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 do implicitly claim that nature is good. You're saying that preserving nature would be "to the benefit of all life". But that's absurd in the highest degree. Evolution by natural selection is quite blind to the well-being of the poor creatures that it generates. It optimizes gene replication, which often amounts to violence, suffering and death (inter- and intraspecies: http://jvilchez2009.blogspot.com/2009/04/violacion-entre-simios.html - rape, murder and even tribal warfare in apes). As I said, the vast majority of wild animals die horribly as babies or children already due to starvation, disease, injury or predation. (Most animals produce much more offspring than can make it to adulthood.) How the hell could the preservation of this carnage possibly be "to the benefit of all life"?!

[Bonn1997]

Well the bigger point is that people want to debate your starting point (whether it's that nature is good or nature ought to be preserved). And the "for the benefit of all life" part is definitely debatable - it actually sounds now like you're taking a utilitarian perspective, but it's not clear utilitarianism leads to the preservation of nature.

[Rob Brevendt]

Regarding autonomy, can't you see that it is a big problem if one animal, whether human or non-human and for whatever reason, starts violating many other animals's autonomy even to the point of eating them alive and tearing them into pieces? It nonplusses me how anyone could deny this (and especially any vegan).

And wouldn't it obviously be a good thing to protect the numerous victims by getting the aggressor - with as little use of force as possible - to leave them alone? That's what we ought to do if we're working towards a world in which as many animals as possible (and ideally all) can live autonomously.

[Rob Brevendt]

Have you had a look at this http://arzone.ning.com/profiles/blogs/debunking-the-idyllic-view-of..., Brandon?

[Kerry Baker]

Hi Adriano.  I have a question for you.  How far do you take this right to survive?  To use an example, if your pet cat or dog should happen to suffer the infestation of fleas that will potentially kill it through anaemia, or a tick that can cause painful paralysis, who has the right over whom to live in this scenario? I think this is relevant to what is being discussed here as the fleas and ticks obviously are only trying to survive themselves and will do what they have to for survival.  It is a rather slow and horrible death however for the animals or birds or reptiles that become infested.  One can find many examples of insects that have equally disastrous effects on animal life, and here we tend to discriminate between the 'good' insects, for example bees, and the 'bad' insects, venemous spiders or fire ants for example.  I am interested to learn what you think the answer would be for them.

[Rob Brevendt]

Hi Kerry, thanks for your question. If individuals have rights, then we have an obligation to protect them against violators or attackers of any sort. If that's the only principle to go by, then it's clear that we ought to try to stop and prevent fleas or ticks from harming other animals. One could, however, object that if many fleas or ticks were attacking one animal and if the attackers retain their rights, then intervention would violate more rights than would non-intervention. But in your example that would be based on the assumption that the rights of fleas or ticks are as stringent and important as the rights of a dog, say. I reject this. For one thing, the sentience of a dog is evident while doubts remain regarding the sentience of fleas. Furthermore, I reject the idea that the presence of some sort of sentience is the sole basis for the ascription of equal rights. To me, the main point of ascribing and protecting rights is the prevention of suffering. Suffering is the crucial ethical parameter, not sentience per se. And if fleas can indeed suffer, they're capacities to suffer are surely much more modest than those of a dog.
As for insects in general, we should factor in their possible (and quite likely actual) suffering as well and take steps to reduce and prevent it:
http://www.utilitarian-essays.com/insect-pain.html
http://www.utilitarian-essays.com/humane-insecticides.html

[Brandon Becker]

I'm done with this thread. I started it to discuss animal rights, particularly in the legal context, and it's been almost exclusively about lions eating gazelles and other unrelated issues. Fuck utilitarianism and authoritarianism, and it's combination in the fascist genocidal program to exterminate "undesirable" species - these ideas are sickening and I hope they never become accepted within society. If the powers that be ever tried to implement these ideas on a large scale, I'd gladly join an insurrection to restore justice in the world.

[Mark Jordan]

I think equating interfering in the autonomous lives of natural carnivores with stopping famine and genocide is quite flawed. The former involves interfering with an animal acting as their natural biology tells them to and demands from them to survive, the later involves interfering with others of our species acting in a manner our society feels inappropriate and is not necessary for the humans doing it to survive. Animal rights means that we strive to let every animal live as their natural instincts and societal norms tell them. Humans deal with human issues, other animals deal with their issues. 

[Mark Jordan]

Brandon, I think you make very good points and I agree with your sound reasoning on these points.

Animal rights means that we strive to let every animal live as autonomously as their natural instincts and their societal norms tell them, as free from human intervention as possible (hopefully totally free). Helping animals in need, when they are stuck in the mud, etc. is very different than interfering in their autonomy with population control and other such matters.

I would be grateful if an elephant helped me out after I got hit by a car, but I don't want the elephants to force birth control or any other of their beliefs about what is right for me, or my species, on me (and I come from the most invasive destructive harmful species this planet will ever see, a thousand fold!) - I'll decide on that, thanks.

[Rob Brevendt]

Brandon, take a chill pill, a whole bottle of them, read this http://masalladelaespecie.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/debunkingidyl... brilliant paper and think about whether your verbal demeanor is likely to convince anyone of the views that you'd be prepared to defend with physical violence and warfare (not exactly vegan either!). What would give you the right to physically force your views down our throats? Your position is self-contradictory.* If you regard us as genocidal predators, why won't you let us go about our business? Same for all the meat-eaters, rapists, murderers and Neo-Nazis today. Don't even think of intervening and trying to eliminate undesirably violent humans from society, you bloody fascist!

*Ours is not, for we are not opposed to intervention per se, we're opposed to it if it's bad and support it if it's good. And it can be good (in human as well as in non-human cases), namely by preventing more suffering and death than it causes.

[Bonn1997]

"Animal rights means that we strive to let every animal live as autonomously as their natural instincts and their societal norms tell them, "

Societal norms can't possibly dictate morality. You'd be arguing against veganism if you believed otherwise. All you're really left with is the vague natural instincts claim. What if a human animal's natural instincts involve a propensity to war and prejudice? should we not interfere with that human animal's instincts?

[Kerry Baker]

Thanks Adriano. I think your definition of sentience is questionable. In the past couple of decades for example scientists have managed to record vegetables registering emotion in frequencies outside of the human auditory range. This is one of the arguments that those who argue with vegans use and is not strictly incorrect. What you are proposing is in effect playing God, which has got the planet into the situation we are currently in with all the environmental disasters and violation of 'animal rights' which is what is in discussion here. I am frankly horrified to see you describing carnivorous traits as in some sort of malware as though it is just something that can be 'fixed' the same as on a computer. Your proposals assume that human know and understand everything sufficiently to make these judgements, and I think the point of what has been expressed several times in this thread is that humans are the cause of the major violations in animal rights and that we should just stop imposing what we think is or isn't right on them. My personal vew is that what you are suggesting would be a global cataclysm. In fact the removal of top order predators from environments has caused huge damage that in many cases has only been fixed by the return of these same predators. Whether or not we like to acknowledge it, carnivores were around much earlier than we appeared on the scene and there is purpose in the way nature has evolved. Of course we can find papers to support whatever our personal stance is on this issue.  But I have to go with Brandon on this one. I think minimal intervention in the wild is the only way we can respect animal rights and concentrate on how we treat animals in our social systems. The vast majority of animals being tortured are tortured legally in factory farms every day, which is what we have created. We can go on discussing this ad infinitum, but I think playing with genetics is a truly horrendous proposition, despite the intention to relieve what you think is a bad gene.  Sorry it's 7.30am here and I have to get to work so will respond to any issues that I think need comment at the end of my day.