The oil has always been on top. Always. The water has always been on bottom. Always. In a bottle, oil is always considered to be on top, the steadier, important substance, at a higher level than water. Oil is at the top of the liquid chain. Then again, they are both liquids and have similar characteristics; does that mean water and oil should be on the same level? Should they be considered the equal? Many people agree that animals should have some rights. Animal rights, by definition, is an animal’s right to live free from human caused suffering. However, what is continually debated is what kind of rights animals ought to have. Should animals be considered an equal to the human species or be kept below them? Although animals share many attributes with human beings, there are too many differences between them for them to be considered equal.
First of all, animals do not need to be equal or have the same privileges because of their basic needs. There are 3 main necessities: food and water, shelter, and a habitat . Food and water for them to eat and drink, shelter to protect them from predators and bad weather, and a habitat to live in and interact with others (“The Basic Needs of Animals”). Considering the fact animals’ sole purpose in life is to survive and continue their species, certain liberties are of no concern to these creatures and would be wasted on them: the right to drive, the right to vote, the freedom to walk through streets without leashes, and the freedom to eat whatever they like. So of course, it would be unrealistic to say animals are equal to humans when more than half of what humans do does not matter to them.
What most animal rights activists would say is animals should not be discounted for their intelli...
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Katz, Jon. "Animals Need Better Care, Not Equal Rights." Slate (5 Mar. 2004). Rpt. in The Rights of Animals. Ed. Auriana Ojeda. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2004. Current Controversies. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 25 Mar. 2011.
Kobilnyk, Andrey. “Do Animals Have Rights?” First Science. 1 Oct. 2007. Web.26 Jan. 2011.
Stiver, Randy. "God Did Not Make Animals the Moral Equivalent of Humans." The Rights of Animals. Ed. Auriana Ojeda. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2009. Current Controversies. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 7 Mar. 2011.
Thorpe, Joey. Personal Interview. 31 Jan. 2011.
Will, George F. "U.K. Pets Get 'Freedoms'; Humans need freedom from government supervision of all dealings between people, or between people and tropical fish." Newsweek 13 Feb. 2006: 72. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 25 Mar. 2011.
Regan, Tom. “The Case for Animal Rights.” In Animal Rights and Human Obligations, 2 ed.. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1989.
Regan, Tom. “The Case for Animal Rights.” In Defense of Animals. Ed. Peter Singer. New York:
Wyckoff, Jason, and M.A Bertz. "The Animal Rights Debate: Abolition or Regulation? - By Gary L. Francione & Robert Garner." Journal of Applied Philosophy 28.4 (2011): 414-16. Print.
Feinberg, Joel. Rights, Justice, and the Bounds of Liberty: Essays in Social Philosophy "The Rights of Animals and Unborn Generations," Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980, 159-84. Essay.
Almost all humans want to have possession and control over their own life, they want the ability to live independently without being considered someone’s property. Many people argue that animals should live in the same way as humans because animals don’t have possession of their lives as they are considered the property of humans. An article that argues for animal rights is “The case against pets” (2016) by Francione and Charlton. Gary L Francione and Anna E Charlton are married and wrote a book together, “Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach (2015). Francione is a law professor at Rutgers University and an honorary professor at University of East Anglia. Charlton is also a law professor at Rutgers University and she is the co-founder of the Rutgers Animal Rights Law Clinic. In this article Francione and Charlton mainly focus on persuading people to believe in animal rights but only focus on one right, the right of animals not to be property. The article is written in a well-supported manner with a lot of details and examples backing it up, but a few counter-arguments can be made against some of their arguments.
Billions of animals are being slaughtered, abused, and harmed every year; causing enormous amounts of pain, suffering and distress upon them. It is wrong for humans to cause extended harm to animals for no compelling reason, for the fact that they have moral statuses. We have obligations to animals, and these are not simply grounded in human interests. However, the issues of moral status and equal consideration are far more fundamental and far-reaching in practical impact as DeGrazia have stated. (38) Animals have as much moral status and rights as humans do, and are most definitely worthy of our consideration in their lives.
Hills, Alison. "Do animals have right?" In Chapter 13: Science and Suffering, by Alison Hills, 199-218. Cambridge: Icon, 2005.
Morrison, Nick. "Animal Rights and Wrongs." Northern Echo, 24 Feb. 2001: n. pag. elibrary. Web. 12 Nov. 2013.
... concept. An animal cannot follow our rules of morality, “Perhaps most crucially, what other species can be held morally accontable” (Scully 44). As a race humans must be humane to those that cannot grasp the concept. Animals do not posess human rights but they posess the right to welfare and proper treatment by their handlers.
In conclusion, I agree with Tom Regan’s perspective of the rights view, as it explores the concept of equality, and the concept of rightful treatment of animals and humans. If a being is capable of living, and experiencing life, then they are more than likely capable of feeling pleasure and pain, except in a few instances. If humans are still treated in a respectable and right way even if some cannot vote, or think for themselves, then it is only fair that animals who also lack in some of these abilities be treated as equals. As Regan puts it, “pain is pain, wherever it occurs” (1989).
Animals will have rights when they have the means to enforce them. They don't have the ability to reason as humans do. The human race has such a vast understanding of the necessities for all of the different species of animals to exist. Humans are far superior to any other animal because they are so advanced in technology. One advantage of advanced technology is, humans can store information as reference material. With all of this reference material humans can look back at previous mistakes so they don't do the same thing again. With this knowledge, humans can see and predict outcomes before a choice is made. Humans have the knowledge to enforce their rights, something no other animal has.
Tom Regan, “The Case for Animal Rights,” in In Defense of Animals, ed. Peter Singer (Oxford:
Animals are so often forgotten when it comes to the many different levels of basic rights. No, they can’t talk, or get a job, nor can they contribute to society the way humans can. Yet they hold a special place in their owners’ hearts, they can without a doubt feel, show their different emotions, and they can most definitely love. In recent years there has been a massive increase in animal rights awareness, leading to a better understanding and knowledge in the subject of the humane treatment of animals. Where do humans draw the line between the concern of equality, and simple survival?
To conclude this paper then, after reviewing the reasons for being opposed to assigning rights to non-human animals I am still faithfully for the idea. There is no justification for the barbaric and insensitive ways to which we have been treating the non-human animals with over the decades. As I stated before, they are living creatures just as we are, they have families, emotions and struggles of their own without the ones we inflict on them. So then where does this leave us? Of course it is a complicated mater, but none the less non-human animals should be protected with rights against them being used as machines, for food, for their skins, their wool, and all cases in which they are being abused.
Cavalieri , Paola. The Animal Question: Why Nonhuman Animals Deserve Human Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Print.