They believe that animals should be granted the right against suffering at the hands of humans. I believe that it is wrong to think that animals have any rights. To protect animals from suffering by humans should be a matter of animal welfare, not right. According to Jussen, animal rights proposes that it is unacceptable to use animals for any human purpose at all, including the use of dogs and cats as pets, cows and pigs for food, or the use of animals in research and testing. Regardless of how humane, animal rights proponents reject all animal use as exploitation and aim to ban all use of animals by humans.
The morality of humane treatment or imposing the parameters of human rights as a moral imperative where animals are concerned should be based upon the idea that as an enlightened human being, animals should be treated with dignity. That animals do not deserve humane treatment because they cannot reciprocate is not a rational idea. Neither is the argument that because they cannot be taught relevant. It is not about the creature who is being treated in a certain way as much as the morality involved in using power over other creatures to deny their
Slaughterhouses were gruesome and extremely unethical in their approach to materialize animals. It seems as if animals were no longer living beings but rather objects that humans can reproduce and manipulate. I believe that many people in our society are anthropocentric because a lot of them are not exposed to what the food industries really do. The general public is often occupied with the idea that everything should revolve around improving ourselves. But not a lot of people pay attention to what happens behind the scenes.
Does the wrongness of killing animals (human and non-human) depend on them possessing specific attributes? If the wrongness of killing depends on the killed holding particular attributes, do non-human animals possess them? (Here I will examine the latest research into animal mindedness.) If some (or all) animals lack the attributes that deems killing immoral, do we have any grounds to oppose their killing? If, as it is commonly claimed, there is a mismatch between utilitarian pronouncements and our intuitions when it comes to killing, does it pose a problem for the utilitarian perspective?
There are multiple reasons stated in Rachel's article on why it is wrong to eat meat. The main point in her article is that to eat meat is to support a cruel system of meat production. Rachels argues against Kant's belief that animals do not have a moral standing and are merely a means to an end, which is man. Rachels believes that
Ethics on use of animals for research The early Greek philosophers valued reason above all else, and ascribed little moral value to animals and even to other humans that did not possess this attribute. While this viewpoint might be viewed as extreme, from a biological perspective this might be seen as competition. Using the survival advantage given to us by our capacity for reason is no less moral or ethical than another animal using its adaptations to survive. However, it should be obvious that by allowing unrestricted human exploitation of animals, there is great potential for extirpation of species. Thus, we utilize animals for food and clothing; we keep them as pets or as livestock; we plant our crops, harvest wild plant products, and build our cities and highways where animals might otherwise have lived, but we do so with restrictions on our
(Midgley p. 152) In other words, Kant does not believe animals to be persons, but they are not exactly things or objects. So the question remains, where exactly do animals stand? Since it is apparent that humans do regard animals as more than mundane objects and that it is evident that animals do display certain levels of intelligence and sentience, I will argue that humans indeed have an irrevocable moral obligation to animals. First of all, let’s start with defining what a human person really is, I believe that a human person is a person if they match the following criteria. They must be a conscious being as in they must be able to experience things subjectively, secondly, they must be self-aware, and thirdly, they must display a certain degree of intelligence, (Anderson).
The Law of Nature is the known difference between right and wrong. That is, man’s distinction between what is right and what is wrong. Lewis also believes we as humans have a primal instinct, although this is not what he means by the moral law. Lewis says: “I do not deny that we may have a herd instinct: but that is not what I mean by the moral law... Feeling a desire to help is quite different from feeling that you ought to help whether you want to or not.”(Lewis 9).
Just thinking about the skinning of an animal terrifies me, but it saddens me more to know that there are people in the world that can kill animals just for the profit that it can bring to them. When an animal is captured, it is put through unbelievable pain. It sometimes drives the animal to tear through its own flesh and bone, sometimes the animal even loose teeth because they bite on the trap. Sometimes the animals are left suffering for hours before the hunters show up to kill the animal by stumping on the animal. This type of animal cruelty is legal for people with a license to hunt, but for those who are not legalized hunters can face many years in prison and be fined thousands of dollars.
Due to this, some people feel that animals should be treated equally with human beings because just like us, they have rights too. Animals are fully aware of their existence and like humans, feel emotions and pain therefore by killing them for own benefit would be ethically incorrect. Just because they are unable to speak for themselves, it does not mean that humans can choose when their life ends. Furthermore, by killing an animal for the benefit of humans is also wrong because it is going against the sixth commandment ‘do not murder’. This is wrong, because as humans we must respect hashem and not disobey his commandments.