How do you justify animal rights?

Question

From a social contract perspective. If you can't justify them - should they be abolished?

Answer 1

From a social contract perspective.... OK. That's tricky, but a good challenge. Two ways to argue it from that perspective.

First, we are part of a community (limited to other humans for this version of the argument). Animals are important to many of the other members of that community, both as pets, chattel, food source, etc. Cruelty or excessive harm to animals causes people to be upset, when their pets or companions are hurt, or because their livelihood is affected. That harms the social control implied within the community to help thy neighbor.

Second perspective. The global community includes all living things. This is more like the Aboriginal, Shinto or Native American belief system. Within that global natural community, everything we do has an effect on the balance of the system as a whole. When we harm other living things, we upset that natural balance, thus harming the community as a whole.

Two different ways to justify animal rights from within that one philosophical perspective. I'll abstain from the discussion over whether to abolish animal rights or not.

[PS] Thanks. That was a fun intellectual challenge.

Answer 2

Well, rights are conferred by humans, so I am suspect of that. The problem is that since humans have rarely conferred rights on animals, they appear to have virtually none. If anyone wanted animals to have the same rights as humans, they would have to abolish the humans.

Four legs good, two legs bad (with apologies to Chicken Run)

Answer 3

If I should see an animal being harmed, I would have no
problem in justifying the matter.
Most animals are small & all are without a voice,
people, on the other hand, can suck.

Answer 4

the abstract idea that is social contract is contingent in the same sense as the animal rights idea. One cannot justify the preference of one species over another from a logical point of view.

Answer 5

If they are legally categorized as such, then treat them as animals according to the letter of the law. Animal rights stop when they infringe on human rights. Unfortunately, I would categorize many human beings under the category of animal. What must we do about them?

Answer 6

Animals must have rights because in the first place they cannot speak for themselves and seen that we are the caretakers of the Earth it's our duty to protect them , i think so, it's the least we can do.!!!

Answer 7

Animals are living beings, we are mainly talking about dogs and cats that people take in their lives and then abuse them, abandon them and mistreat them. They should have the same right as people even more because they cannot talk and complain and love us without any restrictions. Boubala

Answer 8

Because there is absolutely no reason what so ever to torture or abuse an animal. They are living, breathing, feeling creatures. Domesticated animals are not capable of taking care of themselves, therefore they depend on humans to provide their basic needs. Anyone who is capable of torturing an animal is psychotic! It is a proven fact that those people are 10 times more likely to injure or kill another human.

And it would actually be much easier on the environment if everyone were to become vegetarian:

What we choose to eat has an enormous impact on the environment. Following a diet loaded with animal flesh, eggs, and dairy products is like trampling the Earth in a Hummer—it's bad for the environment and wastes vast amounts of resources. Switching to a vegetarian diet reduces your "ecological footprint", allowing you to tread lightly on the planet and be compassionate to its inhabitants.

Consider the following:

Eating animals causes global warming. A major report by the University of Chicago in 2006 found that adopting a vegan diet has a greater impact in the fight against global warming than switching to a hybrid car does.
It takes up to 16 pounds of grain to produce just 1 pound of animal flesh. It's shockingly inefficient to feed plant foods to farmed animals and consume their flesh rather than eating the plant foods ourselves.
In the U.S. every second, chickens, turkeys, pigs, and cows in factory farms produce nearly 89,000 pounds of excrement, which is contaminated with the antibiotics and hormones that are pumped into these animals. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the runoff from factory farms pollutes our waterways more than all other industrial sources combined.
Industrial agriculture consumes and wastes a tremendous amount of resources: In the U.S., 70 percent of all grains, 80 percent of all agricultural land, half of all water resources, and one-third of all fossil fuels are used to raise animals for food.
Eating animals destroys the rain forest. Most environmentalists are aware that the Amazon has been slashed and burned in order to create grazing space for cows. But perhaps an even greater threat is the destruction of rain forest in order to create land where feed is grown for factory-farmed animals in wealthy nations. A recent report by Greenpeace blamed the chicken-flesh industry, particularly KFC, for leading the way in destroying the Amazon.

By choosing vegetarianism instead of a diet loaded with animal products, you can dramatically reduce the amount of land, water, and oil resources that you consume and the amount of pollution that you cause. Of course, reducing your ecological footprint should also mean causing less harm to the Earth's nonhuman inhabitants: By switching to a vegetarian diet, you can save more than 100 animals each year from the horrific cruelty of the flesh, egg, and dairy industries. Please make the compassionate, environmentally friendly choice to switch to a healthy vegetarian diet

Answer 9

In some states you cat has more rights than a human fetus.

Answer 10

i don't .i no that they have feeling also .it's the right thing to do because animals can't tell us or protect them self's so it's our job to do so.