The True Meaning of Animal Rights

[Brandon Becker]

Learn about the true meaning of animal rights, including what is and is not rights advocacy and examples of rights advocacy compared to other advocacy: http://www.rpaforall.org/rights.html

From the introduction:
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"Animal rights" is almost always used incorrectly by the news industry and most animal organizations and advocates. This hampers animal-rights advocacy by creating confusion about its goal, divergence from rights-promoting strategies, and delusion about what constitutes progress toward animal rights. People have helped animals in countless ways for thousands of years without promoting rights for them. Promoting rights means describing the rights other animals need to lead fulfilling lives, why meaningful protection is impossible without rights, and why human beings as well as other animals will benefit when all have the rights they need.
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[Rob Brevendt]

You're right, it's been repetitive for quite some time now. Let me just add that conversely, we see you as violating rights if you don't even want to try to do something about all the suffering that animals have to endure in nature. If animals have a right to live without the interference of human predators, then why don't they have a right to live without the interference of non-human predators too? Non-human hunters often let their victims suffer more than human hunters. So why are you only concerned with  human predators? That's speciesism. If we try to end predation (and starvation and disease, which is even more important) in nature, that will result in a smaller total number of rights violations and will therefore be the lesser evil.

Don't worry, we're used to arguing with speciesist organizations such as Green"peace".

Thanks, same to you.

[David Pearce]

Kerry, genetic tweaking is not the same as "exterminating" a species. For example, consider cats. Some animal advocates rescue and adopt cats and then try to feed them on a vegan diet. But most cats do not flourish without meat. If instead we can genetically tweak their metabolism so cats can flourish on a meat-free diet - or if cats were fed on catnip-laced in vitro mincemeat (etc) - would they somehow have lost the species-essence of "catness", whatever the might be? For sure, such modification wouldn't be wholly "natural". But then neither is wearing clothes.

I'd like to raise a more subtle question too. Beyond mere survival, in what sense is it really in the interests of a predatory meat-eater to continue harming and killing other sentient brings? Thus many human animal advocates who formerly ate meat and/or animal products are distressed they were ever complicit in such systematic killing and exploitation. We regret not being raised from birth as vegans, or at least not being enlightened sooner. Before embracing a vegan lifestyle, we simply hadn't understood the impications of whet we were doing: i.e. the harm and suffering we were causing.  We're grateful at least that the scales have fallen from our eyes. Now short of a transhumanist-inspired "uplift" scenario,  carnivorous predators such as lions, snakes and crocodiles are not going to acquire a theory of mind rich enough to understand the implications of what they are doing. But if they acquired the cognitive competence to do so, wouldn't they likewise be appalled - and want the opportunity to change too?

[Kerry Baker]

Unnecessary Adriano.

Adriano Mannino said:

You're right, it's been repetitive for quite some time now. Let me just add that conversely, we see you as violating rights if you don't even want to try to do something about all the suffering that animals have to endure in nature. If animals have a right to live without the interference of human predators, then why don't they have a right to live without the interference of non-human predators too? Non-human hunters often let their victims suffer more than human hunters. So why are you only concerned with  human predators? That's speciesism. If we try to end predation (and starvation and disease, which is even more important) in nature, that will result in a smaller total number of rights violations and will therefore be the lesser evil.

Don't worry, we're used to arguing with speciesist organizations such as Green"peace".

Thanks, same to you.

[Kerry Baker]

David.  In a previous comment Adriano acknowledged that some species will have to go.  These are the ones as I pointed out that are simply not physiologically capable of surviving on vegetation.  What will you do for example, as I asked before, about the animals in the polar regions that really have very little vegetation to survive on and require meat and fat to exist in the cold?  What about the raptors and owls whose beaks are not quite probably physically able to harvest greenery?  What about the whales that eat krill, several thousand in one gulp? 

On the issue of the cognitive ability of animals, how do you know what they are aware of?  Consider for example, as you all keep pointing out the horrors of nature and the difficulties of living in the wild, how is it in the interests of carnivores o expend a lot of energy in making a slow kill?  Your accusations constantly of cruelty in the animal kingdom lose credibility by the fact that none of you have tackled the question of human cruelty.  Animals kill to survive, we don't. 

But the fundamental objection here is that it is entirely hypocritical to be saying that when it is not ethically right to do something to the human race, it is perfectly alright to o this to other species.  Remember, there are percentage wise very few vegan humans on this planet.  So start with us first.

On the issue of the ecosystems, I am quite rightly concerned that you will be starting something leading to the butterfly effect. Lukas stated that it will require research and if i results in being wrong then it's a no go.  When have humans ever restrained themselves from damage and worse, how often has there been actual harm done knowingly for profit!

My position is simply this.  We know what goes on in the wild and I find much of the killing unpalatable.  But I accept that this is nature.  I do not consider that humans are evolved enough or care enough or are compassionate enough to enter into what you are proposing.  I also believe that animals should have the rights that we do as a species.  I repeat, if you won't do it to the human race then you have no right to do it to other species.  Your position is one of a human supremacist argument, it is a power relationship you are talking about. 

I unfortunately have to get to work so may need to add to this later on.

David Pearce said:

Kerry, genetic tweaking is not the same as "exterminating" a species. For example, consider cats. Some animal advocates rescue and adopt cats and then try to feed them on a vegan diet. But most cats do not flourish without meat. If instead we can genetically tweak their metabolism so cats can flourish on a meat-free diet - or if cats were fed on catnip-laced in vitro mincemeat (etc) - would they somehow have lost the species-essence of "catness", whatever the might be? For sure, such modification wouldn't be wholly "natural". But then neither is wearing clothes.

I'd like to raise a more subtle question too. Beyond mere survival, in what sense is it really in the interests of a predatory meat-eater to continue harming and killing other sentient brings? Thus many human animal advocates who formerly ate meat and/or animal products are distressed they were ever complicit in such systematic killing and exploitation. We regret not being raised from birth as vegans, or at least not being enlightened sooner. Before embracing a vegan lifestyle, we simply hadn't understood the impications of whet we were doing: i.e. the harm and suffering we were causing.  We're grateful at least that the scales have fallen from our eyes. Now short of a transhumanist-inspired "uplift" scenario,  carnivorous predators such as lions, snakes and crocodiles are not going to acquire a theory of mind rich enough to understand the implications of what they are doing. But if they acquired the cognitive competence to do so, wouldn't they likewise be appalled - and want the opportunity to change too?

[Brandon Becker]

Why aren't you all promoting extinction of all life? That is the logical conclusion of the extreme utilitarian position. After all, evolution could affect a shift from a herbivorous animal to become carnivorous or a plant to become carnivorous, as has happened in the past. Bacteria and protists also can cause suffering to others. From the extreme utilitarian position, it seems the best thing to happen would be for an asteroid to wipe out the earth or a massive volcano to permanently cloud the atmosphere killing all life. Even better, why not the big crunch, the other end of the big bang? That removes all matter, ensuring for a few billion years that no life with the capacity to suffer will exist.

[Rob Brevendt]

Brandon, don't you worry about the "utilitarian position". There are many different variants of utilitarianism and they dictate quite different things under different conditions. Wiping out the planet would be bad on any variant (either intrinsically or at least instrumentally).

But that's not the point here. As has been said many times already, compassionate intervention in nature follows from the anti-speciesist rights approach too. Regarding the millions of wild animals that are dying from starvation, disease or injury, there can be no question. And regarding predation, while it is true that intervention would probably constitute a rights violation, it would be the lesser evil by far, because if we do nothing, many more (and much more horrible) rights violations will occur.

[Rob Brevendt]

"But the fundamental objection here is that it is entirely hypocritical to be saying that when it is not ethically right to do something to the human race, it is perfectly alright to o this to other species. Remember, there are percentage wise very few vegan humans on this planet. So start with us first."

It's not hypocritical at all. I have stated explicitly that if humans were obligate carnivores, we should get rid of their carnivorous genes too. It would be immoral not to do so because by staying carnivorous (or by having a carnivorous instead of a herbivorous child) one would cause the suffering and death of hundreds of non-human animals so that one single human animal can live. That cannot be right.

And I have never disputed that veganizing human culture should be the current practical focus of the AR movement.

[Kerry Baker]

To continue, one of the things that Adriano in particular keeps accusing us of is speciesism.  Definitions of his term include;

From Merriam Webster online

1.  prejudice or discrimination based on species; especially : discrimination against animals
2.  the assumption of human superiority on which speciesism is based

Word English dictionary (online)

..    a belief of humans that all other species of animals are inferior and may therefore be used for human benefit without regard to the suffering inflicted

Your dictionary (online)

..discrimination against or exploitation of animals based on the assumption that humans are superior to and more important than all other species

So the first thing I think should be sorted out now is that if you take my position of non-intervention based on the principle that as a human I am not superior and have no right to dictate to other animals how they should live, then perhaps this term is not applicable to me, but rather to yourselves as you are proposing your action based primarily on human superiority.

I hasten to add that one can engage in speciesism for utilitarian purposes which is effectively what you are doing, in the same way that to address various discriminatory issues back in the 1970's and since some governments have engaged in what was called positive discrimination.

My point it that being constantly accused of being speciesist is getting tiresome and is something I reject.  This accusation is being used as a bullying tactic and is pretty childish.

Back on topic, stopping killing for food will not stop pain and suffering.  Animals in the wild die from a number of causes including accidents, famine, flood, territorial disputes and so on.  Some of these types of injuries result in fairly horrible and slow deaths, although granted these can't be quantified. 

Allow me to raise an analogy to what you are proposing.  In WW2 the US decided to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  The act was effectively a war crime, as he majority of those killed were old people, women and children.  The rationale was that this action would end the war and in so doing save many lives.  That is arguable since Japan was under blockade at the time and there is a theory that the real reason was that the US wanted to test the bomb for efficacy.  We all know what ensued.  Hundreds of thousands of people wiped out for a utilitarian purpose.  And to this day people are still having deformed babies directly linked to the bombings.  In fact, there have quite possibly been permanent changes to the genetic structure through irradiation.

Is there an upside to this?  I suppose it started the ban the bomb movement, but the fact that there are more nuclear weapons around today than during the cold war and possessed by less stable governments actually has placed us in a more precarious situation. 

What you are proposing is to drop the bomb into the ecosystem.  That's a major objection.  The other, as noted above, is that you are taking a human supremacist position which I reject as a violation of animal rights. I don't believe that in any way your proposal will result in a better world for anybody.  You WILL have to destroy whole species, those that are physically unable to be 'tweaked' as you put it, that is a certainty.  From this you will then have to make value-judgements based on who you personally think has a right to live.  The leave them alone stance is the lesser of two evils.

Kerry Baker said:

David.  In a previous comment Adriano acknowledged that some species will have to go.  These are the ones as I pointed out that are simply not physiologically capable of surviving on vegetation.  What will you do for example, as I asked before, about the animals in the polar regions that really have very little vegetation to survive on and require meat and fat to exist in the cold?  What about the raptors and owls whose beaks are not quite probably physically able to harvest greenery?  What about the whales that eat krill, several thousand in one gulp? 

On the issue of the cognitive ability of animals, how do you know what they are aware of?  Consider for example, as you all keep pointing out the horrors of nature and the difficulties of living in the wild, how is it in the interests of carnivores o expend a lot of energy in making a slow kill?  Your accusations constantly of cruelty in the animal kingdom lose credibility by the fact that none of you have tackled the question of human cruelty.  Animals kill to survive, we don't. 

But the fundamental objection here is that it is entirely hypocritical to be saying that when it is not ethically right to do something to the human race, it is perfectly alright to o this to other species.  Remember, there are percentage wise very few vegan humans on this planet.  So start with us first.

On the issue of the ecosystems, I am quite rightly concerned that you will be starting something leading to the butterfly effect. Lukas stated that it will require research and if i results in being wrong then it's a no go.  When have humans ever restrained themselves from damage and worse, how often has there been actual harm done knowingly for profit!

My position is simply this.  We know what goes on in the wild and I find much of the killing unpalatable.  But I accept that this is nature.  I do not consider that humans are evolved enough or care enough or are compassionate enough to enter into what you are proposing.  I also believe that animals should have the rights that we do as a species.  I repeat, if you won't do it to the human race then you have no right to do it to other species.  Your position is one of a human supremacist argument, it is a power relationship you are talking about. 

I unfortunately have to get to work so may need to add to this later on.

David Pearce said:

Kerry, genetic tweaking is not the same as "exterminating" a species. For example, consider cats. Some animal advocates rescue and adopt cats and then try to feed them on a vegan diet. But most cats do not flourish without meat. If instead we can genetically tweak their metabolism so cats can flourish on a meat-free diet - or if cats were fed on catnip-laced in vitro mincemeat (etc) - would they somehow have lost the species-essence of "catness", whatever the might be? For sure, such modification wouldn't be wholly "natural". But then neither is wearing clothes.

I'd like to raise a more subtle question too. Beyond mere survival, in what sense is it really in the interests of a predatory meat-eater to continue harming and killing other sentient brings? Thus many human animal advocates who formerly ate meat and/or animal products are distressed they were ever complicit in such systematic killing and exploitation. We regret not being raised from birth as vegans, or at least not being enlightened sooner. Before embracing a vegan lifestyle, we simply hadn't understood the impications of whet we were doing: i.e. the harm and suffering we were causing.  We're grateful at least that the scales have fallen from our eyes. Now short of a transhumanist-inspired "uplift" scenario,  carnivorous predators such as lions, snakes and crocodiles are not going to acquire a theory of mind rich enough to understand the implications of what they are doing. But if they acquired the cognitive competence to do so, wouldn't they likewise be appalled - and want the opportunity to change too?

[Lukas Gloor]

 " ...as a human I am not superior and have no right to dictate to other animals how they should live..."

Predators dictate that their prey should live in fear and die in agony. Do you think predators are "superior" to prey. If not, they don't have that right you're talking about either, and it will be the lesser rights violation to intervene. As I said in my earlier post, whichever decision we will make, it will have the impact of telling the animals how they should live. We'll either positively affirm that prey animals should have to suffer from predation until the end of the world, even though we could change that, or we'll choose the other option. Both will be a judgement with significant consequences on the lives of non human animals.

(Earlier, our position was called speciesist for, as far as I can make out, no better reason than that predators are a different species than prey animals. David and Adriano have, on the other hand, already given several examples in which non interventionism or conservationism really are speciesist.)

Comparing interventionism with dropping an A-bomb onto the ecosystem is a cheap straw-man, and mainly irrelevant again because it's a practical objection in a discussion on normative ethics.

[Kerry Baker]

Lukas the analogy to the dropping of the bomb is absolutely reasonable as it is about systems. 

Similarly, your comment about predator V prey is similarly a nonsense and a misrepresentation of what has been said relating to why I and others take the leave them alone stance.

You have, despite your statement to the contrary, apparently decided that you as a human animal have the right to decide what should happen to every other species on the planet. The question that has been asked several times and not answered is what you are going to do about those that can't be 'tweaked' to become vegan, whales, polar animals, raptors, snakes and so on.  It's all very well to ask what I think these animals might do should they develop the ability to understand concepts of death and pain and so on.  But it won't help much if they are starving to death.  As with everything, there will be species you can't change for a number of reasons.

It is very obvious that this issue has raised a high level of acrimony, two divergent views that have no common ground.  You have arrived relatively late into the argument, and I am uncertain about how much of this thread you have been through.

I don't think your position has been argued as well as it might have been.  It is not enough to continue to give broad statements about the theory, what's needed to have an intelligent discussion here is more details about how you intend to bring about these changes without harming the ecosystem, the environment, and the animals as a direct result of genetic manipulation. It is evading these issues by constant references to prey animals. If this happens and gets screwed up, the potential suffering will eclipse anything that you have put forward as your reasons for wanting to do this. You are all saying the what and the why, what you need to explain is the how.

[Bonn1997]

One way of conceptualizing intervention in nature to distinguish between two motivations: selfish and benevolent. I find it puzzling that those who claim to oppose intervening in nature actually support selfish but not benevolent interventions. (Or at least they have not expressed any opposition to selfish forms.) Here are two examples of selfish interventions although all our behavior in some way intervenes in some way with (nonhuman elements of) nature:

Selfish interventions:

A) "I have to cut my lawn so that it looks pretty - no matter how many insects it shreds."

B) "I have to drive to the mall to hang out no matter how many worms my car kills."

A benevolent intervention in contrast is done with the goal of improving animal well-being, as Adriano, David, and others have described.

[David Pearce]

Brandon, from a rights-based perspective, isn't the most basic right of a sentient being the right not to be harmed - a right that trumps any notional right to harm others. Until recently, any such right not to be harmed was empty and unenforceable. But the exponential growth of computer power harnessed to the biotech revolution means that previously utopian scenarios such as global veganism will shortly become technically feasible - which of course doesn't mean they will - or should - actually happen.

Philosophically speaking, I have doubts about the ontological status of rights. But from an indirect utilitarian perspective, I hope that  recognition of the right not to be harmed will one day be enshrined in law. Pursuing the implications of what such a basic right to be unharmed entails does  indeed lead to counterintuitive conclusions. Either way, it's not just utilitarians who favour global veganism and compassionate biology, but potentially rights theorists, Buddhists, Jains and members of many other creeds besides.