting or by confining them; they are owned as if they were inanimate objects. As wild animals live in a network of other animals, biological field researches do not only affect the observed animals but also their offsprings, their predators, etc.3 While doing research in the wild or interfering with the natural habitats of wild animals for commercial purposes, their affiliations and attachments should also be taken into consideration. The preservation of dignity justifies animal rights. Martha Nussbaum, The Moral Status of Animals, Chronicle of Higher Education, Volume 52, Issue 2, 2006. The basic moral intuition behind my approach concerns the dignity of a form of life that possesses both deep needs and abilities. Its basic goal is to take into account the rich plurality of activities that sentient beings need all those that are required for a life with dignity. With Aristotle and the young Marx, I argue that it is a waste and a tragedy when a living creature has an innate capability for some functions that are evaluated as important and good, but never gets the opportunity to perform those functions. Failures to educate women, failures to promote adequate health care, failures to extend the freedoms of speech and conscience to all citizens all those are treated as causing a kind of premature death, the death of a form of flourishing that has been judged to be essential for a life with dignity. Political principles concerning basic entitlements are to be framed with those ideas in view. The species standard is evaluative. It does not simply read off norms from the way nature actually is. Once we have judged, however, that a central human power is one of the good ones, one of the ones whose flourishing is essential for the creature to have a life with dignity, we have a very strong moral reason for promoting it and removing obstacles to its development. The fact that some animals may not have interests does not dejustify animal rights. Tom Reagan, Moral Basis of Vegetarianism, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 5, Number 2, 1975
48
PlanetDebate.com 49
For the cases where we would, with good reason, doubt whether an animal has interests - for example, whether protozoa do - are cases which are, I think, irrelevant to the moral status of vegetarianism. The question of the obligatoriness of vegetarianism, in other words, can arise only if and when the animals we eat are the kind of beings who have interests. Whatever reasonable doubts we may have about which animals do and which do not have interests do not apply, I think, to those animals that are raised according to intensive rearing methods or are routinely killed, painlessly or not, preparatory to our eating them. Thus, to have it pointed out that there are or may be some animals who do not have interests does not in any way modify the obligation not to support practices that cause death or non-trivial, undeserved pain to those animals that do. Recognizing the moral standing of animals does not require them to have equal rights. Aysel Dogan, A Defense of Animal Rights, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 2010. Animals have interests other than protection from suffering, such as an interest in living, in security, in reproduction, and so on. Such interests create duties more powerful than duties arising from compassion, pity, and benevolence. This does not mean that animals have exactly the same rights that we do. I consider the moral standing of animals as somewhere between supererogatory duties and duties arising from basic claim rights in the sense of fully recognized entitlements by society. Feinbergs notion of valid claims throws light on the idea of the moral standing of animals to be advocated here. Factory farms negatively impact water quality. Kyle Landis-Marinello, The Environmental Effects of Cruelty to Agricultural Animals, Michigan Law Review, Volume 106, 2008. Factory farms have similarly negative effects on water quality. Agriculture is the leading contributor to water quality impairment in the United States, and the meat industry is often the worst of the worst. Raising unnaturally high numbers of animals in confined areas creates a large quantity of waste that is often not treated properly before it enters our nations waterways. For instance, in United States v. Sinskey, a meat-packing plants decision to double the number of hogs it raisedand thereby create more waste than their wastewater treatment plant could handlenecessarily resulted in criminal violations of the Clean Water Act. Sinskey involved one of the rare instances where a factory farm was caught for its environmental violations. More frequently, the dumping of untreatedor improperly treatedwaste goes undetected, to the detriment of our waterways and human health. The recognition of animal requires a change in the law. David Favre, Professor of Law at Michigan State University, Integrating Animal Interests into our Legal System, Animal Law, Volume 10, 2004. The use of the term "rights" in that first March was not constructive. The general public overuses the term. It seems to generate a response of: "Here we go again - another wacky group wants something silly." A more appropriate term than "rights" is "interests," because it enhances mental clarity. n3 If the legal system consistently holds in a particular fact pattern for one set of individuals - as a summary of expected outcomes - it can be said that these individuals possess legal rights. Legal rights are a judged outcome of the legal process. We must more closely focus on the input side of the legal process. If we can enhance the interests of animals within the legal system, their "rights" will come into existence in the natural course of events.
49
PlanetDebate.com 50
Animals have the right to flourish. Martha Nussbaum, The Moral Status of Animals, Chronicle of Higher Education, Volume 52, Issue 2, 2006. Another sort of aggregation also causes difficulty: Utilitarians consider together diverse aspects of lives, reducing them all to experienced pain and pleasure. But we might think that a good life, for an animal as for a human, has many different aspects: movement, affection, health, community, dignity, bodily integrity, as well as the avoidance of pain. Some valuable aspects of animal lives might not even lead to pain when withheld. Animals, like humans, often don't miss what they don't know, and it is hard to believe that animals cramped in small cages all their lives can dream of the free movement that is denied them. Nonetheless, it remains valuable as a part of their flourishing, and not just because its absence is fraught with pain. Even a comfortable immobility would be wrong for a horse, an elephant, or a gorilla. Those creatures characteristically live a life full of movement, space, and complex social interaction. To deprive them of those things is to give them a distorted and impoverished existence. Obligations to animals justify animal rights. Aysel Dogan, A Defense of Animal Rights, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 2010. Frequently, rights are defined in terms of capability of having interests. Razs notion of right is a typical example of conceiving rights in terms of having interests. He identifies rights with important interests of a claimant (1984, p. 194). Of course, not every interest constitutes a right to the fulfillment of the interest. To avoid triviality, it is stressed that rights derive from needs or interests only if the relevant interests have crucial importance for the claimants lives. Accordingly, one reason for defending the view that animals have rights is that they have important interests for their own well-being. Animals have a natural motive to live; their reflexes and reactions against attackers fit to this natural tendency. Every day, they practice caution and care necessary to protect themselves. Their bodies are likewise structured for survival. Whether their skins are thin or thick, whether they have colorful furs, sharp teeth, vision, and so forth are all determined by their being appropriate instruments for their survival and adaptation to environment. In a similar fashion, their abilities to move quickly, to fly in the air, etc., enable them not only to find food for themselves but also to escape from dangers of nature and their enemies. Thus, it is clear that animals have an interest in survival and well-being. If rights pose obligations on us for the good of others, and animals have important interests for their well-being, then we ought not to inflict harm on their vital interests. Concern for individual animals is necessary. Martha Nussbaum, The Moral Status of Animals, Chronicle of Higher Education, Volume 52, Issue 2, 2006. Does justice focus on the individual, or on the species? It seems that here, as in the human case, the focus should be the individual creature. The capabilities approach attaches no ethical importance to increased numbers as such; its focus is on the well-being of existing creatures, and the harm that is done to them when their powers are blighted. Consequently the survival of a species may have weight as a scientific or aesthetic issue, but it is not an ethical issue, and certainly not an issue of justice apart from the harms to existing creatures that are usually involved in the extinction of a species. When elephants are deprived of a congenial habitat and hunted for their tusks, harm is done to individual creatures, and it is that harm that should be our primary focus when justice is our concern, even while we may for other reasons seek the preservation of elephant species.
50
PlanetDebate.com 51
Legal changes are necessary to protect animal rights. David Favre, Professor of Law at Michigan State University, Integrating Animal Interests into our Legal System, Animal Law, Volume 10, 2004. We have the same necessity with animal issues. Those individuals who care about animals make personal decisions based upon moral beliefs that take non-human interests into account. But there are many who are either ignorant of the issues or do not care that their actions impose pain and suffering upon animals. While education and enlightenment will change the conduct of some, only by altering the law can we force changes of behavior upon the unwilling. Then, many or most animals will receive the consideration that is due. Society must give concern to animals vital interests. Aysel Dogan, A Defense of Animal Rights, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 2010. However, under ordinary or normal conditions, we have an obligation to give due consideration to animals vital interests. For instance, we ought to avoid destroying their natural habitats. Even if we have no choice other than using poisoning chemicals in our industrial activities, we ought to take necessary cautions to protect animals natural habitats from pollution that threatens their lives. The respect for their right to life requires us to take such measures. Different ability to reason does not dejustify animal rights. Tom Reagan, Moral Basis of Vegetarianism, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 5, Number 2, 1975 Natural though this line of argument is, I do not think it goes any way toward justifying the differential treatment of the animals and humans in question. For on what grounds might it be claimed that the humans, but not the animals, have an equal natural right to be spared undeserved pain?14 Well, it cannot be, as it is sometimes alleged, that all and only human beings have this right because all and only humans reason, make free choices or have a concept of their identity. These grounds will not justify the ascription of rights to all humans because some humans-infants and the severely mentally defective, for example-do not meet these conditions. Moreover, even if these conditions did form the grounds for the possession of rights; and even if it were true that all human beings met them; it still would not follow that only human beings have them. For on what grounds, precisely, might it be claimed that no animals can reason, make free choices or form a con-cept of themselves? What one would want here are detailed analyses of these operative concepts together with rationally compelling em-pirical data and other arguments which support the view that all non-human animals are deficient in these respects. It would be the height of prejudice merely to assume that man is unique in being able to reason, etc. To the extent that these beliefs are not examined in the light of what we know about animal's and animal intelligence, the sup-position that only human beings have these capacities is just that - a supposition, and one that could hardly bear the moral weight placed upon it by the differential treatment of animals and humans.15 Many animal rights can be respected by just leaving animals alone. Aysel Dogan, A Defense of Animal Rights, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 2010. The choice theory of rights is problematic, however, in that it not only denies rights of animals but also excludes babies or mentally retarded adults and the like from the society of right holders just because they are unable to make meaningful choices. It is true that a right brings a measure of control by the right
51
PlanetDebate.com 52
holder over others similar to legal powers to bind or release those who are obligated and the choice theory explicates the binding power of rights very well. Yet its narrow scope implies that basic interests of beings who are not capable of choice might easily be harmed and not respected, especially when they come in conflict with legal claims of right holders. But this does not square with our moral intuitions; we do not want to admit that babies might legitimately be killed when their existence and claims for the means of life jeopardize some relatively less significant benefits protected by the rights of free rational adults. If it is wrong to kill babies or the mentally retarded for the sake of respecting some legal rights of persons as autonomous agents, it is wrong to kill animals for the sake of protecting some less important human interests, as well. Thus, it seems difficult to accept the capability of choosing as the only relevant criterion of having a right. The interest conception of rights fits better to common sense morality and facilitates defending rights of animals as well as rights of some human beings coherently with our moral intuitions. Animals have rights also because humans might easily discharge their obligations corresponding to the basic rights of wild animals simply by doing nothing in most cases. Animals have an equal right to life. Tom Reagan, Moral Basis of Vegetarianism, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 5, Number 2, 1975 Briefly, it is not clear, first, that no non-human animals satisfy any one (or all) of these conditions, and, second, it is reasonably clear that not all human beings satisfy them. The severely mentally feeble, for example, fail to satisfy them. Accordingly, if we want to insist that they have a right to life, then we cannot also maintain that they have it because they satisfy one or another of these conditions. Thus, if we want to insist that they have an equal right to life, despite their failure to satisfy these conditions, we cannot con-sistently maintain that animals, because they fail to satisfy these con-ditions, therefore lack this right. The right of self-ownership can apply to animals. Aysel Dogan, A Defense of Animal Rights, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 2010. Wild animals have basic moral claims against human beings not only because they have important interests but also because they do not naturally belong to us. We humans do not give birth to them; nor are animals, like our limbs, something we have already had by our nature. Wild animals are just found out there; no body can legitimately claim the private possession of them. Neither adult animals nor their offsprings do in any way owe their existence or nurturing to us. If to claim that one has rights is to make an assertion that one has them, as Feinberg (2002, p. 465) writes, then we cannot justifiably claim that we humans have a right to the bodies of animals, to use them in whatever way we think expedient for us. As wild animals do not owe their physical existence, their nurturing and protection from attackers to us, we cannot assert that we have a right to them. But animals themselves are in a position to make a claim against us because their bodies, their well-being, and so on do naturally belong to them. Their natural right to their bodies and to their well-being imposes on us the duty of noninterference with their lives. Factory farms destroy topsoil. Kyle Landis-Marinello, The Environmental Effects of Cruelty to Agricultural Animals, Michigan Law Review, Volume 106, 2008. Factory farms are also destroying topsoil. As Tom Paulson recently reported in the Seattle PostIntelligencer, the erosion of topsoilat rates more than ten times the replacement rateis a global crisis that threatens the shallow skin of nutrient-rich matter that sustains most of our food and ap-pears
52
PlanetDebate.com 53
to play a critical role in supporting life on Earth. According to Harvey Blatt in Americas Environmental Report Card, a few inches of dirt is all that separates us from mass starvation. Factory farms are thinning this pre-cious layer of topsoil by demanding vast quantities of certain crops (like corn and soy) that can be used as feed for their livestock. To meet this de-mand, farmers often clear additional fields and use tilling techniques that erode topsoil. Millions of acres of land are farmed every year just to feed the livestock at factory farms, and, as a result, every year these fields are left with less topsoil. Differing capabilities between animals do not dejustify animal rights. Martha Nussbaum, The Moral Status of Animals, Chronicle of Higher Education, Volume 52, Issue 2, 2006. Similarly, James Rachels, whose view does not focus on sentience alone, holds that the level of complexity of a creature affects what can be a harm for it. What is relevant to the harm of pain is sentience; what is relevant to the harm of a specific type of pain is a specific type of sentience (for example, the ability to imagine one's own death). What is relevant to the harm of diminishing freedom, Rachels goes on, is a being's capacity for freedom or autonomy. It would make no sense to complain that a worm is being deprived of autonomy, or a rabbit of the right to vote. My capabilities view follows Rachels, denying that there is a natural ranking of forms of life, but holding that the level of complexity of a creature affects what can be considered to be a harm to it. Humans right to property should not dejustify animal rights. Aysel Dogan, A Defense of Animal Rights, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 2010. To support basic rights of animals on the ground that they do not naturally belong to us is, one might dispute, problematic in that it implies that we can do whatever we want to do with animals once we invest our labor on developing their well-being and thereby we make them our private property as inanimate objects. That is, we can sell, destroy, or use animals for any other purpose convenient to us, just because we exert some energy or use our labor to build a shelter for them, or breed them, for example. This is not only morally objectionable but also forbidden by statutes protecting animal rights in many countries. One cannot, for instance, beat or torture animals or confine them in unsanitary spacese.g., dark, narrow, etc.or abandon them to die from starvation simply on the ground that one naturally owns them. Capacity to feel pain is what justifies equal human rights. Tom Reagan, Moral Basis of Vegetarianism, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 5, Number 2, 1975 Moreover, if it is unjust to cause a human being undeserved pain, (and if what makes this unjust is the fact that the pain is evil and the human is innocent and thus does not deserve the evil he receives), then it must also be unjust to cause an in-nocent animal undeserved pain. If it be objected that it is not possible to act unjustly toward animals, though it is possible to do so toward humans, then, once again, what we should demand is some justifica-tion of this contention; what we should want to know is just what there is that is characteristic of all human beings, and is absent from all other animals, that makes it possible to treat the former, but not the latter, unjustly. In the absence of such an explanation, I think we have every reason to suppose that restricting the concepts of just and unjust treat-ment to human beings is a prejudice. If, then, the most plausible basis for attributing an equal natural right to be spared undeserved pain to all human beings turns on the idea that it is unjust to cause pain to an undeserving human being, then, given that it is unjust to do this to an innocent animal, it likewise would follow that animals have an equal natural right to be spared un-deserved pain.
53
PlanetDebate.com 54
Animal rights would eliminate factory farming. Kyle Landis-Marinello, The Environmental Effects of Cruelty to Agricultural Animals, Michigan Law Review, Volume 106, 2008. Factory farming as we know itand its devastating environmental effectswould not be possible if we were to criminalize cruelty to agricultural animals. That is why this multi-billion-dollar industry spends so many resources lobbying legislatures and agencies to leave their practices unregulated. As soon as government steps in and requires factory farms to treat their animals appropriatelyfor instance, by providing each animal with adequate space to roamthese farms will not be able to raise nearly as many animals. Production will thus decrease, which will mitigate the envi-ronmental damage wrought by factory farms. Fewer agricultural animals will necessarily translate to less methane and other greenhouse gas emis-sions, less water consumption and pollution, and less erosion of topsoil. These and other environmental benefits all flow directly from decreasing production on factory farms. Wild animals may have more rights than domesticated animals. Aysel Dogan, A Defense of Animal Rights, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 2010. In addition, Nussbaum thinks that though in the case of animals there is some room for the distinction between positive and negative duties, human responsibility to animals cannot consist merely of refraining from cruel treatment and aggression towards animals (2004, p. 312). But she leaves in mist the answer to the question: how extensive are our positive duties towards animals? By drawing a distinction between wild animals and domestic animals, the proposed view offers a solution to this problem. Wild animals do not belong to us whereas we use our labor, capital, etc. to grow domestic animals. So we have an obligation to satisfy the negative duties corresponding to wild animals right to life at least in the form of non-interference even if we do not have such an obligation in the case of domestic animals There is no morally relevant difference between humans and animals that dejustify rights. Tom Reagan, Moral Basis of Vegetarianism, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 5, Number 2, 1975 A critic will respond that all that this argument could show is that, among themselves, each animal has an equal natural right to be spared undeserved pain. What this argument could not show, this critic will contend, is that any animal could have a right that is equal to the right that any human being has to be spared undeserved pain. I do not think this criticism is justified. For assuming that the grounds for ascribing the right in question are the same for humans and animals, I do not un-derstand how it can be logically inferred that humans possess this right to a greater extent than do animals. Unless or until we are given some morally relevant difference that characterizes all humans, but no animals, - a difference, that is, on the basis of which we could justifiably allege that our right to be spared undeserved pain is greater than the right that belongs to animals, - unless or until we are given such a difference I think reason compels us to aver that, if humans have this right, to an equal extent; for the reasons given, then animals have this right also, and have it to an extent that is equal to that in which humans possess it.
54
PlanetDebate.com 55
Differing human capabilities still justify animal rights. Martha Nussbaum, The Moral Status of Animals, Chronicle of Higher Education, Volume 52, Issue 2, 2006. What type of significance is that? There is much to be learned from reflection on the continuum of life. Capacities do crisscross and overlap: A chimpanzee may have more capacity for empathy and perspectival thinking than a very young child, or than an older child with autism. And capacities that humans sometimes arrogantly claim for themselves alone are found very widely in nature. But it seems wrong to conclude from such facts that species membership is morally and politically irrelevant. A child with mental disabilities is actually very different from a chimpanzee, though in certain respects some of her capacities may be comparable. Such a child's life is difficult in a way that the life of a chimpanzee is not difficult: She is cut off from forms of flourishing that, but for the disability, she might have had. There is something blighted and disharmonious in her life, whereas the life of a chimpanzee may be perfectly flourishing. Her social and political functioning, her friendships, her ability to have a family all may be threatened by her disabilities, in a way that the normal functioning of a chimpanzee in the community of chimpanzees is not threatened by its cognitive endowment. That is relevant when we consider issues of basic justice. For children born with Down syndrome, it is crucial that the political culture in which they live make a big effort to extend to them the fullest benefits of citizenship they can attain, through health benefits, education, and re-education of public culture. That is so because they can flourish only as human beings. They have no option of flourishing as happy chimpanzees. For a chimpanzee, on the other hand, it seems to me that expensive efforts to teach language, while interesting and revealing for human scientists, are not matters of basic justice. A chimpanzee flourishes in its own way, communicating with its own community in a perfectly adequate manner that has gone on for ages. In short, the species norm (duly evaluated) tells us what the appropriate benchmark is for judging whether a given creature has decent opportunities for flourishing. Animal rights legislation is already on the books. Cass Sunstein, The Rights of Animals, The University of Chicago Law Review, Volume 70, Number 1, 2003 In the United States, state anticruelty laws go well beyond pro-hibiting beating, injuring, and the like, and impose affirmative duties on people who have animals in their care. New York contains a representative set of provisions. Criminal penalties are imposed on anyone who transports an animal in a cruel or inhumane manner, or in such a way as to subject it to torture or suffering, conditions that can come about through neglect.9 People who transport an animal on railroads or cars are required to allow the animal out for rest, feeding, and water every five hours.10 Nonowners who have impounded or confined an animal are obliged to provide good air, water, shelter, and food." Those who abandon an animal in public places, including a pet, face criminal penalties.12 Another provision forbids people from torturing, beating, maiming, or killing any animal, and also requires people to provide adequate food and drink.'3In deed, it is generally a crime not to provide necessary sustenance, food, water, shelter, and protection from severe weather.14 New York, like most states, forbids overworking an animal, or using the animal for work when she or he is not physically fit.15 Compare in this regard the unusually protective California statute, which imposes criminal liability on negligent as well as intentional overworking, overdriving, or torturing of animals.'6 "Torture" is defined not in its ordinary language sense, but to include any act or omission "whereby unnecessary or unjustifiable physical pain or suffering is caused or permitted."
55
PlanetDebate.com 56
Animal rights are justified by principles of equality. Peter Singer, All Animals are Equal, Animal Rights and Human Obligations, Eds. Peter Singer and Tom Regan, 1989. http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/singer02.htm A liberation movement demands an expansion of our moral horizons and an extension or reinterpretation of the basic moral principle of equality. Practices that were previously regarded as natural and inevitable come to be seen as the result of an unjustifiable prejudice. Who can say with confidence that all his or her attitudes and practices are beyond criticism? If we wish to avoid being numbered amongst the oppressors, we must be prepared to re-think even our most fundamental attitudes. We need to consider them from the point of view of those most disadvantaged by our attitudes, and the practices that follow from these attitudes. If we can make this unaccustomed mental switch we may discover a pattern in our attitudes and practices that consistently operates so as to benefit one groupusually the one to which we ourselves belongat the expense of another. In this way we may come to see that there is a case for a new liberation movement. My aim is to advocate that we make this mental switch in respect of our attitudes and practices towards a very large group of beings: members of species other than our ownor, as we popularly though misleadingly call them, animals. In other words, I am urging that we extend to other species the basic principle of equality that most of us recognize should be extended to all members of our own species. Not being able to demand a right does not dejustify animal rights. Tom Reagan, Moral Basis of Vegetarianism, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 5, Number 2, 1975 The first declares that animals cannot have rights because they lack the capacity to claim them.20 Now, this objection seems to be a variant of the view that animals cannot have rights because they can-not speak, and, like this more general view, this one too will not withs-tand a moment's serious reflection. For there are many human beings who cannot speak or claim their rights - tiny infants, for example - and yet who would not be denied the right in question, assuming, as we are, that it is supposed to be a right possessed by all human beings. Thus, if a human being can possess this (or any other right) without being able to demand it, it cannot be reasonable to require that animals be able to do so, if they are to possess this (or any other) right. Giving animals the right to legal standing would protect more rights. Cass Sunstein, The Rights of Animals, The University of Chicago Law Review, Volume 70, Number 1, 2003 If the suffering of animals matters- and every reasonable person seems to think that it does-we should be greatly troubled by these limitations. The least controversial response would be to narrow the "enforcement gap," by allowing private suits to be brought in cases of cruelty and neglect. Reforms might be adopted with the limited pur-pose of stopping conduct that is already against the law, so that the law actually means, in practice, what it says on paper. Here, then, we can find a slightly less minimal understanding of animal rights. On this view, representatives of animals should be able to bring private suits to ensure that anticruelty and related laws are actually enforced. If, for ex-ample, a farm is treating horses cruelly and in violation of legal requirements, a suit could be brought, on behalf of those animals, to bring about compliance with the law.
56
PlanetDebate.com 57
If different groups of humans can have special rights, animals can, too. Peter Singer, All Animals are Equal, Animal Rights and Human Obligations, Eds. Peter Singer and Tom Regan, 1989. http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/singer02.htm The thought behind this reply to Taylor's analogy is correct up to a point, but it does not go far enough. There are important differences between humans and other animals, and these differences must give rise to some differences in the rights that each have. Recognizing this obvious fact, however, is no barrier to the case for extending the basic principle of equality to nonhuman animals. The differences that exist between men and women are equally undeniable, and the supporters of Women's Liberation are aware that these differences may give rise to different rights. Many feminists hold that women have the right to an abortion on request. It does not follow that since these same people are campaigning for equality between men and women they must support the right of men to have abortions too. Since a man cannot have an abortion, it is meaningless to talk of his right to have one. Since a pig can't vote, it is meaningless to talk of its right to vote. There is no reason why either Women's Liberation or Animal Liberation should get involved in such nonsense. The extension of the basic principle of equality from one group to another does not imply that we must treat both groups in exactly the same way, or grant exactly the same rights to both groups. Whether we should do so will depend on the nature of the members of the two groups. The basic principle of equality, I shall argue, is equality of consideration; and equal consideration for different beings may lead to different treatment and different rights. The lack of language does not dejustify animal rights. Tom Reagan, Moral Basis of Vegetarianism, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 5, Number 2, 1975 Let us ask, then, whether Descartes is correct in holding that only a being who can use a language can experience pain. It seems he is not. Infants, for example, are not able to describe the loca-tion and character of their pains, and yet we do not, for all that, suppose that, when they fill the air with their piercing cries, they are not (or, stronger still, cannot possibly be) in pain. True, we can say of infants, what we may not be in a position to say of animals, that they have the potential to learn to use a language. But this cannot help the Cartesian. For when the infant screams for all he is worth, and when we find the diaper pin piercing his side, we do not say "My oh my, the lad certainly has a fine potential for feeling pain/' We say he really is feeling it. Or imagine a person whose vocal chords have been damaged to such an extent that he no longer has the ability to utter words or even make inarticulate sounds, and whose arms have been paralyzed so that he cannot write, but who, when his tooth abcesses, twists and turns on his bed, grimaces and sobs. We do not say, "Ah, if only he could still speak, we could give him something for his pain. As it is, since he cannot speak, there's nothing we need give him. For he feels no pain." We say he is in pain, despite the fact that he has lost the ability to say so. Whether or not a person is experiencing pain, in short, does not depend on his being able to perform one or another linguistic feat. Why, then, should it be any different in the case of animals? It would seem to be the height of human arrogance, rather than of Pythagorean "superstition," to erect a double standard here, re-quiring that animals meet a standard not set for humans. If humans can experience pain without being logically required to be able to say so, or in other ways to use a language, then the same standard should apply to animals as well.
57
PlanetDebate.com 58
Animal rights do not require animals to be eaten. Cass Sunstein, The Rights of Animals, The University of Chicago Law Review, Volume 70, Number 1, 2003 If we focus on suffering, as I believe we should, it is not necessar-ily impermissible to kill animals and use them for food; but it is en-tirely impermissible to be indifferent to their interests while they are alive. So too for other animals in farms, even or perhaps especially if they are being used for the benefit of human beings. If sheep are going to be used to create clothing, their conditions should be conducive to their welfare. We might ban hunting altogether, at least if its sole pur-pose is human recreation. (Should animals be hunted and killed sim-ply because people enjoy hunting and killing them? The issue would be different if hunting and killing could be justified as having impor-tant functions, such as control of populations, the search for food, or protection of human beings against animal violence.) Differing human capabilities show that animal rights can be justified. Peter Singer, All Animals are Equal, Animal Rights and Human Obligations, Eds. Peter Singer and Tom Regan, 1989. http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/singer02.htm When we say that all human beings, whatever their race, creed, or sex, are equal, what is it that we are asserting? Those who wish to defend a hierarchical, inegalitarian society have often pointed out that by whatever test we choose, it simply is not true that all humans are equal. Like it or not, we must face the fact that humans come in different shapes and sizes; they come with differing moral capacities, differing intellectual abilities, differing amounts of benevolent feeling and sensitivity to the needs of others, differing abilities to communicate effectively, and differing capacities to experience pleasure and pain. In short, if the demand for equality were based on the actual equality of all human beings, we would have to stop demanding equality. It would be an unjustifiable demand. Animals killing animals does not dejustify animal rights. Tom Reagan, Moral Basis of Vegetarianism, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 5, Number 2, 1975 For if, say, a lamb has the natural right to be spared undeserved pain, then the wolf, who devours it unmercifully, without the benefit of anaesthetic, should be said to violate the lamb's right. This, it is alleged, is absurd, and so, then, is the attribution of rights to animals. Well, absurd it may be to say that the wolf violates the lamb's right. But even supposing that it is, nothing said here implies that such deeds on the part of the wolf violate the lamb's rights. For the lamb can have rights only against those beings who are capable of tak-ing the interests of the lamb into account and trying to determine, on the basis of its interests, as well as other relevant considerations, what, morally speaking, ought to be done. In other words, the only kind of being against which another being can have rights is a being that can be held to be morally responsible for its actions. Thus, the lamb can have rights against, say, most adult human beings. But a wolf, I think it would be agreed, is not capable of making decisions from the moral point of view; nor is a wolf the kind of being that can be held morally responsible; neither, then, can it make sense to say that the lamb has any rights against the wolf. This situation has its counterpart in human affairs. The severely mentally feeble, for example, lack the requisite powers to act morally; thus, they cannot be expected to recognize our rights, nor can they be said to violate our rights, even if, for example, they should happen to cause us undeserved pain. For as they are not the kind of being that can be held responsible for what they do, neither can they be said to violate anyone's rights by what they do.
58
PlanetDebate.com 59
If discriminating against people is wrong, then discrimination against animals is wrong. Peter Singer, All Animals are Equal, Animal Rights and Human Obligations, Eds. Peter Singer and Tom Regan, 1989. http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/singer02.htm It is an implication of this principle of equality that our concern for others ought not to depend on what they are like, or what abilities they possessalthough precisely what this concern requires us to do may vary according to the characteristics of those affected by what we do. It is on this basis that the case against racism and the case against sexism must both ultimately rest; and it is in accordance with this principle that speciesism is also to be condemned. If possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not entitle one human to use another for his own ends, how can it entitle humans to exploit nonhumans? Fulfillment of higher order pleasures does not dejustify animal rights. Tom Reagan, Moral Basis of Vegetarianism, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 5, Number 2, 1975 For even if we assume, what is debatable, that pleasures can differ qualitatively one from another, this objection must, I think, offend a moral principle to which we would all sub-scribe. This is the principle that no practice which causes undeserved, non-trivial pain can be justified solely on the grounds of the amount of pleasure it brings about for others, no matter how "high" the quality of the pleasure might be supposed to be. To test this contention we need merely to ask whether we would approve of a practice which causes some humans to suffer non-trivial, undeserved pain but which brings about, say, high intellectual pleasures for other human beings; more particularly, we need to ask whether we would approve of such a practice simply on the grounds that it produces this kind of pleasure in whatever amount might be hypothesized. My belief is that we would not approve of it. My belief is that the pain is not justified by these higher pleasures - that the pain is, therefore, gratuitous and that the natural right to be spared undeserved pain, assuming that humans have this right, is being violated. Capacity to suffer is what justifies animal moral standing. Peter Singer, All Animals are Equal, Animal Rights and Human Obligations, Eds. Peter Singer and Tom Regan, 1989. http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/singer02.htm In this passage Bentham points to the capacity for suffering as the vital characteristic that gives a being the right to equal consideration. The capacity for sufferingor more strictly, for suffering and/or enjoyment or happinessis not just another characteristic like the capacity for language, or for higher mathematics. Bentham is not saying that those who try to mark "the insuperable line" that determines whether the interests of a being should be considered happen to have selected the wrong characteristic. The capacity for suffering and enjoying things is a prerequisite for having interests at all, a condition that must be satisfied before we can speak of interests in any meaningful way. It would be nonsense to say that it was not in the interests of a stone to be kicked along the road by a schoolboy. A stone does not have interests because it cannot suffer. Nothing that we can do to it could possibly make any difference to its welfare. A mouse, on the other hand, does have an interest in not being tormented, because it will suffer if it is.
59
PlanetDebate.com 60
Negative Quotations
Only humans can have morality. Carl Cohen, The Case for the use of Animals in Biomedical Research, The New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 315, Number 14, 1986. The attributes of human beings from which this moral capability arises have been described variously by philosophers, both ancient and modern: the inner consciousness of a free will (Saint Augustine3); the grasp, by human reason, of the binding character of moral law (Saint Thomas4); the self-conscious participation of human beings in an objective ethical order (Hegel5); human membership in an organic moral community (Bradley6); the development of the hu-man self through the consciousness of other moral selves (Mead7); and the underivative, intuitive cognition of the Tightness of an action (Prichard8). Most influential has been Immanuel Kant's emphasis on the universal human possession of a uniquely moral will and the autonomy its use entails.9 Humans confront choices that are purely moral; humans but certainly not dogs or mice lay down moral laws, for others and for themselves. Human beings are self-legislative, morally auto-nomous. Suffering cannot be sufficient to justify animal rights. David R. Schmahmann and Lori J. Polacheck, The Case Against Animal Rights, Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, Volume 22, 1995. Whether or not animals suffer, however, only begins the analysis. As interesting as it is to dwell on the relative capacities for suffering of various species12 and the possibility that some animals may suffer less under human control than when left alone,13 the ability to suffer cannot, standing alone, be the sole tool with which access to legal rights and remedies is analyzed.14 While the capacity for suffering may be a common denominator of humans and animals, and is easily polemicized, legal rights have their origins in and are intertwined with a multitude of complex and subtle concepts that may include, but are in no means limited to, suffering. Not all obligations to animals would necessarily entail rights. Carl Cohen, Do Animals Have Rights?, Ethics and Behavior, Volume 7, Number 2, 1997. Many obligations are owed by humans to animals; few will deny that. But it certainly does not follow from this that animals have rights because it is certainly not true that every obligation of ours arises from the rights of another. Not at all. We need to be clear and careful here. Rights entail obligations. If you have a right to the return of the money I borrowed, I have an obligation to repay it. No issue. If we have the right to speak freely on public policy matters, the community has the obligation to respect our right to do so. But the proposition all rights entail obligations does not convert simply, as the logicians say. From the true proposition that all trees are plants, it does not follow that all plants are trees. Similarly, not all obligations are entailed by rights. Some obligations, like mine to repay the money I borrowed from you, do arise out of rights. But many obligations are owed to persons or other beings who have no rights whatever in the matter. Obligations may arise from commitments freely made: As a college professor I accept the obligation to comment at length on the papers my students submit, and I do so; but they have not the right to demand that I do so. Civil servants and elected officials surely ought to be courteous to members of the public, but that obligation certainly is not grounded in citizens' rights.
60
PlanetDebate.com 61
Comparing animal rights to the struggle for human rights is an exaggeration. Leslie Pickering Francis and Richard Norman, Some Animals are more Equal than Others, Philosophy, Volume 53, Number 206, 1978. Why then has our emphasis been predominantly negative? The phrase 'animal liberation' says it all. By equating the cause of animal welfare with genuine liberation movements such as black liberation, women's liberation, or gay liberation, Singer on the one hand presents in an implausible guise the quite valid concern to prevent cruelty to animals. At the same time the equation has the effect of trivializing those real liberation move-ments, putting them on a level with what cannot but appear as a bizarre exaggeration. Liberation movements have a character and a degree of moral importance which cannot be possessed by a movement to prevent cruelty to animals. A real liberation movement is an attempt by an oppres-sed or exploited group to protest against its exploitation, to argue the justice of its case, and to organize in order to achieve its own liberation. It appeals to the possibilities for fully human and equal relations between those who are currently oppressors and oppressed. The fact that so-called 'animal liberation' could not conceivably be understood in these terms illustrates, as well as anything, the inescapable differences between human beings and animals, and their moral implications. People can have special obligations to animals without giving them rights. Carl Cohen, Do Animals Have Rights?, Ethics and Behavior, Volume 7, Number 2, 1997. Special relations often give rise to obligations: Hosts have the obligation to be cordial to their guests, but the guest has not the right to demand cordiality. Shepherds have obligations to their dogs, and cowboys to their horses, which do not flow from the rights of those dogs or horses. My son, now 5, may someday wish to study veterinary medicine as my father did; I will then have the obligation to help him as I can, and with pride I shallbut he has not the authority to demand such help as a matter of right. My dog has no right to daily exercise and veterinary care, but I do have the obligation to provide those things for her. The sum of the differences between humans and animals justifies different rights. David R. Schmahmann and Lori J. Polacheck, The Case Against Animal Rights, Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, Volume 22, 1995. In the end, however, it is the aggregate of these characteristics that does render humans fundamentally, importantly, and unbridgeably different from animals, even though it is also beyond question that in individual instances-for example, in the case of vegetative individuals- some animals may indeed have higher cognitive skills than some humans. To argue on that basis alone, however, that human institutions are morally flawed because they rest on assumptions regarding the aggregate of human abilities, needs, and actions is to deny such institutions the capacity to draw any distinctions at all. Consider the consequences of a theory which does not distinguish between animal life and human life for purposes of identifying and enforcing legal rights. Every individual member of every species would have recognized claims against human beings and the state, and perhaps other animals as well. As the concept of rights expanded to include the "claims" of all living creatures, the concept would lose much of its force, and human rights would suffer as a consequence.
61
PlanetDebate.com 62
Rights only apply to humans. Carl Cohen, Do Animals Have Rights?, Ethics and Behavior, Volume 7, Number 2, 1997. Animals cannot be the bearers of rights because the concept of rights is essentially human; it is rooted in, and has force within, a human moral world. Humans must deal with ratsall too frequently in some parts of the worldand must be moral in their dealing with them; but a rat can no more be said to have rights than a table can be said to have ambition. To say of a rat that it has rights is to confuse categories, to apply to its world a moral category that has content only in the human moral world. Animal rights movements are hypocritical. Vicki Hearne, Whats Wrong with Animal Rights, Harpers Magazine, September 1991. The logic of the animal-rights movement places suffering at the icono-graphic center of a skewed value system. The thinking of its proponentsgiven eerie expression in a virtually sado-pornographic sculpture of a tortured monkey that won a prize for its compassionate visionhas collapsed into a perverse conundrum. Today the loudest voices calling fordemandingthe destruction of animals are the humane organizations. This is an inevitable consequence of the apotheosis of the drive to relieve suffering: Death is the ultimate release. To compensate for their contradictions, the humane movement has demonized, in this century and the last, those who made animal happiness their business: veterinarians, trainers, and the like. We think of Louis Pasteur as the man whose work saved you and me and your dog and cat from rabies, but antivivisec-tionists of the time claimed that rabies increased in areas where there were Pasteur Institutes. Animal rights would lead to ludicrous conclusions. Carl Cohen, Do Animals Have Rights?, Ethics and Behavior, Volume 7, Number 2, 1997. Try this thought experiment. Imagine, on the Serengeti Plain in East Africa, a lioness hunting for her cubs. A baby zebra, momentarily left unattended by its mother, is the prey; the lioness snatches it, rips open its throat, tears out chunks of its flesh, and departs. The mother zebra is driven nearly out of her wits when she cannot locate her baby; finding its carcass she will not even leave the remains for days. The scene may be thought unpleasant, but it is entirely natural, of course, and extremely common. If the zebra has a right to live, if the prey is just but the predator unjust, we ought to intervene, if we can, on behalf of right. But we do not intervene, of courseas we surely would intervene if we saw the lioness about to attack an unprotected human baby or you. What accounts for the moral difference? We justify different responses to humans and to zebras on the ground (implicit or explicit) that their moral stature is very different. The human has a right not to be eaten alive; it is, after all, a human being. Do you believe the baby zebra has the right not to be slaughtered by that lioness? That the lioness has the right to kill that baby zebra for her cubs? If you are inclined to say, confronted by such natural rapacityduplicated with untold variety millions of times each day on planet earththat neither is right or wrong, that neither has a right against the other, I am on your side. Rights are of the highest moral consequence, yes; but zebras and lions and rats are totally amoral; there is no morality for them; they do no wrong, ever. In their world there are no rights.
62
PlanetDebate.com 63
Human life is more valuable than animal life. David R. Schmahmann and Lori J. Polacheck, The Case Against Animal Rights, Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, Volume 22, 1995. These forms of doctrinaire "animal rightism" ignore the value that society has placed on human life which enables society to function in an orderly fashion. In effect, the extreme positions of animal rights activists devalue human life and detract from human rights.3! "The belief that human life, and only human life, is sacrosanct is a form of speciesism," Singer writes.32 But if the sacredness of all life is equivalent, what is one to make of animals that kill each other and the often arbitrary nature of life and death and survival of the fittest in the wild? What is one to make of the conflict between the seeming arbitrariness of the killing that takes place in nature and the ethical content of human existence that starts with the certainty that the life of every individual person is uniquely sacred? The moral sphere of rights only applies to humans. Carl Cohen, Do Animals Have Rights?, Ethics and Behavior, Volume 7, Number 2, 1997. Some respond by saying, "This can't be correct, for human infants (and the comatose and senile, etc.) surely have rights, but they make no moral claims or judgments and can make noneand any view entailing that children can have no rights must be absurd." Objections of this kind miss the point badly. It is not individual persons who qualify (or are disqualified) for the possession of rights because of the presence or absence in them of some special capacity, thus resulting in the award of rights to some but not to others. Rights are universally human; they arise in a human moral world, in a moral sphere. In the human world moral judgments are pervasive; it is the fact that all humans including infants and the senile are members of that moral communitynot the fact that as individuals they have or do not have certain special capacities, or meritsthat makes humans bearers of rights. Therefore, it is beside the point to insist that animals have remarkable capacities, that they really have a consciousness of self, or of the future, or make plans, and so on. And the tired response that because infants plainly cannot make moral claims they must have no rights at all, or rats must have them too, we ought forever put aside. Responses like these arise out of a misconception of right itself. They mistakenly suppose that rights are tied to some identifiable individual abilities or sensibilities, and they fail to see that rights arise only in a community of moral beings, and that therefore there are spheres in which rights do apply and spheres in which they do not. Animals cannot be exploited. Leslie Pickering Francis and Richard Norman, Some Animals are more Equal than Others, Philosophy, Volume 53, Number 206, 1978. Of course, what most disturbs the vegetarian is not that we do not talk to animals, but that we exploit them. Yet here too, one can question the possibility of extended relationships. Reciprocal exchange and co-operative production are dependent upon communication of a relatively sophisticated kind. In so far as such communication is impossible, so also is the development of economic relations which depend upon it. Along these lines, one might even challenge the possibility of exploiting animals, if exploitation involves the distortion or misuse of underlying possibilities for reciprocal economic endeavour.
63
PlanetDebate.com 64
Rationality and autonomy do not justify animal rights. Carl Cohen, Do Animals Have Rights?, Ethics and Behavior, Volume 7, Number 2, 1997. Rationality is not at issue; the capacity to communicate is not at issue. My dog can reason, if rather weakly, and she certainly can communicate. Cognitive criteria for the possession of rights, Beauchamp (this issue) said, are morally perilous. Indeed they are. Nor is the capacity to suffer here at issue. And, if autonomy be understood only as the capacity to choose this course rather than that, autonomy is not to the point either. But moral autonomythat is, moral self-legislationis to the point, because moral autonomy is uniquely human and is for animals out of the question, as we have seen, and as Regan and I agree. In talking about autonomy, therefore, we must be careful and precise. Animal rights activists want to violate human rights. David R. Schmahmann and Lori J. Polacheck, The Case Against Animal Rights, Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, Volume 22, 1995. Sometimes the statements of contemporary radical environmentalists and animal rights activists display a profound misanthropy. "If radical environmentalists were to invent a disease to bring human population back to ecological sanity, it would probably be something like AIDS," writes one author using the pseudonym Miss Ann Thropy.33 "Seeing no other possibility for the preservation of biological diversity on earth than a drastic decline in the number of humans, Miss Ann Thropy contends that AIDS is ideal for the task primarily because 'the disease only affects humans' and shows promise for wiping out large numbers of humans."34 Ingrid Newkirk has commented that even if animal research resulted in a cure for AIDS, PETA would "be against it."3 The animal rights movement is hypocritical. Vicki Hearne, Whats Wrong with Animal Rights, Harpers Magazine, September 1991. An anti-rabies public-relations campaign mounted in England in the 1880s by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and other organizations led to orders being issued to club any dog found not wearing a muzzle. England still has her cruel and unnecessary law that requires an animal to spend six months in quarantine before being allowed loose in the country. Most of the recent propaganda about pit bullsthe crazy claim that they "take hold with their front teeth while they chew away with their rear teeth" (which would imply, incorrectly, that they have double jaws)can be traced to literature published by the Humane Society of the United States during the fall of 1987 and earlier. If your neighbors want your dog or horse impounded and destroyed because he is a nuisancesay the dog barks, or the horse attracts fliesit will be the local Humane Society to whom your neighbors turn for action. Since animals cannot violate rights, they cannot possess them. Carl Cohen, Do Animals Have Rights?, Ethics and Behavior, Volume 7, Number 2, 1997. Because humans do have rights, and these rights can be violated by other humans, we say that some humans commit crimes. But whether a crime has been committed depends utterly on the moral state of mind of the actor. If I take your coat, or your book, honestly thinking it was mine, I do not steal it. The actus reus (the guilty deed) must be accompanied, in a genuine crime, by a guilty mind, a mens rea. That recognition, not just of possible punishment for an act, but of moral duties that govern us, no rat or cow ever can possess. In primitive times humans did sometimes bring cows and horses to the bar of human justice. We chuckle at that practice now, realizing that accusing cows of crimes marks the primitive moral view as inane. Animals
64
PlanetDebate.com 65
never can be criminals because they have no moral state of mind. Human rights are the only legitimate basis for ethics. David R. Schmahmann and Lori J. Polacheck, The Case Against Animal Rights, Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, Volume 22, 1995. The point is that reverence for human life must be both the starting point and the reference point for any ethical philosophy and system of law that does not immediately become unhitched from its moorings in civilization. With respect to animals and their similarities to humans, Singer's dismissal of "fine phrases" notwithstanding, the fact that debate exists about the ethical consequences of such differences is almost distinction enough. It is we-humans-who are having the debate, not animals; and it is a unique feature of humankind to recognize ethical subtleties. This ability to recognize gradations and competing interests is what defines the rules that we live by and the system of rights and responsibilities that comprise our legal system. Animals cannot possess rights because animals are in no way a part of any of these processes. On the other hand, any duties we may have respecting our treatment of animals derive from the fact that we are part of these processes.36 Humans have unique characteristics that justify prioritizing their interests. Leslie Pickering Francis and Richard Norman, Some Animals are more Equal than Others, Philosophy, Volume 53, Number 206, 1978. Our claim, then, is that communicative, economic, political and familial relations are far more widespread among human beings (including infants) than between human beings and animals. We have noted various rela-tively uncontroversial ways in which such relations are regularly taken to have a moral significance. What we are suggesting is that, taken together, they add up to a network of relations which may quite generally justify human beings in attaching greater weight to the interests of other human beings than to those of animals. In other words, we are offering this as a plausible ground for rejecting Singer's principle of equal consideration. Giving animals rights is a misapplication of ethical principles. Carl Cohen, Do Animals Have Rights?, Ethics and Behavior, Volume 7, Number 2, 1997. Mistakes parallel to this in other spheres may be helpful to think about. In the Third Part of The Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant explained with care the metaphysical blunders into which we are led when we misapply concepts of great human import. In our human experience, for example, the concepts of time and space, the relations of cause and effect, of subject and attribute, and others, are essential, fundamental. But, forgetting that these are concepts arising only within the world of our human experience, we sometimes are misled into asking: Was the world caused, or is it uncaused? Did the world have a beginning in time, or did it not? Kant explainedin one of the most brilliant long passages in all philosophical literaturewhy it makes no sense to ask such questions. Cause applies to phenomena we humans encounter in the world, it is a category of our experience and cannot apply to the world as a whole. Time is the condition of our experience, not an absolute container in which the world could have begun. The antinomies of pure reason, and after those the paralogisms of pure reason, Kant patiently exhibited as confusions arising from the misapplication of the categories of experience. His lesson is powerful and deep. The misapplication of concepts leads to error and, sometimes, to nonsense. So it is with rights also. To say that rats have rights is to apply to the world of rats a concept that makes good sense when applied to humans, but which makes no sense at all when applied to rats.
65
PlanetDebate.com 66
Animal rights lead to the trivialization of rights. Vicki Hearne, Whats Wrong with Animal Rights, Harpers Magazine, September 1991. I want to leave the philosophers behind, but I cannot, in part because the philosophical problems that plague academicians of the animal-rights movement are illuminating. They wonder, do animals have rights or do they have interests? Or, if these rightists lead particularly unexamined lives, they dismiss that question as obvious (yes, of course, animals have rights, prima facie) and proceed to enumerate them, James Madison style. This leads to the issuance of bills of rightsthe right to an environment, the right not to be used in medical experimentsand other forms of trivialization. Animal research is necessary. David R. Schmahmann and Lori J. Polacheck, The Case Against Animal Rights, Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, Volume 22, 1995. Adrian R. Morrison, in Understanding (and Misunderstanding) the Animal Rights Movement in the United States, describes the importance of basic animal research to advances in medicine.43 Dr. Morrison notes that most basic medical research relies upon studies using animals.44 In turn, most medical advances rely upon basic medical research.45 For example, "41% of the papers reporting work judged to be fundamentally important to the 10 most important advances in cardiology were concerned with studies that sought knowledge for the sake of knowledge itself."46 Morrison also recounts how the appearance of penicillin and the sulfonamides '''did not fall into our laps'" but were the product of "'[g]enerations of energetic and imaginative investigators [who] exhausted their whole lives on the problem. It overlooks a staggering amount of basic research to say that modern medicine began with the era of antibiotics."'47 Andrew Rowan lists the medical advances, some of them spectacular, that can be traced directly to animal research.48 Animals inability to communicate justifies denying them rights. Leslie Pickering Francis and Richard Norman, Some Animals are more Equal than Others, Philosophy, Volume 53, Number 206, 1978. The degree of human communication makes it possible for human beings to identify with one another, in a strong sense. They can share each other's experiences and aspirations; they can imagine themselves in each other's positions. (Nor does the word 'can' here indicate merely an option which may or may not be exercised; to encounter the joys or sufferings of another human being without in any way internalizing them would normally require the deliberate inhibition of one's reactions.) Moreover, because human beings communicate with one another, they can also justify themselves to one another. When one human being acts in a certain way towards another, he/she can appropriately ask 'How could I explain and justify to the other person my way of acting? Could I do it by appeal to rational principles which the other person would accept?' More generally it makes sense to ask what principles human beings could agree on to regulate their behaviour towards one another. None of this applies to the interactions between human beings and animals. The rudimentary levels of communication between human beings and animals make possible no more than an equally rudimentary 'sympathy' for the plight of an animal. A human being can appreciate that an animal is in pain, or afraid, and can 'feel for' it. But any more developed identification with the experiences of an animal would be likely to be the product of fantasy.
66
PlanetDebate.com 67
The inherent value of animals does not justify giving them rights. Carl Cohen, Do Animals Have Rights?, Ethics and Behavior, Volume 7, Number 2, 1997. The expression inherent value has another sense, however, also common and also plausible. My dog has inherent value, and so does every wild animal, every lion and zebra, which is why the senseless killing of animals is so repugnant. Each animal is unique, not replaceable in itself by another animal or by any rocks or clay. Animals, like humans, are not just things; they live, and as unique living creatures they have inherent value. This is an important point, and again likely to be thought plausible; but here, in Sense 2, the phrase inherent value means something quite distinct from what was meant in its earlier uses. Inherent value in Sense 1, possessed by all humans but not by all animals, which warrants the claim of human rights, is very different from inherent value in Sense 2, which warrants no such claim. The uniqueness of animals, their intrinsic worthiness as individual living things, does not ground the possession of rights, has nothing to do with the moral condition in which rights arise. Regan's argument reached its critical objective with almost magical speed because, having argued that beings with inherent value (Sense 1) have rights that must be respected, he quickly asserted (putting it in italics lest the reader be inclined to express doubt) that rats and rabbits also have rights because they, too, have inherent value (Sense 2). Animals may live better lives in captivity than in the wild. Vicki Hearne, Whats Wrong with Animal Rights, Harpers Magazine, September 1991. The calculus of suffering can be turned against the philosophers of festering flesh, even in the case of food animals, or exotic animals who perform in movies and circuses. It is true that it hurts to be slaughtered by man, but it doesn't hurt nearly as much as some of the cunningly cruel arrangements meted out by "Mother Nature." In Africa, 75 percent of the lions cubbed do not survive to the age of two. For those who make it to two, the average age at death is ten years. Asali, the movie and TV lioness, was still working at age twenty-one. There are fates worse than death, but twenty-one years of a close working relationship with Hubert Wells, Asali's trainer, is not one of them. Dorset sheep and polfed Here- fords would not exist at all were they not in a symbiotic relationship with human beings. The consequences of abandoning animal testing would be disastrous. David R. Schmahmann and Lori J. Polacheck, The Case Against Animal Rights, Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, Volume 22, 1995. The animal rightists' second line of argument is a fallback to the notion that human health does not justify animal suffering. One cannot argue with this proposition without returning full circle to where we began in this Article-a reasonable reverence for human life must come first in a human philosophical perspective.49 Morrison, referring to historical descriptions of "'infants with ears streaming pus, schoolboys with facial impetigo, beards growing from heavily infected skin, faces pocked by smallpox or eroded by lupus, or heads and necks scarred from boils or suppurating glands,'" describes us as ''the healthiest generation in history."50 To those who believe the statement that "[a] life is a life ... [i]f the death of one rat cured all diseases, it wouldn't make any difference to me,"51 humanity's movement from such miseries is irrelevant.
67
PlanetDebate.com 68
Animal rights would dejustify pet ownership. Vicki Hearne, Whats Wrong with Animal Rights, Harpers Magazine, September 1991. People who claim to speak for animal rights are increasingly devoted to the idea that the very keeping of a dog or a horse or a gerbil or a lion is in and of itself an offense. The more loudly they speak, the less likely they are to be in a rights relation to any given animal, because they are spending so much time in airplanes or transmitting fax announcements of the latest Sylvester Stallone anti-fur rally. In a 1988 Harper's forum, for example, Ingrid Newkirk, the national director of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, urged that domestic pets be spayed and neutered and ultimately phased out. She prefers, it appears, wolvesand wolves someplace elseto Airedales and, by a logic whose interior structure is both emotionally and intellectually forever closed to Drummer, claims thereby to be speaking for "animal rights." Animal rights theories discount the human pursuit of knowledge. David R. Schmahmann and Lori J. Polacheck, The Case Against Animal Rights, Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, Volume 22, 1995. The selection of animal research facilities as a target for activism is also consistent with the antiintellectual bias of the animal rights movement itself. The movement downplays intellect and its accompanying curiosities and ambiguities as a distinguishing feature of humankind. The notion that there is nothing sacred about the right to pursue knowledge is, after all, a central feature of all nonspeciesist analysis.55 Those qualities that lead scientists to seek further knowledge- for its own sake or to better the human, and often animal, condition-are precisely the human traits that animal rights activists brand as speceisist and pointless. Animals lack the capability for moral judgment, so they cant have rights. Carl Cohen, The Case for the use of Animals in Biomedical Research, The New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 315, Number 14, 1986. Animals (that is, nonhuman animals, the ordinary sense of that word) lack this capacity for free moral judgment. They are not beings of a kind capable of exercising or responding to moral claims. Animals therefore have no rights, and they can have none. This is the core of the argument about the alleged rights of animals. The holders of rights must have the capacity to comprehend rules of duty, governing all including themselves. In applying such rules, the holders of rights must recognize possible conflicts between what is in their own interest and what is just. Only in a community of beings capable of selfrestricting moral judgments can the concept of a right be correctly invoked. Legal rights for animals would lead to ridiculous conclusions. David R. Schmahmann and Lori J. Polacheck, The Case Against Animal Rights, Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, Volume 22, 1995. The question which must arise in the context of any proposal that the government endow rights on animals is how such a notion can be reconciled with the very definition of "rights" in a constitutional democracy. Any real acceptance of the notion must mean reposing in the government a wholly new and undefined set of powers, presumably to be exercised on behalf of an entirely new and vague constituency. The notion contemplates the creation of a vast, unprecedented, intrusive, and uncircumscribable jurisprudence in which the government erects barriers to human conduct on the strength, not of competing
68
PlanetDebate.com 69
human interests-be they economic, esthetic, or humanitarian-or the delegation of power to it by individuals, but of assumptions about the interests of animals assessed by the government apart from human interests or experience. Not only may this be impossible, but in the contemplated nonspeciesist world, where there would be no hierarchy within the animal kingdom just as there would be no hierarchy between humans and animals, the "rights" of individual animals would exist in competition with the rights of individual humans. Thus, no rat could be harmed, chicken cooked, or rabbit dissected without government permission or the prospect of government scrutiny. If some government agency were given the power to act in the interest of animals, the result would be the creation of a vast, intrusive structure which would erect barriers to human conduct on the strength, not of competing human interests, but of assessments of the interests of animals conducted without reference to human interests or experience. Animals do not have rights. Carl Cohen, The Case for the use of Animals in Biomedical Research, The New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 315, Number 14, 1986. Humans have such moral capacities. They are in this sense self-legislative, are members of communities governed by moral rules, and do possess rights. Animals do not have such moral capacities. They are not morally self-legislative, cannot possibly be members of a truly moral community, and therefore cannot possess rights. In conducting research on animal subjects, therefore, we do not violate their rights, because they have none to violate. Granting animal rights would radically increase the power of the government. David R. Schmahmann and Lori J. Polacheck, The Case Against Animal Rights, Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, Volume 22, 1995. What sort of fearsome bureaucracy would purport to institutionalize, standardize, and write regulations pertaining to animals' rights and interests implicated by all legislation? What kind of free-ranging commissions of inquiry would courts become if the requirements of human standing62 were removed and any advocate or group of advocates purporting to speak for any animal were entitled judicial access to press the animal's rights and to argue the animal's case? Life is not a sufficient condition to grant a right to life. Carl Cohen, The Case for the use of Animals in Biomedical Research, The New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 315, Number 14, 1986. To animate life, even in its simplest forms, we give a certain natural reverence. But the possession of rights presupposes a moral status not attained by the vast majority of living things. We must not infer, therefore, that a live being has, simply in being alive, a "right" to its life. The assertion that all animals, only because they are alive and have interests, also possess the "right to life"10 is an abuse of that phrase, and wholly without warrant. It does not follow from this,-however, that we are morally free to do anything we please to animals. Certainly not. In our dealings with animals, as in our dealings with other human beings, we have obligations that do not arise from claims against us based on rights. Rights entail obligations, but many of the things one ought to do are in no way tied to another's entitlement. Rights and obligations are not reciprocals of one another, and it is a serious mistake to suppose that they are.
69
PlanetDebate.com 70
Human interests must always trump animal interests. David R. Schmahmann and Lori J. Polacheck, The Case Against Animal Rights, Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, Volume 22, 1995. The only measure-true north, the touchstone-must be human interests. These interests could be aesthetic or humanitarian and could seek to weigh all the factors the range of human dialog about animals includes. But it is human interest, whether it be in the environment, the need to show compassion, or the need to advance science, that must be weighed, not any supposed interest in an anthropomorphized rat or a Disneyfied rabbit. When overpopulation of deer threaten a water supply the deer must be culled, and without due process for the deer.63 When rabbits ruin vital crops the rabbits must be exterminated.64 When human medical advances require vivisection, vivisection may continue without unnecessary harm but with such harm as may be necessary for its purpose. Our lack of understanding of animals legal interests makes the positions untenable. David R. Schmahmann and Lori J. Polacheck, The Case Against Animal Rights, Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, Volume 22, 1995. We do not see how a legal system in which human rights are enshrined could approach these matters differently. Our moral and legal systems cannot accommodate a theory that purports to detach decisions as to how we should treat animals from an anthropocentric reference point and have these decisions revolve around some other concept, such as that of "civil rights" for beings that cannot articulate their own interests and about whose true sapience, awareness, knowledge of death, and value of life we know so little. Only humans can consent, so only humans can have rights. Carl Cohen, The Case for the use of Animals in Biomedical Research, The New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 315, Number 14, 1986. The capacity for moral judgment that distinguishes humans from animals is not a test to be administered to human beings one by one. Persons who are unable, because of some disability, to perform the full moral functions natural to human beings are certainly not for that reason ejected from the moral community. The issue is one of kind. Humans are of such a kind that they may be the subject of experiments only with their voluntary consent. The choices they make freely must be respected. Animals are of such a kind that it is impossible for them, in principle, to give or withhold voluntary consent or to make a moral choice. What humans retain when disabled, animals have never had. Current law sufficiently protects the interests of animals without recognizing their rights. David R. Schmahmann and Lori J. Polacheck, The Case Against Animal Rights, Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, Volume 22, 1995. State and federal legislation that presently regulates human interaction with animals is consistent with the views that only humans possess rights and that animal suffering may be an unavoidable consequence of some human activities. Such legislation does not address animals as beings with rights, but rather as beings toward which humans have responsibilities. These responsibilities are derived, not from some conception that animals possess claims against humans, but rather from a recognition that human interests and esthetic sensibilities are impacted by our treatment of animals.
70
PlanetDebate.com 71
Only humans can follow moral codes, so only humans can have rights. Carl Cohen, The Case for the use of Animals in Biomedical Research, The New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 315, Number 14, 1986. This criticism misses the central point. It is not the ability to communicate or to reason, or dependence on one another, or care for the young, or the exhibition of preference, or any such behavior that marks the critical divide. Analogies between human families and those of monkeys, or between human communities and those of wolves, and the like, are entirely beside the point. Patterns of conduct are not at issue. Animals do indeed exhibit remarkable behavior at times. Conditioning, fear, instinct, and intelligence all contribute to species survival. Membership in a community of moral agents nevertheless remains impossible for them. Actors subject to moral judgment must be capable of grasping the generality of an ethical premise in a practical syllogism. Humans act immorally often enough, but only they never wolves or monkeys can discern, by applying some moral rule to the facts of a case, that a given act ought or ought not to be performed. The moral restraints imposed by humans on themselves are thus highly abstract and are often in conflict with the self-interest of the agent. Communal behavior among animals, even when most intelligent and most endearing, does not approach autonomous morality in this fundamental sense. Legislation that currently protects animals is human-centric. David R. Schmahmann and Lori J. Polacheck, The Case Against Animal Rights, Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, Volume 22, 1995. The major federal animal legislation, such as the Animal Welfare Act (AWA),66 the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA),67 and the Endangered Species Act (ESA),68 are-like all legislation-products of a balancing of competing interests. The interests in the balance are the various human interests that may be affected by the way we interact with animals; the perceived interests of animals are of impor-tance only insofar as it is assumed that mistreatment of animals, especially the gratuitous mistreatment of animals, is unesthetic and inconsistent with a humane view of our place in our environment Analogies between animal rights and racism do not make sense. Carl Cohen, The Case for the use of Animals in Biomedical Research, The New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 315, Number 14, 1986. Racism has no rational ground whatever. Differing degrees of respect or concern for humans for no other reason than that they are members of different races is an injustice totally without foundation in the nature of the races themselves. Racists, even if acting on the basis of mistaken factual beliefs, do grave moral wrong precisely because there is no morally relevant distinction among the races. The supposition of such differences has led to outright horror. The same is true of the sexes, neither sex being entitled by right to greater respect or concern than the other. No dispute here. Between species of animate life, however between (for example) humans on the one hand and cats or rats on the other the morally relevant differences are enormous, and almost universally appreciated. Humans engage in moral reflection; humans are morally autonomous; humans are members of moral communities, recognizing just claims against their own interest. Human beings do have rights; theirs is a moral status very different from that of cats or rats.
71
PlanetDebate.com 72
Animal rights potentially violate the First Amendment. David R. Schmahmann and Lori J. Polacheck, The Case Against Animal Rights, Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, Volume 22, 1995. Eating, farming, clothes manufacturing, research, and education are not the only endeavors in which society must accept some form of harm to animals. The Supreme Court has recognized that animal sacrifice may be a protected aspect of religious worship. In Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. City of Hialeah, the United States Supreme Court addressed the constitutionality of a municipal ban on ritual animal sacrifice.93 The Court held that a city ordinance which entirely banned ritual animal sacrifice improperly burdened religion in violation of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.94 In so holding, the Court noted that many types of animal killing, such as fishing, the extermination of mice and rats, hunting, and euthanasia of stray dogs and cats were either permitted or approved of by the statute and city ordinance in question.95 Discrimination between species is necessary and right. Carl Cohen, The Case for the use of Animals in Biomedical Research, The New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 315, Number 14, 1986. I am a speciesist. Speciesism is not merely plausible; it is essential for right conduct, because those who will not make the morally relevant distinctions among species are almost certain, in consequence, to misapprehend their true obligations. The analogy between speciesism and racism is insidious. Every sensitive moral judgment requires that the differing natures of the beings to whom obligations are owed be considered. If all forms of animate life or vertebrate animal life? must be treated equally, and if therefore in evaluating a research program the pains of a rodent count equally with the pains of a human, we are forced to conclude (1) that neither humans nor rodents possess rights, or (2) that rodents possess all the rights that humans possess. Both alternatives are absurd. Yet one or the other must be swallowed if the moral equality of all species is to be defended. Animals lack legal standing because they dont have concrete interests. David R. Schmahmann and Lori J. Polacheck, The Case Against Animal Rights, Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, Volume 22, 1995. The Supreme Court has articulated the constitutional standing issue as "whether the plaintiff has 'alleged such a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy' as to warrant his invocation of federal court jurisdiction and to justify exercise of the court's remedial powers on his behalf."171 To satisfy the standing requirement, plaintiffs seeking relief in federal court must show that they have suffered a concrete, actual injury caused by the alleged legal violation.l72 Plaintiffs lack standing to assert a claim based on a "generalized grievance" shared by all or a large class of citizens.l73 Furthermore, plaintiffs must assert their own legal rights and interests and cannot base their claim for relief upon the interests of third parties. Individual duties dejustify animal rights. Carl Cohen, The Case for the use of Animals in Biomedical Research, The New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 315, Number 14, 1986. Humans owe to other humans a degree of moral regard that cannot be owed to animals. Some humans take on the obligation to support and heal others, both humans and animals, as a principal duty in their
72
PlanetDebate.com 73
lives; the fulfillment of that duty may require the sacrifice of many animals. If biomedical investigators abandon the effective pursuit of their professional objectives because they are convinced that they may not do to animals what the service of humans requires, they will fail, objectively, to do their duty. Refusing to recognize the moral differences among species is a sure path to calamity. (The largest animal rights group in the country is People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals; its codirector, Ingrid Newkirk, calls research using animal subjects "fascism" and "supremacism." "Animal liberationists do not separate out the human animal," she says, "so there is no rational basis for saying that a human being has special rights. A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They're all mammals."15 Only people can bring lawsuits to court under current animal protection laws. David R. Schmahmann and Lori J. Polacheck, The Case Against Animal Rights, Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, Volume 22, 1995. Because animals do not possess standing to sue, animal laws must be enforced either by the government or by individuals and private organizations. When a person brings a private action, the law of standing mandates that the person be among those actually injured by the alleged legal violation and be within the "zone of interests" of the relevant statute.l80 The fact that an animal or the animal's habitat may have been harmed is simply insufficient to establish standing for that animal.181 Thus, in cases brought by individuals and organizations under the ESA, the MMPA, the AWA, and the NEPA, the threshold inquiry is often how, if at all, people have been injured. Granting legal standing to animals would go beyond the scope of the judiciarys duties. David R. Schmahmann and Lori J. Polacheck, The Case Against Animal Rights, Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, Volume 22, 1995. In cases involving our animal laws, the search for an actual human injury often leads to tangential inquiries into topics such as the plaintiff's vacation preferences and feelings about animals.212 The focus on injury in fact, however, is critical because such a focus confines judicial inquiry to cases or controversies directly involving people. The resolution of disputes between animals and people or between various animal species is simply not within the scope of the judiciary's duties. Animal rights would violate human well-being. Carl Cohen, The Case for the use of Animals in Biomedical Research, The New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 315, Number 14, 1986. When balancing the pleasures and pains resulting from the use of animals in research, we must not fail to place on the scales the terrible pains that would have resulted, would be suffered now, and would long continue had animals not been used. Every disease eliminated, every vaccine developed, every method of pain relief devised, every surgical procedure invented, every prosthetic device implanted indeed, virtually every modern medical therapy is due, in part or in whole, to experimentation using animals. Nor may we ignore, in the balancing process, the predictable gains in human (and animal) well-being that are probably achievable in the future but that will not be achieved if the decision is made now to desist from such research or to curtail it.
73
PlanetDebate.com 74
Courts are not qualified to examine animal interests. David R. Schmahmann and Lori J. Polacheck, The Case Against Animal Rights, Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, Volume 22, 1995. When animal rights activists seek judicial intervention on behalf of animals in situations that involve no human injuries, they essentially ask courts to make national animal policy and to act as guardians for animals, neither of which are proper functions for our courts. Standing forces both litigants and courts to address situations involving animals from a human perspective, the only perspective from which any of us are truly qualified to analyze an issue. Giving animals rights would prevent us from putting our interests over theirs. Carl Cohen, Do Animals Have Rights?, Ethics and Behavior, Volume 7, Number 2, 1997. Some may say, "Well, they have rights, but we have rights too, and our rights override theirs." That may be true in some cases, but it will not solve the problem because, although we may have a weighty interest in learning, say, how to vaccinate against polio or other diseases, we do not have a right to learn such things. Nor could we honestly claim that we kill research animals in self-defense; they did not attack us. If animals have rights, they certainly have the right not to be killed to advance the interests of others, whatever rights those others may have. Comparing animal rights movements to civil rights movements is wrong. David R. Schmahmann and Lori J. Polacheck, The Case Against Animal Rights, Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, Volume 22, 1995. The analysis that equates animal rights with the rights of women and African-Americans is as inappropriate as the equation is distasteful, and the progression upon which those who make it rely is not inexorable. For one thing, it is not necessarily true that because history is replete with examples of obduracy and ignorance in making political distinctions, there is no credibility to the distinctions now made between animals and humans. While it may be true that in the context of the relatively brief span of American history the experience of women and African-Americans has been one of ascending from subordination to relative political empowerment, it does not follow that political empowerment is a constantly expanding process, destined eventually to empower not only animals but even other entities not yet fully identified. One legal writer postulates that as a general proposition, "a refusal to recognize rights is a dubious position to take in America .... "219 It is doubtful, however, that such a postulation is true. There are many claimed "rights" which, particularly so in the American political tradition, are roundly refused because they have no grounding in morality, culture, or history or because they conflict with other valued rights. We have no choice but to engage in animal testing. Carl Cohen, Do Animals Have Rights?, Ethics and Behavior, Volume 7, Number 2, 1997. The killer disease for which a vaccine now is needed most desperately is malaria, which kills about 2 million people each year, most of them children. Many vaccines have been triednot on children, thank Godand have failed. But very recently, after decades of effort, we learned how to make a vaccine that does, with complete success, inoculate mice against malaria. A safe vaccine for humans we do not yet havebut soon we will have it, thanks to the use of those mice, many of whom will have died in the process. To test that vaccine first on children would be an outrage, as it would have been an outrage to do so with the Salk and
74
PlanetDebate.com 75
Sabin polio vaccines years ago. We use mice or monkeys because there is no other way. And there never will be another way because untested vaccines are very dangerous; their first use on a living organism is inescapably experimental; there is and will be no way to determine the reliability and safety of new vaccines without repeated tests on live organisms. Therefore, because we certainly may not use human children to test them, we will use mice (or as we develop an AIDS vaccine, primates) or we will never have such vaccines. Animal rights are not inevitable they should be rejected. David R. Schmahmann and Lori J. Polacheck, The Case Against Animal Rights, Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, Volume 22, 1995. Far from substantiating an argument that history suggests an inevitable empowerment of animals, history, in fact, suggests the opposite. For one thing, human history abounds in instances of enslavement and liberation, and the political fortunes of women have varied from cultures that are matriarchal to those with prevailing attitudes quite different. No society, however, has ever politically empowered living animals, with the possible exception of Caligula's Rome. Nor should ours do so now. If animals have moral standing, their rights would be inviolable. Carl Cohen, Do Animals Have Rights?, Ethics and Behavior, Volume 7, Number 2, 1997. If Regan is correct about the moral standing of rats, we humans can have no right, ever, to kill themunless perchance a rat attacks a person or a human baby, as rats sometimes do; then our right of self-defense may enter, I suppose. But medical investigations cannot honesdy be described as self-defense, and medical investigations commonly require that many mice and rats be killed. Therefore, all medical investigations relying on them, or any other animal subjectswhich includes most studies and all the most important studies of certain kindswill have to stop. Bear in mind that the replacement of animal subjects by computer simulations, or tissue samples, and so on, is in most research a phantasm, a fantasy. Biomedical investigations using animal subjects (and of course all uses of animals as food) will have to stop.
75
PlanetDebate.com 76
About the author/editor: Dr. Minh A. Luong is Assistant Director of International Security Studies, Associate Director of the Brady-Johnson Center in Grand Strategy, and Director of the Ivy Scholars Program at Yale University. Dr. Luong taught under the auspices of the Forrest Mars Sr. Visiting Professorship in Ethics, Politics, and Economics, an endowed fund that promoted teaching by leaders in the business and policy communities, from 2000-2006; served a two-year term as International Affairs Council Fellow at the Yale Center for International and Area Studies; and most recently was appointed as Faculty Fellow at the Yale School of Management. Dr. Luong also holds academic appointments at Brown University as Adjunct Lecturer of Public Policy at the A. Alfred Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions, Adjunct Lecturer in Political Science, and Visiting Fellow in International Security at the Watson Institute for International Affairs. Dr. Luong teaches courses on national and global security, public policy, espionage and intelligence, privacy and civil liberties, crisis management, ethics and negotiations, Grand Strategy, leadership, and international relations. The views expressed in this topic briefing and other open-source work are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Yale University, Brown University, the U.S. Government and its agencies such as the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Intelligence Community, governments of U.S. partner nations, or the United Nations, with which the author maintains advising relationships. For nearly a decade, Dr. Luong served as a corporate consultant and senior advisor to a number of Fortune 500 companies and worked on critical projects for industry-leading organizations such as: AT&T, BankOne, Boston Financial, EquiServe, E*Trade, ExxonMobil, General Motors, MediaOne (later AT&T Broadband, now Comcast), Monitor Group, and New England Financial/Metropolitan Life. His previous appointments include director of public speaking and debate at the University of California at Berkeley, director of debate at San Francisco State University, and department chair and instructor of communication studies at the Pinewood School (CA). Dr. Luong served as the founding curriculum director at the Lincoln-Douglas debate institutes at Stanford University, University of California at Berkeley, NFC-Austin, and the National Debate Forum. He founded and directs the Ivy Scholars Program for High School Student Leaders at Yale University (http://ivyscholars.yale.edu/). He can be reached at <minh.a.luong@yale.edu>. Nick Coburn-Palo, MA, doctoral candidate in political science at Brown University and former national championship debater and coach, provided argument and topic analysis assistance in preparing this topic briefing. Rick Brundage, MPA, a semifinalist at NFL Nationals and later nationally successful coach, provided argument and research assistance in preparing the strategy and quotation sections of this topic briefing.
76

Resolution Sep Oct 11

Încărcat de

Informații document

Descriere originală:

Drepturi de autor

Formate disponibile

Partajați acest document

Partajați sau inserați document

Opțiuni de partajare

Vi se pare util acest document?

Este necorespunzător acest conținut?

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

Resolution Sep Oct 11

Încărcat de

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

Minh A.

A Note from the Editor

Professor Singers website at Princeton University is at URL: http://www.princeton.edu/~psinger/

Professor Rollins webpage at Colorado State University is at URL: http://www.colostate.edu/dept/Philosophy/RollinB.html

Professor Franciones website is at URL: http://law.newark.rutgers.edu/our-faculty/faculty-profiles/gary-l-francione

Moral Optimism: Rights Cement an Important, Yet Tenuous, Obligation

Smart Definitions: Thin Conceptions of Rights

Professor Gaarders academic website is at URL: http://www.d.umn.edu/~egaarder/Index.html

Negative Strategy Notes 1. Weak Foundation: Animals Dont Deserve Rights

SELECTED QUOTATIONS ON THE TOPIC AFFIRMATIVE QUOTATIONS

S-ar putea să vă placă și