Animals, rights, suffering and responsibility

At first glance, Steve Gordon’s theory – that the ability to suffer gives any living things rights – seems reasonable. However, there is a caveat. Animals do not have the capacity to communicate with us, so we cannot know for certain how intense their pain is. Humans might howl if they stub their toe, but the reality is that a stubbed toe is of completely different magnitude to the pain of an abscessed tooth. Does a chicken with a pea-sized brain feel pain as we do? Steve, very few people enjoy watching an animal suffer, but very few people also enjoy listening to dogs howl at night, bark, or take part in gang bangs. We feed cows, goats and chickens, but what purpose do they serve, other than as food? 

My point is that suffering is not the only part of the equation when we are talking about rights. There is also a thing called responsibility. We are all citizens of one country or another and as such enjoy rights granted by our country and peers, but along with those rights come responsibility to that country and those peers. One does not automatically gain “rights” just because one is born. One must accept some responsibility to one entity or another in order to have rights. Animals are not capable of 

that responsibility. They understand only pleasure, fear and, yes, pain. 

John Arnone