See I knew I'd get it wrong. thanks Wyatt. But yes. I think maybe if you use the experiment aspect of it - at the moment I think quite a few people would think it's OK to experiment on chimps, say, to save people. The right a chimp has not to be experimented on even if that would save people is important. The decision that human interests do not come above those of non humans is something that is quite radical I think? Yes it has to be asserted/defended/enforced by people; does this mean it can't be a right that no one can take away? Do infants not have rights then?

But inalienable doesn't just mean "unable to be taken away". The notion of inalienable rights is bound up with the idea of the Social Contract. Inalienable rights are rights that we may not surrender in exchange for some other consideration. Now, the Social Contract isn't literally a contract, and therefore we don't literally agree to anything as part of it. But in essence, if you think of society as if it were a contract, then your inalienable rights are the ones you may not legitimately sign away in exchange for the benefits of belonging to society.

I've always found this a bit of a stretch even where humans are concerned (precisely because society isn't really a contract); it makes no sense to me when extended even further, beyond the boundaries of what we generally think of as society.

I do take the point about the assumption being challenged that human needs trump those of other animals. That assumption hasn't been absolute for a long time (as Bernard Williams once said, "You may not light the fire using the cat"), but this does represent an unprecedentedly stern challenge to it, and that's a good thing.

I'm the wrong person to ask whether infants have rights, by the way, because I don't think anybody has rights--not natural ones, anyway.

All fair enough and I see what you mean. I hadn't really thought about society in that way in relation to this. I think I think that morality is something we construct individually (with reference to what other people think, mostly) and I guess that doesn't really square with a concept of 'rights'.

I don't think rights are particularly helpful philosophically, though they can be a significant and useful sort of legal locution.

I mean, I think there's a sense of "rights" deriving from the Kantian tradition, involving certain absolute deontological prohibitions on how the state or other individuals can limit the actions of a person, or what other burdens they may impose upon him, which I think is feasible. But while I think the line of rationality between humans and (other) animals is rather more continuous than many of my fellow-Kantians have been happy to concede, it seems to me that virtually all non-human animals are a long way short of the robust levels of rationality required to get them Kantian rights.

I think there's some sense to talking of "rights" in the law, as deontological and absolute bases upon which the polis will not allow itself to infringe; this would be a largely distinct though overlapping usage from the one I describe in the last paragraph. But I don't know why we should think that these sorts of "rights" have any extra-legal standing, and the reifying vocabulary may be unhelpful; there seems to be an image of free-standing, contentless impositions on human law which are themselves independent of and not the products of human law.

Which is pretty mad.

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That assumption hasn't been absolute for a long time

Not much is absolute; but in the world today considering the sheer numbers of animals that are, say, factory farmed because it's slightly more convenient and profitable, not out of necessity; it always seems to me that that assumption doesn't even go challenged that much at any level. I know that what Spain and New Zealand are doing isn't yet anywhere near addressing this but I guess I was excited about it because it seemed to be a fundamental first step without which we can't make any progress.

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All fair enough and I see what you mean. I hadn't really thought about society in that way in relation to this. I think I think that morality is something we construct individually (with reference to what other people think, mostly) and I guess that doesn't really square with a concept of 'rights'.

Individually, yes, but through interaction. Ethics are what we acquire when we come to see that others have needs, interests and wishes and that there's no reason for our own to be considered exceptional. That's why the ethical community, even if extended to other species, is likely to be extended first to species to which we're closely related.

In practice, nearly everyone accepts some form of this. Few people mourn earthworms. Everyone can point to some kind of animal whose life, if they're honest, they treat as less valuable than that of a human. It's inevitable, and it's even defensible, in that human beings seem to be unusually, if not uniquely, invested with the kind of autonomous agendas that ethics involves respecting. So I don't think we should complain that Spain has started with the other Great Apes.

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virtually all non-human animals are a long way short of the robust levels of rationality required to get them Kantian rights.

To me this sounds kind of anthropocentric, in such a way that the reasoning becomes a bit circular? Like, we are humans and we can think rationally and therefore we will decide that that ability is the criterion we will use.

The question is, I think, lyra, whether or not it's a coherent first step.

Incidentally, I really like and agree with most of what Wyatt's had to say on this thread. And it's nice to see him singing from the "Singer's a clever guy, I sure he does have answers to these points" hymnsheet. (smiley) I'm just not sure Singer's answers are satisfactory, for most of the same reasons I haven't found any utilitarian reasoning satisfactory in about a decade.

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Few people mourn earthworms.

I am in that few, a bit. I will pick them up and find somewhere safe to put them if I see them in trouble. and I'll say a kind of prayer if I see a squashed snail.

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To me this sounds kind of anthropocentric, in such a way that the reasoning becomes a bit circular? Like, we are humans and we can think rationally and therefore we will decide that that ability is the criterion we will use

I think it is circular, but unavoidably so - unless you want to invoke divine prerogative or make ethics tautologous, there's no non-circular way to get ethics off the ground. But that doesn't mean the circle can't or doesn't progressively (and that word is quite rich in this context) widen. And for reasons I won't go into here, I don't think it's a circle that any sentient person can avoid standing in without self-contradiction.

But the sort of worthiness of respect as a possessor of rational and reflective ends on which Kantian ethics depends on is just much higher than it seems at all likely that any non-human animal reaches. There's a book by James Rachels claiming otherwise, but it's one of the very worst pieces of work I've ever read by a professional philosopher.

This isn't to say we shouldn't extend a great deal more protection and respect to other animals than we typically do. It's to say, rather, that the justification for doing so may be quite other (and quite a bit less binding) than the justification for affording other humans a great deal more protection and respect than we typically do.

I'll agree with that; especially as what I kind of naturally incline towards privileging is along the lines of sentience/intelligence/capacity for suffering, none of which are exactly unproblematic to define and measure.

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none of which are exactly unproblematic to define and measure.

Tell me about it! :(

Sorry... I guess it's all right for me because I don't have to! Earwigs Have Feelings Too. I'm OK with saying that.

Now see I just read this about the 'right' to bear arms. Now presumably that's a 'right' that's just a legal construct rather than something essential that's indivisible from being human?