Month: June 2019

I have a friend who you might say is a poster-child for the animal rights movement; aggressively vegan and ceaselessly championing the cause of the ethical treatment of animals. She tirelessly argues that all life is precious, that causing suffering is cruel and immoral, and that, therefore, animals should be afforded essentially the same rights as humans. She is not alone of course; from public organisations like Greenpeace and PETA to the grassroots level of your average man-on-the-street, our society has evolved to embrace a greater level of compassion for non-human animals than we previously possessed. The public outrage over the recent illegal killing of Cecil the lion is only the most recent articulation of our apparent love for animals (counter-accusations of hypocrisy or misjudged priorities regarding humanitarian crises in places like Syria notwithstanding). It is perhaps understandable then that movements like veganism and the broader animal rights cause have swollen in popularity over recent years. A study by analysts Mintel in 2014 found that 1 in 8 UK adults now identifies as vegetarian, ditching meat and fish entirely. Many of these same people would also argue that the best way to protect our animal brethren is to afford them the same rights as humans enjoy. I don’t entirely disagree with the logic employed by such arguments, but I do not believe that animals should have the same right to life as humans, largely because I disagree with the essential premises and definitions that underpin these views.

The concept of ‘rights’ entails an appreciation of their moral value, something animals are incapable of doing. We have ideas of ‘rights’ and their application because we are moral beings, free to choose, with an awareness of right and wrong and the capacity to override our baser urges because of this. Animals are not moral beings, they are instinctual; they act on impulse and the desire for survival, comfort, and procreation. The human right to life is a manifestation and application of our moral belief in the value of life. To extend this same right to animals would be to devalue it, as animals are unable to engage with the concept in the same way. If we were to extend this right to animals, we would be forced to look at the males in Cecil’s newly leaderless pride who will kill his cubs in order to stand a better chance of mating with the lionesses with the same sense of moral abhorrence as we would a man who murders a woman’s children and then has sex with her, to say nothing of the woman who would willingly go to bed with such a man. It is understandable to view all life as precious and want to protect animals from harm, but there is simply no logical connection between that idea and extended a ‘right to life’ to animals. The popularity of such views perhaps exists due to our increasing awareness and sympathy for the plight of animals has become more ubiquitous, while true critical thought and logic have remained (unfortunately) the remit of a privileged few in their ivory towers. This shows us then, that there is no convincing logical connection between our desire to protect animals and the extension of a ‘right to life’ to them. This, coupled with the implications of such an idea if we do accept it regardless, is a primary reason why animals should not be afforded such a right.

The other side of this coin is the idea of moral responsibility, inevitably coupled with rights, which we equally cannot afford to extend to animals. It is a fact all too often forgotten in our modern, entitled society that our moral rights do not exist in isolation, but rather that we have our part to play in preserving the moral well-being of our society as well. To award animals, the same rights as humans in any way is to force upon them the same expectations of moral responsibility as we expect of fellow human beings. As previously mentioned, animals are not capable of critical thought; they have no concept of morality and are thus incapable of following moral laws. It would be unfair of us to expect animals to conform to the same standards as we do. We may say ‘bad dog’ when Fido bites the postman or defecates in the street, but we do not mean ‘bad’ in the same way as when we say ‘murder is bad’, because it would be ridiculous to equate the two. Considering the further implications of such an idea, we would be effectively condemning a vast number of species to extinction. To forbid the predator from hunting due to its prey’s ‘right to life’ is just as silly as it sounds. It is not hard to see how unfair, and when the consequences are considered, how ridiculous extending the right to life to animals would be.

Rights have to be taken, defended, and cannot be given and animals are incapable of doing this. To quote the late comedian George Carlin, ‘They aren’t rights if someone can take them away.’ I am inclined to agree. The concept of rights is one that has developed over a very long time, from the Israelites beginning to think that perhaps Egyptian slavery was not their destined lot in life, to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, our thinking continually evolves. As such, it makes little sense to include the animal kingdom in our view of the ‘right to life’.

These are some of the reasons – among many – for why I do not favour the idea of animals sharing the right to life. It would be unfair though not to consider what value treating animals as if they had this same right might have, and I do not discard the idea entirely.

We cannot discount the scale of environmental challenges we as a society face today, when faced with the extinction of so many species, perhaps treating animal life with the same respect we do human life is a viable strategy. In order to preserve biodiversity, which after all is in our best interests too, we must do more to protect endangered species. While we may be different from the rest of nature we are not entirely separate from it, our fate is as entwined with the rest of the biosphere as any other species, albeit not as fragile. It is important for us to preserve and protect animal species as much as we can, for our own sake, and this entails inherent respect for these lives. Quite simply, we need nature more than nature needs us. Our food, the materials of our homes, clothes, books, computers, medicine. In the future, we may need resources for things we don’t yet know drawn from species we are unaware of the existence of that we may already be unknowingly wiping out. Perhaps then there is value in treating the lives of some endangered species with the same respect we treat human lives, even if we do not go as far as an objective ‘right to life’.

Furthermore, the barrier between human and non-human life is becoming increasingly slim, and so less obvious how different animal life is to our own. The philosopher and bioethicist Peter Singer (arguably the father of the modern animal rights movement) has spent much of his life working to erode the division between human and non-human life, and therefore, the division in value. Life is life, he argues, regardless of whether it is human or animal, and should be treated with the same degree of value. “The notion that human life is sacred just because it is human life is medieval,” says Singer, and indeed some modern neuroscience supports this notion (perhaps minus the idea of sanctity). In fact, I do feel an affinity for this argument. Many times I have met the gaze of a gorilla or other higher primate through the bars of a zoo (often such animals live in captivity because they are so endangered in the wild) and on seeing the all-too-human glint in their eyes something in me rails against the idea that these creatures, so close to us in so many ways, should live cage. I understand that this is an experience shared by many.  The line of what defines ‘consciousness’ is yet to be drawn, but perhaps in the future, as our understanding of brain and mind develops, there may be a case for an animal right to life. To further quote Peter Singer, “What one generation finds ridiculous, the next accepts; the third shudders when it looks back on what the first did.”

This is undeniably a difficult and contentious issue. My great-grandchildren may judge me, but the question of rights is a hard enough one to apply only to humans, let alone animals. But if it is indeed ‘rights’ we are talking about, it seems my core philosophical understanding of what is involved in such a concept is what precludes me from believing a right to life can be extended to animals.