Abstract
Predation poses a serious challenge for animal ethics of whatever ilk. For animal rights theory especially, the problem is potentially fatal as animal rights appear to require or permit interfering in nature to prevent predation, an implication that appears to be absurd. Several philosophers have written to deflect this challenge by showing how that implication is not absurd or how the allegedly entailed prescription to intervene does not follow from animal rights theory. A number of philosophers have taken different routes to arrive at the same conclusion that intervention in wildlife predation is not morally permissible or required on the rights view. In this paper, I explore a route hitherto unused to the conclusion that intervention in predation is neither required nor permitted by animal rights theory. I deploy the Hohfeldian analytical framework of rights as well as aspects of the theory of self- or other- defence. This, in my view is the most thorough-going rights perspective on the predation problem. I expose some ad hoc, incoherent, utilitarian, and even speciesist arguments among animal rights solutions to the predation problem. The approach I have used avoids these flaws. Taking animal rights seriously means guarding against any tacit speciesism. I think using Hohfeld’s framework goes some way in keeping rights analysis free of implicit bias that might pollute our arguments in favour of human beings.
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Notes
p is the proposition that requires that the obligor behaves in a certain way towards the right-bearer.
See Wenar (2015, 4–9) for a helpful summary of the rights relations.
I am not arguing against utilitarianism in wildlife management as such. My point is that justice—conceived narrowly as adhering to moral rights—has pro tanto lexical precedence over aggregative utility promotion.
Examples of legitimate exercise of one’s power-right include giving another access to property one owns, lending out one’s property, forgiving a debt one is owed, and harming an aggressor to prevent harm to oneself.
Given the robustness and complexity of human wellbeing, being raised well morally is just as important as being physically protected and provided for.
A liberty-right does not entail a claim-right. In football, a striker has the liberty-right to score but not a claim-right that the opposite side’s defenders do not prevent him from scoring. I am not sure whether interventionists can explore this logical space. For example, respecting a lion’s liberty-right to hunt a gazelle, can a human simply produce a disturbing sound that’s within the gazelle’s auditory wavelength and not the lion’s and thereby effectively preventing what would have been a successful hunt? Practically, however, it seems implausible that humans can prevent wildebeest migration into predator territories, for example, without violating the rights of prey at least even if those of predators, arguendo, are not necessarily violated. It would be particularly hard not to violate predator and prey territorial rights that exclude humans.
Many philosophers rightly agree that there are non-correlative duties, that is, duties to others whereby the beneficiaries do not hold a correlative right. But such duties are outside the bounds of justice or moral rights.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Brad Hooker and Elaine Beadle, who were my Ph.D. supervisors, for discussions of the main ideas in this paper. I am also grateful for the helpful comments from the participants of the Animals and Death conference in 2016 at the University of Leeds organised by APE Collective. Lastly, I would like to say thanks to Anna Wienheus for her comments on a later version of this paper.
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Kapembwa, J. Predation Catch-22: Disentangling the Rights of Prey, Predators, and Rescuers. J Agric Environ Ethics 31, 527–542 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-018-9743-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-018-9743-6