Do Animals Have Rights?
I’m cleaning out my computer and I found this old policy paper I wrote during my Philosophy studies in college. I can’t believe that I probably received a good grade for this but it does ask some somewhat interesting questions later on. Here’s part one, i’ll add part two in a day or so—- AF
Do Animals have rights?
This question is more difficult to answer than the common treatment it is given. Myself being an educated college student, studying Philosophy in the Western world, does not even know for sure what the word rights means.
If animals do have rights, how are they defined or quantified? Who decides? What is the price of admission to possess rights, and if there is a price or a set of qualifiers, what is the criteria?
And again, most importantly, who decides?
Part I. Definitions
If I were to approach this subject wanting to reach a conclusion even neighboring the definitive, I’d first have to have a set of definitions that can be widely agreed upon and understood. Since I am a young man who is a student of Philosophy, waiting for these concepts to be defined before I begin would be like Waiting For Godot and i’ll instead set forth some reasonable definitions for the purpose of this work.
We should agree that a question of whether animals have rights or not truly depends on who makes the rules, and since I’m ill equipped to answer big questions without the requisite information (i.e. an authority or consensus), my arguments will focus on the persuasive rather than definitive.
Without attempting to clear this issue up, at least in my own mind, I’m no further along than if I just wait around. In this sense, I apologize for using bluntly shaped rocks before the time of hammers.
a. Rights
The term, or I prefer concept of Rights has not been satisfactorily defined for me yet. In terms of language Rights are an abstract noun, no different than ‘feelings’ or ‘chaos’. Yet the Western human speaks of them freely and often, without a pang of guilt. Even though we are all in on it, we feel slightly guilty telling children that there is a Tooth Fairy, or that everyone is equal when we might later tell them, justly so maybe, that certain people are bad, and deserve neither consideration nor even human life.
I challenge you to find a definition for “Rights” that doesn’t rely on terms of its own “definition” in order to define it. You won’t find it. The best one I can come up with is this:
Rights are abstract conditions and privileges so basic and rooted in the humanities (what it means to be human) that society commonly accepts them to be god-given and unalienable.
b. Fallibility of Rights
If rights are commonly accepted, or accepted by all humanity, then my rights would not change or disappear when crossing another Country’s borders. A State’s borders. An individuals private property. What about within the proximity of someone who plainly, doesn’t give a shit about my “rights”?
Where did my rights go?
Rights are so omnipotent and crucial, yet they can’t travel across make-believe boundaries created by individuals with the same “rights” that I supposedly possess?
Americans tend to think of rights-in their basest sense-to mean “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.
It would be an exercise in optimism to believe that all people in all places believe in these principles and their application with every human. But that aside as it is a road to nowhere, let us imagine that most humans at their core believe (as Doctors do when they take their Hippocratic Oath) that we should “Do No Harm” and only do that which is good.
What happens when my neighbor wants to open a lemonade stand next to my lemonade stand? He certainly has the right to, but he is doing me harm by doing so. He may very well cause me further, indirect harm because of his decision. Say he offers better lemonade at lower prices. Awhile down the road my wife decide that she wants to be with a more successful lemonade man, and through no fault of his own he has disenfranchised me, stolen my wife and violated my right to pursue happiness, as I see it. Because our understanding of rights is so fuzzy and abstract unless I could prove my neighbor intentionally was trying to harm me, this would be seen as a “disagreement”, meaning that I could not have him jailed for ruining my business and swiping my wife, but instead only take him to civil court where i’d likely be laughed out of the courthouse.
But there’s that word… pursuit. So again it’s with much chagrin that our rights in the United States are based on the nebulous ideas of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This is to say, “Look pal, we don’t make any guarantees here”.
c. Animals
A funny thing happened on the way to the taxonomy office. We commonly refer to non-humans as animals when in fact humans are also animals! Rather than make new signs and books we’ve all agreed that animals means non-humans.
Arguing semantics is not the point but let’s assume that by the word “animals” we mean to say “wild animals and domesticated pets”, and I only bring this up because I will discuss some possible solutions and problems associated with this classification. Additionally, those with an interest in “Animal Rights” tend to not be overly concerned with the rights of animals that we raise for food, which i’ll also address.
Click Here To Read Do Animals Have Rights? Part Two
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“wild animals and domesticated pets”
Farm animals are neither. But I agree than “rights” is just not useful. They are an agreed-upon fiction. Like “property”.
Part two, please.