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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[Carolyn Bailey]

I completely agree with you, Brandon. 

It seems to me that we are falling over ourselves to contracept elephants, deers, kangaroos, horses, dingos, and almost every other animal we can think of, because we are unwilling or unable to contracept humans. This seems like the ultimate in human supremacy to me, and it terrifies me to think that humans may believe this is an acceptable way to solve the problems of human over-population and habitat loss. 

It seems that we are unwilling to strike at the root of the problem, and seem to display an arrogance and a poverty of ambition in the hope of turning the free-living world into a world that humans can be more comfortable viewing and controlling for human benefit and comfort. 

To hear people speak of such a dystopian future, and seemingly not being willing to consider a future where all others may live their lives as they, themselves, should, without humans altering their biology or dictating whether their species will be lucky enough to "make the grade", terrifies me as well. Where do we draw the line? When we have the species of the world controlled and altered in a way we are comfortable with, do we begin managing the races and cultures of the world as well, and eliminating the ones we feel are not quite right? 

Tim, you speak of an individual's right not to be killed, but I don't think you mentioned an individual's right to their liberty or their bodily integrity, or their right to respect, or their right not to have their biology altered by humans, or their right to simply be left alone. 

You also asked:

Does an individual's right to not be killed entail an obligation on the part of a moral agent to prevent such an individual from being killed when that moral agent can prevent the killing without thereby causing some greater harm? 

If a moral agent (human) were to prevent the death of an antelope, isn't it causing a greater harm to the predator, who would suffer hunger and possibly death by your intervention. I don't see that as an open question. 

Humans have been altering the biology of other animals for thousands of years, as they have been destroying the habitat of other animals for almost as long. Every time humans intervene in the lives of others animals there are tragic consequences. Yet, we want to continue to intervene further and further until we have control over every species and race on the planet, and that's not problematic or arrogant? 

We can definitely do better than that! 

[Peter Keller]

The idea of rights is a moral construct that only we (as humans) can recognize and act upon. Therefore our only obligation is how we (as humans) govern our relationship with others (both with other humans and nonhumans). As we have the cognitive ability and technical skills to survive without relying on the use and killing of animals, then it is our moral imperative that we do so. We cannot govern how other animals relate to each other because we then assume a moral positioning above that of the other animals, therefore it cannot be argued that we are acting in concert of equality.
If other animals can evolve and choose not to rely on the killing and eating of other animals to survive, then they can determine that course for themselves, but it is speciesist to assume that we can make those moral judgements for them. As predator species currently cannot survive on their own without killing other animals for sustenance, it is entirely arrogant of us to assume the role of "god" and willingly determine the fate of other animals.
Not to mention that I have no confidence that we can carry out such a plan without causing even more harm--we pride ourselves in being so technologically advanced, but one only needs to look at the current state of pollution and climate change to see our results.

[George Miler]

I am not against an Edenic future in principle. C.S. Lewis envisioned herbivorous lions which still retained their essential "lion" character. More must be done than rewiring their neurologies. They must be made to desire vegetation instinctively, including altering their phenomenological field (I see how cats act at sight of a bird: they immediately know what to do without consciously -- or culturally -- assigning meanings to their experiential field). And equally importantly their biochemistry must be altered rather drastically to assimilate the new food sources. Maybe this can be achieved by 2200 A.D., yet that strikes me as optimistic. The social will must also be there to support the program, which means culture change. Everyone here already knows that animal rights entails this much.

[Peter Keller]

The problem is the idea of "they must be made..."
The ideas of transhumanism to me is frighteningly fascist.
You may call it "compassionate biology" -- I call it "We know what's good for you."

The idea of "Eden" is a myth, propagated mostly by Western Christianity which is responsible for the dominionistic thinking that codified the enslavement of animals and the supremacy of humans. Perhaps Eden was the period of time before humans relied on the use of animals?

[David Pearce]

Peter, a transhumanist commitment to the well-being of all sentience may be utopian. It is not "fascist". Indeed the ideology of fascism was underpinned  by a crude social Darwinism: might is right; the weakest doesn't deserve to survive; and life is perpetual struggle. Much of fascist ideology is a celebration of  "Nature, red in tooth and claw" applied to human society. By contrast, a compassionate biology is as far removed from fascist ideology as one can imagine.

Alternatively, is compassionate biology a case of "We know what's good for you"?
Only in the most innocent sense. A nonhuman animal who is slowly starving to death, being consumed by parasites, or being asphyxiated, disembowelled or eaten alive by predators cannot verbalize his or her preferences in the manner of mature humans. But s/he manifestly does not want to be harmed.  We need to protect the weak and the vulnerable who aren't capable of looking after themselves -regardless of race or species.

[Tim Gier]

Hi Carolyn,

I agree with you and believe that, in general, humans ought not to interfere in the lives of innocent others. However, I also think that when it would be possible for humans to prevent harm from coming to some individuals without causing greater harms to other individuals, then we ought to. Can we prevent antelopes from being harmed by lions without causing a greater harm to the lions (or others)? In most cases, right now, probably not. But that doesn't mean that we will never be able to and it doesn't mean that we shouldn't think about the possibilities. 

[Carolyn Bailey]

Hi Tim, 

The very thought that we are able to determine what "harm" is to other animals is in itself, in my opinion, an arrogant and arrogantly dominant position to hold. 

To think, seriously, about the possibility of altering the biology of other animals in order to allow humans a greater level of comfort, is amazing to me. 

To suggest that "we" need to protect the weak and the vulnerable who aren't capable of protecting themselves, again, is taking a position of human supremacy and dominance, and I strongly disagree with this position. 

[George Miler]

Eden is an ideal rather than an historical fact. Neolithic agrarianism did exist without the exploitation of animals. Pastoralists carried animal use to the extreme, having been hunters first. Hunting isn’t natural to humans either, as we all know. Contrary to predators, humans do rely on an antagonistic affect to pursue this way of life. It’s no coincidence that the practice of war evolved in the same cluster of culture traits. Defending grazing rights without natural boundaries was a full time job (and I sometimes wonder if this is how psychopathy evolved). (Evolution is about makeshift and mend.) As much as I want to avoid logical extremes, where does our sense of moral duty cut off? Either our civilization completely encloses the animal kingdom (our duty to our companion animals and all other domesticated species is clear) in which case we prescribe rights to them (including cockroaches? bacteria?) or we withdraw entirely from the biosphere and let the rest of the world go wild while we cage ourselves. (I was an advocate of arcologies once.) Do we breed cattle back into a state that can survive in the wild and let their herds and the bison work out the details about their ranges? Or keep the cattle comfortable until they die out? Does the Animal Rights Ranger repair the tiger’s jaw broken by a wildebeest’s kick or let it starve? I’d vote yes to the repair. What about veterinarian services to eradicate rabies from the wilds? Yes again. Do we stop the ichneumon wasp from paralyzing the spider and laying eggs in it for its young to consume (the basis for the Alien movies)? I don’t know where the Golden Mean is. If science does set a criterion for sentience and its various degrees (which I’m sure it will) we won’t all become Jains. With this scientific criterion for subjective suffering, however, where do we stop? If society overthrows the dominator ethic that colors human thinking now, the answer may be benign neglect. Along with a tragic sense of life…NOT the Unamunist variety, but the one that grieves over the inevitable painful mortality of a percentage of sentient prey. Come to think of it, this can be extended to everything that can experience death (if you modify the meaning of experience to include things you don’t live through). I don’t know if this will replace the old religious sentiment or not.

(Sticking wires in predators’ pleasure centers to control their behavior would not have gone far enough since the animals would have died of malnutrition, that was the only sense in which I used “must”, not as a moral imperative but as a technical one to achieve results. But this smacks too much of animal experimentation to tolerate it. Lions with modified DNA will have to be created and then what if it’s done wrong in the initial tests? This is the best argument against modifying predators because mistakes will be made. What do we do when we feed them on meat cultured in vitro? Will a radio signal activate the implants and lead them to the feeding sites? That sounds like something from Aldous Huxley. Do animals deserve autonomy? Do we, since controls of this sort were imagined after Dr. José Rodriguez Delgado’s upgrade of the matador and playing monkeys and cats like electronic toys [his words]?) (Christopher Walken NOT in Brainstorm but The Happiness Cage (The Mind Snatchers) (The Demon Within) (1972). You can tell I've had second thoughts.

[Mark Jordan]

The initial rights violation on autonomy is the biggest and most important. Once an animal doesn't have the right of autonomy, what do they have? They only have interests within their non-autonomous existence that can be given or denied by those controlling them and talk of "rights" is meaningless. The animals living autonomously are truly rights-bearers and for humans to impinge on this all-important right is a true tragedy and the antithesis to supporting animal rights.

Additionally, it is the utmost, and oft repeated, folly of humans to meddle and think that they know what is best for nature. Nature knows best what is for nature. Humans, as has been proven time and time again, are actually the least likely to understand the intricacies of, and give any respect to, nature. Respecting nature and respecting animals demands letting those still blessed with autonomy to keep it. 

A non-speciesist will not steal the autonomy of an animal any more than they would steal it from a human.

[David Pearce]

Brandon, could you possibly clarify? Would you support interventions if and when you think they can help other sentient beings? Or do you oppose interventions even in principle?

[Brandon Becker]

To David: I think humans should not needlessly harm other animals, which would include interfering in natural predator-prey relations and violating the bodily integrity of individuals through forced sterilization, for all the reasons I mentioned earlier. Any intervention should respect the precautionary principle that we don't know everything so if there is a potential to cause harm to any individual (individual, not weighing numbers or calculating competing harms) through intervention then it's probably not a good idea to intervene. I don't see any problem with helping an elephant get free from a mud pit, especially considering that (1) the mud pit was likely caused by human destruction of the environment, (2) the elephant's death is not caused by a predator, and (3) scavengers won't get a chance to eat the elephant's corpse since it will be buried in mud.

To Roger: Joan Dunayer is clear in her book that humans shouldn't needless harm other animals, including harm through colonizing their habitats and destroying the natural environment. Certainly isolating humans from other animals, even if it were possible, is a terrible idea and not one she advocates for in my reading of her work. Co-existence without domination ("domination" includes domestication) is the way to go.

[David Pearce]

Mark, I agree with you: autonomy is vital. But to exercise that autonomy, human and non-human animals alike mustn't starve to death, suffer ill health through parasitism and disease, or undergo loss of bodily integrity or life itself through predation. If human and nonhuman animals alike are to flourish, then it's vital that their basic needs for health and safety are met. Hence the case for intervention -  and ultimately compassionate stewardship of the whole of Nature.

All the arguments you make against intervention to help members of other species could be used -  and have been used - to justify a non-interventionist approach to famine and genocide suffered by members for other ethnic groups.

Surely as animal advocates we affirm that we do know what best for other sentient beings, namely not to be harmed.

Could humans botch our interventions? Yes, certainly, here we agree. But compare how humans eliminated smallpox from the face of the Earth; and this century will do the same - I hope - for malaria.
Our interventions can make a difference for the better - in fact hugely so. They must just be intelligent and well conceived.