What are rights and what is it to have rights? Is it just humans that have rights, or do they extend to other sentient beings? How are rights defined and what are the drivers behind them? In answering these questions I present in this paper an example from the Animal Rights movement. This movement has contended that all sentient beings be afforded fundamental rights. In their attempt to achieve this aim they extend the rational argument provided previously by human rights activists. For many the result has been either a retreat into Speciesism or to follow the argument into Deep Ecology. To achieve change however I argue that for the Animal Rights movement it is not a matter of just winning the logical argument, but to win the hearts of collective society. Only with this support will the Animal Rights movement move closer toward non-human animals being afforded fundamental rights.
Rights can be simply defined as ‘legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement’. These are often defined into two broad categories; natural rights and legal rights. Natural rights are often referred to as fundamental, inalienable or moral rights and legal rights are often known as civil rights or statutory rights. In the animal rights discourse legal rights are often divided along Utilitarian or Deontological lines. This paper however will concentrate solely on the argument of natural or fundamental rights.
Traditionally natural rights have been argued from the point of intelligence, ability to feel pain or religious basis’. The basis for these arguments have been central to either ‘intrinsic value’, that something good or desirable in itself or that of ‘instrumental value’, that something is a means to some other end or purpose.
In his hierarchy of nature, Aristotle said the purpose of the less irrational is to serve the more rational. This provided justification for slavery for centuries to come. That is people seen as less rational or intelligent from a Greco-Roman perspective such as indigenous people could be enslaved for instrumental value. In more recent centuries this view has been challenged and subsequently rejected on the basis of all humans having intrinsic value. The moral contracts to reflect this are found in many sources, most prominently the 1948 declaration of human rights. More recently the argument of rationality or intelligence as a basis for rights has been extended to include non-humans. Peter Singer in his book Animal Liberation argues that non-human mammals such as dogs or pigs are better able to reason than newborn human infants. Therefore, the premise that rationality should decide upon rights was debunked.
Closely connected to the argument of intelligence is that of feeling pain. Descartes in his 1649 Passions of the Soul presents an argument for dualism. That is humans are made of both flesh (the body) and mind (the soul). He posited that it is only humans that have a mind and soul, and that to feel pain one must have a soul. Therefore animals could not feel pain. He was quoted as saying that the screeching and yelping of dogs as they were nailed to trees and dissected were merely ‘nothing but the noises of some small springs that were being deranged.’ This argument has been used for medical research in that animals have instrumental and not intrinsic value. At present however this position is not as stable as it once was. Based on our scientific understanding of pain in relation to the nervous system, and the similarities many animals have to humans, questions around the use of animals in medical research have been raised. Nevertheless, the appreciation that animals do in fact feel pain has resulted in the establishment and support of organisations such as RSPCA and the enactment a number of animal cruelty laws.
Religion and in the Australian culture experience, Christianity was and still is in many respects the moral bedrock of our society. Genesis provides for some justification for animal and environmental domination as it stated that men may ‘have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. However, as the Christian church is being questioned as a force for good, as Australia is becoming increasingly multi-cultural and as many have stopped believing in the existence of God this passage is losing favor.
So, if there is no rational or religious argument for non-human animals being used for human ends then what is the ethical basis for such treatment? The basis’ is largely emotive and can be divided into supporters of three camps; Speciesist, Animal liberationist, Deep Ecologists.
Speciesist’s argue from a simple position, that we must look after our own species first. That is whist we have starving children in Africa and whilst we have loved ones dying of cancer we have just cause to use non-human animals for our own survival. Some even state that having an internationally recognized Rights Based Approach is hard enough let alone trying to bring non-human rights into the picture. Ultimately however, for many to admit to being Speciesist does not sit well. It smacks with the same logic previously used for racism and other oppressive ideologies. Animal liberationists buoyed by their defeat of the rational and religious argument continue the their chase along this path. Deep Ecologists take the argument one step further and argue that entire ecosystems should be afforded fundamental rights. Just as humans are a collection of cells working together in one system so too are forests and coral reefs and should be afforded rights accordingly.
In absence of the rational and in pursuit to defend their positions the different sides of this debate have tried to appeal to more basic human emotions. The Speciesist my tell the hard luck story of a sheep farmer, the animal liberationist the pain chimps go through in the research lab and the Deep Ecologists about our responsibility to future generations. Some may argue or find solace in the side of progressive rights, admitting that fundamental rights for animals will be achieved some day. In one specific case Toronto lawyer Clayton Ruby argued in 2008 that the Animal Rights movement had reached the stage the gay rights movement was at 25 years earlier.
Whatever the case may be made for animal rights, rational or emotional they will not be realized unless they are broadly accepted by society. It is the culture, the shared values that a society holds that define ultimately who or what is afforded fundamental rights and how those rights are realized. In Figure 1 (below) it explains that cultural change and that of rights are achieved over time as individuals and community internalize specific attitudes, values and aspirations that are ultimately expressed as desired behaviors. I contend that animal and even perhaps ecosystem rights may follow a similar path. The main difference however is that as animals and ecosystems do not vote or hold other democratic rights and are therefore dependent upon humans to provide rights to them. To be effective in their aims Animal Rights activists must therefore better analyze how change occurs and find suitable methods to affect that change. The rational is but only one.
Figure 1: The cycle of culture change (Cabinet Office, 2008)
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