Transcript How To Talk About Rights - Animal Liberation Front

How to Talk
About
Rights
What is a right?
• “What people are entitled to have or do or
receive.” -- John Mackie
• “To have a right is to be in a position to
claim, or to have claimed on one’s behalf,
that something is due or owed, and the
claim that is made is a claim made against
somebody, to do or forebear what is claimed
as due.” – Tom Regan
Rights as Freedoms & Duties
“P has a right to X” only if:
1) P has the moral freedom (is not morally
obligated not ) to have, do, or be X.
2) Others are obliged not to interfere with
P’s freedoms.
Conventional Rights
Conventional Rights are rights that depend
on human agreement.
Since Legal Rights are created through
human agreement, legal rights are
conventional rights.
All Legal Rights are Conventional, but not all
Conventional Rights are Legal.
Not all conventional rights are
legal.
Conventional
Legal
Non-Conventional Rights?
• Non-Conventional rights, if there are any,
are based on features other than, or in
addition to, human agreement.
• Different thinkers claim different kinds of
non-conventional rights: Regan, “moral,”
Locke, “natural,” Jefferson, “unalienable,”
Lafayette, “human.”
“Natural Rights”
In place of the theory of the
Divine Right of Kings, John
Locke proposed a theory of
Natural Rights.
.
The Divine Right of Kings
This right is bestowed by a deity
who ordains some as being fit
to rule. The Chinese called their
emperor “the son of heaven.”
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“Is it the case that Yao gave the Empire to Shun?”
said Wan Chang.
“No. The emperor cannot give the Empire to
another.”
“In that case, when Shun possessed the Empire, who
gave it to him?”
“Heaven gave it to him.”
“When Heaven gave it to him, did it decree it in so
many words?”
“No. Heaven does not speak, it simply reveals
through deeds and affairs.”
“Natural Rights”
Locke holds that each man has
a “...Right…to his Natural
Freedom, without being subject
to the Will or Authority of any
other Man.”
Legal Rights: The 15th & the 19th
Amendments
• The right of citizens of the United States to vote
shall not be denied or abridged by the United
States or by any State on account of race, color, or
previous condition of servitude
-- Passed: February 26, 1869; Ratified: February 3, 1870.
• The right of citizens of the United States to vote
shall not be denied or abridged by the United
States or by any State on account of sex..
-- Passed: June 4, 1919; Ratified: August 18, 1920
Moral Verses Legal Rights
Tom Regan: “The concept of moral rights
differs in important ways from that of legal
rights… moral rights, if there are any, are
universal... An individual’s race, sex,
religion, place of birth, or country of
domicile are not relevant characteristics for
the possession of moral rights.”
The Case for Animal Rights, p. 267
The Bearers of Moral Rights
Race, sex, religion, place of origin, and nationality are all
irrelevant to Moral Rights.
Persons or Agents
Conscious Subjects or Patients
Conventional & Legal Rights
Conventional
Women
NonConventional?
Policeman
Professional
Legal
The right to raid
Alt’s refrigerator
Nurses
Bearers of Rights?
Other Creatures?
Citizens: Legal
Rights
Non Human Mammals:
Moral Rights?
Humans: Natural
or Human Rights?
Persons: Conventional
Rights
Jeremy Bentham: “Anarchical
Fallacies”
• Bentham argued that the very idea of a nonlegal right was “nonsense upon stilts.”
• He attacked the assumption that: “…there
are rights anterior to the establishment of
governments: for natural, as applied to
rights, if it means anything, is meant to
stand in opposition to legal…”
Inherent Dignity and Human
Rights
• “The United Nations Universal Declaration of
Human Rights” speaks of “the inherent dignity
and of the equal and inalienable rights of all
members of the human family.”
• Article 1: “All human beings are born free and
equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed
with reason and conscience and should act
towards one another in a sprit of brotherhood.”
Regan: Inherent Value and
Animal Rights
• Regan calls creatures that have beliefs,
desires, perceptions, and a sense of the
future “subjects of a life.”
• There are two types of subjects of a life:
1) Moral Patients that are not agents, and
2) Moral Patients that are agents, namely:
human agents.
Human Agents or Persons
Human Agents
Moral Patients
Creatures
Regan’s Case for Animal Rights.
• Regan thinks animals that are conscious patients
have “INHERENT VALUE.”
• He claims that if something has “inherent value,”
we have a “direct duty” to insure that this value is
respected. He says, “It is not ‘the sentimental
interests’ of moral agents that grounds our
duties of justice to children, the retarded, the
senile, or other moral patients, including
animals. It is respect for their inherent value.”
Moral Patients
• Regan thinks some subjects of a life are
pure patients. That is, they are not agents in
the way that people are. Yet they do deserve
moral concern from people. He calls them
“moral patients” and includes in their ranks,
infants, the senile, and some animals.
Regan’s argument
1. Some subjects of a life have “inherent
value.”
2. All things with “inherent value” morally
require our respect.
3. Therefore, some subjects of a life morally
require our respect.
The argument is valid, but is it
sound?
• Neither premise 1. nor premise 2. is true.
• To say something has inherent value is like
saying that it is a circular square.
• To borrow a phrase from Bentham, the idea
of “intrinsic value” is nonsense upon stilts.
The Meaning of “inherent”
• An “inherent” property is one that is woven
into the very nature of a thing.
• So an inherent property is an intrinsic
property.
“Intrinsic”
• An intrinsic property of something is a
property the thing has:
a) no matter what anyone believes or
wants,
b) no matter what else is true.
• Mass, for example, is intrinsic to matter.
Dignity
• Dignity is not a property of a rights bearing
individual in the way that mass is a property
of a human being. Humans have mass no
matter what anyone believes or wants; and
no matter what else is true. But whether or
not a thing has dignity depends on what
people believe about it, want in regard to
it, and what is true of it.
So: Dignity is not inherent
• To have dignity is to be worthy of being
singled out for praise. But what makes a
thing worthy? What dignifies it? Things
have worth because people attribute worth
to them, and they have dignity because
people dignify them. So dignity is not a
property intrinsic to anything. Dignity is
invented, not discovered.
Value is Invented not Discovered
• 1. “I value X” does not entail
• 2. “X is valuable.”
For 2. is ambiguous between:
2 a) “X can be valued” which is trivial, and
2 b) “X is worthy of being valued” which is
clearly not entailed by 1.
So, how should we talk about
rights?
Conventional
Legal,
Professional,
etc.
Yes
Non-Conventional
Natural or Human?
Moral, etc.
No
Do I Have the Right?
Human,
Natural,
Moral?
Stop
Professional or Legal?
No
Yes
Can it be created?
Can it be enforced?
How?
How do you know?
Is it being enforced?