Professor: Lynn Watts
Philosophy 2306
20 April 2013

On A Defense Of Animal Rights

Animals where one of the first species to walk and live in this world, that we now call Earth. Animals are able to adapt and survive in this world that humans have changed and adapted for human conformities and that now humans claim as theirs, even though animals where the first to live and inhabit this world. Animals are on planet Earth for a purpose but we are not aware of this because we do not have enough knowledge about animals. But that does not mean that the purpose is for us humans to abuse and use them as we please, just for our needs for food and for personal hobbies that include hunting: and for scientific studies that with out consent abuse animals for testing purposes. Animals should be allowed to live free of fear of being captured and to not be removed from their natural habitat that they consider their home or to be brutally killed. Animals should be allowed to live the lives that they please as they please with no fears of being separated from their families. Animals have feelings just like us humans and yes they are capable of feeling pain just like we do. Animals should have the right to be protected from humans that want to cause them any extreme cruelty and hardship. Animals are different species than humans, but just because they are different than human beings does not mean they should not have rights. Morality rules should be applied and respected for all living things.
My arguments are that animals have rights because they are living things thus they have the right to be defended and protected from those who want to cause them any harm or any type of cruelty. Animals should have rights to their lives, they should be able to live freely the way they please and not be held in captivity for human’s entertainment. Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, use for entertainment, or abuse in any way.
II
Those who argue against animal rights argue that animals have no rights because they lack thought process. Alan White maintains that since animals, cannot, for example, claim, assert, or waive right’s, they are not the kind of things that can have rights in the first place. Only a person can have rights, on White’s account. Animals have shown to be similar in imitating some actions like humans. For example monkeys understand that people smoke cigarettes and thus they do the same action when given cigarettes and some have even become addicted to cigarettes just like humans. Also a group of military men where horsing around and where using their guns in front of a monkey and they gave the monkey a gun and the monkey started shooting at them. But the argument is that just because animals have similarities to humans does not automatically give them rights. Because if similarity is going to be applied, to be given rights, then a toy robotic dog, computers, and even radios behave in ways that are similar to ways that human beings behave. Descartes argues that the absence of speech in animals could only be explained in animals lacking thought. Descartes was well aware
Excerpted from Alan White, Rights (Oxford:Oxford University Press 1984). Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press.

that animals produce calls, cries, songs and various gestures that function to express their passions but argued that they never produce anything like declarative speech in which they use words or put together other signs, as we do in order to declare our thoughts to others. Humans grow and develop a stronger mentality and thought process. Animals never grow up enough for any certain sign of thought to be detected in them.
Animals are here for our needs what harms them really does not matter. Animals are here for a reason thus it is okay for humans to use them as ends to our means. So basically what animals feel, really does not matter because they are not human thus they cannot feel the same way that rational