Introduction

In order to respect the basic moral rights of nonhuman animals, we must abolish their use. Once we’ve done this in our own lives by becoming vegan, we are left with the question of how to abolish the use of animals in society at large. Given that the use of animals will not end overnight, and that we have a duty to help today’s animals, the question can be more specifically framed as, “What sort of advocacy leads incrementally to abolition?”

Much of the modern global animal protection movement’s advocacy work is grounded in the belief that we can bring about abolition--or at least animal “liberation”--by focusing on how nonhuman animals are treated by humans. Broadly speaking, the idea is that advocating welfare reform and educating the public about animal suffering will incrementally reduce that suffering, eventually leading to the abolition of animal use or to greater consideration for the preferences of nonhuman animals. In his work, professor Gary L. Francione calls this ideology new welfarism.[1]

New welfarism

There are at least two major strands of new welfarism recognizable within the modern global animal protection movement.

The first is comprised of people who consider themselves abolitionists. Their objective is to eliminate animal use. The second strand includes those utilitarians who, like Peter Singer, seek as their objective the equal consideration of interests or preferences, not abolition. Because utilitarianism is not inherently opposed to animal use, this position can be difficult to distinguish from traditional welfarism, which holds that it is acceptable to use nonhuman animals as a means to human ends. But unlike most traditional welfarists, Singer-style new welfarists believe that humans and animals are equal and that their preferences must always be weighed equally.

Regardless of their differences, what all new welfarists share in common is that they focus their efforts primarily on improving the welfare of exploited animals—i.e., their treatment—rather than directly challenging the notion of animal use.[2] They believe that that their objective can be achieved through welfare-based reforms and by educating the public about how animals are treated. Below are some key beliefs characteristic of new welfarist ideology. A new welfarist need not hold all these beliefs, nor should this list be seen as exhaustive.

1. The new welfarist believes that legal and institutional welfare reform campaigns offer animals increased protection and reduce animal suffering today.


2. The new welfarist believes that, by raising public awareness of the cruelty caused by institutionalized animal exploitation, reform campaigns will prompt people to reduce or even eliminate their use and consumption of animals and products derived from animals. Under this belief, new welfarists support and promote non-vegan vegetarianism as a way to reduce one’s contribution to animal suffering.


3. The new welfarist believes that reform campaigns will damage the animal-using industries.

In the next installment of AR101, I will examine these beliefs in more detail to determine whether they are well-founded or whether we should look to another incremental approach to abolition.

Next: A Closer Look at New Welfarism

Previous: Utilitarianism

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1. See Chapter 2 of Gary L. Francione’s Rain Without Thunder for a more thorough introduction to new welfarism.
2. For an extended discussion of use versus treatment, read Gary L. Francione’s “Introduction / The Abolition of Animal Use versus the Regulation of Animal Treatment” in Animals as Persons.

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Labels: abolition, animal rights, animal welfare, AR101, theory

I was invited to participate as an "Expert" over at Opposing Views, a site that sets up debates on various topics by asking "Experts" to weigh in with their arguments (OV's About page). I mentioned the site previously in a post on California's Proposition 2.

The topic I was asked to take on was Should Animals Have the Same Rights as People? As of now, Bob Torres and I represent similar viewpoints, while two other viewpoints are set forth by Tibor Machan and Paul J. Fitzgerald, S.J..

I've laid out only three arguments at this point, mainly to pick apart the question and to support my views with very basic posts regarding animal rights (you may recognize some of the content from the AR101 series I'm running here). Please take the time to visit and read them:

1. What Are Rights?
2. Sentience is Sufficient for Basic Rights Protection
3. Making Sense of the Question

You may offer your thumbs-up under each argument as a recommendation if you like, or even offer comments in support of or against. Please let me know if you feel there's something else I ought to be arguing, either here in comments or via email by using the "Contact" link above.


I like to hear from you. Comment below or email me.

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Labels: animal rights, theory

Utilitarianism

In a nutshell, utilitarianism holds that the consequence of a given action is what determines its moral worth. According to the principle of utility the right action is that which maximizes "utility." Under hedonistic or classical utilitarianism, utility is defined in terms of pain and pleasure. The morally correct action to take in any given situation, then, is the one that leads to the greatest pleasure for the greatest number of individuals affected by that action.

In counting the pleasures and pains of all those affected, each individual must "count for one and none for more than one." Because nonhuman animals can also be affected by an action (i.e., an action can cause them pleasure or pain), their pleasures and pains must also be taken into consideration when deciding whether an action is wrong or right.

Peter Singer

Peter Singer, probably the most well-known modern proponent of utilitarianism, defines utility in terms of preferences rather than pleasure and pain. Preference utilitarianism holds that what is intrinsically valuable in any given scenario is not pleasure, per se, but the satisfaction of preferences (i.e., desires or interests).[1] Of course, these preferences might include avoiding pain and seeking pleasure, but preference utilitarianism might be seen as a more nuanced or graded approach.

In addition to the principle of utility, Singer advocates even more forcefully a principle of equal consideration for other beings' interests. In determining the consequences of our actions, he argues that we must accord equal consideration to equal interests, even going so far as to say that nonhuman animals have a right to this consideration. He describes at length how excluding nonhuman animals from equal consideration (or otherwise disregarding their interests) is speciesist, an arbitary bias in favor of one's own species membership that is analogous to excluding humans from equal consideration on the basis of their race or sex.[2]

Singer later expressed regret at allowing "the concept of a right to intrude into [his] work so unnecessarily." Though he is often called "the father of the animal rights movement," this stance is not all that surprising when you consider that his views do not and cannot lead to a respect-based animal rights view given his adherence to the principle of utility.[3]

Issue: Tension between equal consideration and utility

The principle of utility is problematic for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the tension between considering like interests equally and maximizing utility.

Despite his belief that we ought to determine what will maximize utility on a case-by-case basis, Singer holds that animals' interests must always be given equal consideration. Though this insistence also informs the egalitarianism of rights theory put forth previously, it creates problems here because taking all interests equally into consideration may well fail to maximize utility, at which point we would no longer operating in the realm of utilitarianism.

The corollary here is that the principle of utility conflicts with the principle of equal consideration when maximizing utility would require us to ignore the interests of some individuals or otherwise allow them to be harmed if doing so serves the "greater good." In other words, utilitarianism’s emphasis on the consequential benefit of a potential act favors the majority and allows for exploitation of the minority.

As Tom Regan writes, “The modest point being urged here is that, for all its emphasis on equality, utilitarianism would sanction recognizable forms of sexism and racism, if the facts happened to turn out a certain way.”[4]

Issue: Treats interests as tradable

The rights view protects interests even when it would benefit others (or the greater good) to violate or ignore them. "[T]he defining characteristic of a respect-based right is that the interest that it protects cannot be compromised for consequential considerations alone."[5] Utilitarianism, on the other hand, treats interests as tradable. If ignoring the interests of certain individuals maximizes utility overall, then utilitarianism would say that the right thing to do in that situation is to ignore those interests in favor of the interests of the many, effectively treating interests as tradable, not inviolable. Such a view "is consistent with animal exploitation if the consequences justify that exploitation and if the decision to exploit is not based on species discrimination."[6]

Indeed, though Singer advocates vegetarianism, it is not certain how he can prescribe this measure on a utilitarian basis. An appeal on consequentialist grounds would suggest that vegetarianism maximizes utility, but the principle of utility could well come down against vegetarianism if the consequences of everyone becoming vegetarian actually turned out to have less utility than if everyone continued to eat at animal products.

Singer thinks that the negative consequences for the animals involved in factory farming outweigh the benefits, but as Regan points out, "[t]he animal industry is big business," and although "[i]t is uncertain exactly how many people are involved in it, directly or indirectly, . . . the number must easily run into the many tens of thousands." Those involved in animal agriculture "have a stake in the animal industry as rudimentary and important as having a job, feeding a family, or laying aside money for their children's education or their own retirement." . . . The problem is that once the preference satisfaction of everyone involved in factory farming (humans and nonhuman) is deemed relevant and counted equitably, Singer's assumed result appears to be much more controversial than he recognizes.[7]

In light of these complications, the utilitarian impact of becoming vegetarian is not at all clear, particularly on the individual level. Because utilitarians must make the moral calculations on a case-by-case basis, they cannot demonstrate that becoming vegetarian will always maximize utility, which means that utilitarianism can make no standing argument for vegetarianism at all, much less veganism.

More consistent with the utilitarian view is his assertion that it may be morally justifiable to eat animals who "have a pleasant existence in a social group suited to their behavioral needs, and are then killed quickly and without pain."[8]

Issues: Fails to offer normative guidance

The vegetarian question points to a lack of normative guidance (i.e., guidelines for standard, everyday behavior) offered by Singer's views. In Animal Rights Theory and Utilitarianism: Relative Normative Guidance, Gary L. Francione reveals utilitarianism's lack of normative guidance by focusing on three components of moral theory that he identifies as the ideal level, the micro-level, and the macro-level.

The ideal level asks what ideal state a theory aims to achieve. The clarity of a theory's ideal state is important because it helps guide micro- and macro-level components of moral decision-making. The micro-level component of a theory guides our personal behavior. The macro-level component examines whether a theory prescribes how to effect incremental change in order to achieve a theories ideal state of affairs.

Under the rights view, it may be said that the ideal state is the complete abolition of institutionalized animal exploitation, a fairly clear, measurable objective. Knowing that this is our ideal state, it becomes rather plain that our personal obligation on the micro level is to avoid participating in activities that, at the very least, contribute directly to animal exploitation (i.e., we ought to be vegan). On the macro level, a coherent prescription for incremental change guides us to a strategy of spreading rights-based ideology and veganism.

Singer's ideal is much more vague, requiring as it does that offer nonhuman animals equal consideration for their interests while maximizing utility. How do we describe or measure this objective, much less know when we have reached it (assuming it is a place one could even "reach")? This view offers no practical guidance for making decisions, ultimately leading us to make best guesses about what is likely to "reduce" suffering to some indeterminable extent.

The calculations required to follow this rule for micro-level decision-making are stunningly complicated. Among our variables are every individual who might be affected by what we choose to do, the preferences those individuals have, and the varying weights of these preferences. Assuming it was possible to gather all this data, we would then have to make comparisons of these prefrences between individuals and across species, and we would have to determine which satisfied preferences maximize utility, which don't, and so on. As if this wasn't burden enough, we must perform this complex calculus for every considered action, and there's still a chance our estimates could be wrong due to our lack of perfect knowledge, our inability to predict how other involved parties might behave, much less our general inability to predict the future.

On the macro-level of decision-making, the admonition to do whatever we think might best reduce suffering is equally unhelpful. Already ourideal state is vague, so this sort of guidance makes it hard to know where we're headed incrementally as a group. Nor do we always know whether and how much our actions will reduce suffering, which is perhaps what leads certain animal advocates to focus on what some new welfare advocates call the "low-hanging fruit."

This approach to advocacy involves welfare campaigns that are problematic for a number of reasons that I will analyze in my next AR101 installment. Suffice it to say for now that the macro-level component here fails to meaningfully distinguish our incremental actions as a movement from those who exploit animals (none of whom believe we ought to, say, increase suffering). It is hard to see how animals will be liberated if we are merely reinforcing the existing paradigm that it is acceptable to use animals, so long as we minimize their suffering.

Conclusion

Compared to a rights-based approach, which simply tells us that equal consideration means equal protection for those interests that are equal (leading to veganism), utilitarianism is unclear and could possibly even lead to immoral results. In my next installment of AR101, I will examine the new welfare approach of the modern "animal rights movement," which is informed by utilitarian thought. As we shall see, utilitarianism's vague, conflicting, and difficult-to-fulfill prescriptions offer little, or worse, confusing guidance for our advocacy.

Next: New Welfarism

Previous: Property

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1. Peter Singer, Practical Ethics, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 14.

2. ______, Animal Liberation, Ecco paperback, first edition (New York: Harper Collins, 2002), 6.

3. Much is made of the influence wrought by Animal Liberation on the "animal rights movement," though its author distances himself from rights theory, calling his use of the term a concession to popular moral rhetoric (Peter Singer, "The Parable of the Fox and the Unliberated Animals," Ethics 88, no. 2 {January 1978}, p. 122). Despite this, the utilitarian's groundbreaking 33 year-old book continues to be recommended by a number of prominent advocates, including People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, as the "animal rights 'bible'." PETA's merchandise catalog states, "If you read only one animal rights book, it has to be this one."

I want to be clear on a few things. Animal Liberation does raise some important philosophical questions regarding our treatment of animals. It is not a trivial work, and it obviously influenced a new movement on behalf of animals that, in some form, is still around today. However, its own author has disavowed rights, and Animal Liberation does not promote any sort of rights theory whatsoever. It is not an animal rights book. As such, it does not provide any clear guidance for rights advocacy.

If you want to read an animal rights book, and you can read only one for some reason, then allow me to recommend Gary L. Francione's Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog? Within that book, you'll find a concise and easy-to-understand discussion of animal rights theory, along with a coherent prescription for a rights-based approach to abolishing animal exploitation.

4. Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, 1st ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 227-28.

5. Gary L. Francione, "Equal Consideration," in Animals as Persons: Essays on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 168.

6. ______, Rain Without Thunder: The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), 49.

7. ______, "Animal Rights Theory and Utilitarianism: Relative Normative Guidance."

8. Singer, Animal Liberation, 229-30

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I hope you're finding this series useful. I enjoy the reading comments I've been receiving so far, so please continue to share your thoughts by commenting below.

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Labels: abolition, animal rights, AR101, theory, utilitarianism

Property status

Humans have long dominated animals, including wild (or "free-living") animals, treating them as if they were our property since well before our laws formally defined them as such. Over time, our sense of entitlement to use animals as things for our benefit became firmly embedded in our culture. Indeed, it was animals' de facto property status that led to them being legally classified as property to begin with.

This deeply entrenched property status is the key obstacle to securing legal rights for nonhuman animals because, as long as humans perceive nonhumans to be property, we will be unable to abolish their legal property status. As mentioned in my previous post, property cannot possess legal rights, only persons can.

Persons are the humans, corporations, and other institutions endowed with rights by law, including the right to own and use property as a means to some recognized end. For instance, a person's bicycle is a means for her to travel from one place to another. That bicycle belongs to her, and she may use or not use it as she sees fit. Because the bicycle is an inanimate object, it is not sentient, and therefore it has no interests for her to take into consideration.

Unlike bicycles and all other inanimate objects, sentient animals do have interests that merit consideration, and this presents us with our problem: Because they are legally classified as property that humans may use as a means to any recognized end, just like inanimate objects such as bicycles, they are prevented from possessing any legal rights that would protect their interests.

Legal welfarism

In lieu of legal rights, numerous welfare laws and anticruelty statutes have been enacted over the past 200 years or so, with the intent of protecting at least one very important animal interest that humans have recognized as significant enough to be given our consideration: that of not being made to suffer. To avoid causing animals "unnecessary" suffering in the course of our using them as means to our ends, welfare laws seek to ensure that persons treat animals "humanely." "Necessity" is evaluated by balancing human interests against the interests of animals in a given scenario.

Gary L. Francione identifies the futility of this balancing act in Animals, Property, and the Law:

...although the law prohibits the infliction of "unnecessary" pain and suffering on animals and requires that they be treated "humanely," these terms are interpreted in light of the legal status of animals as property, the importance of property in our culture, and the general tendency of legal doctrine to protect and to maximize the value of property. (p. 4)

In other words, as long as animals are regarded as the property of humans, their interests will never count for as much as legally protected human interests, and so the scale will be rigged in favor of humans before the balancing has even begun. Despite the existence of myriad animal welfare laws and cruelty statutes intended to protect animals from suffering, then, animals' interests remain more or less unprotected. Without legal rights, even an animal's most significant interests cannot be protected from being traded away in favor of any trivial human interest so long as that human interest is in some recognized end (see Legal welfarism illustrated, below, for an example).

Francione calls this entire framework "legal welfarism." Unlike rights theory, which regards every animal as an end, legal welfarism regards nonhuman animals solely as a means to some end ("food animals," "lab animals," "game animals," "fur animals," "companion animals," "animal actors," etc.). Presuming from the outset that animals are property for us to use, legal welfarism asks only that we determine whether or not an animal is being treated "humanely" in the course of being exploited--and provides them with only that level of protection that facilitates humans using them as a means to their recognized ends, e.g., advancing scientific knowledge, producing food, and so on. As Francione suggests, "The only activities that remain to be prohibited by such statutes are those where no socially recognized benefit can be traced to the animal killing or suffering." (p. 129)

Legal welfarism illustrated

To illustrate legal welfarism in effect, let's examine a couple of hypothetical scenarios involving the use of a cow. Bear in mind throughout that the cow has an interest in not being used as property precisely to avoid being the victim in either of these hypothical scenarios in the first place.

Now, to determine whether or not an activity would be prohibited by an anticruelty statute, we must break the question of "necessary" suffering into two parts (See Figure 1, below). Part 1 asks whether the end is recognized, i.e., whether or not using the cow provides some recognized human benefit. If the end is, say, "satisfying a teenager's sadistic interests," the answer for Scenario 1 is "No." The law does not recognize the end of satisfying one's sadistic intersts as providing some human benefit--quite the contrary. Regardless of the teenager's exact plans for the cow, any suffering he causes the cow in the end of satisfying his sadistic interests will be considered "unnecessary," and is thus prohibited.

Case closed. On to Scenario 2.

If the end in question is "using a cow for the purpose of food, clothing (or some other recognized end)," then the answer to Part 1 under the legal welfarism paradigm would be "Yes." While the cow has the exact same interest in not suffering as in Scenario 1, the law recognizes that producing food and clothing provides a human benefit, and so it is determined that this activity or end is "necessary." The cow's interest is effectively trumped, and so we move on to Part 2.

Part 2 asks whether the means the cow's owner employs to the end of using a cow to produce food or clothing is consistent with that end. If the cow's owner lets her starve due to neglect, then the owner will have caused "unnecessary" suffering. Neglect is therefore prohibited. Starving one's cow is not consistent with the end of using that cow to produce food or clothing. It's a pointless "waste."

On the other hand, if a cow experiences suffering in the course of being used as a means to the end of producing food and clothing for human benefit, that suffering is considered "necessary" so long as the suffering is the result of a standard industry practice. Of course, the law also recognizes as "necessary" the death of the cow as a means to achieving the recognized end of feeding and clothing humans, despite the cow's demonstrable interest in staying alive.

The law will rule as "unnecessary" only that suffering which does not conflict with the animal owner's ability to exploit an animal efficiently. Generally, however, the law will defer to property owners when determining whether or not a certain activity is necessary.

It's generally assumed under the legal welfarism paradigm that a property owner wouldn't intentionally devalue his property by causing that property "unnecessary" suffering. Therefore, whatever suffering the owner does incur must be "necessary" to increase the value of the property or maximize the benefits of that use for humans.

What about "wild" animals?

Though many nonhuman animals are born free in nature, as non-persons they still do not have a legal right not to be property. Though they may not technically be property, they are still regarded as if they are property (e.g., as mere things, or potential property), and our laws allow humans to "convert" certain wild animals into their personal property through the act of hunting and capturing or killing those animals.

All animals' interests may be traded away in favor of human interests as long as they are not protected by legal rights. And, even though some animals aren't technically personal property, their property status always tips the scale in favor of human interests, as if they were in fact property.

Conclusion

As long as animals are regarded as property, the balancing of animal and human interests is futile. The only way to balance the scales--to honestly give the like interests of humans and nonhumans equal consideration--is to give animals legal rights that protect their interests, too. Then we'll be on a level playing field. But if we ever want to see this happen, we must first abolish their property status--starting with the very perception that it is acceptable to use animals as if they were property.

Next post: Utilitarianism

Previous post: Animal Rights


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Labels: abolition, animal rights, AR101, property, property status, theory

Introduction

As with the term "rights," there is a great deal of confusion about the term "animal rights." Much of this confusion has been caused not just by the media and the industries that exploit nonhuman animals, but also by activists and animal advocacy groups using the term to loosely describe any actions purported to improve the conditions of animals used by humans. In other words, rather than promoting the moral or legal rights of animals, some so-called "animal rights activists" focus on regulating animal welfare--how animals are treated.

Further confusing the issue, some animal rights activists seek legal rights for only a select category of sentient nonhuman animals (such as great apes), based on characteristics such as higher-order cognitive abilities. The rights theory I put forth here--laid out in far greater detail in Gary L. Francione's highly recommended Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog?--holds that any sentient being has at least one basic moral right simply by virtue of that being's sentience: The right not be treated merely as a means to another's end.

Sentience

To be sentient is to be conscious or self-aware, capable of perception or feeling. Sentient humans and nonhumans feel sensations of pain, pleasure and so on. When a being is sentient, s/he will naturally have interests. For instance, the capacity for sentient beings to feel pain provides them with a clear interest in not feeling pain.

In recognition of this particular interest, we generally consider it unacceptable to inflict pain on another sentient being unless there is an extraordinarily good reason. Take the example of a boy who harms a nonhuman simply to satisfy his morbid curiosity. He straps an ordinary dog down on a table and cuts her open to have a look inside. As he does this, the dog yelps, howls, and struggles, but the boy keeps cutting, ignoring her cries.

I think it's safe to assume we all find the boy's behavior objectionable. Various reasons may be offered for this, from our concern that the boy has psychological problems--and that these problems could lead to him harm other humans some day--to our concern that the dog might belong to another human who has an emotional attachment to her. But these are not the fundamental reasons for our objection. We are upset by the example because we recognize that the boy is causing the dog unnecessary pain.

If the dog was not sentient, then she wouldn't have an interest in not being caused pain (because non-sentient beings are unable to sense pain), and so there would be no harm done. But, of course, we know that the dog is sentient, and we know that the boy's actions cause her much pain.

Now, if we were to agree that the pain was for some justifiable reason necessary, we might be distressed by what is being done to the dog, but we would not object to it as a moral matter. For instance, if the boy was attacked by the dog and killed her to protect himself from a similar fate, we might be saddened by her death, but we would say that it was justified in this particular situation. However, it cannot be reasonably held that the boy needs to harm the dog merely to satisfy his curiosity.

This example illustrates how, as long as a being is sentient, we recognize--as a moral matter--that the being has an interest in not being harmed, which cannot be ignored or overridden unless it is truly necessary to do so. This belief is based on no other characteristic than the being's ability to feel that pain. No other characteristics beyond sentience are necessary to merit moral consideration.

Equal Consideration

The principle of equal consideration holds that, as a basic moral matter, we ought to treat like cases alike. Viewed in terms of interests, the principle requires that the like interests of various beings must be given equal consideration. As described above, nonhumans and humans are alike in at least one important, morally relevant respect: they are sentient and, as such, they have interests that must be considered. Extending the principle of equal consideration to all sentient beings requires that we give nonhumans' interests equal weight to humans' interests. Where our interests are the same, we must weigh them equally.

So how does this work?

Let's examine a simple case involving humans. Morally, we disapprove of killing other humans without justification (e.g., self defense). This is because we recognize that human beings have an interest in not being killed. We take this interest very seriously, protecting it with a legal right. A person's interest in not being killed does not derive from skin color, sex, or cognitive abilities. When we give equal weight to the interests of white and black people, people of any sex or intelligence level, we recognize that they all have an equal interest in continued existence, and we accept that we might protect this interest equally.

Species is not the basis for an interest in continued existence, either. Humans do not have an interest in continued existence because they are human, but because they are sentient. As previously discussed, all sentient beings have interests, including a fundamental interest in staying alive.¹ According to the principle of equal consideration, to whatever extent we respect a human's interest in not being killed, then we must also respect a nonhuman's interest in not being killed. If we accept that a human's interest in continued existence cannot be outweighed by another human's interest in pleasure, then we must accept that a nonhuman's interest in continued existence cannot by outweighed by a human's interest in pleasure.

There is simply no non-arbitrary difference between humans and other animals that justifies treating their like interests differently.² Remember, we accord equal consideration where our interests are alike. Because there is no characteristic possessed by sentient nonhumans that justifies giving their like interests less consideration than our own, they ought to be protected equally. This brings us to animal rights.

Animal Rights

Recall from my previous AR101 post that rights protect one's interests against those who would disregard those interests. All sentient beings have interests, both human and nonhuman, and so they all belong in the moral community of rightholders. When we say that nonhuman animals have moral rights, we are basically acknowledging that some of their interests are like ours and that these interests must be given equal consideration to our own. So, if we have a moral right not be killed (even if it might benefit someone to kill us), then our understanding of the principle of equal consideration leads us to the conclusion that nonhuman animals have that moral right as well, as they have the exact same underlying interest.

As discussed previously, we expect that, at some point, legally defined rights will reflect the moral rights that we already accept. Moral and legal rights for animals, then, derive from the notion of equal consideration for their basic interests. Saying that animals have rights is the same as saying that animals are rightholders. It doesn't necessarily say which rights animals have morally, and which they should be granted legally. Moral rights would, of course, become better understood as we begin to give the interests of nonhuman animals equal consideration. The expectation is that legal rights would follow along the same lines.

While we may not agree on all the specific moral rights possessed by sentient nonhuman animals, but there must be at least one fundamental moral right they hold if any other rights are to make sense: The right not be treated as a thing, as merely the means to another's end. This must also be granted as a legal right if any other legal animal rights are going to mean anything. Nonhuman beings simply have no legal rights as long as they are regarded as property, i.e., a means to the ends of a person. Remember, property cannot have rights, only persons can.

In my next post, part four of AR101, I will discuss in more detail how property status relates to animal rights, along with its implications.

Next post: Property Status

Previous post: Rights


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1. Remember, if one is not sentient, one simply has no interests to speak of.
2. There are certainly some interests sentient beings do not have in common. For instance, nonhumans do not have a demonstrable interest in voting, bearing arms, and so on, and therefore we are not obligated to consider those interests. After all, you cannot give consideration to an interest if it does not exist.

Labels: abolition, animal rights, AR101, theory

Animals as Persons: Essays on on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation was released May 23rd, but it has taken me a while to finish reading Gary L. Francione's latest book because I'm perpetually swamped lately. However, working it into my ridiculous schedule was relatively easy, in part because the book is comprised of individual, self-contained essays that allowed me to conveniently break my reading up into manageable sessions as time permitted. You might find this helpful as well. While the essays range in length, none of them are terribly long (particularly after the first two), and together they all provide an excellent and highly readable introduction to Professor Francione's abolitionist theory of animal rights. If you are one of those people who have put off reading his earlier books due to time constraints or for any other reason, this might be an ideal place to start.

I recommend not skipping over the introduction, particularly if you've never read Francione before. In it, he gets right to the pivotal assertion that the animal advocacy movement is, in effect, two very different movements: one that seeks to abolish animal exploitation by eradicating the property status of animals, and the other a movement that seeks the regulation of animal-using industries while failing to effectively challenge the property status of animals.

He expands on the core concepts of abolitionism in the first chapter, "Animals as Persons." That essay is itself a relatively brief but thorough presentation of Francione's theory as developed more fully in Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog? (ITAR) While it is not a substitute for reading that book, "Animals as Persons" is a very clear essay that will quickly have you up to speed on the basic concepts.

The next chapter is an essay called "Reflections on Animals, Property, and the Law and Rain Without Thunder." In it, Francione responds to various critics who have argued that the property status of animals does not necessarily prevent advocates from improving animal welfare, and that animal welfare regulation is an effective way of moving incrementally toward recognition that animals have more than the value that we assign to them.

You don't necessarily need to have read the two books to appreciate "Reflections," though I'm sure I got more out of it because I had. I found the essay particularly interesting because Francione deconstructs real-world legislation such as Florida's gestation crate ban and California's foie gras ban. While he frequently deconstructs current events on his blog, as he did with the announcement that KFC Canada would adopt a controlled-atmosphere killing policy, these case studies offer new readers relevant and useful applications of his abolitionist theory.

In his third essay, "Taking Sentience Seriously," Francione focuses on flaws in the "similar-minds" theory, a critical analysis all the more relevant in light of news that Spain's parliament plans to extend legal rights to life and freedom for great apes. Based as it is on cognitive abilities rather than sentience, this pending legislation is a case in point for Francione, so you'll definitely want to read chapter 3 if you don't know why this seemingly good news is a bad precedent for animal rights.

Returning to his critics, chapter four's essay, "Equal Consideration," focuses specifically on Cass Sunstein's review of ITAR, in which he claims that Francione fails to justify why animal advocates should not focus on regulating human treatment of animals rather than abolishing animal use. This gives Francione an excellent opportunity to point out some fatal flaws in Sunstein's thinking, along with that of Jeremy Bentham and Peter Singer, who seem to believe that some sentient beings have no interest in continuing to live, despite the logical implication that their very sentience gives these animals an interest in continued existence.

Francione's fifth essay examines the justifications for vivisection, which he also covers in IATR (along with descriptions of numerous specific experiments). Here, too, he observes that even if there is some plausible empirical claim for necessity, this form of animal use cannot be morally justified. "The Use of Nonhuman Animals" is one of the clearest, most concise critiques of vivisection I have read, from both the empirical and moral points of view. While the empirical section should be sufficient in and of itself to clear up any confusion as to whether vivisection is as valuable as is usually claimed, Francione footnotes our way to additional resources, and of course he follows this up with a moral critique that is impossible to refute without engaging in hypocrisy.

His next essay, "Ecofeminism and Animal Rights," is actually a 1996 review of Beyond Animal Rights: A Feminist Caring Ethic for the Treatment of Animals, in which he examines arguments made against animal rights and for an "ethic of care." Like Cass Sunstein's review of IATR, essays in Beyond Animal Rights suggest that we do not need to end the institutionalized exploitation of nonhuman animals in order to include them within the moral community, and even go as far as to actually legitimize that exploitation, ironically perpetuating speciesist hierarchy at the same time that they condemn the rights view as hierarchical. Francione swiftly and effectively counters these views.

Finally, Francione turns his attention to perhaps the world's best-known animal rights author and philosopher, Tom Regan, who in his seminal The Case for Animal Rights makes a sustained, comprehensive, and complex philosophical argument for animal rights. In the course of his argument, which can be seen as a case for which criteria are valid for inclusion in the moral community, he presents the "lifeboat case" as an example of a conflict between rightholders. The lifeboat case is a hypothetical scenario Regan resolves in part by claiming that death is a greater harm to humans than it is to nonhumans such as dogs. Francione critiques this view with "Comparable Harm and Equal Inherent Value," a 1995 essay updated with a 2008 postscript to respond to the new preface Regan wrote in 2004 for the second edition of The Case for Animal Rights, in which he responded to critics of his lifeboat example.

One of the few drawbacks of gathering together all these different essays is that, even though the case studies and responses to specific criticisms may prompt you to understand Francione's abolitionist theory more clearly, you frequently end up reading the same thing you've read elsewhere in his work, including other essays in this book, and sometimes nearly even verbatim. However, it is that very deja vu experience that reminds you how so many supposedly different debates always come back to the fundamentals, which we would do well to learn... and that may just be the reason Francione keeps repeating them.

In recapping his abolitionist animal rights theory and defending it with such precision, clarity, and authority, Gary Francione successfully reasserts the view that nonhuman animals will not be meaningfully protected from unnecessary harm so long as they are considered human property, and that welfare reforms or variations on the theme are incapable of leading to their emancipation. Animals as Persons is a must-read for anyone claiming to support or to even simply be interested in animal rights. Right now you can purchase it and all Columbia University Press animal studies titles at a steep 50% off until August 1st.

While you await your copy, you can read the publisher's interview with Francione and listen to his most recent interview (part 1) on Vegan Freak Radio (part 2).


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Labels: abolition, animal rights, book, reviews, theory

Rights

The term "rights" is widely misunderstood. It will be helpful here to distinguish between moral and legal rights. These classes of rights are similar in at least one respect: in both cases, a right protects a person’s interest by providing that person with a claim against any party who interferes with the satisfaction of the person's protected interest.

An example

Let's look at an example in which a person is protected by both kinds of rights.

Person A is an average human being whose interest in continuing to live we can hopefully agree is important enough that it should not be arbitrarily ignored by any other person. When we say that Person A has "a right to live," we are more or less stating that Person A's interest in continued existence is protected by a "claim" against any person and/or actions that would prevent Person A from continuing to live. Another way of looking at this is that the right protecting Person A's interest in continued existence imposes a duty on other people not to ignore this interest.

Of course, there are limitations on this protection. If Person A attempts to kill another person, then most people would not object to the other party defending herself with lethal force, or to Person A being shot and killed by an officer of the law. Person A's interest in continuing to live has not evaporated, but his actions have provided appropriate justification for ignoring that interest.

With this example in mind, let's take a look at the difference between legal and moral rights.

Legal rights

The law identifies that certain interests ought to be protected, even if infringing upon those interests would serve the interests of another person, or the interests of the greater good. When a person's legal right is violated by another party, then the right provides the person with a justified legal claim against the violating party.

Valid legal claims can lead to various legal sanctions against the violating party, including financial penalties and/or imprisonment. Legal rights are generally codified and enforced by a political institution, such as a government, and they are held by certain entities functioning as legal "persons," such as humans and corporations.

Moral rights

Moral rights derive from objective morality, not from governmental authority. They can be understood to have approximately the same logical structure as legal rights, but they are not backed up with the same sort of protection offered by legal rights. However, the claim a person has against another party who infringes upon a moral right is no less valid. Consequences for violating moral rights can range from a personal demand for an apology to being ostracized by one's community.

The relationship between moral and legal rights

Moral rights and legal rights are distinctly different, but they are closely related. We can think of a moral right as an underlying, pre-legal form of a right. Whatever moral rights a being holds will ideally (if not now, at least some day) be reflected in the legal system. For instance, our moral right to liberty is reflected in our legal right to that liberty. As public opinions about right and wrong shift, laws generally evolve along with them. Humans enslaved in the United States before 1865 had the same basic moral rights as every other human, but these moral rights were not reflected in the law until the 13th Amendment was passed.

It is possible for legal rights to clash with moral rights. For example, some animal rights advocates believe that all sentient beings have at least one basic moral right: the right not to be treated exclusively as a resource by others. This moral right conflicts directly with the morally indefensible legal right humans have to own nonhumans.

Other considerations

A right typically does not need to be understood by someone who possesses that right in order to receive its protection. For example, the interests of children and mentally incompetent persons are protected by rights. Claims to these rights can usually be made on their behalf.

Because nonhuman animals are legally classified as property instead of persons, they cannot possess legal rights.

Conclusion

In my next post, I will describe animal rights. It will be helpful to keep in mind the above discussion as we consider what interests nonhuman animals have.

Next post: Animal Rights

Previous post: The Need


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Labels: abolition, animal rights, AR101, theory

This is the first in a series of posts I am writing to introduce readers to the most basic fundamentals of the abolitionist approach to animal rights as laid out by Gary L. Francione. I have also read works by Joan Dunayer and Lee Hall but, for my purposes here, Francione's body of work currently offers the most thorough and original explication of abolitionist animal rights and our duties as animal rights advocates.

Though this blog is obviously not the best forum for me to be completely comprehensive, that is not my goal. If you're looking for that, you should be reading the following books anyway: Rain Without Thunder, Introduction to Animal Rights, and Animals as Persons. Instead I will attempt to distill in my own words the basics of abolitionist animal rights advocacy that I have learned over the past 18 months or so. I will work through the basics, beginning with an understanding of the term rights, and working through what it means to be an animal rights advocate.

Post One:  The Need

The animal rights "movement" has been diluted by welfare-oriented advocacy to such an extent that the term "animal rights" has come to be widely understood merely as a catch-all label that refers to any activity carried out on behalf of animals, whether the activity is related to the moral or legal rights of animals at all. Most often it is not. 

Labels: abolition, animal rights, AR101, theory