2. Overview: questions we discuss in this class
Where we are and where we are going
Questions for this class:
What beings can have rights?
What is the basis for having rights?
What beings have rights?
3. Overview contd the texts
Regan, Animals as Subjects-of-a-Life
Stone Should Trees have Standing?
Feinberg The Rights of Animals
Attfield The Good of Trees
4. How Ill proceed in this presentation
First Ill introduce some definitions and such that will help us ask
the right questions
Next Ill briefly go through the readings and identify some of the
questions they raise.
Finally Ill offer a few general observations and raise some general
questions.
5. Part I: introductory Remarks
6. Definition: what are rights?
According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Rights are
entitlements (not) to perform certain actions, or (not) to be in
certain states; or entitlements that others (not) perform certain
actions or (not) be in certain states. (SEP, Rights)
The rights that we focus on in this class are the entitlements that
protect individuals (human beings, animals, plants, species, or
other) from certain maltreatments by the actions or inactions of
moral agents. So, rights, as we will use the term, are protections
that oblige moral agents to do or refrain from doing something that
affects the interests of the individual (be they human, animal,
plant, or other).
The main question of this class is what sorts of objects that can
be the carrier of a right. Or, same question in other terms: What
sorts of objects can have entitlements that oblige moral agents
(human beings) to do or refrain from doing something that affects
their interests.
7. Who has rights, the traditional response
A classical answer to the question of what can have rights is that
only those who can respect and be bound by the rights of others can
be bearers of rights themselves.
This answer leads to an anthropocentric position (assuming that
only human beings can respect and be bound by the rights of
others). But weve also seen that the idea that only moral agents
can be moral patients (which is the underlying assumption of this
interpretation of rights) is questionable. In this case it seems to
entail that infants, the severely retarded, or those whove lost
their mental faculties to senility or in an accident cannot have
rights. Few would accept this conclusion.
So, the questions remain: what is the basis of rights? Who or what
can have rights? Why? The rest of this lecture will be about the
answers to these questions we find in this weeks readings.
8. The Distinction between necessary and sufficient
conditions
A necessary condition: something that must be the case for
something else to be the case.
Example: there is no life without water = water is a necessary
condition for life.
If we can identify a necessary condition for some X (a phenomenon,
property, norm or other thing), then two sorts of inferences are
safe:
First, if the necessary condition for X does not obtain, then X is
not the case. For example: if there is no water on Mars, there is
no life on Mars.
Second, if X is the case, then the necessary condition obtains. For
example: we found life on Mars, so there must be water on
Mars.
9. Contd: Sufficient conditions
If condition or set of conditions are sufficient for some
phenomenon, property, or norm X, then we know that if the
conditions obtain, then X obtains.
If, for example, eating fifteen ice-creams is sufficient to make
Socrates feel sick, then we know that if Socrates ate fifteen
ice-creams then Socrates feels sick.
Note: we cannot infer from the presence of some phenomenon X that
the sufficient conditions obtain, for there may be more than one
set of sufficient conditions. Socrates might feel sick, not because
he ate fifteen ice-creams, but because he ate eleven chocolate
bars.
10. Relevance of the distinction between necessary and sufficient
conditions
If we can identify necessary conditions for having rights, then we
can define the scope of beings that might have rights and thereby
also define what beings certainly does not have rights. If, for
example, having desires is necessary for having rights, then plants
cannot have rights (assuming that plants cant desire
anything).
If we can identify a set of sufficient conditions for having
rights, then we can identify beings that have rights. If, for
example, having cognitive capacities is sufficient for having
rights, then we know that human beings have rights (assuming that
we have cognitive capacities).
The question is: what are the necessary and sufficient conditions
for having rights. If we can answer this question, then we can
define what beings have rights (and also have the beginning of an
answer to why they have them).
11. Summary, part I
Definition of rights: were using the term rights in the loose sense
of protections that oblige moral agents to do or refrain from doing
something that affects the interests of the individual.
We doubt that only those who can be bound by rights are also the
only ones who can have them (moral patients need not be moral
agents)
Distinction necessary and sufficient conditions.
12. Part II: the texts
13. Recap of Regan Animals as Subjects-of-a-Life
Regan presents the following argument for the conclusion that
sentient animals have rights:
All and only beings that are of inherent value have rights. (Here
inherent value means that the being cannot be treated as of merely
instrumental value, but must be seen as an end in itself.)
Human beings have rights, because they are of inherent value.
Human beings are of inherent value, because they are subjects of a
life (they have alive as opposed to merely being alive; they have
and perceive that they have interests in their own
flourishing).
So, human beings have rights, because they are
subjects-of-a-life.
So, by generalization, every subject-of-a-life has rights.
Sentient animals are subjects of a life
Thus, sentient animals have rights.
14. Two questions for Regan
Why does inherent value suffice to give its bearer rights?
(Might being a subject of a life be a necessary, but not
sufficient, condition for having rights?)
Why should we think that animals are subjects-of-a-life in the
relevant sense?
15. Chris Stone,Should Trees Have Standing?
Stone goes further than Regan. Stone argues that we should give
natural objects of various kinds legal rights.
Stone proposes that we give legal rights to forests, oceans,
rivers, and other so-called natural objects in the environment
indeed, to the natural environment as a whole. (47)
16. Stones proposal contd
Three criteria that must be satisfied for something to be a holder
of legal rights:
It must have legal standing: meaning that it can be represented and
make claims before the courts.
Courts must be able to count injury to it as an object of legal
concern and possible basis for claims to reparations.
It can be the recipient of legal awards.
Stone notes that currently neither of these criteria is satisfied
by trees, forests, cows, or so on. Stone thinks that it should be
the case that natural objects can hold legal rights and thus have
standing, harm to them be of legal concern, and they should be able
to receive the awards for such harms when they are judged legal
wrongs.
17. Stones Argument?
Stone does not provide much of an argument for the conclusion that
that animals, trees, species, or rivers have rights. But he clearly
thinks that these objects can be harmed. And perhaps we can find in
the capacity to be harmed something that we might use to
reconstruct an argument on his behalf? What things can be
harmed?
What do you think Stones argument is? Can we reconstruct a good
argument for his conclusion? Do you think that Taylors argument
from last week might help us out here?
Final question: Stone appears to think even things like rivers
should have rights: could a river have a right? Can a river be
harmed?
18. Joel Feinberg The Rights of Animals
According to Feinberg, Things that can have rights are things that
have interest. Having interests is a necessary condition for having
rights.
So, Feinberg immediately rules out that rocks could have rights.
But he thinks that whether our ancestors, future generations,
fetuses, animals, plants, or species can have rights are open
questions.
In this article he attempts to show how we can answer these open
questions by focusing first on the case of individual
animals.
19. Feinberg contd
Feinberg proceeds by focusing more closely on the notion of having
interests.
Having an interest, Feinberg argues, amounts to having a good of
ones own, and this in turn amounts to having a conative life (i.e.
to have a level of psychology that includes desires, wishes,
unconscious drives, aims, impulses, and the like).
20. Feinberg Contd
So, a preliminary conclusion, beings that have interests (i.e. a
conative life) can have rights.
Sentient animals have a conative life.
So, sentient animals can have rights.
Question is: do they?
21. Feinberg: yes, sentient animals have rights
Why? Because we think that we can do them wrong. Think of the last
man torturing a dog, if it is wrong, then isnt it because he wrongs
the dog?
Two questions:
First, is there anything else that can have rights?
Second, is there anything else that does have rights?
Feinberg says: no and, therefore, no.
22. Feinbergs sentientism
Feinberg maintains that having a conative life is both necessary
and sufficient for having rights. From this he argues that only
sentient animals (including human beings, of course) have
rights.
23. Feinbergs negative argument:
A thing can have rights only if it has interests
A thing has interests only if it has (or is capable of having) a
conative life.
Plants, lower animals, species, and so on, do not (and are not
capable of) having a conative life.
So, plants, lower animals, species, and so on, cannot (and so do
not) have rights.
24. Feinbergs positive argument
Beings with interests have rights
Sentient animals have interests.
So, sentient animals have rights.
If we combine the positive and the negative arguments, we get:all
and only sentient animals have rights. (Because having interests is
necessary and sufficient for having rights.)
25. Questions for Feinberg
Feinbergs basic argument is that having interests is both necessary
and sufficient for having rights and that a conative life is the
stuff that interests are made off; wherefore only sentient beings
have interests, wherefore only sentient beings can have
rights.
Two critical points to this argument: 1. The claim that only beings
with interests can have rights, and 2. The claim that only beings
with a conative life (i.e. higher sentient beings) can have
interests.
So, our questions are: First, Are we convinced by Feinbergs
argument that only beings with interests can have rights? Second,
Are we convinced that only beings with a conative life have
interests?
26. Robin Attfield,The Good of Trees
Attfield does not think that Feinbergs argument succeeds.
Attfield agrees that only beings with interests can have rights,
but he rejects that only sentient beings have interests.
Attfield also rejects that all beings with interests have
rights.
So, according to Attfield: interests are necessary, but not
sufficient, for having rights.
27. Attfield and Feinberg contrasted
Feinberg
Interests necessary and sufficient for having rights
Only beings with a conative life have interests
So, all and only sentient animals have rights
Attfield
Interests necessary, but not sufficient for having rights
All living things have interests
Not immediately clear what beings have rights.
28. Attfield contd
According to Attfield (echoing Rolston III, Taylor, and others) all
living things have interests. Some of these living things have
special interests in not being exposed to pain.
If interests were sufficient for having rights, then (contrary to
Feinberg) insects and trees would have rights.
Attfield doesnt think insects or trees could have rights. Yet, they
have interests and we can harm them.
29. Attfields paradox
So, Attfield says he has identified a paradox:
Trees have needs and a good of their own, yet they have no
intrinsic value and no rights of their own. Trees have interests,
yet we have no obligation to protect those interests in themselves.
And this is a position uncomfortably close to unreason; for, in
other cases, what has interests of its own becomes ipso facto of
moral concern, whereas in this case we are prepared to disregard a
large set of interests and treat them as morally irrelevant.
(66-7)
30. Solving the paradox?
Attfield suggests that we can solve the paradox by looking at a
variation on the last man example. Imagine the following
scenario:
The last man is also the last sentient being. He feels like killing
the last of the elm trees, just for fun. The elm tree could
continue the species of elms into the future, but if it is killed,
then elms are eliminated from the universe forever.
31. Questions
So, here are some questions for you to reflect upon:
Do you think it would be wrong for the last man to kill the last of
the elm trees?
By stipulation, if it is wrong, it cannot be because he violates
the interests / rights of any sentient being, so, if it is wrong is
it:
Because he violates the right of the tree?
Some other reason? But then, what?
Why does Attfield think this example points to a solution to the
paradox what is the solution?
32. Part III: conclusion: questions
33. Some good questions
(These are, of course, questions you might reflect further on in
your discussion post.)
What is Stones argument?
Can rivers have rights? Do they?
Can plants have rights? Do they? Does the last of the elm trees
have a right not to be killed for fun?
Can insects have rights? Do they?
Can species have rights? Do they? Is killing the last elm tree a
violation of the rights of the species of elms?
Can sentient animals have rights? Do they?
What, if any, is the relation between the capacity to have rights
and having interests?
What are interests? What beings have them?
Why do human beings have rights?
34. Inness, The Elm Tree