Animal Rights: Key Principles and Debates

Introduction

• Animals deserve to live their lives free from suffering and exploitation.
• Scientific research shows that animals possess consciousness, emotions, and the capacity to experience pain and suffering.
• The treatment of other species challenges anthropocentric views and raises ethical questions.

Animal Rights: Philosophical Foundations

• Animal rights are moral principles grounded in the belief that non-human animals deserve the ability to live as they wish without subjection to the desires of human beings.
• Human rights protect certain freedoms like the right to expression, freedom from torture and access to democracy
• The animal rights movement emphasizes activism and education to promote awareness and protection for animals worldwide
• Animal rights are rooted in the belief that non-human animals have inherent value and deserve ethical consideration.
• Autonomy is at the core of animal rights.
• Animal rights aim for something similar to human rights.

The Case Against Animal Rights

• Ideas against animal rights include the following:
  • Animals don't think or aren't really conscious
  • Animals were put on earth to serve human beings
  • Animals do not have souls and do not behave morally
  • Animals are not members of the "moral community"
  • Animals lack the capacity for free moral judgement

Historical Review: Utilitarianism and Animal Welfare

• Utilitarianism, as advocated by Jeremy Bentham and Mill, emphasizes maximizing happiness and minimizing suffering.
• Bentham stated, "The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?"
• Moral consideration extends to animals based on their capacity to experience pain.
• Bentham points to that animals capacity for suffering gives it a right to equal consideration
• The capacity for suffering is not another characteristic like the capacity for language or higher mathematics.
• All animals are seen to have the ability to suffer that is similar to the ability and extent humans do
• Animals feel pain, pleasure, fear, frustration, loneliness, and motherly love.

Deontology and Animal Rights

• Deontological ethics, associated with Kant and Tom Regan, focuses on inherent rights and duties.
• Regan argues that animals, like humans, are "subjects-of-a-life" and possess inherent value.
• Treatment of animals as ends in themselves, not merely as means to human ends.
• Beings that are subjects-of-a-life can be said to have inherent value.
• Beings with inherent value are equally valuable and entitled to the same rights.
• Inherent value doesn't depend on usefulness to the world doesn't diminish if they are a burden to others.
• Adult mammals have rights in just the same way. for the same reasons, and to the same extend that human beings have rights
• Animals should have a similar level of biological complexity,
• They should be conscious/aware of existing and know what is happening to them
• They should prefer some things and should make conscious choices
• Animals should live to give themselves the best quality of life and plan their lives to some extent
• The quality and length of their life matters to them

Speciesism

• Speciesism is prejudice or discrimination based on species membership and analogous to racism or sexism.
• Prioritization of human interests over the interests of other animals, even when those interests are comparable.
• This bias underlies many forms of animal exploitation.
• Animals should have the right to live free from suffering and exploitation.
• Peter Singer's book, Animal liberation states that basic principle does not require equal or identical treatment but requires equal consideration.
• This is important distinction when talking about animal rights.

Animal Rights and Exploitation

• Animal rights come into opposition with animal exploitation.
• Exploitation includes animals being used by humans for a variety of reasons, for food, or as experimetnal objects or even as pets.
• Animal rights also violated when it comes to human destruction of animal habitats,
• Violations negatively impacts the ability of animals to lead full lives of their choosing.

The Difference Between Animal Welfare and Animal Rights

• Animal rights philosophy is based on the idea that animals should not be used by people for any reason.
• Animal rights should protect their interests the way human rights protect people.
• Animal welfare is a set of practices designed to govern the treatment of animals who are being dominated by humans, whether for food, research, or entertainment.

Recognition of Animal Rights

• Should animal rights be recognized, industries would disappear.
• Environmental problems - including water pollution, air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and deforestation - they cause would disappear.
• Halting the widespread use of animals would eliminate systematic cruelty and denial of choice perpetuated by animal industries.
• The physical and psychological pain endured by animals in places like factory farms has reached a point many consider to be unacceptable.
• Animals are mutilated by humans in several different ways.

George Orwell

• (Born June 25, 1903, Motihari, Bengal, India, died January 21, 1950, London, England) was an English novelist, essayist, and critic, famous for Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-four (1949).
• Nineteen Eighty-Four is a profound anti-utopian novel that examines the dangers of totalitarian rule.
• He served at a number of country stations and initially seemed like a model imperial servant.
• In 1922, he went to Burma as assistant district superintendent in the Indian Imperial Police.
• Orwell realized how much against their will the Burmese were ruled by the British, he felt increasingly ashamed of his role as a colonial police officer.
• He recounted his experiences and reactions to imperial rule in Burmese Days.
• He also wrote two autobiographical sketches, Shooting an Elephant and A Hanging, in expository prose.

Shooting an Elephant and Animal Rights

• George Orwell's Shooting an Elephant recounts the narrator's experience as a British police officer in colonial Burma.
• The main character felt pressured to shoot an elephant, despite not wanting to,
• Act becomes symbolic representation of complexities of colonialism and its moral compromise
• Literary works, like Orwell's, significantly influenced raising awareness and empathy for modern animal rights movements.
• Traditionally critics focus on the metaphors of Shooting an Elephant and the concrete fact is always right before our eyes.
• The slow death of the elephant is an allegory of imperialism. (Meyers 24)
• Death of the elephant symbolizes the death of Empire,
• Edward Quinn notes that the elephant represents "traditional Burmese culture" (307).

The Symbolism of the Elephant

• The elephant symbolizes oppression and the struggle faced by the marginalized and also embodies power and control.
• This reflects the dynamics of authority in society.

Sociological and Postcolonial Context

• Colonial power dynamic is the imbalance between British colonizers and Burmese people.
• Narrator, as representative of colonial administration, holds position of authority, but feels alienated and powerless himself
• The crowd mentality is the crowd's pressure on the narrator to act in accordance with their expectations
• This illustrates the sociological phenomenon of deindividuation, where individuals lose their sense of responsibility
• The elephant's commodity inside the colonial system is primarily economic.
• The elephant is a tool for labor and commodity to be user and disposed of
• This instrumental view reduces them to mere objects, devoid of intrinsic value.
• The narrator, despite doubts, functions as a cog in the colonial machine, enforcing the laws and maintaining order, even when he knows its unjust
• Imperialism in Burma was driven by economic interests, like teak and rice, The elephant as working animal, becomes a part of this.
• The use of metaphors and symbols served to distract from the animal
• Reading takes away from the fact "Shooting an Elephant" is animal being hurt
• Animal farm has been read as a political satire of stalinist russia or political failings
• Orwell claimed the motif was to protest the human treatment of animals esp. farm animals
• Ironically critics overlooked this claim

Empathy Towards Animals

• Empathy is key to understanding the welfare and the needs of animals
• The elephant is a gateway to the discussion of animal rights

The Elephant's Killing

• Orwell said "It was a tiny incident in itself, but it gave me a better glimpse than I had had before of the real nature of imperialism – the real motives for which despotic governments act"(Orwell 36).
• The killing is referred to as "tiny incident".
• The killing represents the extracting human message from the animal
• As for the description of the elephants destruction it destroyed a bamboo hit, killed a cow etc
• What's ironic is the reason for aggressiveness is not highlighted in the story
• But says the beast "had gone must"
• The animal was denied its biological necessity chained so it can suffer in a handicapped way.
• The killing can be avoided, the animal was almost pacified grazing peacefully.
• Orwell said he was to observe the beasts actions that it would not go wild- but the animal was never alone
• Orwell was against killing the animal because "it's a serious matter to shoot a workin elephant"
• this Is comparable to destroying costly piece machinery
• The animal life more seemingly valued for the monetary value people can use it for
• In turn orwell must act like a sahib/colonial

Colonialism's Animal Rights Impact

• Huguen and tiffin observed that both western exploitation, present/past, has lead to the murder displacement of the animal
• Here the moral degradation comes into the situation, and westerners always chose to destroy the resource
• It appears that the colonized cannot be blamed
• The white colonizers are generally blamed for exploiting, but the colonized are also the same in their views of animals
• Despite the colonized being attacked the also do the same
• Anthropocentric attitude is common no matter the ethnicity, etc.
• The point is that the white man kills to use but the natives made him do it for entertainment purposes and food.
• Orwell heard "devilish roar".
• It indicates that it does not really matter whether you are a colonizer or colonized, you are worse than the animals in the jurisdiction and should
• Most importantly the natives were asking for the man to do it instead of themselves.
• Killing of the great beast is told with gruesome details. The death is painful and ghastly
• People never care, the animals details of death.
• Shooting an elephant heart-rendering description of a large murder, so human power replaces it
• It shows it was done only to keep masterly image
• Narrator didn't want to look fool
• Instead we got human self centeredness
• We always raced to assume superiority to animals
• But instead, The Elephant as Symbol is used to show the oppression.
• They both symbolize wild people
• It is a force which human control has no power as long it's subjected to colonialism

Why it is important to treat Non-Humans with compassion

• The way we treat others non-human shows our values.

Violence

• The killing in the elephant story is a culmination of the violence with human social systems.
• It's symbolic, and inflicted among our natural world if over looked would be praised
• Older said that the elephant deserves the right to live but they needed the coolie

Domination over Nature

• The nature of the animals are not the responsibility or need to be dominated and have ethical implications

Explore the core principles of animal rights, focusing on the basis for granting rights to non-human animals and the primary objectives of the movement. Understand autonomy in the context of animals and debate ethical dilemmas such as animal testing, farming, and conservation.