9WHY HUMAN BEINGS MAY USE ANIMALSThe Journal of Value Inquiry 36: 9–14, 2002.© 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Why Human Beings May Use Animals

TIBOR R. MACHANLeatherby Center for Entrepreneurship and Business Ethics, Argyros School of Businessand Economics, Chapman University, Orange, CA 92866, USA, and Hoover Institution,Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA

1. The Ethical Basis of Rights

Before turning to the arguments for animal rights or liberation, let us con-sider what may be called a classical-individualist case for the use of animalsfor human purposes. Without this position reasonably well established, it willnot be possible to critically assess the case for animal rights. After all, this isa comparative matter. Which viewpoint makes best sense and is therefore morelikely to be true? It was from a roughly classical-individualist stance that theidea of basic rights was developed, by John Locke and others.1

One reason for the propriety of our use of animals is that we, as members ofthe human species, are more important or valuable than other animals and someof our activities may require the use, even killing, of animals in order to suc-ceed at our lives, to make it flourish most. This is different from saying thathuman beings are uniquely important, a position avidly ridiculed by StephenR.L. Clark, who claims that “there seems no decent ground in reason or revela-tion to suppose that man is uniquely important or significant.”2 If man wereuniquely important, that would mean that one could not assign any value to plantsor non-human animals apart from their relationship to human beings.

The position we are considering is that there is a scale of importance innature and that among all the various kinds of being, the kind ‘human being’is prima facie the most important, even while some members of the humanspecies may indeed prove themselves to be vile and worthless, as well. In short,the position is unabashedly a specieist position.

How do we establish that we are the most important or valuable kind ofbeing? We may do so by considering whether the idea of lesser or greaterimportance or value in the nature of things makes clear sense and if it does,then by applying it to an understanding of whether human beings or otheranimals are more important. Put somewhat differently, let us suppose thatranking things in nature as more or less important makes sense, is sound. If,furthermore, human beings qualify as more important than other animals, thereis at least the beginning of a reason why we may make use of other animalsfor our purposes, for instance, when a trade-off is unavoidable.

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That there are things of different degree of value or importance in nature isat least implicitly admitted by animal rights advocates, so there is no need toargue about that here. When they insist that we treat animals differently fromthe way we treat, say, rocks so that we may use rocks in ways that we may notuse animals, say to build our homes, animal rights champions testify, at leastimplicitly, that animals are more important than rocks. They happen, also, todeny that human beings rank higher than other animals or at least they do notadmit that ranking human beings higher warrants our using animals for ourpurposes. But that is a different issue. What matters for now is that defendersof the high or equal moral status of animals admit rankings in nature.

Independently of this acknowledgment, there is evidence throughout thenatural world of the existence of beings of greater complexity and thus argu-ably of higher value. For example, while it makes no sense to evaluate as goodor bad such things as planets, rocks, or pebbles, except as they may relate tohuman or other animal purposes or goals, when it comes to plants and ani-mals, the process of evaluation commences very naturally. We can speak ofbetter or worse oaks, redwoods, zebras, foxes, or chimps. While at this pointwe confine our evaluation to the condition or behavior of such beings with-out any intimation of their having any moral or ethical responsibility for be-ing better or worse, when we start discussing human beings, our evaluationcan take on a moral component. Indeed, none are more ready to testify to thisthan animal rights advocates. They, after all, do not demand any change ofbehavior on the part of non-human animals and yet insist that human beingsconform to certain moral edicts as a matter of their own choice. This meansthat even animal rights advocates admit outright that to the best of our know-ledge, it is with human beings that the idea of moral responsibility enters theuniverse.

This shows, beyond a reasonable doubt, a hierarchical structure in nature.Some things, such as rocks, comets, and minerals, do not invite any other thanperhaps esthetic evaluations. It is of no significance, except in relationship tothe well-being of some living entities, whether they exist or what conditionthey are in or how they behave. However, some things, such as zebras, frogs,and redwood trees, do justify being evaluated as to whether they do well orbadly but without any moral or ethical significance to the evaluations involved.Finally, some things – human beings – invite moral evaluation, in light of thefact that they exercise the initiative or basic choice as regards the good andbad, right and wrong things they can do.3

The level of importance or value may be noted to move from the inani-mate to the animate world, culminating, as far as we now know, with humanlife. Normal human life involves moral tasks, and that is why we are moreimportant than other beings in nature. We are subject to moral appraisal. It isa matter of our own doing whether we succeed or fail in our lives.

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When it comes to our moral task to succeed as human beings, we are de-pendent upon reaching sensible conclusions about what we should do. We canfail at this task and all too often do so. But we can also succeed. The processthat leads to our success involves learning, among other things, what it is thatnature avails us with to achieve our highly varied tasks in life. Clearly, amongthe highly varied tasks could be some that make judicious use of animals. Forexample, for transportation, to find out whether some medicine is safe forhuman use, and for sport we might wish to employ animals. This would bethe rational thing for us to do, in order to make the best use of nature for oursuccess in living our lives.

This does not give us any reason to deny that we can do with fairly spe-cific guidelines for how we might make use of animals , any more than wecan do without guidelines for how we use anything else. In a discussion ofethics, such guidelines would become essential but they are not the topic ofpolitics or law in a free society except when animals or plants become the sub-ject of contractual agreements and their enforcement or part of tort adjudications.This line of reasoning also addresses two frequently raised questions to ouruse of other animals: Could not the same argument be used within the humanspecies, giving better people the right to make use of worse people? Might itbe directed toward infants and the impaired, who may well lack the normalhuman capacities on which the moral dignity of human life is based?

The answer to the first question is that making choices is a preconditionfor determining who is better or worse among human beings. Using peopleagainst their will squelches their choice, at least with respect to what theyought to do next, so those who are better have the obligation to leave thosewho are worse to continue to make choices that may well reverse the situ-ation. As we have learned from Aristotle, the comparative assessment of hu-man beings must await the completion of their lives, at least in principle.The answer to the second question is that as far as infants or the signifi-cantly impaired among human beings are concerned, they cannot be the basisfor a general account of human morality, of what rights human beings have.Borderline cases matter in making difficult decisions but not in forging ageneral theory.

2. The Emergence of the Interest Theory

Let us return to the more recent defense offered for according animals the statusof, in effect, rights-holders. Lee Burwood and Ros Wyeth say that “membersof all sentient species have interests which should be protected and sometimesit is useful to put this in terms of their having a right to life, a right to avoidpain, a right not to be involuntarily used as a resource by others. These arecore vegan beliefs.”4

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Having interests, however, is not a sufficient ground for having rights.Someone may have an interest in Albertson’s grocery store carrying a certainkind of bread but the person has no right to the bread, or to Albertson’s pro-viding him with it. The United States of America has an interest in Kuwait’soil but this does not provide it with the right to lay claim to Kuwait’s oil. Thisis one reason why talk about the national interest does not suffice to justifymilitary intervention with other countries.5 Instead, it is the capacity to directactions toward or away from acting to fulfill proper interests that is relevantto having rights. That capacity belongs to human beings alone. There may besome minimal moral agency evident in some animal species and hardly anyin some damaged human beings, but borderline cases do not defeat such ageneral point.

Indeed, while humans share about ninety-seven percent of their DNA struc-ture with some higher non-human animals, the last three percent are so vitalthat all of human civilization, religion, art, science, philosophy and, mostimportantly, our moral nature depend upon it. Most vegans in their conductattest to this when they appeal to human beings to deal with other animals inconsiderate ways rather than to other animals to do the same. None of themimplore a lion, for example, not to kill a zebra or to kill it more humanely.

Some moral philosophers might argue that the killing and infliction of suf-fering done by non-human animals to others is necessary for their survivalqua the animals they are. Human beings, however, do much of such inflictionof suffering for sport and convenience, not out of necessity. This, however, isa surmountable response.

First, it is not at all established that all the killing and infliction of suffer-ing done in the non-human animal world is necessary for survival. When somelions kill the cubs in their pride, it is not at all clear that they are driven to dothis for the sake of survival. It does seem evident that the cat actually playswith the mouse as it prepares to kill it, which is not needed for the kill.

Second, just what is necessary for human life is not made clear in the re-sponse at hand. Arguably, human beings are the sort of animals whose flour-ishing or thriving requires much more than bare survival. All the achievementsin the arts, sciences, philosophy, and even athletics attest to this. Mere sur-vival is not human survival, not human living. If, by chance, the developmentof some human potentialities in medicine, research, adventure, athletics, orthe culinary arts requires the use of animals, even the infliction of sufferingon them, that may well be just what makes such use morally proper, unobjec-tionable.6

As someone drives to the theater or to visit friends and family, for instance,he may crush many small and even not so small non-human animals, causingpain and suffering. Yet it would not be a human life that did without suchactivities as going to the theater, visiting friends and family once in a while,and unavoidably doing so in ways that will normally do some damage to cer-

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tain animals. This is so even if sound ethical reasons can be given for treatingnon-human animals humanely and for avoiding wantonly or uselessly inflict-ing pain on them. In any case, the higher status of human life in the chain ofliving beings and the nature of being human provide grounds for ascribing tohuman beings basic rights that would not make sense to ascribe to other ani-mals. It also justifies occasional use of other animals for human purposes,since, comparatively speaking, human interests merit greater service than theinterest of non-human animals.

The concept of animal rights is, therefore, a concept that embodies confu-sion, and veganism, which rests on it, is a wrong ethical view. The conceptinvolves a category mistake, confusing, as it does, considerations applicableto moral agents with considerations not involving such agents. Put plainly,rights are borders needed by moral agents so that they are secure in their sov-ereignty, in their freedom to make moral decisions. To beings that do not makesuch decisions the concept of rights is, then, out of place.

3. The Interest Theory of Rights

Animals have found supporters from rights theorists and utilitarians. Rightstheorists say that animals are enough like human beings to have rights. Utili-tarians argue that because animals are able to strive to be well off, they needto be free to increase well-being.

One argument advanced in support of animal rights has it that the reasonwe should ascribe at least legal rights to animals is that they have interests.This argument goes back as far as Jeremy Bentham who, while he denied thatnatural rights exist, thought that animals should have legal rights. In common-sense terms it amounts to the view that if something can be benefitted fromcertain states, conditions, or circumstances, then it may be said, properly tobe a rights-possessor. What does it have rights to? The answer is whatever ittakes to obtain those matters that are to its interest.

This view of having rights is defended by John Stuart Mill, in his On Lib-erty, where we get the most explicitly utilitarian theory of human rights. Be-cause it is to our interest to obtain various goods, such as happiness, andbecause liberty is a precondition to being happy, we have a right to liberty.That is the gist of Mill’s argument.

One problem with this view is that it violates the universalizability condi-tion for ascribing basic rights. Inasmuch as some beings have an interest inbenefits that others also have an interest in, it would be impossible to respectthe rights of both beings if having interests conferred on them rights, too. Boththe United States and Iraq have an interest in Kuwait’s oil. To ascribe to bothcountries the right to the oil would result in creating peacefully unresolvableconflict. Both Democratic and Republican candidates have an interest in be-

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coming President of the United States, but both candidates cannot have a rightto becoming President, since only one of the candidates can become Presi-dent. Because human beings and other animals have an interest in making useof the lives of animals, both cannot have the right to make use of them.

Compossibility is a necessary feature of successful rights-ascription. To as-cribe to some being the right to liberty implies that others akin to it in therelevant respects, also get the right ascribed to them. An interest-based theoryof rights fails to satisfy this requirement. What is true even so is that beingsthat have interests can be said to value various things in which they have aninterest. Various things, conditions and such can be of value to interest-bear-ing beings. That is true about animals. Water, sunshine, nourishment, andcertain ecological conditions are of value to animals. Clearly, however, non-human animals do not have rights to such things just because of this.

It is important to note that having rights imposes obligations on others. Ifnon-human animals had rights, they would have obligations to other interest-bearing beings. Yet, consider that zebras have an interest in and benefit fromcertain conditions such as grazing. But, that certain conditions are of interestor value to zebras does not imply that a lion, which also has interests, includ-ing killing and devouring zebras, is obligated to respect a purported right ofthe zebra to such conditions. The proper inference to draw is that nothingfollows about human beings having to respect some alleged right of zebras tokeep grazing. If human beings ought to let zebras graze, it will have to beshown on the basis of something other than such supposed interest-based rightsof zebras.

Notes

1. See Tibor R. Machan, Individuals and Their Rights (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court Publish-ing Company, Inc., 1989).

2. Stephen R.L. Clark, The Moral Status of Animals (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1977), p. 13.

3. See Tibor R. Machan, Initiative – Human Agency and Society (Stanford, California:Hoover Institution Press, 2000).

4. Les Burwood and Ros Wyeth, “Ethics and the Vegan Way of Life,” Philosophers’ Maga-zine, November–December, 1998.

5. For more on this, see Tibor R. Machan, “Defending a Free Society,” Journal of ValueInquiry 33 (4).

6. Cf. Peter Singer, Practical Ethics (London: Cambridge University Press, 1993).