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Animal Rights

This version was saved 12 years, 1 month ago View current version     Page history
Saved by Don Pogreba
on February 14, 2012 at 11:26:43 pm
 

History of Animal Rights

  • The history of the idea of animal rights has been a slow process from protection of the welfare of animals to broader expansion.  
  • Probably the most important contemporary philosopher who advocates increasing rights of animals is Peter Singer, who wrote Animal Liberation in 1975.
  • Tom Regan wrote The Case for Animal Rights in 1983.

 

Modern Context: Factory Farming

Daniel Degrazia argued in this 2002 book Animal Rights: A Very Short Introduction that factory farming does more harm to animals than any other human activity. He wrote:

Considering both numbers of animals involved and the extent to which they are harmed, factory farming causes more harm to animals than does any other human institution or practice.  In the USA alone, this institution kills over 100 million mammals and five billion birds annually.  American farm animals have virtually no legal protections.  The most important applicable federal legislation is the Humane Slaughter Act, which does not cover poultry - most of the animals consumed - and has no bearing on living conditions, transport, or handling.  Moreover, as Gail Eisnitz and others have extensively documented, the Act is rarely enforced.  Apparently, the US Department of Agriculture supports the major goal of agribusiness: absolute maximization of profit without hindrance.  This is not surprising when one considers that, since the 1980s, most top officials at USDA either have been agribusiness leaders themselves or have had close political and financial ties to the industry.

 

 

Arguments for Animal Rights

  • Singer bases much of his argument in favor of animal rights on utilitarianism, the principle that the best decision leads to the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.
  • He rejects the idea that humans or non-humans have natural or moral rights, and proposes instead the equal consideration of interests, arguing that there are no logical, moral, or biological grounds to suppose that a violation of the basic interests of a human—for example, the interest in not suffering—is different in any morally significant way from a violation of the basic interests of a non-human. 
  • Regan argues that the crucial attribute that all humans have in common, he argues, is not rationality, but the fact that each of us has a life that matters to us; in other words, what happens to us matters to us, regardless of whether it matters to anyone else. In Regan's terminology, we each experience being the "subject-of-a-life." If this is the true basis for ascribing inherent value to individuals, to be consistent we must ascribe inherent value, and hence moral rights, to all subjects-of-a-life, whether human or non-human. The basic right that all who possess inherent value have, he argues, is the right never to be treated merely as a means to the ends of others. 
  • Singer argued that failure to extend rights to animals merely because they lack reason would open the door to mistreating humans with severe disabilities.

 

Arguments Against

  • One of the most common arguments against animal rights/vegetarianism is known as the Ben Franklin Defense. Franklin argued that since animals do not show mercy to each other, humans should not feel any obligation to them. According to Singer, Franklin was for many years a vegetarian, until one day, while watching his friends fishing, he noticed that some of the fish they caught had eaten other fish.  He then said to himself: "If you eat one another, I don't see why we may not eat you."
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