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["Alice Evans" <apyyae@nottingham.ac.uk>]

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** For Your Eyes Only **

ok, im just got back from work, now the rant starts, bear with me, i may well ramble, in fact it's very likely that i do. apologies in advance etc. i want to talk about why certain non-human animals have a right to life so here goes.

oh, one brief thing, just cos we've done it in the past doesn't make it right, i would mention traditions such as slavery, subjugation of women etc etc. yes, both date back to roman times, im not a fan of either..

so, here goes...

It appears that all sentient beings have a strong right to freedom from suffering physical pain. This is grounded in their capacity for feeling pain and thereby their interest in the avoidance of feeling pain. We should thus care for the welfare of our farm animals, for instance, and ensure that they do not suffer. It remains to be established, however, whether animals have a right to life. Perhaps there is no moral objection to putting a non-human animal to death painlessly.

Rational creatures mind death. Possession of certain personal beliefs and forward-looking desires (such as getting married) entails an individual's interest in his or her continued survival. It is thereby wrong to kill those who can rationalise. However, those who lack self-conscious awareness must thereby lack the concept of death. Lacking the mental complexity of a normal human, farm animals cannot comprehend the finality, the significance nor indeed the tragedy of death. Non-human animals do not have the kind of desires which do not "merely presuppose being alive (like the desire to eat when hungry) but rather answers the question whether one wants to remain alive". Their inability to have the latter form of 'categorical desires' entails that such beings cannot therefore mind death.

However, all sentient beings do have an interest in living for an additional reason, which is common to all, regardless of rationality. Quite apart from their interest in future goals, rational beings also have an interest in their continued existence for the sake of pleasure. If future life can provide pleasure then this too provides an additional interest in continued survival. Since this experience is not exclusive to rational beings alone, it also provides non-rational beings with an interest in continued survival.

The meat-eater may retort that though they recognise that the non-rational being may well have an interest in living this does not necessarily entail that he ought to recognise its right to life. The cow, for example, not being self-conscious only cares that it does not continue to have unsatisfied desires. Unsatisfied desires can be handled in two ways; satisfied or extinguished. We can handle a being's desire (e.g. for life) by killing it, thereby leaving it with no unfulfilled desires. The same argument cannot be applied to self-conscious beings as they are different in that they care how their unsatisfied desires are handled. Beings that lack the conceptual capacities required for higher-order desires logically cannot care how their unsatisfied desires are handled. It seems that it cannot matter to a cow, for instance, whether the desire for continued existence is satisfied or extinguished. Thus some do not believe that the cow has a right to life.

However, we can apply Regan's argument at this point to argue that we should not treat anything with inherent value as a mere receptacle. 

So does the cow have inherent value?


Arguably only persons possess intrinsic value (expand). Given that non-human animals are not persons they thus lack inherent value. No rights are violated when they suffer through maltreatment and death, for being of no intrinsic value, they have no rights. Non-human animals are only valuable instrumentally, unlike persons who are intrinsically valuable. Arguably personhood is both a necessary and sufficient condition for being awarded rights. If non-human animals, lack rights moral agents do not, thereby, have moral obligations towards them, but to persons alone. 

It could be contended, however, that non-human animals are persons. We must thus discern the necessary and sufficient conditions for personhood. Whereas some contend that sentience entails personhood, perhaps further criteria must be satisfied. Locke maximalist definition requires that a being must be 'capable of a law' and may therefore be held morally and legally responsible for its actions. Kant argues that moral status, which entails rights, arises from moral agency. Moral agency is contingent upon the ability to overcome natural instincts and follow principles. For Kant, the 'moral law within' determines personhood and possession of moral worth. Unless one is a moral agent one cannot claim rights for oneself. All those capable of moral agency would therefore be categorised as persons. Such a capacity requires a sufficiently complex language to convey moral concepts, a trait seemingly lacking on the part of non-human animals. Lacking the capacity for language, it seems evident that non-human animals cannot logically moralise. (But this is a bit of a blanket policy which may well be proven wrong upon further investigation). 

If non-human animals cannot moralise then they are not moral agents. If moral agency is a necessary condition for personhood then those non-human animals, who fall short of such pre-requisites, do not have rights. 

Young children lack the capacity to make claims or to enter into argument. Nevertheless, they should be accorded rights by a community of adult right-holders. Arguably children are ends in themselves and rights bearers in virtue of their potential for moral agency and "the capacity for developing a sense of justice". Such liberal inclusion grants rights to the unfertilised human ova, which, given appropriate conditions, may later acquire the required abilities for personhood. Yet surely this is not what we want?  (n.b. the potentiality argument is rather crap, in my view, for my car is potentially scrap metal but I would be fuming if u treat it as such). Recognising the weakness of the potentiality argument we could defend children's rights because their existence is a condition of that community's continuing to exist in the future. This approach, failing to accord children with intrinsic, rather than merely instrumental, value, offends our intuition. Children have rights because of their intrinsic value as beings rather than our vain wish for the continuation of the species.  

If actual moral agency is a necessary condition for personhood then many sentient human beings are denied moral status. Many humans are not moral agents. Furthermore, though this approach may endow infants with rights it still does not cover those who are unable to become rational moral agents, on account of permanent mental impairment (such as the comatose). We thereby have no moral obligations to such human beings. Though we ay wish to ascribe rights to the comatose, acceptance of this theory entails that we cannot do so. To be consistent and non-speciesist, we are faced with a dilemma. Either we accept the theory and deny rights to all those who lack the relevant capacities, principally humans and non-human animals or we reject the theory and extend the net of inclusion. . Having acknowledged these notable difficulties, Rawls later rejected the notion that personhood is a necessary condition for possession of moral rights.

We simply cannot ascribe moral rights on the basis of being a member of the kind of group which exhibits such agency without falling prey to the charge of speciesism. If we are granting personhood and thereby rights on a conditional basis then we logically cannot award a human being with the mental capacity of a hamster full moral standing whilst deny rights, and their corresponding advantages to primates of indubitable intelligence.

Some counter this argument by asserting that non-human animals are not the sort of beings which can have interests. He conjectures that interest talk (of this specific type) has an "evaluative-prescriptive overtone", in other words, if something is in a being's interest then they ought to do it. On this basis, it simply cannot be in Fido's interest that he be treated for worms. It is indeed incoherent to say that a dog 'ought' to do something, such as see to it that he gets treated for worms. However, if we accept this line and deny that animals have interests then this has implications for those we intuitively assume have interests, such as human infants and the mentally handicapped. On McCloskey's reading, to argue that it is in the baby's interest to have a blood transfusion is to assert that the child ought to see to it that she gets a transfusion. An attempt to assign interests to the child might take the form of applying that prescriptive overtone to some other being which might enact the necessary measures on the incompetent's behalf. Similarly, to say that is in Fido's interests that he gets treated for worms is only to assert that some other person 

Having been attacked by this charge of speciesism we must examine whether such preference is necessarily analogous to and as morally reprehensible as racism. We must determine whether it is necessarily wrong to show preferential treatment because a being is a member of a certain species. Nozick disagrees; he contends that is legitimate to prioritise the interests of fellows over other species. Indeed, if lions were moral agents they would not be criticised for putting other lions first. 

This argument is not only insufficient to justify current treatment of animals but it is also analogous to a commendation of racism. First, even if one is justified in having special regard for one's family members this does not provide reasonable warrant for inflicting needless suffering and indeed death upon others. When it comes to abusing other species needlessly, this is beyond preferential treatment. Whereas lions hunt rarely, only when hungry and for survival, insuring no food is wasted and at most toy with their food, rather than institutionalized cruelty. Preferential treatment is prioritising not needless exploitation. Secondly, it is profoundly unjust to assent to unqualified preferential treatment. If a black employer gave such special consideration to members of his own race this would be viewed as racism, so too can and indeed we must condemn arbitrary speciesism.

Although species alone is not morally significant; species-membership is correlated with other differences that are significant. Arguably it is not speciesist to judge human life more valuable than non-human life. For Frey "humans have a much higher quality than animal life on the basis of richness". Human lives that lack this richness may "fall below the quality of life of some animals. Given the benefits of experimentation Frey argues for such practice on non-humans as well as marginal humans. Curiously, however, he does not defend raising retarded animals for food. 

There is a simple anthropological explanation of our speciesist behaviour. Traditional morality conveniently endorsed anthropocentrism, the prevalent tendency to judge creature's importance in terms of fulfilling human ends. The world was the centre of the universe and, with Man helm of that kingdom, God had granted him dominion over the land and animals. Copernican and Darwinian findings have since shattered this view. No longer is the earth held to be the centre of the cosmos, nor can we believe in a marked distinction between humans and other species. Such findings should have simultaneously demolished the corresponding moral view. The foundations which underpin our contemporary practices, in particular our treatment of non-human animals, have been swept away but the habits still remain unchanged. Now Nozick and fellow meat-eaters argue the same case but lack the original belief system which upheld this view. Although there are notable differences between humans and non-human animals (such as but not limited to cultural, linguistic, cognitive, social, technological and theological) these differences are definitely distinctions though not dichotomies. Such distinctions are insufficient to morally defend a dichotomy in treatment, particularly when, in the case of certain non-human possessing reason while some humans do not, such distinctions appear overlapping.

Clearly, we must either be prepared to recognise the rights of all sentient species or preclude the less able ones from our own.


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