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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[Kerry Baker]

David, survival is said to be our strongest urge and that of other animals certainly. My concern is that we too frequently assume we 'know' about other animals which is to deny the limitations of our own psychology. Humans operate within mental models and schemas, which are to put it very simply our way of making sense of the world around us. Consider the issues in anthropological studies to see how that may operate, the difficulty with true objective empirical observation. And so it is with animals. We have our views of animals coloured by centuries of assumptions that have filtered through Hollywood for example creating caricatures of animals, or the other extreme objectifying animals and birds etc to justify the cruelties imposed on them in the slaughterhouses. I really think that we make huge assumptions about what lies behind animal behaviour. I am vegan but have 3 cats whom I love greatly. I feed them meat, which is an issue that I am trying to find an answer to. They won't eat vegan cat food and although I know people have claimed they have healthy cats on vegan food, I am not so sure. I have read the comments about genetic modification and don't agree. It seems to me that the most successful environmental healing has been in the restoration to what has been the natural order, reintroducing wolves into Yellowstone for example as top order predators. I tend towards leaving things alone, only intervening for example where you find an injured animals or one that has had an accident, like the elephants in the bog.

[Brandon Becker]

You need to read anthropology so you can understand what life was like for humans before civilization. In short: far better. The idea that nature is something to be conquered and that humans have terrible lives as wild foragers are myths and rationalizations and have commonly been used throughout history to support humans' mass enslavement of other animals and destruction of the planet. See: http://www.survivalinternational.org/progresscankill

[Brandon Becker]

Just like David, you are viewing things solely through utilitarian ideology, not a rights or liberation perspective. It's also not clear that you are even judging the consequences correctly to make an accurate utilitarian calculation and you're surely not giving equal consideration as I've argued earlier.

[Brandon Becker]

Thanks, Carolyn, I appreciate your support!

[Bonn1997]

It's not clear to me that his argument fails from a rights perspective. Which right is stronger: a carnivore's right to maintain his (or her) current dietary preference or the right to life of the several animals he kills over his lifetime?

[Brandon Becker]

The right to autonomy preserves the ability of every animal to live on their own terms. In terms of animal rights in general, the commonly held view from philosophers and political theorists is that rights constrain human behavior, not that of other animals. Even if you wanted to enforce rights against other animals, how would you communicate with them to get their consent to participate in the system or knowledge of what the rules/laws are? You can't. So from both a theoretical and a practical perspective, we can only apply rights to human behavior.

[Lisa V]

The "natural is better" idea lasts right up until you get an abscessed tooth or broken femur. I was born with a condition that would have eventually killed me (painfully, over time) had I not had a *very simple* surgery. Not all progress is bad just because some has been.

I don't think nature is something to be conquered, either. I think it's something to be studied, understood, and worked with intelligently to alleviate pain, disease, and suffering.

[Brandon Becker]

Did you read the linked report? The message that is sent is that humans from industrialized nations enforce civilization on primitive populations, denying autonomy and self-determination, while bringing mental illness, disease, suffering, destruction, and other harms.

You're committing a straw man fallacy by trying to debunk a position that is not even argued for, at least not by me or in the linked report.

[Tim Gier]

People may find this introduction to the various concepts and formulations of Human Rights interesting: http://www.iep.utm.edu/hum-rts/ From the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: A peer-reviewed academic resource

[Ronnie Lee]

Looks like this has been an interesting discussion, which, owing to limited computer-time, I've only been able to glance through briefly.

I don't have any particular problem with "animal rights" as a philosophical concept, but when dealing with the public, I prefer to talk about "human wrongs", i.e. why it is wrong for humans to abuse other animals, because most people don't even think in terms of human rights when expressing their objection to the abuse of one group of humans by another.

Forinstance, when people express their disgust at the experiments on Jewish children by the Nazi Dr Mengele, the majority do not go through the mental process of thinking "those children had rights that Mengele violated" before doing so. They just innately feel that Mengele was evil Therefore to persuade those same people to oppose vivisection, what I need to do is to get them to see the similarity between what Mengele did to the children and what vivisectors do to non-human animals. I don't need to mention "rights" and I think that to do so would just complicate things and make my task a more difficult one.

Likewise, when trying to persuade people to go vegan. One needs only to pose the simple question. "is it necessary for humans to consume animal products, with all the death and suffering that entails, in order for us to survive and to be healthy?". Answer: "quite definitely no". Therefore the consumption of animal products by humans cannot be morally justified and must be wrong. No need for mention of "rights" here either.

[Bonn1997]

The right of a victim's life to be defended should not be dependent on the violator's consent to participate in the system. Do we have the right to stop a tiger from killing a human?

[Lisa V]

Brandon, I agree that forcing "civilization on primitive populations, denying autonomy and self-determination, while bringing mental illness, disease, suffering, destruction, and other harms" is a bad thing. And usually done in the course of some kind of exploitation and in the spirit of material greed.

But giving someone the means to fix an abscessed tooth or broken femur isn't forcing "civilization on primitive populations, denying autonomy and self-determination, while bringing mental illness, disease, suffering, destruction, and other harms." It's alleviating very real pain and suffering ... which you and anyone with a working CNS would want alleviated if unfortunate enough to experience it.

To romanticize primitive living is just as problematic as romanticizing "happy meat" and "locavores" and so on. I hear it a lot from meat eaters ... "Well, the Eskimo eat seals ... it's their tradition! What will the Eskimos do of you make everyone vegan??!!" or ... "The Native Americans respected the animals! They prayed and gave thanks and used the whole animal! Are you questioning the wisdom of the Native Americans??!!"

And, btw, would you like for those "primitive" folks to become vegan? Can you interfere that much? And, if so, why can you interfere in that respect, but not to teach them how to do a root canal?