Carl Cohen's Explanation Of Animal Rights

According to Carl Cohen, he starts out argument by establishing the differences between rights and interests, which he explains through examples and definitions. He defined rights as a valid or potential claim made by the moral agent, which also needs to have some sort of content and targets involved. He then contrasts it with interests as them holding different moral reasonings and does not always command respect. The main point he uses to explain the difference between rights and interest is that rights trumps interests always. Besides the rights and interest we may have between different individuals, there is a relationship between rights and obligations as he explains it through seven different examples. Animals do not have the same rights as humans since we are both on different moral realms, but we may have certain obligations to animals. On the other hand, his argument for proving that animals do not have rights follows: P(1) If doing X gives only humans have the ability to make moral claims then doing X morally required.

P(2) Members of non-human animal species do not have the ability to make moral claims. P(3) Therefore, members of non-human animal species do

As he was trying to explain the differences between human and animal rights, his definition of rights involves a valid moral claims and that only humans have this ability. The one problem I found in his argument is with the senile and infants do not have the ability to retain mental functions, ill, or rational and are to the point where they cannot be moral agents anymore and their rights to make decisions is compromised showing that the senile and infants have no rights. However, Cohen could respond by stating that just being human alone means that these rights are already given to us versus the animal kingdom who do not have this right as explained from