Planet Debate 2011 September/October l-d release Animal Rights
Animal Rights Strategy Fails – Ethical Arguments Insufficient to Change Attitudes
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- Animal Rights Strategy Fails – Rights Can’t Pierce Anthropocentrism
- Animal Rights Strategy Fails – Ineffective Strategy for Social Change
- Animal Rights Strategy Fails – Focus on Rights Undermines Success of Movements
Animal Rights Strategy Fails – Ethical Arguments Insufficient to Change AttitudesETHICAL ARGUMENTS CAN’T CHANGE OUR INTUITION TO PUT HUMANS FIRST Richard Posner, Federal Circuit Judge, 2004, Animal Rights: Current debates and new directions, eds. Sunstein & Nussbaum, p. 67 I do not claim that our preferring human beings to other animals is “justified” in some rational sense—only that it is a fact deeply rooted in our current thinking and feeling, a fact based on beliefs that can change but not a fact that can be shaken by philosophy. I particularly do not claim that we are rationally justified in giving preference to the suffering of humans just because it is humans who are suffering. It is because we are humans that we put humans first. If we were cats, we would put cats first, regardless of what philosophers might tell us. Reason doesn’t enter. MORAL ARGUMENT INEFFECTIVE IN CHANGING BEHAVIOR Richard Posner, Federal Circuit Judge, 2004, Animal Rights: Current debates and new directions, eds. Sunstein & Nussbaum, p. 69 And although the efficacy and soundness of moral arguments are analytically distinct issue, they are related. One reason that moral arguments are ineffective in changing behavior is their lack of cogency—their radical inconclusiveness—in amorally diverse society such as ours, where people can and do argue from incompatible premises. But there is something deeper. Moral argument often appears plausible when it is not well reasoned or logically complete, but it is almost always implausible when it is carried to a logical extreme. An illogical utilitarian (a “soft” utilitarian, we might call him) is content to say that pain is bad, that animals experience pain, so that, other thing being equal, we should try to alleviate animal suffering if we can do so at a modest cost. Singer, a powerfully logical utilitarian, a “hard” utilitarian, is not content with such pabulum. He wants to pursue to its logical extreme the proposition that pain is bad for whoever or whatever experiences it. He does not flinch from the logical implications of his philosophy that if a stuck pig experiences more pain than a stuck human, the pig has the superior claim to our solicitude, or that a chimpanzee is entitled to more consideration than a profoundly retarded human being. (He does not flinch from these implications, but, as I said, in his popular writing, and in particular in Animal Liberation, he soft-pedals them so as not to lose his audience.)
David Nibert, Professor of sociology, Wittenburg University, 2002, Animal Rights/Human Rights: entanglement of oppression and liberation, p. 197-8 Ethnocentrism/anthropocentrism is essential to this process. If the masses are taught to discount the oppressed as “foreign,” “alien,” ‘uncivilized,” ‘unclean,” “stupid,” “inferior,” and so on, they become socially distanced from the devalued others, thus precluding both opportunities and tendencies for empathetic response. Many humans are deeply situated in the status quo, through indoctrination, social position, and self-interest, even express indignation at any suggestion that “others” particularly other animals, are oppressed. THOSE WHO BENEFIT FROM THE OPPRESSION OF OTHERS VIEW HIERARCHIES IN STATUS AS “NATURAL” David Nibert, Professor of sociology, Wittenburg University, 2002, Animal Rights/Human Rights: entanglement of oppression and liberation, p. 199-200 Meanwhile, those who do not suffer oppression, and may even reap some benefits from the oppression of others, similarly are steeped in a social reality that presents the arrangement as natural. Again, drawing an example from the pervasiveness of racism in the Southern United States, civil rights activist Virginia Durr recalled:
Helena Silverstein, Professor, Lafayette College of Government and law, 1996, Unleashing Rights: law, meaning and the animal rights movement, p. 54 This leads us to address further concerns raised in the scholarship on rights language. Are activists captivated by the “hollow hope” of rights led to deploy an ineffective and even harmful language (Rosenberg, 1991)? And do the language and meaning of rights shape this movement in detrimental and undermining ways? These questions relate to the larger issue of whether the appropriation of rights language contributes to social movement attempts to advance social change. If recent legal scholarship is correct, there is good reason to be skeptical of the turn to rights language common in modern movements. There is reason to believe that political activists seeking to advance progressive social change are misguided by the empty promise of rights. Whether animal rights activists are misled in this way and, as a result, diminish the effectiveness of their movement and the power of rights are issues that must be addressed. Animal Rights Strategy Fails – Focus on Rights Undermines Success of MovementsANIMAL RIGHTS MOVEMENT FOCUSING ON PEOPLE, NOT GOVERNMENT—BUT STRATEGY IS FAILING Robert Garner, Professor of Politics, University of Leicester, 1996, Animal Rights: the changing debate, ed. Robert Garner, p. 123-4 Whilst the cultural changes referred to in the previous paragraphs are hugely important, the animal protection movement also needs (and, more to the point, has sought) to enter into conventional pressure group politics. Clearly, it is a bankrupt strategy simply to wait for major cultural changes to somehow miraculously emerge. For one thing, the effect that governmental action can have on social behavior should not be underestimated. For another, there is much, of course, that can be done to improve the lot of animals short of the major social transformation that is no doubt needed for the achievement of the abolitionist objectives of animal rightists. Furthermore, there is some evidence that the opponents of the animal rights movement (the pharmaceutical companies, the bio-medical community and the meat industry) have mounted a relatively successful counter-mobilization so that the animal protection movement finds it much more difficult now to gain positive publicity for its campaigns. ANIMAL RIGHTS ADVOCATES VIEWED AS ANTI-HUMAN Helena Silverstein, Professor, Lafayette College of Government and law, 1996, Unleashing Rights: law, meaning and the animal rights movement, p. 234 As if this were not bad enough, additional problems associated with public perceptions stem from the competing claims rights often foster. Because the notion of animal rights implies a human obligation to cease most if not all current use of animals, the movement’s identity is associated with a challenge to such human rights as choosing the clothes we wear, the food we eat, and the sports in which we engage. Most importantly, the identity of this movement is connected to the assertion that it is immoral to experiment on animals. This, in turn, identifies the movement with a challenge to the human right to life.
To a large extent, such public perceptions of movement identity would have occurred had animal liberation rather than animal rights come to symbolize this movement. Animal liberation, like animal rights, seeks to end the way we presently use and conceive of animals. However, the language of animal rights is especially problematic for public perceptions. It pushes the public toward the belief that the movement’s identity is about giving cows the right to vote. In so doing, the rights-oriented identity amplifies the absurdity of animal rights and reinforces common perceptions of rights. ANIMAL RIGHTS POSITION DOESN’T ALLOW COMPROMISES -- UTOPIAN Gary L. Francione, Professor of Law, Rutgers University, 1996, Rain Without Thunder, p. 160-1 Any response to the claim that animal rights theory is “utopian,” “unrealistic,” or “absolutist” also requires an examination of the macro components of these various theories in order to determine what each prescribes to achieve the ideal state of affairs for animals, beyond personal changes in lifestyle. It is a central tenet of new welfarism that rights theory represents an “all or nothing” approach that cannot provide a theory of incremental change. If, the argument goes, rights theory regards complete abolition as a societal ideal, and as a matter of micro-level personal behavior, then the rights advocate cannot affirmatively seek any change short of complete abolition without acting in conflict with rights theory. Since there is no realistic possibility of complete abolition anytime soon, rights theory is dismissed as “utopian” in that it seeks an ideal state without a corresponding theory about how to get there. Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 1.43 Mb. Share with your friends:
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