If a mouse cannot have any moral rights, severely mentally challenged humans cannot have any moral rights either
For the purpose of this essay, I would leave aside the question whether a mouse can have moral rights or not. The point I am concerned with is whether holding the view that an animal cannot possess any moral rights commits us to saying that the same extends to mentally challenged humans. A person might very well hold that a mouse has moral rights, but that is not relevant here. What is relevant is whether there is a reasonable conception of moral rights which allow them to be applicable to mentally challenged humans, but not to mice.
So what is this concept of a moral right which (I argue) rodents cannot possess, but mentally deranged humans can? Where do they arise from, and who lends them authority?
When we say that a person A has right to F, what we mean is that it is obligatory on the people or society he is part of to enable him to do or enjoy F. For example, if I have a right to freedom, then others have a responsibility to not enslave me or constrict my freedom. If I have a right to life, then others have a duty to ensure that I live. Rights generate correlative duties on the part of others.
Rights can be conventional: created by existing social and political arrangements, or natural: which pertain to us by virtue of our humanity. While the former can vary from society to society, the latter apply universally to every human being. In discussing moral rights, in particular, we refer to our natural rights, in so far as morality is a universal human concept, and not a mere social construct. Moral rights are rights with a moral dimension: they generate correlative duties which are independent of the law or social convention of the land and have the same binding force as moral obligations do. The particular content of moral rights, as morality does, might differ from society to society, but the concept itself applies universally.
However, it is worth noting that moral rights have a stronger force than other sort of moral claims. The duties they evoke have preference over other possible conflicting moral duties that a person might have in a particular situation.
Do moral rights even exist? (Footnote: It will be useful to discuss this question only cursorily, since it in itself is much larger in scope than the essay question.)
If the laws of every existing society condemn a human being to be a slave, he, or another on his behalf, may yet hold that he has a ``right” to be free. ”Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains”, said Rousseau. Such moral rights have their own existence, independent of what the law of the land dictates. How then, do they come to be?
One answer is that moral rights arise from our very human nature. Thus, animals cannot lay claim to them. But this begs the question that what is in the nature of humans that grant us this special status.
For some, our special status has been granted by God (``God made humans in his own image”). I will not go into this claim, since I believe it rests on a stronger assumption on the existence of God and his designs and ends, which I find it impossible to discuss or argue for or against. Suffice to say, the burden of proof or defence on such a position is quite high. However, such a position, if it could be defended, could allow for mentally challenged humans to have moral rights as opposed to animals.
Reason and Moral Rights
Others might maintain our intrinsic worth, our capacity to act morally, derives from our ability to reason. To be men, is to be rational animals. Our moral rights derive their existence from the virtue of our rationale. This was Aristotle and Kant’s view. Reason is man’s defining characteristic, and hence foundation of our natural rights as human beings.
If we choose actual rationality or the exercise of freedom as the basis for having rights, then we simply cannot extend moral rights to all humans, in particular, to those who are mentally deficient in their capacity to reason. This I believe is a problem, because nothing stops this conception from reducing mentally challenged humans to animals in all matters pertaining to morality.
Moreover, even though it might seem to place a wedge between `normal’ humans on one side and mentally challenged humans and mice in the other, does rationality really lend us a clear cut applicable distinction? Many animals display skill in hunting, Building, fighting, social organisation, adaptability of means to ends, and other characteristics which are evidence of intelligence in men. Some higher primates display rational behaviour. Ants use tools and live a highly organised social life. Bees live in a highly sophisticated government system. Would we grant them moral rights? On the other hand, many human activities are almost robotic, requiring little thought or abstract use of symbols.
Our human nature defined as such: as being Humans
However, there is a conception of humanity which we all share and can identify with, which is different and independent from man’s rational nature. While man’s capacity to reason is essentially a spectrum: some possess it in a greater degree, others to a limited one, this doesn’t imply that I think the other one as being less of a human. I could relate and identify with all human beings as kindreds regardless of how much their faculty of reasoning has developed. Which is not the case when it comes to animals like mice. No matter how much intellectual capacity a mice demonstrates, no matter how consistent or logical its activities as mice are, no matter how skilfully it navigates labyrinths or how well it performs in lab experiments, I wouldn’t relate to it in the same way I relate to a human. There would be an essential difference: the essence of a mouse will remain that of a mouse and of a human will be of a human.
One’s moral rights ultimately depends on on moral claims which bind themselves on others. If person A has a right to F, other people or society, recognises its obligations with respect to F because they, in turn, would want a right to F when in A’s position. Lets call this the ‘reflective principle’. Recognising this is sufficient for me to feel a moral duty towards a fellow being. I would recognise a mentally deficient person’s moral rights because I could imagine myself in that position: that if I were to end up in the same state by way of accident or misfortune then I would to have those rights. I recognise and identify myself as a member of the same species. This is not true when it comes to mice, for example: I could not possibly think of myself in the mice’s position without giving it human form and human thoughts and anthropomorphising it - until I make it equivalent to a member of my own species for all intents and purposes.
One could argue that savages do not dream of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, for they do not question what is customary. Neither do the very depressed. In our case, the argument would go from a mentally challenged person’s point of view: he cannot possibly claim moral rights, since he can’t rationally want them. But saying that these people cannot recognise moral rights is different from saying that they don’t have moral rights. In so far as they have an existence as part of a human society, others would have certain moral duties towards them, which in turn would define their rights. The existence of moral rights, thus, depends on the conception of humans as social beings, each having moral obligations toward each other, some of them stronger others.
But is it just dependent on social beings? Would ants and bees, insofar as they are social animals, have moral rights? No, not the rights as we understand them. This is because the principle of reflective principle is part of our shared existence. Bees and Ants might have their own conception of bee-rights or ant-rights, which do not have this reflective principle. A queen bee might have right to protection by worker bees, for example, in the sense that the worker bees have a duty to protect here. It might be the duty of a worker bee to give up its own life to protect the queen bee, regardless of whether they are rationally making that decision or not. Whatever works for their case. We are not concerned with that. Freedom of a worker bee is not our concern, indeed, it is not our duty. Our conception of rights are limited to our own species.
Right to life, liberty and happiness and so forth do not exist independent of human concerns. It would not be rational or irrational to say it is a worker bees; , or indeed mice’s right to be live freely. Any such statement would necessarily involve a substantial amount of anthropomorphisation.
But if restricted to humans, where do these moral rights, arise from, if not from our rational natures alone? This is besides the question, but one could pin it on social evolution: rights are something we feel compelled to oblige because they conferred our species with a collective evolutionary advantage. The same rights, when applied to mice or bees for example, might not serve as an evolutionary advantage. The force of duty we feel, towards recognising liberty, justice and so forth, might arise from our evolutionary instincts.
Conclusion
If we insist that all humans, regardless of their mental capacities, possess moral rights, it would seem that there is an immaterial dimension to human beings that is the basis of us having rights - since we are not basing it on our rational nature. One could either adopt the immaterial dimension of God, or produce some other philosophical justification. I believe our reflective reasoning, arising as we live collectively as a society, is also unique to human nature and can serve as a justifiable basis for moral rights. This allows all members of human species to possess such rights, whether mentally challenged or not: one does not need to be able to reason reflectively to possess those rights, as long as other members of the society can.
23 November 2014