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> Philosophy: Animal Rights: What Rights Should Animals Possess?

> Requirements: Discuss and debate this question and answer it referring to past philosophers theories and stating personal opinion. Must include 3 - 5 references, MLA style required.

> Project Developed:

Background.

The real world is one of essentially boundless wants yet scarce resources. The evolutionary science maintains that the various survivor species did eventually learn to adjust to these constraints and ever intensifying volatility of competitive co-existence, but the mass of resources available has steadily decayed regardless. The so-called mechanism of 'replicator dynamics' (introduced into biology and social sciences such as economics only recently) rules that the species will grow in population or remain at equilibrium if and only if it maintains the optimal parameters, so that the population's dynamics in absolute and relative weight terms will signal to the species whether their traits are consistent with sustained survival. This channel alone does not, however, account for the astonishing instances of 'irrational' outcomes, whereby it is the inferior species that come to dominate the area. The oft-cited illustration is man or, for that matter, mammals at large that never did command any more superior features than, say, the now-extinct dinosaurs did, and yet they did eventually become the effectively dominant race. Now, of course, several qualifications should be applied to refine this observation: superior properties need not reduce to thick skin, and dominance may not be in terms of the relative weight. (Indeed, if it were so, then the non-animal universe consisting of rocks and water could be referred to as the 'dominant' form of life).

Humans learned to fight the inherent scarcity and otherwise constraints, and there actually evolved a whole science of managing the household's or the economy's endowments so as to maximize comfort. However, despite the dramatic advancements in technology and the resultant standards of living the world over, there have occurred some major and even aggravating shortcomings to these developmental scenarios which would drive one to conclude that humankind never did attain any ideal tradeoffs. For one, the growing wealth and consumption has exhibited a deepening asymmetry across the advanced versus the less developed societies. Moreover, the recent times have been marked by splashes of environmental and antiglobalist movements calling for a major reform of public institutions accountable for supranational policies (collective choices as made by the haves and the have-nots) and fundamental animal rights. The mounting evidence of cruel, careless, or myopic interaction with the environment has issued some urgent alarms. Bloody sports widely popular in Spain and Portugal, fast cattle growing that has caused material health issues to emerge, and free-rider or nomadic attitude when it comes to controlling pasture lands, commons and forestry have all been empirical material that the mature civil society can now afford addressing. (We will dwell on this interesting theme later in text.)

Further Discussion.

The neoclassical economic theory boasts effective scenarios whereby the competitive free markets can on their own handle all sorts of problems, like allocating resources to their best uses. This important claim essentially builds on the legacy of John Stuart Mill and Adam Smith, influential moral-philosophic thinkers of the 19th century who outlined some key premises guiding the markets and societies. Mill argued that individuals are inherently rational and exhibit a propensity for maximizing their utility or best self-interests. That, of course, presumed that they are also selfish, and would appear somewhat at odds with just how could such a chaos of selfish hunters produce the 'greatest good for the largest number of people.' That, however, is easily reconciled if we are to deploy Smith's mysterious notion of 'invisible hand,' whereby the selfish individual will promote the social good even better than the otherwise altruistic well-wishers, when they engage in profitable trades eliminating all potential for further efficiency improvement. The economy would then produce at its maximum capacity, and those overly concerned with equity would be consoled to learn that this amount of good could in principle get redistributed any way they might deem reasonable and fair.

I would at this point turn around in suggesting that the classical economic theory might actually have overstated its claim of successful constrained optimization. In other words, it seems to have achieved the remarkable record at the cost of omitting and overlooking some of the important constraints. National economies have by and large tended to disregard the vast layers of stakeholders like other nations, as well as own natural (animal) environment. Failure to endogenize these potential stakeholders into the optimization setting amounts to consistently compromising their minimum reasonable rights-an utterly unethical solution a priori. The famous economic principle of Pareto efficiency maintains that the system is at equilibrium if and only if no further improvements could be effected other than by damaging some stakeholders (or improving some markets at the expense of leaving others as missing).

What this reduced, incomplete economics has achieved amounts to little more than an illusory claim to fame, treating some beneficiaries as mere means (or indeed resources) rather than as ends or constraints-an early caution voiced by Immanuel Kant. What this ethical thinker actually proposed was an attitude of respecting other individuals as ends in their own right, having their dignity of living beings and more importantly capable of experiencing pain and suffering. Kant in no manner retreated to a naive call for treating thy neighbor as an end and value only; he really cautioned against viewing one as means only, even though occasional conflicts and selfish attitude is the inevitable facet of this scarce and imperfect world.

The French philosophers Rousseau and Voltaire extended the Kantian framework so far as to incorporate the many species into the pool of beings entitled to be treated more than means only. They suggested that ethical behavior of non-capture of others' subsistence should be applied to every species. It does not really matter if they are less intelligent or have no abstract or self-reflective faculty whatsoever. All that matters is they are capable of experiencing pain and suffering, and for that very reason must enjoy our mercy. There is no other way that the animal species could come to be endangered, enslaved, or otherwise oppressed if not for man's tyranny.

I would venture extending this analysis even further, though. The apparent analogy could be the evolution of a human being beginning with embryo. Children or the incapacitated ones possess very little intelligence, and yet even other parents' children need our care and mercy, if only because they can suffer. I would, however, set out to modify this criterion. While children and animals can feel instantaneous pain or pleasure, they might not be able to identify sources of damage they could be exposed to in the longer run or in a more complex setting. Therefore, I would suggest that exposure to harm or vulnerability for that matter be used, in place of mere capacity to suffer or enjoy instantaneous and immediately apparent effects, as the underpinning principle behind fundamental human and animal rights alike.

The classical economic theory and conservative policymaking have failed in many ways, when it comes to internalizing externalities (like adverse environmental effects or otherwise the unintended or unappropriated social costs) and providing the valuable public goods and complex social choices calling for co-operative solutions and not feasible in a competitive setup alone. I believe that animal rights pertain to this ill-addressed domain of underprovided public goods at large. On second thought, since such movements trace to no human stakeholders and self-interested lobby per se, they could be viewed as rare instances of 'purely' ethical institutions promoting justice for the sole purpose of justice.

One additional concern pertaining to externalities and social costs was mentioned early in our discussion, and deserves a more in-depth coverage. The issue of collective use of commons, fishing territories, or natural resources is intimately linked to the so-called free-riding behavior. Individual, selfish decision makers might encounter (en masse) enormous difficulty enforcing and co-coordinating important collective equilibrium. The nomadic pattern of resource exploitation features the tragic outcome whereby the source will be used until it is depleted, unless the access is rationed by institutions such as private or otherwise well-defined property rights or by centralized planning body. The animal rights could in a sense reduce to the issue of relative property rights or indeed the relative bargaining power (which is almost nil for animals). On second thought, it is a purely resource-theoretic question to be resolved by the conventional methods of resource law-and-economics-the only peculiar intricacy being the need to enforce these regulatory initiatives on a level of international law (which in itself is not easily enforceable, if only due to heterogeneous institutional environments).

Some Analytical Afterthoughts.

I would join the champions of such animal rights as a right to belong to indigenous species without being mutated genetically, not to be killed or tortured for entertaining purposes, and other similar cases pertaining to the excesses of modern societies rather than their prime necessities. On the other hand, I would question the merit of phasing out the zoos. I cannot see just how that in inconsistent with authenticity within the species, even if the animal individual gradually loses or dissipates part of natural traits like predator spirit, etc. I would not be so sure as to claim that reverting to natural environment would be unconditionally superior ex post, even if (which I doubt too) it is so ex ante. It is not unusual that the animal comes to love his new milieu, human counterparts included-even if it has to work occasionally. Finding food and shelter is also less problematic in homes and zoos than in the wild ...

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