Animal Rights: Liberty and Justice for All

By James O'Heare

Rights are the protection of interests. The most fundamental right is the prohibition against coercive exploitation: not to be treated as property, not to be caused pain and suffering. Who ought this basic right apply to? All and only humans? That does not really specify what it is that qualifies them. Being really smart? Being capable of language? These criteria would rule out a number of humans, and why are these criteria relevant to who is eligible for basic rights? All and only sentient beings have one fundamental interest in common: to avoid/escape pain and to continue living to experience pleasure. This includes all humans but it also includes a great many other animals. In the Western world, we believe strongly in liberty, rights, and justice. If we are to be just, we must admit that a great many animals are eligible for basic rights. Just as sexism, racism, and heterosexism are unjust (because sex, race and sexual orientation are irrelevant to the function of basic rights), so too is speciesism. I will argue in Animal Rights: Liberty and Justice for All that justice demands that all sentient beings, not just the ones who happen to be human, are eligible for basic rights, given all of the deeply held beliefs we have in individual liberty, rights, and justice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Mar 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9780228875956

James O'Heare

James O'Heare is a Behaviorologist who has spent over 25 years researching animal behavior and animal rights. He lives in Ottawa, Canada.

Book preview

Animal Rights

Liberty and Justice for All

A theory of basic rights for all sentient beings, be they human or not, based on social and political principles we already accept

James O’Heare

Animal Rights: Liberty and Justice for All

Copyright © 2022 by James O’Heare

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-2288-7596-3 (Hardcover)

978-0-2288-7597-0 (Paperback)

978-0-2288-7595-6 (eBook)

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

—Martin Luther King Jr.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

Chapter 1. Introduction

The Scope of the Problem

The Thesis in Brief

The Assumption

The Varying Perspectives on Animals

Social Justice and Animal Rights

Chapter 2. Western Social and Political Theory

The Constitutional Democracy

Justice

Rights

The Social Justice Movement in a Constitutional Democracy

Chapter 3. Sentience

Introduction

The Science of Sentience

Who Meets the Basic Criteria for Sentience?

Chapter 4. Basic Rights for All Sentient Beings

Introduction to a Theory of Justice for Sentient Animals

Membership in the Moral Community

The Alien Thought Experiment

Chapter 5. Counter Criteria to Sentience

Introduction

Species Membership

Qualities Supposedly Unique to Humans and the Similar Minds Theory

Summary

Chapter 6. Welfarism

Introduction

Welfarism

Chapter 7. The Property Status of Sentient Animals

The Preclusion of Basic Rights

Chapter 8. Yeah, But…

But it is natural and traditional to use animals and that’s how it has always been.

Hey, it’s not our fault we are the top of the food chain. We are predators, and they are prey, and that’s just the circle of life.

But animals eat other animals and even humans sometimes, so is that not immoral? How can they have rights if they don’t respect the rights of others?

Why should I bother? It sounds difficult and expensive to adopt veganism. I love hamburgers, and I don’t want to be one of those preachy vegans anyway. Why bother?

Don’t we displace and even kill animals when we plant and harvest crops? I heard vegans kill more animals in their farming than meat-eaters. And some animals need us to use them, like sheep that need their coats cut, for instance.

What about all the domesticated animals out there like cows and dogs? What would we need to do about that, and does this mean I can’t have pets? That’s obviously unacceptable. Now you’ve gone too far!

What about experimentation and product testing? Certainly, that is something we truly need, right?

Chapter 9. Advocacy

Introduction

Abolitionist versus Animal Protectionist

Direct Action

Summary

Chapter 10. Summary and Conclusion

Epilogue

The World with Sentient-Being Rights

Resources

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I wish to thank Gary Francione for his work in animal rights. He champions the abolitionist approach and has been the greatest influence on my own thinking on the topic. I would also like to thank Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka for being significant influences in my thinking on the topic.

Thank you to Mark Bopp, my good friend and colleague for reviewing drafts and providing valued and sage advice! Thank you also to George Anderson, who provided feedback on the chapter on which this book is based.

And thanks to all vegans and animal-rights advocates who are standing on the right side of history.

Preface

This small book is an expansion and refinement of a chapter I wrote in Some Intersections of Science, Coercion, Equality, Justice, and Politics—A Teapot Tempest Stirs Science organized by Ledoux and O’Heare (2021). I promised in that chapter a fuller treatment of the topic, and this small book fulfils that promise. As with any work I generate, this too will remain a work in progress as my knowledge continues to expand on the topic.

What I hope to achieve in this book is to demonstrate that if one believes in the predominant social and political orientation in the Western world—the constitutional democracy—including individual liberty, rights, rule of law, and justice, then that necessarily requires all sentient beings, not just the ones who happen to be human, must be included in the community of basic rights-holders. The vast majority of us in the Western world already completely agree with these fundamental assumptions in social and political realms. However, the vast majority of those who maintain such strongly held beliefs fail to recognize justice then requires basic rights for all sentient beings—rights and liberty must be applied consistently and nonarbitrarily. One is not required to change their basic beliefs in regard to rights and justice to accept animal rights; indeed, justice demands basic rights are owed to all sentient beings.

The animal rights theory explicated in this book is not entirely new. Gary Francione has conceived and championed the abolitionist approach in his many books, and much (but not all) of the approach presented here is derived at least in part from Francione’s work. Some components of the argument I present here are aligned fairly closely with that of Francione, but I will be arguing the position under the term animal rights. I hope to make a contribution to the discussion on animal rights.

Unless otherwise specified, when I refer to rights, I am talking about moral rights and not legal rights. Typically, social justice must establish moral rights before they may become codified into law, and that is our first step. Ultimately legal rights are the goal.

There is unfortunately no good single word to refer to the set of all animals who are not human. Humans are animals! I originally wrote this book referring to all nonhuman animals as nonhumans because I did not want to obfuscate the topic as is almost universally the case by referring to nonhuman animals as animals. At the last moment I decided reluctantly to use established terms rather than try to break new ground in favor of accuracy. The book reads more cleanly with the incorrect term animal than it would with the accurate term nonhuman. I do not want novel terminology to distract from the argument made in the book. Now, this does pose a problem. The word animal may refer to: (a) the set of all animals (that is all vertebrates and invertebrates); (b) sentient animals other than humans; or (c) all sentient animals. I thought this would be a problem, but I believe the context in which the word animal occurs suggests the intended use.

Also at the last moment, I similarly opted for the incorrect term animal rights over sentient-being rights for the same reasons. However, allow me to take this opportunity to explain the problem with the incorrect use of the word animal. I have already explained that using it to refer to nonhuman animals is incorrect. There is a further problem with the term animal rights.

The term animal rights is problematic because it names a taxonomic classification, which almost certainly fails to correspond to which species meet appropriate criteria for a valid basic-rights claim. In other words, it is likely that not all animals—that is members of the taxonomic group animalia—are sentient and owed basic rights. It is a mistake, in any event, to start with an opinion on which species ought to have basic rights and then devise a theory around that bias, a mistake commonly committed by people attempting to compose a theory that includes humans and only humans. It is especially a problem if it is likely that not all species of animal are sentient and owed rights. It is scientific best practice to start with the rationale or theory that explains which traits a being must have in order to have valid basic-rights claims and only then determine which species possess those relevant traits.

Here is why the term sentient-being rights is much better than animal rights. Sentient-being rights properly identifies the criterion that an individual or species must meet in order to qualify for basic rights rather than a taxonomic classification that may or may not accurately encompass all qualified individuals. It unambiguously includes the entire range of those that qualify for basic rights. I am actually arguing for sentient-being rights and not animal rights.

That said, after writing the entire book using nonhuman and sentient-being rights, I realized this clearly imposes a distracting burden on the reader, who will no doubt be quite familiar with the incorrect terminology. I have therefore opted to use the more common and generally accepted terms. I use animal to refer to nonhuman animals and, in many cases, specifically sentient nonhuman animals, and I refer to human animals as humans. I can only hope this discussion serves to elucidate these issues adequately.

The first chapter introduces