I’m a vegan, I turned vegan because I have very strong issues with the meat industry. I expect the vast majority of you in this part of the forum have similar reasons.
But I do not advocate animal rights, I do not see how they could ever work. I advocate animal interest, it’s like the difference between Singer and Regan. Surely that would be a more accurate name, and wouldn’t lead to confusion about things.
I’m assuming this part of the forum is called animal rights because most vegans do believe in animal rights and this is the place to talk about subjects related to animal rights. You are probably in the minority if you don’t believe sentient beings deserve rights.
All living beings should have the right not to be treated as things. Animals should be treated as non-human persons. Anything less and it cannot be ensured that they are treated well. Once a sentient being becomes property, it is the decision of the owner on how to treat their property.
You cannot consider animal interests without animals having rights because things have no interest. That is the basis of animal rights. Because non-human animals do have an interest in continuing to live then they cannot be things and as such must not be treated as things.
Nobody wants dogs, chickens and pigs to be able to vote or drive cars or take out loans or adopt children or other such nonsense. We just want to afford them the right not to be property and to be treated as living, breathing, feeling, sentient beings who want to live their lives freely without unnecessary pain and suffering.
Also, any number of horrible acts can be “justified” using Singers utilitarian beliefs. If the good outweighs the bad involved then it’s fine. Really, you could drug and rape someone and as long as they never find out it’s a good thing according to utilitarian thought. The harm from rape is not the act but the knowledge of the act and remembering the act having been perpetrated. But, when you give everyone the right to not be raped, then rape becomes wrong whether or not anyone finds out. While utilitarians have some good points, following that philosophy completely will only cause more violence to be committed.
The ends do not justify the means.
Firstly and most obviously, whether I’m in a minority or not, that doesn’t make a difference, it is still an inaccurate forum title.
What do you mean by deserve? That implies they’ve done something to earn rights, did you mean they are, or should be, entitled to rights?
Obviously things have interests, humans are things, plants are things, non-human animals are things. Some interests are from having existential freedom, some are more instinctive than that.
So that part of your post also falls down. However I never said that I advocate animals being property or that anyone should be able to have property rights over them.
What do you mean by they should be treated like persons? Does that mean they have person-hood? So that words now just synonymous with being able to feel pain?
Next; if we afford non-human animals rights, it is down to the state to protect those rights (I presume we’re talking about lawful rights, if not explain to me what you mean by moral rights and where the . In which case when two non-human animals are engaged in battle, which one should be protected, or should both be protected?
What you might argue is that the intentions of the rapist was wrong, even if fortunately no harm to her existence (as in perception, thought processes etc.) was caused.
There is no guarantee if we give animals rights or not, that they’ll be treated well.
Interestingly is that you jumped into talking about rights that wouldn’t be applicable to non-human animals as if I’d made that part of my argument, as if I’d be saying that people have a right to an abortion when they’re not pregnant.
With regards to your attack on Singer and experience being the prime part of morality. A woman is in a coma, she is raped, any damage done to her body is repaired before she comes out of the coma. No body apart from the rapist knows of the rape. There are no lasting effects that happen due to the rape. The rapist is killed in a traffic incident completely unrelated to his previous actions.
Can you tell me what harm has been done to her?
Furthermore is there a specific right against being raped?
I thought the legalities lie with the potential aggressor, not the victim, but I might be wrong.
That or it’s surely a lot broader than that (and a right about (bodily) harm).
You’ve said the ends don’t justify the means, but you’ve not said why that’s the case.
This is a good question - very interesting thread 
I’m going to butt in! 
We are all born with basic human rights as outlined in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, the European Convention of Human Rights, etc. These rights include rights to live without torture, servitude or detention. It makes sense to suppose that animals are also born with rights.
Now, you may not personally believe we are born with rights, and it’s still controversial just how many of these rights animals are born with.
With regard to the woman who is raped whilst in a coma, I’ld like to use the example of Eva Peron. Her corpse was embalmed after her death. Some years later it emerged that her corpse has been raped an abused. People found this upsetting because, even though she would not have felt pain, the idea of her had been disrespected and violated. Even if nobody ever found out about this, it would still have been [conventionally] morally wrong because the action shows disrespect. The people who did this were not using her like an erotic aid: they intended to gain power over her image/memory. Most crimes have an element of power-play.
I think that the concept of rights transcends interests. Rights benefit society as a whole, not just the individual. A society that respects rights is a better place to live - it is rights that lead to laws (against rape, exploitation, etc) being formulated. The legalities are with the aggressor because the victim has rights.
I have a few issues with this post, but in a different way. If we do have rights when we’re born, then to not give them to animals is idiotic (see the argument from marginal cases). But then I don’t think we ought to be granted legal rights from birth.
Furthermore I don’t think any of the marginal cases ought to be granted legal rights.
The issue with the corpse being raped is that just because someone feels that that ‘disrespects’ the corpse doesn’t mean anything ought to be done. No person has been harmed, is it disrespectful to a rock if a smash it for my own pleasure?
Can we really say that popular perception=morality? It sounds like a move to try and claim that there is an objective morality.
And of course, you can have laws that aren’t based around rights concerning subjects, I’m not sure I really need to say more about that, and the rest of what I put about rights in my previous post could just be copied and pasted.
Your being in the minority when it comes to thoughts on rights has everything to do with this thread. If your beliefs were in line with the majority, you would not have taken issue with this forum being named animal rights. Your not believing in rights does not make this forums name any less accurate or in some way confusing. If most people didn’t believe in rights, this sub-forum would have been called “animal welfare” or some other similar name. The fact that topics regarding animal rights are meant to be discussed in this forum is the only justification needed in the name.
It is obvious by your response that you don’t care to know the answers to your questions. You are just picking on my word choices rather than bringing up any actual disagreement or misunderstanding in what I have to say. If you actually want to know something, all of your questions and hypothetical situations have been answered and explained many times over by people that are much more meticulous in their word choice than I will ever be on an internet forum. All of that information is freely available to anyone willing to look.
Jesus there are some idiots on this site. The point is that the name itself narrows things down so that anyone who doesn’t believe animals ought to have rights (which tends to be most people who have read Singer’s and Regan’s work) don’t have a sub forum. Why not have a wider name?
It also perpetuates the idiotic view that anyone who believes animals have interests, and because of that we should take them into account, that such a person MUST believe animals have rights.
The rest of my answers have been directed at someone talking about rights and non-rights arguments about animal interests, which isn’t really what this topic is about, but yes when people reply I can and will reply.
Don’t presume to know my intentions, jackass.
Let’s try and keep things civil here.
Rights are a purely human philosophy. Animals are not “born” with rights just as humans are not “born” with rights. Let’s ignore the legal or moral aspect of rights and instead look at what is “natural”. Animals must be allowed to live without unnatural interference. Humans create unnatural interference in the form of domestication, hunting, population control, captivity, relocation, expansion, etc. By interfering with animals, humans create an imbalance in the ecosystem. This imbalance has grown so large in the last century that it may take centuries to return to normal if interference is halted.
Now, the term “Rights” has legal definitions, but lets look at the term in a more basic sense. Rights has to do with what is right as opposed to what is wrong. Right and wrong in terms or ethics or morality is purely subjective. However, in terms of science is can be very much objective. It is “right” for the sun to produce heat and light. It is “right” for plants to use that heat and light as energy to grow. It is “right” for herbivores to eat those plants. It is “right” for carnivores to eat herbivores. etc. etc. With each of the previous statements, you can replace “right” with “natural”. What is natural is for life to thrive in an ecosystem with balance. Life does not thrive when an imbalance occurs, and life will die out completely if that imbalance is severe enough.
It is “natural” or “right” for an animal to live in balance with its environment and humans need to understand this “right”. “Animal Rights” can be thought of as a life with “Natural balance” without unnatural interference by humans. Only humans can provide this “right” because we are the only ones who unnaturally interfere with the natural balance. There are, of course, natural interferences that could cause imbalances or wipe out life altogether, but we are just as helpless as the animals to halt these occurrences. However, we are capable of halting the demise of life by our own hands by giving animals “rights”.
Sorry but you seem to have mixed up a lot of things here.
Morality if anything is prescriptive, there isn’t a prescription for plants to absorb light energy, that’s merely a description, it’s nonsensical to say “plants ought to absorb light energy” because it’s not about morallity (or if it is, you’ve not shown how).
What is right can be what is ‘correct’ in science, someone being right, but that’s a description, not prescription.
What is right in morality is how one ought to act, what actions one ought to take.
Your talk of a balance doesn’t make any sense, it’s abstract and baseless as far as I can tell. Humans automatically affect all eco systems at the moment.
The difference between most humans and most non-human animal is simply that most humans show a capacity to understand (to a limited extent) morality, and can act in a way that they themselves can judge as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ or ‘neutral’.
Description:
“I hit him in the face.”
Prescription:
“I shouldn’t of hit him [in the face].”
However you might want to look into naturalism:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism … losophy%29
plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism/
And no doubt most relevant:
plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism-moral/
Go back and reread my post because you completely read it wrong.
re-read, my post stands… I did miss out something that’s very basic and ignored in both our posts, what do you mean by ‘natural’ in this context.
Look it up. And you missed more than that.
Go on…