At first, I thought that I wouldn't tend to be in favor of animal rights. I generally think about ethics in terms of welfare instead of in terms of rights or obligations, so why would I think animals should have rights? However, after thinking about it more, I've come down in favor of animal rights, and I feel like I have a better understanding of why human rights matter.
So, let's talk about human rights. I haven't seen a metaphysical argument that humans "naturally" have rights, and I'm not sure I'd be convinced by that kind of argument anyway. However, there area couple of reasons that I think it makes sense to assign humans rights:
- Humans have a strong preference for self-determination (which is partially final and partially instrumental)
- Rule-consequentialist / rule-utilitarian: "human rights" are a good policy to agree on, because that policy helps us maximize welfare
"Should we decide to give animals rights?" is the natural question for me; we could decide on rights pragmatically, and then follow them dogmatically, even when we don't see why they're useful in a particular case. I generally don't think the first reason above applies to animals, but I think the second does. So, I think we should give animals rights.
(A note on why I think it makes sense to consider rights as pragmatic things we decide on: rights are pretty complicated, sometimes seem inconsistent or made-up, and they're constantly up for debate. For example, what's the deal with children's rights? What are all the trade-offs and edge cases around the right to free speech, or the right to refuse service? I think it used to be considered a "right" of soldiers to defend themselves and their fellows on a battlefield, and to be exempt of moral blame when they follow orders, but revisionist just-war theorists are working on overturning that, IIRC. These things are clearly cultural constructs, and we should choose them as we see fit.)
Some rights that I think probably make sense for animals:
- They should be represented in decisions (e.g. political decisions)
- Guardianship should be a matter of political debate (and animals should have representatives in these decisions)
- If rights that work for kids don't work for animals, then animals should have more rights than kids do (e.g. people care about kids intrinsically, usually, and don't benefit financially from having them, whereas animals don't have these natural protections)
On this last point: imagine a world where having children could be very lucrative. In this world, we'd probably have to restrict the right to have children, and give children rights that prevent parents from exploiting them for financial gain. I think we probably will need to extend those kinds of rights to animals.
So, animal rights: yes! I'm just not sure which ones, or how we get there.
I think I agree with all the premises of this article. And I think I agree on your categorization of rights as pragmatic. I don't think I agree that we should give animals rights. Buuut, I might have misunderstood, and I might be too stuck in my ways.
ReplyDeleteFirst, my understanding: if I'm reading it right, "animal rights" means, among other things, legally enforced veganism. Like, if we can't have animals as property, we probably definitely can't kill them for food, and it's hard to imagine how we could get a cow's agreement to give us milk. (correct me if I'm wrong.)
(btw I realize "legally enforced veganism" would totally derail this conversation on many blogs; I'm hoping yours doesn't have the kind of readership that would do that)
This seems a bit extreme if we actually just want to improve animal welfare. You can have laws around how you treat property, while it's still property. (I think?) Like, I can buy a car but I can't just drive it around wherever, or let my kid drive it, or ghost ride it. You've got to be responsible with cars (where "responsible" means a basket of things that not everyone agrees on); why not just work on defining the basket of responsibilities with animals?
(almost started talking about guns instead of cars, but that would risk derailing the conversation again :P)
(and I also realize there's a difference there; we only regulate cars so you don't hurt other people with them; it's not about the car's rights itself.)
On to your proposal of animal rights: How do you "represent" an animal in a decision? How can you represent a critter who can't ever communicate with? I guess you could get, say, a cow expert to tell you about all the things that make a cow's life better or worse. But again, we're in vegan world, so there probably wouldn't even be cow experts anymore. And we're far enough away from our current world that my instincts are probably not great moral judgment tools anymore. So, maybe I'm just too stuck in my ways.
Also, I can stop commenting on everything you post, if it gets too much trouble to respond to them all :) You post about interesting things.