My previous post on animal rights outlined ideas of natural rights, and particularly focused on Thomas Hobbes’ idea of man’s state of nature as awarding natural freedoms to that individual. This idea of natural rights is tempered by the fact that in modern society, any rights that are given true protection are embodied in law. While many people may consider, for example, the right to same-sex marriage to be a ‘right’, this belief is ineffective in and of itself; for a right to same-sex marriage to be effective, it must be recognised in law (which thankfully, is gradually occurring worldwide).

How do we balance the rights of humans and the rights of animals?

Both human and animal societies take steps to balance the rights of individuals with the rights of the group: humans, by way of law; animals, by way of social hierarchy and associated rules of behaviour. For humans, it can be argued that there is a clear social contract; but for animals, this idea is debatable. Animals are not capable of making a social contract with each other; but then again, a mentally delayed human is also not capable of participating in the social contract idea due to their inability to consent to it. A further difficulty is considering what constitutes the in-group and the out-group. Are animals included in the same group as humans when it comes to balancing rights, or are they in a separate group (in which they don’t have 'rights’ against each other, only behaviours and hierarchy).

Social contract theory

The idea of the social contract cannot effectively be extended to animals, and there are many questions as to whether it is even effective as a theory applying to humankind. There is a difference between electing not to comply with the social contract (e.g. by committing a crime/harming another person for personal gain), and being incapable of participating in the social contract. Nonetheless, those who are incapable of complying (due to lack of mental reasoning capacity) may still stand to benefit very much from the contract. The social contract idea does not require a “tit-for-tat” swap of rights: it only requires that an individual surrender some rights in exchange for others: but if any given being cannot consent, it doesn’t matter if they surrender rights and receive others in return.

Based on the social contract idea, humans agree not to kill other humans to preserve peace in society. So why do humans also agree not to kill some animals such as cats or dogs, but agree that killing others is okay? Likewise with humans: why is killing no humans okay, even though there are many humans (such as children, people in comas, mentally disabled people) who it is arguable cannot consent to the contract in the first place. So why should they be afforded it’s protections? In my view, the social contract theory does not provide a strong foundation for creating moral rules as to how one individual should act towards another.

Utilitarianism

Another theory is the idea of utilitarianism, which focuses on the idea of happiness and maximising utility - perhaps we limit our rights in relation to each other so as to maximise utility for society as a whole. The question is whether the happiness and utility of animals is factored into the equation: are animal lives or animal rights less important than human lives or human rights?

Even within social contract theory, the proper course of action may be in fact that some individuals surrender more than others, to ultimately result in greater utility (maximisation of benefit and reducing harm). Based on an idea of natural rights, humans have a natural right to kill others, including animals, and eat them if they so desire, as these are actions that a person could take in his natural state. All natural rights, however, are tempered by legal rights, and the core legal rights that are generally recognised by Western society are already based on what Hobbes would consider to be the core natural rights. New legal rights are created based on what the majority in society (or the people in charge) consider to be a good to maximise utility and reduce harm. To create new legal rights to protect animals and maximise their happiness, they also need to be factored into the utility equation.

Peter Singer argues that when taking a utilitarian approach, the happiness of all sentient beings should be considered, and that rights should be conferred upon an individual based on its level of self-awareness, regardless of species. This approach has some issues, where there is great variance within a species in terms of self-awareness: should we not protect the happiness of a person in a coma?

Speciesism

Perhaps an inclusive approach could be taken: if any one member of a species is self-aware enough to warrant protecting that individual’s happiness, all members of that species should have rights, and should be factored into the utilitarian equation. This is due to the potential for any given member of that species to have that level of self-awareness, as we cannot be certain that any given member does or does not have that quality.

I also note that a species is an artificial classification of organisms based on physical and genetic similarities between individual creatures. Clearly this may cause some issues where one creature does not easily fit within a species; one could argue that having all members of a species 'tag along’ due to the self-awareness of one member of that species unfairly excludes creatures that do not clearly fit into one species or another. However, I believe that to maximise utility from a practical perspective, we must work within the current understanding of what a species is, and that as a result some un-classified creatures may be excluded.

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