Non Human Animals Research Paper

1530 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Do animals deserve rights

Determining the rights of non-human animals and deciding how to treat them may not be an available choice to our human society. Our inability to communicate with them remains an irremovable barrier to determining their thoughts as well as expressing our intentions towards them. Despite this barrier, non-human animals have served as an integral component to our sustenance and welfare throughout the history of all human societies. It could even be argued that we as humans have developed an irrevocable reliance on non-human animals in all aspects of our daily lives. As an advocate for the rights of animals, Tom Reganʻs three main goals are to abandon the use of animals in any scientific research, discontinue all commercial animal agriculture, …show more content…

He also states that promoting equal treatment and respect between all human and non-human animals is initiated by accepting that each human and non-human animal possesses equal inherent value, which qualifies them to have rights. To solidify this premise, Regan claims that neither sentiment or emotion allows humans to recognize the inherent value within non-human animals that is equal to their own, but that it is the ability to reason that allows us to do so (Regan, 7). Regan then arrives to the conclusion that non-human animals must not be utilized as resources. This conclusion is also stated to support his main goals as a non-human animal rights activist, which are to eliminate scientific research on non-human animals, to abolish commercial animal agriculture, and to end commercial and sport animal …show more content…

This response rejects my second premise, in which I propose that humans do not interfere with the lives of humans, because remaining idle would only sustain our complicity in the suffering of animals. We as humans must first ensure that we are completely detached from their enduring oppression before we disassociate from them. An example would be the recovery of abused domesticated pets. If we were to abandon them completely in their condition with injuries and trauma without helping them heal first, they may not be able to survive on their own. In this situation, helping them would be completely necessary in order to ensure that the effects of human oppression does not continue to impede their welfare. Instead of separating ourselves completely from the lives of non-human animals, we need to make sure that we abolish all of our actions that abuse them in order for them to have the opportunity to live independently from

Show More
Related

  • The Case for Animal Rights

    850 Words  | 2 Pages

    "The Case For Animal Rights" written by Tom Regan, promotes the equal treatment of humans and non-humans. I agree with Regan's view, as he suggests that humans and animals alike, share the experience of life, and thus share equal, inherent value.

    Read More

  • Animals Rights Should Be The Golden Rules

    845 Words  | 2 Pages

    Slaughter. Torture. Neglected. Starvation. Everyday innocent animals have to face these consequences because of us. Animals can show more love and affection to us than we humans can. Animals are not only subjects to animal testing, fur farming, breeding, factory farming, dog fighting, but also many other purposes. Animal cruelty perfectly epitomizes the fact that animals can show more compassion, respect to others. A dog, otherwise known as a “man’s best friend” always has this thing called a collar, choked on its neck. So does that mean we in return have to wear a collar too, being pulled in the direction that the dog wants to go, never having the chance to go where we want, do what we want? A young orca forcefully separated from their mother to be enslaved into performing at water parks eternally. Not only that, they are enclosed in these small cages and have to spend endless hours cramped up in that tight space. The pool they swim in is far smaller than what they can swim in if they were free, off in the wild. Is that fair to them that for our satisfaction and pleasure, these animals are deprived from their perfect live? As Christine Stevens had said, “The basis of all animal rights should be the Golden Rule: we should treat them as we would wish them to treat us, were any other species in our dominant position.”

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Peter Singer Arguments Against Animal Captivity

    1442 Words  | 3 Pages

    As Regan himself states, ‘I believe that the philosophy of animal rights is the right philosophy.’ (Ryder, 1992, p.55) Proving how strongly he feels on the subject. Similar to Singer, Regan was central in ‘providing intellectual justifications for granting a higher moral status to animals.’ (Garner 1997, p.1) Other animals do not deserve to be treat as inferior to human beings because having a point of view betokens having fundamental rights. This includes the rights not to be made to suffer, not to be confined and not to be killed by human agents. Animals have rights as beings with an interest in respectful treatment. Unlike Singer, Regan directly states he is against the use of animal captivity when he writes, ‘the philosophy of animal rights calls for an end to the capture and training of wild animals, for the purposes of entertainment.’ (Ryder, 1992, p.60) As SeaWorld, many wildlife parks, zoos and circuses exploit animals as a means of entertainment for money, Regan argues they must be brought to an end as it is against their rights as living, rational and autonomous creatures. Kalof and Fitzgerald clear up Regan’s claims in their book ‘The Animals Reader: The Essential Classic and Contemporary Writings’ when they state ‘the position he articulates in his writings is that animals, like humans, have moral rights, and treating them as if

    Read More

  • Let's Put an End to Animal Research, Testing, and Experimentation

    2009 Words  | 5 Pages

    Loeb, Jerod M. “Human vs. Animal Rights: In Defense of Animal Research.” Taking Sides: Science, Technology, and Society. Gilford: Dushkin Publishing Group, 2011

    Read More

  • The Ethics of Animal Use in Biomedical Research

    1849 Words  | 4 Pages

    Both in and out of philosophical circle, animals have traditionally been seen as significantly different from, and inferior to, humans because they lacked a certain intangible quality – reason, moral agency, or consciousness – that made them moral agents. Recently however, society has patently begun to move beyond this strong anthropocentric notion and has begun to reach for a more adequate set of moral categories for guiding, assessing and constraining our treatment of other animals. As a growing proportion of the populations in western countries adopts the general position of animal liberation, more and more philosophers are beginning to agree that sentient creatures are of a direct moral concern to humans, though the degree of this concern is still subject to much disagreement. The political, cultural and philosophical animal liberation movement demands for a fundamental transformation of humans’ present relations to all sentient animals. They reject the idea that animals are merely human resources, and instead claim that they have value and worth in themselves. Animals are used, among other things, in basic biomedical research whose purpose is to increase knowledge about the basic processes of human anatomy. The fundamental wrong with this type of research is that it allows humans to see animals as here for them, to be surgically manipulated and exploited for money. The use of animals as subjects in biomedical research brings forth two main underlying ethical issues: firstly, the imposition of avoidable suffering on creatures capable of both sensation and consciousness, and secondly the uncertainty pertaining to the notion of animal rights.

    Read More

  • Animal Sentience and Equal Consideration of Interests

    1012 Words  | 3 Pages

    In his article entitled “Animal Liberation,” Peter Singer suggests that while animals do not have all of the exact same rights as humans, they do have an equal right to the consideration of their interests. This idea comes from the fact that animals are capable of suffering, and therefore have sentience which then follows that they have interests. Singer states “the limit to sentience...is the only defensible boundary of concern for interests of others” (807). By this, he means that the ability to feel is the only grounds for which rights should be assigned because all species of animals, including humans, have the ability, and therefore all animals have the right to not feel suffering and to instead feel pleasure.

    Read More

  • An Analysis Of Ill-Gotten Gains, By Tom Regan

    727 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...nimal rights yet I do question myself where to draw the line. I do not condone violence or harm against animals, yet I shudder at the thought of a mice plague and feel saddened by the extinction of our native animals by ‘feral’ or pest species. Is it right to kill one species to save another? I am appalled by the idea of ‘circus’ animals yet I will attend the horse races every summer for my entertainment. I think Tom Regan’s argument and reasoning for animal rights was extremely effective at making whoever is reading the essay question his or her own moral standards. Reading the essay made me delve into my own beliefs, morals and values which I think is incredibly important. To form new attitudes as a society it is important we start questioning how we view the lives of others, do we see animals as a resource to be exploited or as equals with rights just like we do?

    Read More

  • Challenging Anthropocentrism: The Inherent Value of Animals

    1497 Words  | 3 Pages

    There are many people out there that deny the idea that animals have inherent value and believe that only humans have inherent value. This is an anthropocentric view that believes humans have inherent value and everything else only has instrumental value as long as humans can use it. This view is what Regan says is “the fundamental wrong is the system that allows us to view animals as our resources, here for us—to be eaten,

    Read More

  • Animal Abuse Essay

    912 Words  | 2 Pages

    Animals are used today for many sources of protection, food, clothing, transportation, sports, entertainment, and labor, but millions of these animals die each year from abuse. “Most of the reasons that people give for denying animals rights are: animals do not have souls, god gave humans dominion over the animals, humans are intellectually superior to animals, humans are intellectually superior to animals, animals do not reason, think, or feel pain like humans do, animals are a natural resource to used as humans see fit, and animals kill each other” (Evans). It all started in the nineteenth century, when people began abusing animals by beating them, feeding them poorly, providing them with no shelter or poor shelter, left to die if they were sick or old, or by cruel sports. Most of the organized efforts to improve human treatment of animals all started in England. Around the 1800s, there was signs of rising concern for animal welfare in the United States.

    Read More

  • Peter Singer, And Tom Regan, Peter Singer And Aldo Leopold

    1133 Words  | 3 Pages

    As an advocate of animal rights, Tom Regan presents us with the idea that animals deserve to be treated with equal respect to humans. Commonly, we view our household pets and select exotic animals in different regard as oppose to the animals we perceive as merely a food source which, is a notion that animal rights activists

    Read More

  • Argument for Stopping Animal Abuse

    2126 Words  | 5 Pages

    Tom Regan, “The Case for Animal Rights,” in In Defense of Animals, ed. Peter Singer (Oxford:

    Read More

  • Animal Welfare In Farming

    1683 Words  | 4 Pages

    ... concept. An animal cannot follow our rules of morality, “Perhaps most crucially, what other species can be held morally accontable” (Scully 44). As a race humans must be humane to those that cannot grasp the concept. Animals do not posess human rights but they posess the right to welfare and proper treatment by their handlers.

    Read More

  • Should Animals Have Rights?

    996 Words  | 2 Pages

    To conclude this paper then, after reviewing the reasons for being opposed to assigning rights to non-human animals I am still faithfully for the idea. There is no justification for the barbaric and insensitive ways to which we have been treating the non-human animals with over the decades. As I stated before, they are living creatures just as we are, they have families, emotions and struggles of their own without the ones we inflict on them. So then where does this leave us? Of course it is a complicated mater, but none the less non-human animals should be protected with rights against them being used as machines, for food, for their skins, their wool, and all cases in which they are being abused.

    Read More

  • Animal Rights Essay

    970 Words  | 2 Pages

    Animals deserve fair and ethical treatment, however not necessarily equally. Non-human animals and humans are not one in the same, there is no way we will ever be defined and put in the same category. Humans have reference levels, the ability to reason and think logically. We have evolved to the point where we can study, contain, and determine the outcome of basically any animal on Earth, now it’s up to us to ensure they are treated fairly.

    Read More

  • Animal Experimentation Essay

    1302 Words  | 3 Pages

    Such experimentations enabled scientists to come up with concrete solutions and provide treatments and to understand if the new drugs produce adverse effects in monkey. For instance, polio vaccine was first tested on monkey and it has helped scientist to treat humans suffering or dying from poliomyelitis deceases. Despite the advantages of such medical experimentations on monkey, animal rights activists believe that any kind of drugs test on animal like monkey should be stopped. Philosophers like Tom Regan in “The Case for Animals Rights” believe that animals should have fundamental rights as humans, and also be protected from unnecessary humans’ aggressive actions. In addition, Peter Singer confirms Tom Regan’s standpoints about animals’ rights and believes that both humans and animals should have the same principles of rights. Regan stresses that unless humans’ mentality to accept that animals are important and they are aware of what happen in the world to them humans will continue to disrespect them and eat, use in science, hunt, and exploit in different ways. Regan’s ideology is that even though animals have “inherent values” which lack abilities that humans do, but their life is important and they can feel the pains. Regan illustrates that humans have biological, individual, and social needs and these needs should not penetrate into animals’ life. He believes that

    Read More

More about Non Human Animals Research Paper

Open Document