问答题
Do animals have rights? This is how the question is usually
put. It sounds like a useful, ground-clearing way to start. 46){{U}}Actually, it
isn't because it assumes that there is an agreed account of human rights, which
is something the world does not have.{{/U}}
On one view of rights,
to be sure, it necessarily follows that animals have none. 47){{U}}Some
philosophers argue that rights exist only within a social contract, as part of
an exchange of duties and entitlements.{{/U}} Therefore animals cannot have
rights. The idea of punishing a tiger that kills somebody is absurd; for exactly
the same reason, so is the idea that tigers have rights. However, this is only
one account, and by no means an uncontested one. It denies rights not only to
animals but also to some people—for instance, to infants, the mentally incapable
and future generations. In addition, it is unclear what force a contract can
have for people who never consented to it: how do you reply to somebody who says
"I don't like this contract"?
The point is this: without
agreement on the rights of people, arguing about the rights of animals is
fruitless. 48){{U}}It leads the discussion to extremes at the outset: it invites
you to think that animals should be treated either with the consideration humans
extend to other humans, or with no consideration at all.{{/U}} This is a false
choice. Better to start with another, more fundamental, question: is the way we
treat animals a moral issue at all?
Many deny it. 49){{U}}Arguing
from the view that humans are different from animals in every relevant respect,
extremists of this kind think that animals lie outside the area of moral
choice.{{/U}} Any regard for the suffering of animals is seem as a mistake—a
sentimental displacement of feeling that should properly be directed to other
humans.
This view, which holds that torturing a monkey is
morally equivalent to chopping wood, may seem bravely "logical". In fact it is
simply shallow: the confused centre is right to reject it. The most elementary
form of moral reasoning—the ethical equivalent of learning to crawl—is to weigh
others' interests against one's own. This in turn requires sympathy and
imagination: without which there is no capacity for moral thought. To see an
animal in pain is enough, for most, to engage sympathy. 50){{U}}When that happens,
it is not a mistake: it is mankind's instinct for moral reasoning in action, an
instinct that should be encouraged rather than laughed at.{{/U}}