Planet Debate 2011 September/October l-d release Animal Rights
Cognitive Capacity Does Not Necessitate Rights Extension
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- Cognitive Capacity Bad Justification for Rights
- Genetic Similarity Does not Necessitate Rights
- **Problems with Recognizing Animal Rights”
Cognitive Capacity Does Not Necessitate Rights ExtensionSCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE DOES NOT JUSTIFY LINES BETWEEN NONHUMAN ANIMALS BASED ON SUPPOSED VALUE Lesley J. Rogers & Gisela Kaplan, Professors of Neuroscience and Animal Behavior, University of New England, 2004, Animal Rights: Current debates and new directions, eds. Sunstein & Nussbaum, p. 186 However, rights deal with positive freedoms, and such freedoms must be enjoyed if they are content and species specific. However, given our present state of knowledge of the needs and capabilities of classes of animals, let alone individual species, we feel, as biologists, that we first and foremost ought to guard against, or at least be very cautious about, the temptation of creating a scale of lesser or greater value of one species over another.
Marc Bekoff, Professor of Biology, University of Colorado @ Boulder, 2003, The Animal Ethics Reader, eds. Armstrong & Botzler, p. 121 It is important to talk to the animals and let them talk to us; these reciprocal conversations should allow us to see the animals for who they are. To this end…Gluck (1997), in stressing the importance of considering what we do to animals from the perspective of the animal, emphasizes the need to go beyond science and to see animals as who they are. Our respect for animals must be motivated by who they are and not by who we want them to be in our anthropocentric scheme of things. As Taylor (1986, p. 313) notes, a switch away from anthropocentrism to biocentrism, in which human superiority comes under critical scrutiny, “may require a profound moral reorientation.” EMPHASIS ON COGNITIVE CAPACITY WILL REQUIRE RIGHTS FOR COMPUTERS Richard Posner, Federal Circuit Judge, 2004, Animal Rights: Current debates and new directions, eds. Sunstein & Nussbaum, p. 55 Wise is aware that too much emphasis on cognitive capacity as the basis for rights invites the question: So what about computers? Some computer scientists and philosophers believe that computers will soon achieve consciousness. Wise brushes aside this possibility with the observation that chimpanzees and human beings have traveled a similar evolutionary path, and computers have not—though one might have thought that, since computers are a product of the human mind, they may “think” along somewhat similar lines. Wise makes himself a hostage to future scientific advances by ignoring the possibility that there may some day be computers that have as many “neurons” as chimpanzees, “neurons” that moreover are “wired” similarly. Such computers may well be conscious. This will be a problem for Wise, for whom the essence of equality under law is that individuals with similar cognitive capacities should be treated alike regardless of their species. Nothing in his analysis would permit him to limit this principle to “natural” species—for what if a human being could be created in a laboratory from chemicals, without use of any genetic material? Wise would have to agree that such a human being would have the same rights as any other human being; rights in his view are not based on genes. So why are computers categorically excluded? Genetic Similarity Does not Necessitate RightsGENETIC SIMILARITY NOT NECESSARILY CORRELATED WITH HOW MUCH WE “LIKE” THE ANIMALS Richard Posner, Federal Circuit Judge, 2004, Animal Rights: Current debates and new directions, eds. Sunstein & Nussbaum, p. 62-3 Oddly, sentimental attachmen to animals is not well correlated with genetic closeness, as is implicit in my noting that we can like some animals more than we like people. We are more closely related genetically to chimpanzees than to cats or dogs or falcons or leopards, but some of us like chimpanzees less than these other animals, and we might prefer, for example, to have medical experiments conducted on chimpanzees than on these other species, though the relative pain that experiments inflict on different species of animals, as well as differential medical benefits from experiments on different species, would be a relevant factor to most of us. If chimpanzees’ greater intelligence increases the suffering that they undergo a subjects of medical experiments, relative to less intelligent animals, the increment in suffering may trump our affection for certain “cuter” animals. To the extent that the happiness of certain animals is bound up with our own happiness, there is, as I have just noted, a utilitarian basis for animal rights (though “rights” is not the best term here) even if the only utility that a utilitarian is obligated to try to maximize is human utility.
Animal Rights System Threatens Global ExtinctionANIMAL RIGHTS DENY OUR ABILITY TO LIVE AND CULMINATE IN EXTINCTION – ANY GIVING OF RIGHTS DOOMS US ALL Robert James Bidinotto, Director of Development and Special Projects@ theInstitute for Objectivist Studies. “Environmentalism or Individualism”. 2003 http://www.econot.com/page4.html There is only one fundamental alternative in the natural world: the alternative of life and death. Like all living things, we humans must act to further our own interests, or we perish. But unlike other living things, we cannot effectively compete as predators, with claws, fangs, speed, and strength. In order to survive and flourish in nature, we must produce what we need. We must use our unique reasoning powers to transform natural resources into the goods and services that sustain and enhance our lives. Alone on a desert island, a man would realize immediately that the amount of his wealth is not fixed, but expands based solely on what he produces. However, in a complex economy built on trade, where direct causes and effects are harder to trace, it's easy to forget that overall material abundance doesn't exist in some fixed, perishable quantity. As a result, many believe that the economy holds only a limited supply of resources and wealth--like a pie of fixed size, so that if one person gets a bigger piece, his neighbor has to get a smaller piece. And so, to many, "self-interest" in the economy has come to mean not productivity, but getting something at the expense of others--acting not as a producer, but as a parasite, or even as a predator. This premise--that the interests of men are inherently in conflict--is rooted in our tribal past. It's the source of the myth that the pursuit of one's self-interest must necessarily harm others. And that myth, in turn, has led to the corollary idealization of self-sacrifice: the belief that to reduce social conflict, the individual must be made to sacrifice his interests for the sake of others, or of the "greater whole." However, the premise isn't true. The belief that human interests are inherently in conflict fails to take into account human creative intelligence. We aren't fighting over a fixed or dwindling amount of resources, or an economic pie of fixed size. That's because we aren't just pie consumers: we're pie producers. By using our creative intelligence to develop previously idle resources, we create a bigger pie--then more pies--then better pies--then cake, as well. The history of human progress is that Man takes things from nature, and by using his reason, transforms them into ever-increasing abundance. He does so with ever-greater efficiency, too, creating more values with fewer resources. And then he adds to his abundance by trading what he produces for other things that he wants. Both sides to a trade get something that they want more, by trading away something they want less. Such enlightened self-interest doesn't require anyone's victimization: free trade is a win-win situation. Far from using up a fixed and shrinking amount of natural resources, then, Man's rational intelligence produces a growing bounty of new resources from material previously considered to be useless. That is why centuries of Malthusian predictions about resource depletion, mass starvation, population outrunning resources, and the destruction of the planet have utterly failed to materialize--why global living standards and life spans have, in fact, been rising at an accelerating pace. Yet in the face of all the benefits of modernity, the primitive tribal ideal of self-denial still persists, most explicitly in the environmentalist movement. Because of the popularity of this ideal, many view environmentalists as sincere idealists, but simply too extreme. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, their alleged "ideal" isn't ideal at all. No, I'm not criticizing them for being too committed to a principle. I'm accusing them of being committed to the wrong principle. Ask yourself the following question: Where is there a place for humans and their works in a world where pristine nature is deemed ideal, and the productive use of nature for human gain is deemed immoral?
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