Animal Rights?

[Ozme52]

I use "natural rights" in the sense of your second definition (but I would comment that, in your "wolf" illustration, the wolf should not be condemned for killing a man in self-defence, although it would be wise to destroy it, as it is clearly a dangerous animal, to prevent it killing anyone else - our right of self-defence).

If it's a natural right as you suggest and the animal cannot be condemned... then isn't it hypocritical to say it would be wise to destroy it?

Rights are a human construct. And we only have to agree to what the rules are to be. Animals have no natural rights... only those rights we humans wish to confer on them.

If you disagree, then in accordance to your example, a man who kills an animal in self-defence should not be condemned but should likewise be destroyed none the less.

Therefore, the rest of your post regarding natural rights and unnatural situations fails (in my eyes) because I believe it's based on an incorrect premise.

(I notice that there has been comment on abortion in this context, but I have not read any of those posts properly, and it's probably unwise for me to comment. As always in these situations, I bowl straight in, regardless. It seems to me that the rights of fertilised human ova/foetuses is an entirely different thing from the rights of animals. Up to a given point the ovum or foetus is not a viable entity and its destruction can be legally sanctioned. Beyond that point abortion is not permissable because it amounts to killing an unborn human being. Animals are not and never will be human. So far as I am aware, the abortion of animals is not much of an issue for anybody.)

Off topic... the comment you didn't read is whether or not abortion is a luxury... which is also off topic in an animal rights conversation. (But that's up to Saucie... it's her thread.)

Tom notes that, on a philosophical level, it can be argued that there is not much difference between humans and other animals and so it will become harder to formulate laws that distinguish between them adequately. That strikes me as nonsense: of course we can formulate all the laws we like. Only humans will obey or disobey them, because only humans will be aware of them. In the good old days, we would hang dogs for supposed crimes. If it made our forefathers feel better, that's one thing, but the poor animals just thought they were being killed - nothing else.

I'm not sure if that's the point Tom was trying to make... but I'm not sure it wasn't either. Tom?

He has also discussed whether animals feel pain, and should we care? If we are devoid of empathy, it doesn't matter. But we aren't, and so we should - and most of us do - care if an animal suffers at our hands. It may be true that we do not understand how animals recognise feelings of pain (or love, or hunger). But we know that certain things cause us pain, and that animals react to pain in much the same way that we do: ergo, animals feel pain and don't like it.

On this I agree. Animals react to pain as we do, we don't like pain, and therefore it is reasonable for us to empathize and wish to avoid causing animals unnecessary pain... which is why (here I go) we, humans, get to decide on what rights we wish to confer on animals.

TYWD