Animal Rights Literature Review

Running head: ANIMAL RIGHTS PROPOSAL 1

ANIMAL RIGHTS PROPOSAL 4

Unit III Animal Rights Proposal

Cynthia Fisher

Columbia Southern University

1/29/17

Animal Rights Proposal

Section 1: Animal Rights

Non-human animals have rights and ought to be treated just like normal human beings of moral concern (Rowlands, 2016). Animal rights is the ides that a few, or all, non-human animals have the right to possess their own lives and thus there basic interest ought to be managed an indistinguishable thought from comparative interests of human beings. Some of the animal’s basic interest is the right or need to avoid suffering. Animals are living beings, they contribute to the balancing of ecological system, and therefore, human beings have the responsibility to refrain from harming them but instead protect them. According to Cochrane (2012), if these needs or obligations are not satisfied, there will be no moral action on the side of human beings.

Section 2: Controversy Behind animal Rights

The controversy over animal rights is a standout amongst the most antagonistic in the field of morality and ethics. Most people ask the same question: “Do animals share a comparative consciousness with humans?” This epistemological issue has no exact answer (Hearne 1991). For sure, no one understands what goes on in an animal mind. They may at the same time share some traits with human beings. As Sunstein (2003) claims, many individuals trust that animals do not have rights, and the general populations who bolster animal rights are liberals who need to discover different outlets for their persuasions. Others feel it is our ethical commitment to nurture animals as they cannot act or talk themselves.

Animals clearly should experience their lives free from exploitation and misery. One may contend that it is the human's capacity to reason that differentiates us from animals. As Korsgaard (2012) indicates, the fact that we reason makes us unrivaled. While it cannot be decisively proven that animals cannot reason, we just have to assume that they cannot for the moment. Birds can fly while human beings cannot. The fact that birds can fly while human being cannot does not make animals superior. Contingent upon what traits human beings concentrate on, all species can be viewed as superior in some way. However, these differences are insignificant when choosing which species get which rights (Regan 1980). Human beings are mammals, we are animals, just like other animals. We have a sense for survival. We have to eat and rest when it is necessary. Therefore, we have a central nervous system and as a result, we feel pain and suffering and so do animals.

We as human beings do take other species to extremes, making new species through farming and domestication, invading most climates and environments, and utilizing our intelligence to expand short term gains at the detriment of long-term sustainability (Hadley 2009). This is what leads to harming animals. Supporters of animal rights trust that animals have a natural worth, a value that is totally segregated from their benefit to humans. Every creature that has a right to live should be free from pain and suffering. Therefore, animal rights as a movement challenges the worlds old view that all animals only exist for human use like in experimentation and agriculture.

Section 3: Thesis statement

Animals have rights to live free of pain and suffering. These rights should overpower the problems with animal experimentation, abuse and abandonment.

References

Cochrane, A. (2012). Animal rights without liberation: Applied ethics and human obligations. Columbia University Press, 36-252

Hadley, J. (2009). Animal rights extremism and the terrorism question. Journal of social philosophy, 40(3), 363-378.

Hearne, V. (1991). What's Wrong with Animal Rights: Of Hounds, Horses, and Jeffersonian Happiness. Harper's Magazine, 283(1696), 59-64.

Korsgaard, C. M. (2012). A Kantian case for animal rights. 3-25

Regan, T. (1980). Animal rights, human wrongs. Environmental Ethics, 2(2), 99-120.

Rowlands, M. (2016). Animal rights: Moral theory and practice. University of Miami, Florida, USA. Springer.

Sunstein, C. R. (2003). The rights of animals. The University of Chicago Law Review, 70(1), 387-401.