Animal Rights and the Nature of Society
So there was this article about PETA in Slate today. Now, at the risk of taking a controversial position for which i may be vilified in the distant future, i would like to offer my explanation for why the issue of our treatment of animals is not an equivalent moral issue to the treatment of women, minorities, or any other group of humans in various times and places throughout history..
The real measure of whether a being deserves the full and equal rights we ascribe to each other should be based on its ability to engage in the social contract on which our rights as members of Society are contingent. This requires a full understanding and adherence to the obligations of Society. Here i am defining a Society to be the set of beings who have implicitly or explicitly agreed to whatever social contract the Society adopts as its governing philosophy. Note that i am purposely leaving the terms of the social contract vague. i intend to leave open the possibility that disjoint Societies can be created based on non-identical or even mutually exclusive social contracts..
The social contract on which our Society is based is one that contains such rules as “no stealing” and “no violence” and “do not be a parasite” along with such concepts as “property rights” and “government by consent of the governed”. Animals, by and large, do not respect these conditions; and so we deny them membership in Society based on the conclusion that they therefore either do not understand our Society’s social contract or they have rejected it. On the other hand, our Society has extended equal rights to previously excluded groups such as women and minorities based on the recognition that members of these groups are capable and willing participants in the social contract..
Of course you’re thinking, “But what about the children? Children are not born with the ability to understand and adhere to the social contract, so does that mean we deny them the privileges of Society membership?” Yes it does, but this should come as a surprise to no one. We do not allow children to marry, to vote, or to be drafted. In short, we place children in a class afforded limited rights and obligations precisely because of their inability to understand and accept the social contract. Does this mean it is okay to torture children, or to deny them freedom of religion? Of course not; under the rules of our Society we recognize an obligation to nurture past or potential future Society members..
At various points in their lives humans can be unable or unwilling to accept the social contract. We deny privileges to criminals who have rejected the social contract. We limit the legal capacities of mentally incompetent individuals who are not able to understand the social contract. We withhold certain rights from children until they have developed enough to make an informed decision about the consequences of accepting or not accepting the social contract. But what should be the process for determining when an individual (whether woman, man, child, sheep, or amorphous plasma blob) has crossed that threshold, and how can we avoid politicizing the process? This is the real question..
Of course, this view is not entirely without hope for animals, and in fact i think it conveys a significant degree of optimism. For if the basis of Society membership lies in the social contract, there is no reason to preclude the possibility that animals could someday possess the capacity to enter into the social contract. When that happens, we must be prepared to accept them into Society, or the accusations currently being thrown around by PETA will be legitimate..
When will this become important? At the rate technology is advancing, we may find ways to communicate with animals as early as this century, and we may find at that point that some are capable of buying into the concept of a social contract. However, in even shorter order technology may also create sufficiently intelligent machines that we will need to grapple with this issue long before it is applicable to animals. Or we may see advances in gene therapy or cybernetics so profound that they force us to reconsider what it is to be human in the first place. At any rate, it is worth recognizing and preparing to deal with these issues before they blindside us as a Society..
3 Comments:
Looking at this post, my main criticism is that i have discretized the process of Society membership without justifying such a drastic departure from the way Society currently handles things. Depending on the jurisdiction we let children surf the Internet at 13, work at 15, drive at 16, have sex at 17, vote at 18, smoke at 19, gamble at 21, rent a car at 25, and become President at 35..
Of course, maybe we should rethink whether we want to allow Society membership to increase gradually along a continuum; if we do, we have eliminated the definitive threshold of accepting the social contract, and it is much harder then to deny at least some rights to horses and rocks. After all, if we don't use the ability to understand and accept the social contract as our benchmark, what means do we have to determine who gets what rights? Do we draw an arbitrary line at the species level? This plays right into the hand of the legitimate portion of PETA's argument. Society has unilaterally accepted its mistake in drawing that line at the gender or race level; the last thing we need to do is draw another line we will regret later..
One more comment, this time on the nature of conflict. Within the paradigm i outlined in my post, war can be seen as a byproduct of competing ideologies being advanced by Societies with incompatible social contracts, each of which either holding the view that it is acceptable
to attack other Societies or holding the view that it is acceptable to defend against attacks of other Societies. i will examine this issue from the perspective of a Society that prefers to avoid war, and explore each of the possibilities..
According to my definition above, war requires the following elements: separate Societies, at least one of which with an inclination to attack and all others with an inclination to defend. In order to avoid war, a Society has three options. First, it can refuse to attack or defend; Switzerland would be the standard example. Second, if it wants to preserve its right to defend it can work with other societies to convince them not to attack; we might consider the worldwide diplomatic corps as an example of the collective attempt of Societies around the world to accomplish this goal. Finally, there is the option of having only one Society; consider the formation of the EU or the USA as an attempt to accomplish this by merging multiple Societies into one..
But what about civil war? Surely the history of the USA must inform us that making one Society out of many is not necessarily a guarantee that war will not occur. i propose that civil war actually conforms to the definition of war i posted above, and that it merely underlies the fact that two or more Societies must exist within the boundaries previously thought to encompass only one Society. This raises some interesting implications for the structure and coexistence of Societies, which are perhaps best saved for another day..
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