#3 What exactly are rights and what rights can we give animals?
Despite arguably being the foundation of the Western liberal tradition,
the concept of "rights" has been a source of controversy and confusion
in the debate over animal rights. A common objection to the notion that animals have
rights involves questioning the origin of those rights. One such argument
might proceed as follows:
Where do these rights come from? Are you in special communication
with God, and he has told you that animals have rights? Have the
rights been granted by law? Aren't rights something that humans
must grant?
It is true that the concept of "rights" needs to be carefully explicated.
It is also true that the concept of "natural rights" is fraught with
philosophical difficulties. Complicating things further is the confusion
between legal rights and moral rights.
One attempt to avoid this objection is to accept it, but argue that
if it is not an obstacle for thinking of humans as having rights, then it
should not be an obstacle for thinking of animals as having rights. Henry
Salt wrote:
Have the lower animals "rights?" Undoubtedly--if men have. That is
the point I wish to make evident in this opening chapter... The
fitness of this nomenclature is disputed, but the existence of some
real principle of the kind can hardly be called in question; so that
the controversy concerning "rights" is little else than an academic
battle over words, which leads to no practical conclusion. I shall
assume, therefore, that men are possessed of "rights," in the sense
of Herbert Spencer's definition; and if any of my readers object to
this qualified use of the term, I can only say that I shall be
perfectly willing to change the word as soon as a more appropriate
one is forthcoming. The immediate question that claims our attention
is this--if men have rights, have animals their rights also?
Satisfying though this argument may be, it still leaves us unable to
respond to the sceptic who disavows the notion of rights even for humans.
Fortunately, however, there is a straightforward interpretation of
"rights" that is plausible and allows us to avoid the controversial
rights rhetoric and underpinnings. It is the notion that a "right" is the
flip side of a moral imperative. If, ethically, we must
refrain from an act performed on a being, then that being can be said to
have a "right" that the act not be performed. For example, if our ethics
tells us that we must not kill another, then the other has a right not to
be killed by us. This interpretation of rights is, in fact, an intuitive
one that people both understand and readily endorse. (Of course, rights so
interpreted can be codified as legal rights through appropriate
legislation.)
It is important to realize that, although there is a basis for speaking
of animals as having rights, that does not imply or require that they
possess all the rights that humans possess, or even that humans possess all
the rights that animals possess. Consider the human right to vote. (On the
view taken here, this would derive from an ethical imperative to give humans
influence over actions that influence their lives.) Since animals lack the
capacity to rationally consider actions and their implications, and to
understand the concept of democracy and voting, they lack the capacity to
vote. There is, therefore, no ethical imperative to allow them to do so,
and thus they do not possess the right to vote.
Similarly, some fowls have a strong biological need to extend and flap
their wings; right-thinking people feel an ethical imperative to make
it possible for them to do so. Thus, it can be said that fowl have the right
to flap their wings. Obviously, such a right need not be extended to humans.
The rights that animals and humans possess, then, are determined by their
interests and capacities. Animals have an interest in living, avoiding pain,
and even in pursuing happiness (as do humans). As a result of the ethical
imperatives, they have rights to these things (as do humans). They can
exercise these rights by living their lives free of exploitation and
abuse at the hands of humans. |
