Animal Rights

1
Animal Rights

• Chapter 14 Continued

2
Are all Animals Equal?

• I am urging that we extend to other species the
  basic principle of equality that most of us
  recognize should be extended to all members of
  our own species.

3
Equality as a Moral Ideal

• According to Singer, equality is a moral ideal,
  not a simple assertion of fact.
• It is not the case that all human beings are
  equal. In any area of comparison, there are some
  whose abilities are superior to others.
• Yet, we grant that our interests deserve equal
  consideration. Any being capable of suffering has
  interests, so if it can suffer, its interests
  must be taken into account.

4
Singer on Eating Nonhumans

• There can be no defense of eating flesh in terms
  of satisfying nutritional needs, since it has
  been established beyond doubt that we could
  satisfy our need for protein and other nutrients
  far more efficiently with a diet that replaced
  animal flesh with soy beans, and other high
  protein vegetable products.

5
Singer on Factory Farms

• Hens, veal calves, pigs etc.. are kept in tiny,
  cramped cages and deprived of the opportunity to
  live full animal lives. Anyone who kept a dog in
  conditions in which pigs are frequently kept
  would be liable to prosecution. Yet, since our
  interest in exploiting pigs is greater than
  exploiting dogs, we condemn cruelty to dogs while
  consuming the produce of cruelty to pigs.

6
Singer on Animal Experimentation

• Food additives like artificial coloring and
  preservatives are tested by what is know as
  LD50 a test designed to find the level of
  consumption at which 50 of a group of animals
  will die.
• To those who challenge that if many human lives,
  can be saved at the expense of one animal,
  shouldnt we sacrifice the animal, Singer
  replies, Would the experimenter be prepared to
  perform his experiment on an orphaned human
  infant to save many lives?

7
What Makes Us Different?

• Frankena Humans have emotions and desires, and
  are able to think, and hence capable of enjoying
  a good life in a sense in which other animals are
  not.
• Humans have an intrinsic dignity or intrinsic
  worth.

8
Singer on Human Dignity

• Why should it be that all humans including
  infants, psychopaths, mental defectives, Hitler,
  Stalin, and the rest have some kind of dignity
  or worth that no elephant, pig, or chimpanzee
  will ever achieve?

9
Against Animal Rights A Kantian Argument

• A right is a (potential) claim that one party may
  exercise against another
• Rights are claims within a community of moral
  agents
• To have a right, you have to be
• Able to make a claim
• Part of a community of moral agents

10
Against Animal Rights A Kantian Argument

• Kant we deserve moral respect because we are
  autonomous self-legislating
• Animals lack free moral judgment
• They cannot comprehend duties
• They cannot make moral claims
• They cannot respond to them
• They therefore cannot have rights

11
A Problem

• How have we decided that humans are superior to
  nonhuman animals?
• We are smarter!
• But some nonhuman animals are smarter than human
  infants and even young children.
• Children have the potential to grow into
  autonomous, rational beings!
• What about severely developmentally disabled or
  brain damaged humans who have no such potential?

12
A Problem

• How have we decided that humans are superior to
  nonhuman animals?
• We are language users!
• Not all human beings can use language, and it
  seems that some animals can.
• We are moral agents who can be blamed for moral
  misdeeds a lion isnt a moral being - it cant
  be blamed for killing a gazelle!
• An infant or very child isnt a moral agent it
  cant (reasonably) be blamed for moral misdeeds,
  and yet we grant it moral rights.

13
Koko

• Koko, a gorilla conversant in ASL, developed a
  long-term bond with the kitten, whom she named
  All Ball. She dressed him in linen napkins and
  hats, and signed phrases like Koko love visit
  Ball and Soft good cat. Most remarkably, she
  went into what could only be understood as deep
  mourning after Ball escaped one day and got run
  over by a car. She cried shortly after she was
  told of his death. Three days later, in response
  to her caretakers questions about the cat, Koko
  signed Cry and Sleep cat.

14
Jaworska on Moral Status

• Stanford philosopher, Agnieszca Jaworska, writes
  that it is the capacity for caring that confers
  moral status. Koko, she believes, is clearly a
  person in the sense that she has full moral
  status (by virtue of her capacity for caring).

15
Against Animal Rights the Slippery Slope
Argument

• We should worry about possible abuse of rules we
  adopt
• There are no sharp boundaries between babies and
  adults, the retarded or damaged and the
  intelligent, normal adults and the senile, etc.
• There are borderline cases
• Slippery slope If we fail to treat them as
  having moral standing, we jeopardize our own
  moral standing.
• There are, however, sharp boundaries between
  humans and other animal species, so this seems
  like a good place to draw the line for moral
  status.

16

• DISCUSSION

17
Discussion Michael Vick

• On April 25, authorities raided a house in Surry
  County, Va., owned by Vick and reportedly found
  -- among other things -- 66 dogs (most of which
  were pit bulls), a dog-fighting pit, bloodstained
  carpets and equipment commonly associated with
  dog-fighting. He was charged and sentenced to 23
  months in prison.

18
Discussion Seal Hunting

• In the 1980s, postcards were distributed to 12
  million United States and United Kingdom
  households depicting the infamous Canadian
  Atlantic Fisher swinging a bat at a baby seal.
  The collapse of the seal skin market marked a
  victory for animal rights advocates, but
  devastated the Canadian Inuit who depended on the
  market for their economy.

19
Discussion Disrupting Nature

• Knut's brother, robbed of his mother's warmth,
  tragically succumbed to the chilly Berlin winter.
  Zoo vets stepped in quickly to save Knut from the
  same fate, deciding to raise him themselves
  rather than let him perish. Many animal rights
  advocates believe that the zoo authorities should
  have let the cub die, as is common in the wild
  when a mother rejects her young, rather than
  raise the cub within the confines of a zoo.

20
Discussion Getting too close to your pets

• AFTER two years of debate, the Dutch Parliament
  voted unanimously yesterday to make sex with
  animals a crime. Sex with animals and making
  "animal pornography" now carries a penalty of up
  to six months jail. Current Dutch law only
  forbids bestiality when animals are found to have
  been mistreated. Should sex with nonhuman animals
  be illegal?

21

• GROUP WORK