ANIMALS INTERESTS

Animals Consciousness, Interests and Rights

Table of Content

Introduction1

Discussion1

Singer's view1

Regan's View3

Kant's View4

Sagoff's View5

Feinberg's View6

Conclusion8

References10

Animals Consciousness, Interests and Rights

Introduction

Animal Rights is a growing concern for social and moral philosophers. The increase in animal-rights advocacy with an intense concentration on ensuring rights to animals has created a new sphere of application for the concept of 'Rights'. Most advocates have consistently maintained that animals, as sentient beings have the ability to feel, i.e. that animals can experience pain and in some overt cases, happiness. As such, they reason that human beings have a moral, and in many cases legal obligation to protect the rights of these animals. It is in my belief that animals have rights and should be protected under the law. But, can animals really have rights, in the proper sense of the term?

Discussion

Singer's view

Peter Singer, known as the godfather of animal rights, strongly argues that animals do have rights. From his much celebrated thesis entitled Animals Liberation, he maintains that all animals, including human beings, are equal. Singer makes no distinction between animals: whether homo-sapiens or canines, all animals are of the same kind. From a short essay from his book titled “All Animals are Equal”, he insists that all animals, i.e. all sentient beings that have the ability to suffer; hence their equality is embedded with this unique similarity.

With a strong utilitarian conviction, Singer holds that morality is derived when the highest level of happiness is obtained by the greater number of people within a society; and the world in general. When applying the utility principle, a moral agent must at all times ensure that the level of pain is decreased to fulfill this level of ultimate (absolute) happiness. For the utilitarian, one should always ensure the greatest happiness when deliberating between courses of actions. The utilitarian believes that morality is determined by the consequences of an act and not the act itself. Such that, the act of killing is not necessarily wrong if the consequences produce a greater level of happiness for the majority. Hence, the act of killing a dog would be morally permissible, if the greatest amount of people would experience happiness than pain. But Singer provides an additional outlook to the theory of utilitarianism.

Singer perceives all animals as a unique set of beings; there are no distinctions between them because they each have strengths and weaknesses. Some can run extremely faster than others, while others can reason and create things. Some can see objects hundreds of meters away while some can change their skin color. But what they have in common is their ability to feel/experience pain. He believes that insofar as the welfare of animals can be affected by our actions, we, as rational beings, have a moral responsibility to consider and protect their rights. He insists that this rational ability is superior to other beings (animals); we have the responsibility to ensure the overall happiness of the moral community, which includes these non-human beings.

For Singer, the doctrine of Speciesism (a specie is superior ...