Animal Rights

My opening argument, and indeed my primary argument, is that in the case of non-human animals, they are precluded from anything we could consider a 'right'. Personally, I support that only positive law is a valid platform for defining rights. That an agreement, or social contract is made between consenting agents. My right to life is preserved by my explicit promise not to take anyone else's, and by understanding it also forfeit a loss or penalty by breaking it. In this way, no animal (nor indeed severely mentally-handicapped, permanently brain-dead or infant) can explicitly communicate and comprehend such an agreement, and consequentially are entitled to no rights. In the case of the mentally handicapped, I don't believe they have rights what-so-ever, but are protected from harm by law for their value to other people (not that I am equating them to such, but similarly, property is protected for the same reason but we wouldn't consider ones lawn-mower to be in possession of rights would we?) In the case of the permanently brain-dead, again, no rights, and I'm perfectly comfortable allowing their next of kin to decide what to do about it. Infants/very young children, as with anything legal, occupy a constant state of exception and different rules, almost no matter how one defines rights. Their very guaranteed potential (not-withstanding non-human interference) to become a comprehending, consenting, adult constitutes reason to protect their life and well-being, with all other rights being afforded to them as they mature to comprehend and handle each one. This, in a certain way, puts them in a similar category to sleeping people, in that they are unalert and innocuous, but in a temporary state. Now, most or all of all of your arguments of course rely on the natural rights perspective, so I will object to them before getting to my conclusion. 1. Because our current system recognizes matters in a certain way is not a valid premise for animal rights. Point being, just because the human idiot is treated like an agent with rights by our legal system doesn't establish anything as absolute in what defines a right, and deducing that animals therefor have a right is a fallacy. All this proves is that our current system seems to have a double standard. It doesn't establish which standard is the correct one. 2-A. Interests in this context is a dubiously vague term. It could mean that the agent in question has a conscious reflection of itself, and has established meaningful goals, but the problem becomes: Can it be established that any animal has such an ability? This matter is still fairly inconclusive for even the select few highest-order of non-human animals, such as chimpanzees and dolphins (as a couple of common examples). I challenge you to provide any reliable biological information that concludes with some degree of certainty that they aren't merely expressing response to stimuli, non-intelligent or conditional behavior patterns (including ones related to their technical-conscious) For example, you might witness a chimp apparently problem solve by using a stick to extract termites, but does this mean that the chimp made a conscious resolution in its mind about its goals and its hunger, and in determining to pursuit it, actively and deliberately searched for answers in getting those mites out of the log, or is its appetite and motivation a simple instinctive cue and its brain chanced upon observing how mites will crawl onto a stick when plunged into their nest, and by conditioning the chimp memorized this? 2-B. Emotions are not protected, grounds for nor the basis of rights, not even for humans. Unless you wish to defend that my girlfriend shouldn't have the right to dump me for the emotional devastation I would incur. 3. This is a very weak argument (all due respect of course) or animal rights. This could just as easily provide that plants or completely non-living objects should be afforded rights. Our emotional value toward something I agree should potentially establish protection (as in, for the sake of the person beholden to it), but not rights for the thing itself. For example, I agree with laws protecting people's pets, but not for the animals sake, for the pet-owner's. 4. Consequentialism only works if you establish that the consequences of giving no animals any rights is particularly worse than the alternative. The problem underlying utilitarianism is that it fails to account for quality of an action, that anything that makes one thing happy makes it equally happy is patently false. So in respect to animals, we would have to attempt to evaluate how happy or how much pleasure something gives each animal, and the practical limitations, even flat-out impossibility of this should be obvious. And last, all people are almost certainly "speciest". Does a sea-sponge, with no central nervous system or brain, qualify for rights, all the same as a human? Or a hibiscus for that matter? It too is a specie, not an animal specie but a specie never-the-less.