ANIMAL RIGHTS PHI2380

Carleton University
 Rights approaches

Basic environmental rights

Rights for animals – Tom Regan’s approach

IN THIS Moral rights to legal rights

LECTURE Rights for Nonhuman beings – rivers, plants

etc.
Discussion topics

Quiz

Resources

PHI2380
Animal Rights
 The right to a healthy
environment, includes access
to
unspoiled air, water, land etc.
environmental information,
decision making, participation
remedial procedures

Environmental rights are

Pre-requisites for basic rights –
life, health
BASIC Implications of basic rights –

ENVIRONMENTAL property, bodily integrity

Basic rights
RIGHTS PHI2380
Animal Rights
SIGNIFICANCE OF BASIC
RIGHTS

Scope – to whom they Context – what claims

apply they involve

Stability – whether they Normativity – how

change by context, strong a claim they
persist make

PHI2380
Animal Rights
DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO
BASIC RIGHTS
Status based or natural rights approach

Instrumentalist approach

Statutory approach

Contractualist approach
PHI2380
Animal Rights
 Also called natural rights approach
Inherent worth

STATUS Autonomy
Values as human beings – dignity
BASED Immanuel Kant
APPROAC UN Declaration of Human Rights – all persons
H are endowed with a set of inalienable rights of
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Implications - everyone has the same basic
rights, but how they are operationalized might be
culturally sensitive.

PHI2380
Animal Rights
 INSTRUMENTALIST
APPROACH
J S Mill – people Bring about morally
should be accorded significant ends like
Consequentialism or
rights because that human flourishing,
utilitarian bases
increases overall animal welfare, social
utility or well-being justice

Analogous argument Which claims

Implications – what
for animals – do not maximize utility
count as basic rights
treat animals in a way depend on the society,
and their strength will
that causes them economic structure,
depend on the context
suffering ecological context etc.
PHI2380
Animal Rights
 Conventionalist approach

Created by their being recognized in legitimate

international and national laws and upheld in
legitimate decisions

STATUTO E.g. there is a positive human right to water because

RY the UN and other governments have passed a
declaration asserting that people are entitled to a right
APPROAC to accessible, clean and safe drinking water

H The declaration is the origin of the right

Implications - Legislatively established –

constitution or international agreements – rights, and
relevant duties might not be universally applicable
but limited to the political jurisdictions
PHI2380
Animal Rights
 Social contract tradition – the idea that reasonable
and reliable people would affirm them, and so the
right is legitimate

CONTRAC John Rawls – people would seek them, assert them,

or reject them in the context of rational
TUALIST deliberations about how societies and social
institutions ought to be organized and structured
APPROACH
Implications – bound because they are also the
implicit authors of this law, basis of contemporary
liberalism, has a core political value system in the
public sphere and substantive views are then
accommodated later
PHI2380
Animal Rights
Sentientism – moral considerability – all beings that are sentient should be
directly morally considerable and have a right to exist on their own worth
Cannot be used as means for human ends
Experimentation, factory farming, sport hunting and trapping, etc. would be
abolished on this view

TOM REGAN ON
ANIMAL RIGHTS
PHI2380
Animal Rights
 What happens in cases of conflict?
E.g. vaccination and experimentation, drought and
PRIORITY dams

PRINCIPL
ES 1. Miniride principle
2. Worse off principle

PHI2380
Animal Rights
 “When we must choose between overriding the rights of many who are
innocent or the rights of few who are innocent, and when each affected
individual will be harmed in a prima facie comparable way, then we
ought to override the rights of the few in preferences of the many”

Fewer rights violations are preferable to more rights

MINIRIDE violations, all other things being equal

PRINCIPL
E Applicable in cases where the potential rights
violations involve comparable harms

E.g. – building a dam, 200 people vs 2000 people

PHI2380
Animal Rights
 “When we must decide to override the rights of the many or the rights of
the few who are innocent, and when the harm faced by the few would
make them worse off than any of the many would be if any other option
were chosen, then we ought to override the rights of the many”

WORSE Prioritize avoiding greater harms when adjudicating

conflicts
OFF
PRINCIPL Rights violations of humans are greater harm than
rights violations of nonhumans
E
In cases where we need to kill animals to protect people or we
need to use natural resources for basic human needs, then we
ought to do so

PHI2380
Animal Rights
 Objection : Moral considerability and principles do not
cohere

If animals really do have direct moral considerability then

how can their lives be sacrificed for human interests?

Response : Not species membership but it is psychological

capacities that matter

CRITIQUE Counter-objection : does not explain why the rights of

more psychologically complex individuals should be
prioritized if all sentient beings are inherently worthy
Seems to be traces of anthropocentrism in Regan’s theory

Reasonable : if rights violations must occur then the

fewest violations and the least harm
PHI2380
Animal Rights
 Claims against things being
MORAL done to them, no matter the
current law of the land –
RIGHTS moral rights
TO Freedoms and entitlements
LEGAL that are recognized within
RIGHTS the framework of a
legislative or legal system –
legal rights
PHI2380
Animal Rights
CHRISTOPHER STONE ON LEGAL
RIGHTS
Pioneer in this field in the USA

Argued that “the natural environment as a whole” - trees,

species, ecosystems, rivers, - could be offered legal rights

Be represented in a court of law, argue its case, be a plaintiff

Ships, corporations etc.

Having a legal right means

• Not mere protection, go beyond that
• Can institute legal action at its behest
• Court must take injury – physical, material, aesthetic, cultural - into account
• Relief must run to the benefit of it PHI2380
Animal Rights
GRANTING LEGAL RIGHTS
Protection,
preservation,
Significanc
and
e preventing
harm

Social and
Protecting its ecological
moral
rights/standin
significance
g and
protection
PHI2380
Animal Rights
 LEGAL RIGHTS FOR TREES,
RIVERS, SPECIES
Ecuador constitution recognized
the rights of nature
Muteshekau-shipu river in
Dolphins in India granted legal Quebec granted legal
personhood personhood

2008 2013 2021

2012 2017

Bolivia adopted “Law of the New Zealand granted rights to

Rights of Mother Earth” the Whanganui River ecosystem

PHI2380
Animal Rights
 PHI2380
Animal Rights
 First river to be recognized as a person

WHANGA 170 years long battle

NUI
RIVER – Jointly represented - by one Maori and one
government appointed official
NEW
ZEALAND Te Awa Tupua Bill recognizes
The Maori’s spiritual connection to the river
Their relations to land – mainly that humans don’t control
nature

PHI2380
Animal Rights
"We have always believed that the Whanganui River is an
indivisible and living whole — Te Awa Tupua — which
includes all its physical and spiritual elements from the
mountains of the central North Island to the sea”
- -

Gerard Albert, spokesperson of the Maori peoples, 2014

PHI2380
Animal Rights
MUTESHEKAU-SHIPU RIVER
IN QUEBEC

PHI2380
Animal Rights
DOLPHINS IN INDIA

PHI2380
Animal Rights
DISCUSSI
ON Legal rights for nonhumans –
QUESTIO mechanisms and limits
NS

PHI2380
Animal Rights
 Therapeutic
hunting involves
intentionally killing wild
animals in order to
conserve another species
or an entire ecosystem

IS THERAPEUTIC
HUNTING JUSTIFIED?
PHI2380
Animal Rights
IS CAPTIVE
BREEDING
JUSTIFIED?

PHI2380
Animal Rights
 Christopher Stone –
Should Trees have Standing? Toward Leg
al Rights for Natural Objects

RESOURC Tom Regan – The Case for Animal

ES Rights

Dolphins in India

Magpie river in Quebec

PHI2380
Animal Rights
 PHI2380
Animal Rights
NEXT
CLASS
Rights of Nature

PHI2380
Animal Rights