Planet Debate 2011 September/October l-d release Animal Rights
Animal Rights are Immoral
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- Treating Animals Differently Justified
- Human Needs and Suffering Outweigh Animals Interests
Animal Rights are ImmoralSTRUGGLE FOR ANIMAL RIGHTS DISTINCT FROM CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENTS—DON’T SEEK THE SAME TYPES OF RESPECT AND INCLUSION Helena Silverstein, Professor, Lafayette College of Government and law, 1996, Unleashing Rights: law, meaning and the animal rights movement, p. 236 Activism for animal rights is also distinct from activism on behalf of civil rights and women’s rights, despite some important similarities. The latter movements, like animal rights, have struggled to secure respect for their constituents. They have, in addition, employed similar legal and political strategies to gain power and protection. But a significant difference rests in the fact that the activists for and members of the civil rights and women’s rights movements are often (although not always) the direct beneficiaries of the movements. These are not movements comprised of people who work solely for the benefit of others. ANIMALS LACK CAPABILITY TO BE BEARERS OF ACTIVE RIGHTS FOR SELF-DETERMINATION FOUND IN STRUGGLES AGAINST RACISM AND SEXISM Ted Benton, Professor of Sociology, University of Essex, 1996, Animal Rights: the changing debate, ed. Robert Garner, p. 29-30 The upshot of this is that there is a fairly minimal use of the term rights, as ‘passive’ rights, according to which rights are merely the formal correlates of libations on the part of moral agents, in which animals may properly be said to possess rights. However (so we may reasonably suppose), animals generally lack the range of conceptual and cultural learning capacities to become bearers of the kinds of active rights for self-definition and self-determination which have been at the heart of the human struggles which advocates of animal rights are inclined to use as analogues. It may still be held that these struggles have a special and distinctive character, without conceding to a “speciesist” denial of the positive moral standing of animals
Helena Silverstein, Professor, Lafayette College of Government and law, 1996, Unleashing Rights: law, meaning and the animal rights movement, p. 93 An additional problem arising from the association with human rights stems from the specific connection between the language and the movements for civil rights and women’s rights. Many activists suggested the difficulty of arguing that the move to animal rights is the next logical extension following civil and women’s rights. Many activists suggested the difficulty of arguing that the move to animal rights is the next logical extension following civil and women’s rights. The difficulty is that claiming such an extension may alienate minorities and women who interpret the extension as bringing them down to the level of animals.
Joanne Vining, Associate Professor of Science and Chair Human Nature Research Laboratory @ Urbana College. “The Connection to other animals and caring for nature”. Human Ecology Review Vol 10, 2003 http://www.humanecologyreview.org/pastissues/her102/102vining.pdf Nonetheless, it must be acknowledged that “nature” is a big idea and a large entity, to which humans may not be able to relate. The global concept of the environment may not be as meaningful to most people as specific entities within the environment. For example, an individual might endorse protection of a predator generally but object to the existence of the same predator nearby. Moreover, the environment includes entities that disgust as well as those that enchant. Thus, the prospect of humans developing caring responses to the environment or nature as a unified concept may be problematic. Finally, the idea of healing the human-nature split is complicated by the possibility that such a split may function in a variety of ways to simplify and order our relationship with the physical environment. For example, affection for animals (and perhaps the environment) may be enhanced more by the idea that they are separate from us. Is nature more likely to be on a pedestal, and perhaps protected, if we view it as a special “other” rather than a part of ourselves? Human Needs and Suffering Outweigh Animals InterestsHUMAN SUFFERING OUTWEIGHS, HUMAN SUFFERING IS FAR WORSE AND THEIR EVIDENCE IS BASED OF OFF THE THEORIES OF SINGER WHICH IS FUNDAMENTALLY FLAWED Nicholas Yea, Philosopher and Human rights advocate, “DO ANIMALS DESERVE RIGHTS?”, 2003, http://www.nickyee.com/ponder/animal.html Singer wants to claim that all suffering must be taken into equal consideration, and thus the suffering of a crippled ant deserves equal consideration as that of a crippled human child, and if we could only save one, Singer has to say that we should flip a coin and decide or else we would be speciests. The major flaw in Singer's argument is that not only has he chosen the arbitrary measure of suffering, but he assumes that all suffering is equal. He wants us to believe that the suffering of a human child is comparable to that of an ant's. This is clearly absurd. The suffering that a Holocaust victim endures is more intense than that an ant will ever endure because human beings have the cognitive and emotional capacity that other animals do not have. Shoot a son in front of his mother and the mother feels anguish beyond imagination that will scar her for as long as she lives. On the other end, when male langurs kill the infants of captured female langurs, the female langurs seem to become attracted to the male langur and promptly resume estrus. Singer is trying to avoid pulling intelligence and human cognition into the equation, but he fails to see that it is impossible not to. It is human intelligence that can inflict and understand the kind of overwhelming agony that is part of human existence. It is also human intelligence that allows us to bestow and understand the kind of awe-inspiring joys. 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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