"A right, properly understood, is a claim, or potential claim,
that one party may exercise against another. The target against
whom such a claim may be registered can be a single person, a
group, a community, or (perhaps) all humankind. The content of
rights claims also varies greatly: repayment of loans,
nondiscrimination by employers, noninterference by the state, and
so on. To comprehend any genuine right fully, therefore, we must
know who holds the right, against whom it is held, and to what it
is a right.
Alternative sources of rights add complexity. Some rights are
grounded in constitution and law (e.g., the right of an accused
to trial by jury); some rights are moral but give no legal claims
(e.g., my right to your keeping the promise you gave me); and
some rights (e.g., against theft or assault) are rooted both in
morals and in law.
The differing targets, contents, and sources of rights, and their
inevitable conflict, together weave a tangled web. Notwithstanding all
such complications, this much is clear about rights in general: they
are in every case claims, or potential claims, within a community of
moral agents. Rights arise, and can be intelligibly defended, only
among beings who actually do, or can, make moral claims against one
another. Whatever else rights may be, therefore, they are necessarily
human; their possessors are persons, human beings. [p.865]
The attributes of human beings from which this moral capability
arises have been described variously by philosophers, both
ancient and modern: the inner consciousness of a free will (Saint
Augustine); the grasp, by human reason, of the binding character
of moral law (Saint Thomas); the self-conscious participation of
human beings in an objective ethical order (Hegel); human
membership in an organic moral community (Bradley); the
development of the human self through the consciousness of other
moral selves (Mead); and the underivative, intuitive cognition of
the rightness of an action (Prichard). Most influential has been
Immanuel Kant’s emphasis on the universal human possession of a
uniquely moral will and the autonomy its use entails. Humans
confront choices that are purely moral; humans — but certainly
not dogs or mice — lay down moral laws, for others and for
themselves. Human beings are self-legislative, morally
auto-nomous [sic]. [p.865-866]
Animals (that is, nonhuman animals, the ordinary sense of that
word) lack this capacity for free moral judgment. They are not
beings of a kind capable of exercising or responding to moral
claims. Animals therefore have no rights, and they can have
none. This is the core of the argument about the alleged rights
of animals. The holders of rights must have the capacity to
comprehend rules of duty, governing all including themselves. In
applying such rules, the holders of rights must recognize
possible conflicts between what is in their own interest and what
is just. Only in a community of beings capable of
self-restricting moral judgments can the concept of a right be
correctly invoked.
Humans have such moral capabilities. They are in this sense
self-legislative, are members of communities governed by moral
rules, and do possess rights. Animals do not have such moral
capacities. They are not morally self-legislative, cannot
possibly be members of a truly moral community, and therefore
cannot possess rights. In conducting research on animal subjects,
therefore, we do not violate their rights, because they have none
to violate.
To animate life, even in its simplest forms, we give a certain
natural reverence. But the possession of rights presupposes a
moral status not attained by the vast majority of living
things. We must not infer, therefore, that a live being has,
simply in being alive, a "right" to its life. The assertion that
all animals, only because they are alive and have interests, also
possess the "right to life" is an abuse of that phrase, and
wholly without warrant.
It does not follow from this, however, that we are morally free
to do anything we please to animals. Certainly not. In our
dealings with animals, as in our dealings with other human
beings, we have obligations that do not arise from claims against
us based on rights. Rights entail obligations, but many of the
things one ought to do are in no way tied to another’s
entitlement. Rights and obligations are not reciprocals of one
another, and it is a serious mistake to suppose that they are.
…. Plainly, the grounds of our obligations to humans and to
animals are manifold and cannot be formulated simply. Some hold
that there is a general obligation to do no gratuitous harm to
sentient creatures (the principle of nonmaleficence); some hold
that there is a general obligation to do good to sentient
creatures when that is reasonably within one’s power (the
principle of beneficence). In our dealings with animals, few will
deny that we are at least obliged to act humanely — that is, to
treat them with the decency and concern that we owe, as sensitive
human beings, to other sentient creatures. To treat animals
humanely, however, is not to treat them as humans or as the
holders of rights.
A common objection, which deserves a response, may be paraphrased
as follows:
"If having rights requires being able to make moral claims, to
grasp and apply moral laws, then many humans — the
brain-damaged, the comatose, the senile — who plainly lack those
capacities must be without rights. But that is absurd. This
proves [the critic concludes] that rights do not depend on the
presence of moral capacities."
This objection fails; it mistakenly treats an essential feature of
humanity as though it were a screen for sorting humans. The capacity
for moral judgment that distinguishes humans from animals is not a
test to be administered to human beings one by one. Persons who are
unable, because of some disability, to perform the full moral
functions natural to human beings are certainly not for that reason
ejected from the moral community. The issue is one of kind. Humans
are of such a kind that they may be the subject of experiments only
with their voluntary consent. The choices they make freely must be
respected. Animals are of such a kind that it is impossible for them,
in principle, to give or withhold voluntary consent or to make a moral
choice. What humans retain when disabled, animals have never
had. [p.866]
A second objection, also often made, may be paraphrased as
follows:
"Capacities will not succeed in distinguishing humans from the
other animals. Animals also reason; animals also communicate with
one another; animals also care passionately for their young;
animals also exhibit desires and preferences. Features of moral
relevance - rationality, interdependence, and love — are not
exhibited uniquely by human beings. Therefore [this critic
concludes], there can be no solid moral distinction between
humans and other animals."
This criticism misses the central point. lt is not the ability to
communicate or to reason, or dependence on one another, or care
for the young, or the exhibition of preference, or any such
behavior that marks the critical divide. Analogies between human
families and those of monkeys, or between human communities and
those of wolves, and the like, are entirely beside the
point. Patterns of conduct are not at issue. Animals do indeed
exhibit remarkable behavior at times. Conditioning, fear,
instinct, and intelligence all contribute to species
survival. Membership in a community of moral agents nevertheless
remains impossible for them. Actors subject to moral judgment
must be capable of grasping the generality of an ethical premise
in a practical syllogism. Humans act immorally often enough, but
only they — never wolves or monkeys — can discern, by applying
some moral rule to the facts of a case, that a given act ought or
ought not to be performed. The moral restraints imposed by humans
on themselves are thus highly abstract and are often in conflict
with the self-interest of the agent. Communal behavior among
animals, even when most intelligent and most endearing, does not
approach autonomous morality in this fundamental sense. [p.866-867]
Genuinely moral acts have an internal as well as an external
dimension. Thus, in law, an act can be criminal only when the
guilty deed, the actus reus, is done with a guilty mind, mens
rea. No animal can ever commit a crime; bringing animals to
criminal trial is the mark of primitive ignorance. The claims of
moral right are similarly inapplicable to them. Does a lion have
a right to eat a baby zebra? Does a baby zebra have a right not
to be eaten? Such questions, mistakenly invoking the concept of
right where it does not belong, do not make good sense. Those who
condemn biomedical research because it violates "animal rights"
commit the same blunder." [p. 867]
————-
Carl Cohen. "The Case for the Use of Animals in Biomedical
Research" The New England Journal of Medicine 315, no. 14
(October 2,1986): 865-69.
