Justice requires the recognition of animal rights

Framework: As justice is prescribed by the resolution, we must allow justice to recognize and provide for the capabilities of living organisms. Martha Nussbaum writes: [T]he dignity of a form of life that possesses both deep needs and abilities…is to take into account the rich plurality of activities that sentient beings need — all those that are required for a life with dignity…that it is a waste and a tragedy when a living creature has an innate capability for some functions that are evaluated as important and good, but never gets the opportunity to perform those functions. Failures to educate women, failures to promote adequate health care, failures to extend the freedoms of speech and conscience to all citizens — all those are treated as causing a kind of premature death[.] Thus justice must account for the dignity of life forms and allow their capabilities to flourish. These capabilities include things like sensations, life, and bodily health. All capabilities are equal and trade off with one another. Only this approach to justice respects the unique capabilities of each individual species and subject. Nussbaum continues: There is much to be learned from reflection on the continuum of life. Capacities do crisscross and overlap: A chimpanzee may have more capacity for empathy and perspectival thinking than a very young child, or than an older child with autism. And capacities that humans sometimes arrogantly claim for themselves alone are found very widely in nature. But it seems wrong to conclude from such facts that species membership is morally and politically irrelevant. A child with mental disabilities is actually very different from a chimpanzee, though in certain respects some of her capacities may be comparable. Such a child's life is difficult in a way that the life of a chimpanzee is not difficult[.] There is something blighted and disharmonious in her life, whereas the life of a chimpanzee may be perfectly flourishing. Thus, we must respect the capabilities of each individual. Contention one: Animals have capabilities that justice must allow to flourish. Nussbaum continues: The same attitude to natural powers that guides the approach in the case of human beings guides it in the case of nonhuman animals: Each form of life is worthy of respect, and it is a problem of justice when a creature does not have the opportunity to unfold itspower, to flourish in its own way, and to lead a life with dignity. The fact that so many animals never get to move around, enjoy the air, exchange affection with other members of their kind — all that is a waste and a tragedy, and it is not a life in keeping with the dignity of such creatures. [S]eeing our ethical duties to animals as direct, not indirect, and also in its starting point, a basic concern for sentient life, not just rational life it takes an interest not just in pleasure and pain, but in complex forms of life. Thus animals also can be influenced in positive and negative ways. Bernard Rollin writes: [A]ny sentient or conscious being has states that matter to it in a positive or negative way - pleasure matters to an animal in a positive way, pain or fear in a negative way. [The Animal] can value what happens to it, it has intrinsic value. Given the logic of morality, we should extend our moral attention to those states that matter to it when our actions affect that being. [N]ot all of our moral attention focuses on reason. Most of it focuses on feeling, on not hurting people physically or mentally, or helping them be happy or escape from suffering. So if human beings are ends in themselves, why not animals, since they too have feelings and goals that they value? Thus, sentient beings can have their interests affected in positive and negative ways that harm their capabilities. And there is a distinction between intrinsicly valuable capabilites and those that we can violate. Nussbaum resumes: [T]he capabilities view distinguish[es] two aspects of the capability in question. A tiger's capability to kill small animalsdoes not have intrinsic ethical value, and political principles can omit it. But a tiger's capability to exercise its predatory nature so as to avoid the pain of frustration may well have value, if the pain of frustration is considerable. Zoos have learned how to make that distinction. Noticing that they were giving predatory animals insufficient exercise for their predatory capacities, they have had to face the question of the harm done to smaller animals by allowing such capabilities to be exercised.The Bronx Zoo has found that it can give the tiger a large ball on a rope, whose resistance and weight symbolize the gazelle.The tiger seems satisfied. Wherever predatory animals are living under direct human support and control, such solutions seem the most ethically sound. The capabilites approach is not a prohibition on killing animals or using them at all but is rather an approach that ensures animal flourishing is calculated as well. Kami Daws writes: [T]here may be cases where the perceivable mistreatment of animals is potentially justifiable, such as the killing of animals for food and the experimentation on them for medical research[.] Nussbaum never explicitly states the killing of animals for food is justifiable, she implies that it is acceptable as long as the slaughtering is humane and painless for the animals[.]Nussbaum does argue “against killing at least the more complexly sentient animals for food”… while research that inflicts the risk of disease, pain, or premature death on animals is immoral, it is possible that research to promote human health and safety is acceptable if experimentation is absolutely necessary and is done humanely[.]… Nussbaum accepts human uses of animals as long as the treatment of them does not violate basic animal entitlements. Contention 2: the logic of excluding animal rights is flawed. Animal rights are based on arbitrary distinctions between species that justify more exclusion like racism or sexism. Peter Singer writes: [T]his suggestion should be made in defence of treating members of our species better than members of another species, when it would be firmly rejected if it were used to justify treating members of our race or sex better than members of another race or sex. [T]he impact of possible differences in IQ between members of different ethnic groups, whatever the difference between the average scores for different groups, some members of the group with the lower average score will do better than some members of the group with the higher average score, and we ought to treat people as individuals and not according to the average score for their ethnic group[.] [W]e cannot consistently accept the suggestion that we should grant profoundly intellectually disabled humans the status or rights normal for their species. Finally, ignoring animal rights actually harms humans as well. Justice requires the recognition of all animals otherwise humans will be excluded as well. Mark Rowlands writes: It is impossible to view the world and everything in it primarily as a resource without this infecting the way we view each other. This is the logical culmination of the resource-based view of nature: humans are part of nature, and therefore humans are resources too. And whenever something—humans or otherwise—is viewed primarily a resource, things generally don’t go well for it. [I]ts implications for human beings, is exemplified in our treatment of animals…They are things to be eaten, things to be experimented on, things to be stared at, hunted or killed for our entertainment…[W]hen you are talking about fundamental ways of conceptualizing and understanding the world, what goes around comes around. The instrumental view of animals necessarily infects our views of humans.[T]he dialectic by which the instrumental view of animals becomes transformed into an instrumental view of human beings, and the unfortunate consequences this transformation yields.