Two opposing philosophies have dominated contemporary discussions of the moral status of non-human animals: (1) animal welfare (welfare) and (2) animal rights (rights viewpoint).
Animal welfare considers that humans make no mistake when they use non-human animals in research, raise them to sell as food, and hunt or hunt them for sport or profit, if the overall benefits of engaging in these activities outweigh the harms these animals bear. Welfare organizers demand that animals not cause unnecessary pain and be treated humanely.
The animal rights view holds that human use of non-human animals, whether in the laboratory, on the farm, or in the wild, is wrong in principle and should be abolished in practice. Questions about how much pain and death are necessary miss the central point. Since non-human animals should not be used in these methods in the first place, no amount of animal pain and death is necessary. Moreover, unlike the concept of well-being, the juridical view maintains that human benefits are completely unrelated to determining how animals are treated. Whatever humans can gain from such use (in the form of money or comfort, gastronomic pleasures, or the advancement of knowledge, for example) is bad and it should be.
While welfare can be viewed as utilitarianism applied to animals, the view of rights has identifiable Kantian features. Immanuel Kant was utterly hostile towards utilitarianism, not because of what it meant it could be done on non-human animals, but because of its effects in relation to the treatment of humans. To the extent that one’s utilitarianism is consistent, he must be aware that not only non-human animals may be harmed in the name of benefiting others; The same is no less true for humans.
Kant abandoned this way of thinking. Instead, he provided an ethics narrative that places strict limits on how individuals should be treated in the name of benefiting others. He emphasized that human beings should always be treated as ends in themselves, not just a means. In particular, it is always wrong, given Kant’s position, to intentionally harm someone so that others can reap some benefit, regardless of the size of that benefit.
The rights viewpoint takes Kant’s position a step further than Kant himself. The legal view asserts that those animals raised to be eaten and used in laboratories, for example, should be treated as ends in themselves, not just as a means. In fact, like humans, these animals have a fundamental moral right to treat them with respect, which is something we fail to do whenever we use our superior physical strength or our general knowledge to harm them in pursuit of benefits for ourselves.
Among the recurring challenges raised against the human rights viewpoint, perhaps the two most common ones include (1) questions about where the line is drawn and (2) the absence of reciprocity. Regarding the latter, critics ask how humans can assume the duty to respect the rights of other animals when these animals do not have a duty to respect ours. Supporters of the human rights standpoint respond by noting that the lack of reciprocity is not unique in the present case. Few would deny that it is our duty to respect the rights of young children, for example, even while admitting that it is futile to demand reciprocity by respecting our rights.
Regarding issues of line drawing, the juridical view asserts that basic rights are possessed by those animals that bring a unified psychological existence to the world – those animals, in other words, that humans share a family of perceptions, attitudes, senses, and volitionalities. Capacity. These animals not only see and hear, and not only feel pain and pleasure, but they are also able to remember the past, anticipate the future, and intentionally act in order to secure what they want in the present. They have an autobiography, not just a biology.
When one draws the line between CV animals and other animals it is bound to be controversial. Few would deny that mammals and birds qualify, because both common sense and our best science speak with one voice on this issue. Moreover, new evidence regarding fish perception and behavior is prompting some philosophers and scientists to recognize the psychological complexity of these animals.
Issues drawing lines To one side, the rights-based view can rationally advocate for the sweeping and even radical social changes involved in recognizing animal rights – the end of animal model research and the disintegration of commercial animal agriculture, to name a few. Two examples.
