Of course. I don’t expect it to change, nor do I think such change should be enforced, but it would be nice if it did. It’s my position on a lot of subjects.
I know several vegans, and the reasons they do not consume any animal products, including honey, sugar (something about bone meal), dairy, eggs or meat have more to do with their not wanting to partake of animal hormones. They quite probably object to the use of animals as a rights issue, but the primary reason they give for being vegan instead of simply vegetarian is this hormone issue.
jlzania, AR folks don’t generally think nature is kind. Rather, they point to the difference between moral agents and moral objects.
Let’s look at humans first.
Imagine that a lightning bolt strikes you dead. Is the lightning bolt evil? What if a nasty strain of the flu kills you? What if a snake bites you and you die from the poison? Has the lightning, the germ, or the snake committed an unethical act?
Most folks say no: none of these entities are moral agents (i.e., beings capable of making moral judgements), and so ascribing ethical or unethical behavior to them is irrelevant.
What if a person shoots you? Have they committed an unethical act?
In most cases, they have: a person is (usually) a moral agent, capable of making moral decisions.
Moral objects are beings who have rights, but who can’t make moral decisions. If I kill someone’s 6-month-old baby, have I committed an unethical act? The infant can’t make moral decisions, but most folks believe I’m a right bastard for killing the kid. That’s because the baby is a moral object.
Of course, a dingo who eats babies isn’t unethical: the dingo can’t make moral decisions.
Okay. So now we have moral agents and moral objects. AR folks believe that some animals are moral objects: while they cannot be held morally accountable for their actions, they do have rights that should not be violated.
If a bear eats a rabbit, nothing unethical has occurred: the rabbit may be a moral object, but the bear is not a moral agent.
If a person shoots the bear for fun, according to AR folks, something unethical has occurred: a person is capable of making ethical judgements, and so is responsible for doing so.
AR folks apply this principle generally. Raising animals for meat, no matter how kindly done, violates the animal’s right to life just as surely as it would violate a human’s right to life if you raised him/her for meat. The fact that you saved an animal back from “natural” death no more gives you the right to kill it than saving a person would give you the right to kill him or her.
Some quick notes: I’m summarizing, in particular, my understanding of Tom Regan’s positions from different books & essays I’ve read. I’m messing up the use of “ethical” and “moral,” because the difference between these two confuses me and I use them interchangeably. And while I think the AR philosophy is pretty strong, I’ve not seen it adequately address several key issues.
Daniel
And DeniseV, not to argue about angels and pinheads, but technically Peter Singer doesn’t support animal rights: he supports what he calls (I believe) “preference utilitarianism.”
I only point this out because Singer’s arguments for not raising animals as meat are different from the ones I’m describing. And there’s an enthusiastic argument in the puppyhugger movement about which approach is best.
Generally, animal rights and preference utilitarianism agree on whether an action is ethical or unethical, but in some cases, they don’t. I can’t think of any clear examples right now, but it’s worth knowing that there’s more than one way to get to the no-using-animals-ever conclusion.
And FWIW, Peter Singer is one of the more influential philosophers alive today, I think. I hope I’m not pulling that out of my ass.
Daniel