Eric Moore

‡ Both Tom Regan and Evelyn B. Pluhar endorse the view that animals¹ have rights equal to human rights; for example, the right to life, the right to self-defense, the right to non-interference, and so on.² I shall show that this view has unacceptable consequences, and so must be rejected. The objection that I will give is based on an objection that Regan himself considers and rejects, so it will be worthwhile to review that objection and Regan's response before giving my strengthened version.

The objection that Regan considers is that of conflicting rights between predators and prey (284), and what follows is a reconstruction of that argument. Assume that all animals and humans have equal rights. Then, since both sheep and wolves have rights, wolves violate sheep's rights when they hunt and kill them. Of course, sheep have a right to self-defense, and can use whatever means available, even if that requires harming the wolves. Unfortunately, sheep do not know self-defense, so typically are killed. But suppose a human (a moral agent) learns about one of these hunts. Since the sheep are innocent, and they are threatened, and the wolves violate their rights, the human is morally obligated to intervene.

The principle in operation here is this. Moral agents have a prima facie duty to intervene when an innocent animal's rights are being violated. Thus, if a human sees a sheep being hunted by a wolf, or indeed just about any prey being hunted by any predator, that human has a duty to intervene. But clearly this is absurd. There is no such duty. Even worse, since wolves have rights, and saving the sheep would harm the wolf (who cannot become a vegetarian as we humans can), if we were to interfere and help the sheep, we would violate the wolf's right not to be harmed. So, if animals have rights, then whether we interfere or not in hunting situations we act unjustly. Therefore, it is absurd to attribute rights to animals.

Regan would claim that that this objection "is open to the very charge of absurdity it levels against attributing rights to animals" (285). The problem is that this argument overlooks a crucial fact: wolves are not moral agents, so therefore they cannot have duties to anyone. In particular, wolves have no duties toward sheep. Since the wolves have no duties to the sheep, they cannot violate the sheep's rights. Therefore, we have no prima facie duty to interfere. No rights are being violated. The wolf may hunt the sheep and we act justly when we do not interfere.

I think that this reply is highly unsatisfactory. It grants entirely too much to the wolves. It follows from Regan's reasoning that not only do the sheep have no rights against the wolves, but that the wolves have rights against us not to interfere. We humans are moral agents, and so we do have duties, and in particular, the duty not to harm other animals. If it would harm the wolves to interfere with their hunt (and Regan seems to grant this), then not only is there no obligation to help the sheep, there is a positive obligation to refrain from helping the sheep. This seems wrong. However, the following case is much worse. Suppose that instead of sheep, the wolves are hunting a couple of hapless hikers. Like the sheep, suppose that these hikers are not equipped to scare off the wolves or defend themselves. They will be killed unless we intervene. If we follow Regan's reasoning not only do we have no duty to intervene, but we have a duty to refrain from intervening. We must let the hikers be killed or we will violate the rights of the wolves. This is so because even though the hikers are people, that does not matter in this case. The wolves have no duties to the hikers because the wolves are not moral agents. So, if we were to intervene, we would not be acting justly, because we would be harming the wolves, and they have a right not to be harmed. This is clearly absurd.

Regan could respond in the following way. He could claim that it is not true that we have a duty to refrain from interfering with the wolves, only a duty to refrain from harming them. If we wished, we could scare off the hunting wolves and prevent them from killing the sheep or the hikers. Of course, if we followed the wolves around and constantly interfered with their attempts at hunting, this would harm them. But just the one time would not, because there is no reason to think that the wolves would starve if they did not make this particular kill.

This response is still unsatisfactory. For one thing, it leaves it open to us to refrain from interfering with the hapless hikers. All that has been shown is that we may interfere, not that we must. But this still seems too weak. Furthermore, if it turns out that we can save the hikers only by harming the wolves, say by shooting them, then we would be prohibited from doing so. The hikers could harm the wolves because the hikers have the right of self-defense. But we have a duty to refrain from harming the wolves. Nor would we circumvent this problem if we gave the hikers our guns so that they could shoot the wolves. We would clearly still have violated our duty to the wolves. But this is not good. Not only do we have a right to shoot the wolves; we have a duty to do so. The rights of the wolves are not equal to the rights of the hikers.

It might be thought that the concept of allowable harm to innocent threats saves Regan's view. Suppose a young child picks up a loaded gun and starts firing it at us. We have the right of self-defense, even if that requires us to harm seriously or kill the child. Of course, we must try every other option that we can reasonably try, but if all else fails, we are permitted to kill the child to save ourselves, even though the child is innocent (293). Similarly with the wolves: they are an innocent threat, but we have the right to self-defense, even if it requires harming them.

This will not do, for Regan discusses this example as a threat to us, and that is fundamentally different from the case of the hapless hikers. In that case, only the hikers are threatened, not us. We would not be harmed if the hikers were killed. Furthermore, note that Regan's justification of harm to innocent threats is one of self-defense. He writes, "...since we are innocent of any relevant wrongdoing, since we are seriously threatened by the gun-wielding child ...it cannot be wrong to do what will harm the child..." (293).

The equal rights advocate could bite the bullet and grant that there is a duty to let the hikers be killed by the wolves. However, it is not clear to me that either Regan or Pluhar can consistently take this stance. The reason is their response to the lifeboat case. Consider a lifeboat with five beings, four humans and one large dog. Suppose that the lifeboat will sink and all five will die unless one of the five is thrown overboard (to certain death). Regan clearly argues, and Pluhar seems to believe, that it is right to throw the dog overboard.³ Since neither is willing to bite the bullet in this case, I do not see how either could consistently argue that it is our duty to let the hiker die in the wolf case.