Justice Requires the Recognition of Animal Rights

Katrina Albright defines animal rights: KATRINA M. ALBRIGHT [University of New Mexico School of Law, 2002; B.A., Geology and Environmental Sciences, Bryn Mawr College,]. The Extension of Legal Rights to Animals under a Caring Ethic: An Ecofeminist Exploration of Steven Wise's Rattling the Cage. NATURAL RESOURCES JOURNAL “ "rights" involve "moral notions that grow out of respect for the individual.. .[and … establish areas where the individual is … to be protected” This means I coopt negative arguments about better ways to treat animals because under my definition that better method would be considered a right because animals would be extended protection and thus the NC would affirm rights. Part 1: Sympathy isn’t reserved for the kitchen. Feminist epistemology. Traditional epistemologies that focus on absolute ethical maxims fail because they’re based on an exclusion that doesn’t allow for actual formulations of knowledge but rather hold up rational man on a pedestal. Warkentin: Traci Warkentin. Interspecies Etiquette: An Ethics of Paying Attention to Animals. Ethics & the Environment, Volume 15, Number 1, Spring 2010, pp. 101-121 (Article) “feminists have identified a “crisis of reason” in Western … philosophy, … The rational, disembodied human subject has become the centre, and gold standard, of knowing and of moral judgment, … the main problem of “hyper-rationalism” … is a contemptuous and deliberate denial of the body in ethical decision-making and in the production of knowledge … the “inability of Western knowledges to conceive their own processes of … production, processes that simultaneously rely on and disavow the role of the body,” is a direct “consequence of the historical privileging of the purely conceptual or mental over the corporeal” … This patriarchal legacy of valuing a masculinized, pure, detached reason over what have been constructed as “feminized” embodied modes of knowing, … has fostered a diminution of situated and relational knowledge-making” Thus, epistemology based on similarities and reason is inherently exclusive and patriarchal. This ought to be rejected because the only way to ensure we are making valid epistemic claims is to be inclusive. Even if we ought to reject normative claims, from an epistemic level we must be inclusive. Even, if rationality isn’t bad epistemology based on sympathy is better. Donavan: Josephine Donovan. ATTENTION TO SUFFERING: A FEMINIST CARING ETHIC FOR THE TREATMENT OF ANIMALS. JOURNAL of SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY, Vol. 27 No. 1, Spring, 1996, 81-102 1996 Journal of Social Philosophy “sympathy is a "form" of rationality … it is "not a primitive animal feeling but an exercise of the imagination requiring self-consciousness and comparison" … I try to picture to myself, standing here, how I would look, how I would feel, and how the world would appear if I were therein the place of that body which resembles mine and acts as I might. My imaginative projection into the place of another, conjoined with the two types of data given by the senses [appearance and behavior] makes empathy possible" … a basis for ethical judgment … should involve not -projecting oneself into another's situation but rather figuring out how the other is feeling: "it is not enough that I should imagine how I should feel if I were in the other person's place; I have to imagine how [the other] feels" “ Thus, only accept normative arguments that are based on this epistemology. And, Epistemic justifications preclude normative and meta-ethical ones because knowledge sets the basis for the way normative systems function. Epistemic warrants are the only arguments that answer the question of whether or not meta-ethical assumptions are justified. Part 2: care is more than irrational emotional. The ethic of the AC. I value Justice. The only normative theory consistent with the epistemic framework is the ethics of care. Donovan 3: Josephine Donovan. ATTENTION TO SUFFERING: A FEMINIST CARING ETHIC FOR THE TREATMENT OF ANIMALS. JOURNAL of SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY, Vol. 27 No. 1, Spring, 1996, 81-102 1996 Journal of Social Philosophy “ “ethic-of-care” … derive … ethic[s] from the experience of the oppressed, urging that ethics be rooted in caring practice and an epistemology of attentive love. Such a focus need not-indeed must not-lose sight of the political context in which our moral awareness develops and our moral actions take place. But it also does not lose sight of the individual case. … it envisages both the personal and the political. … They see the downed cow in the slaughterhouse pen; but they also see the farming and dairy industry” The ethics of care are not universal but are rather appreciating of each individual subject. Moreover, even if I’m wrong on epistemology ethics of care are the best way to resolve conflicting moral claims and thus to make ethical decisions. Donovan 4: Josephine Donovan. ATTENTION TO SUFFERING: A FEMINIST CARING ETHIC FOR THE TREATMENT OF ANIMALS. JOURNAL of SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY, Vol. 27 No. 1, Spring, 1996, 81-102 1996 Journal of Social Philosophy “conflicting responsibilities … require …a mode of thinking that is contextual and narrative rather than formal and abstract. The conception of morality as concerned with the activity of care centers moral development around the understanding of responsibility and relationships, just as the conception of morality as fairness ties moral development to the understanding of rights and rules … an ethic that is rooted in the kind of sympathetic understanding proposed by the sympathy theorists introduced above. … caring ethic to the gift-exchange economy … "[If we were to describe the ethical voices characteristic of people living within the two economies, they would be the two ethical voices described … caring ethic should form the basis of environmental ethical theory.” Thus the criterion is maintaining consistency with an ethics of care. My burden is to show that the ethics of care require recognizing animal rights. Part 3: beyond cages and leashes. The contention. I contend that the ethics of care require attentiveness to non-human animals. Warkentin 2: Traci Warkentin. Interspecies Etiquette: An Ethics of Paying Attention to Animals. Ethics & the Environment, Volume 15, Number 1, Spring 2010, pp. 101-121 (Article) “animal beings are best approached through a process of “practical etiquette” in which “the task is to create the space within which a response can emerge or an exchange coevolve” … to bear an open “invitation” in this way is to embody a kind of non-anthropocentric, or posthumanist, ethics. Intent and attitude can be communicated through the body and cannot be easily masked. … Hearne’s… distinguishes between three types of demeanor … animal trainers and handlers, Hollywood types, and academics. … Hearne finds that she can discern each of them from a distance, just by the way they hold themselves as they approach and move through the compound: the handlers and trainers move with an acute awareness and receptiveness of the animals that surrounded them, the Hollywood types move with complete indifference and the academics with an air of distanced observation that is nonetheless intrusive” This involves a full ethical praxis of paying attention in order to meet the framework. Warkentin 3: Traci Warkentin. Interspecies Etiquette: An Ethics of Paying Attention to Animals. Ethics & the Environment, Volume 15, Number 1, Spring 2010, pp. 101-121 (Article) “an ethical praxis of paying attention requires much more than mere politeness or mildly observing. … attentiveness … involves one’s whole bodily comportment and a recognition that embodiment is always in relation to social others, both animal and human. … embodiment enables the expression of ethical comportment toward others, while also providing a kind of empathic1 approximation of the experience of others in our midst, which can … inform our responsive interactions with them.” Compassion is the basis of rights and my approach gives animals rights. Albright 3: KATRINA M. ALBRIGHT [University of New Mexico School of Law, 2002; B.A., Geology and Environmental Sciences, Bryn Mawr College,]. The Extension of Legal Rights to Animals under a Caring Ethic: An Ecofeminist Exploration of Steven Wise's Rattling the Cage. NATURAL RESOURCES JOURNAL “[A]mong the many things that should have significance in determining whether an entity …is a rightholder is … compassion. Emotions, being essential aspects of our nature and of our moral lives,are of relevance in determining who should be rightholders. If applied to the issue of granting rights to animals, our sense of compassion should count as a reason for granting rights to animals.” And reject their evidence based on why humans should come first because it’s inherently circular and presupposes human superiority. Bailey: Cathryn Bailey. A Man and a Dog in a Lifeboat Self-Sacrifice, Animals, and the Limits of Ethical Theory. Ethics & the Environment, Volume 14, Number 1, Spring 2009, pp. 129-148 (Article) “examples … described as relying on circular reasoning in that the prescriptive superiority of human life is thought to be proven by the fact that humans … prefer human life. … philosophical arguments, especially in ethics, often proceed from such common sense intuitions. … the question is about the extent to which our deeply held intuitions are actually expressions of our anthropocentric prejudices. … one can no longer get away with arguments that simply assume a higher value should be placed on human life. … philosophers, … make such assumptions through their reliance on hypothetical scenarios reveals something interesting.” Moreover, reject their arguments about harming human rights because they presuppose that humans have more worth than animals rather than acknowledge it.