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I don't expect that many readers will be converted to the cause of animalrights by reading this book. Nor have I dealt with advances in the legal protection of animals both in practice and in theory. I have focused exclusively on moral theory. Nevertheless, I believe that a good theoretical argument is worth the effort.
It is simply projustice, insisting only that the scope of justice be seen to include respect for the rights of animals. The animalrights movement is not for the faint of heart. How we change the dominant misconception of animals—indeed, whether we change it—is to a large extent a political question.
I believe that this view of the moral status of animals is radically mistaken, not because its distinguished proponents are somehow misinformed about the facts or insensitive in their attitudes, but rather because they misunderstand the basic terms of their own moral vocabulary even as applied to human beings.
But it seems to me, nevertheless, that in general, animals are among the sorts of beings of whom rights can meaningfully be predicated and denied. We must now ask ourselves for whose sake ought we to treat (some) animals with consideration and humaneness? Joel Feinberg , "The Rights of Animals and Unborn Generations," chap.
The initial attractiveness of utilitarianism as a moral theory on which to rest the call for the better treatment of animals was noted in an earlier context. Because animals are sentient (i.e., Because animals are sentient (i.e.,
There is no inconsistency in rejecting plant rights while accepting animalrights. If Smith thinks that plant rights and animalrights stand or fall together, then he is confused, for there is a morally relevant difference between plants and animals, namely, that only the latter are sentient.
If people are encouraged to believe that the harm done to animals matters morally only when these animals belong to endangered species, then these same people will be encouraged to regard the harm done to other animals as morally acceptable.
There are also some things we cannot learn by using humans, if we respect their rights. The rights view merely requires moral consistency in this regard. ( Tom Regan , The Case for AnimalRights , updated with a new preface [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004], 388 [first edition published in 1983])
To inflict death or pain on animals for scientific or medical research is wrong morally, and ought to be prohibited. This follows from everything said in the text about the rights of animals. This does not mean that animals may never be deliberately harmed or become subjects of research.
That Kant should hold such a view should not be surprising; it is a direct consequence of his moral theory, the main outlines of which may be briefly, albeit crudely, summarized. As such, no moral agent is ever to be treated merely as a means. Moral agents are not nonrational, do not have "only a relative value," and are not things.
An exception for vegetables is thus consistent with the categorical imperative; an exception for humans with respect to eating animals is not. Franklin, AnimalRights and Moral Philosophy [New York: Columbia University Press, 2005], 45 [endnote omitted])
In 2002 the German Parliament amended Article 26 of the Basic Law to give nonhuman animals the right to be “respected as fellow creatures” and to be protected from “avoidable pain.” Half of the sixteen German states already have some sort of animalrights provisions in their constitutions. Salem and Andrew N.
Those rights set forth in the Bill of Rights, for example, were not rights that citizens of the United States could claim as legal rights before these rights were drawn up and the legal machinery necessary for their enforcement was in place. First, moralrights, if there are any, are universal.
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