Animal Rights Without Liberation - Applied Ethics and Human Obligations

Citation

Cochrane, A. (2012). Animal Rights Without Liberation: Applied Ethics and Human Obligations. Columbia University Press.

Chapter Summary

Context and Argument

The book separates two ideas that animal-ethics writing often joins: that animals have rights, and that they must be liberated from human use. Cochrane argues that sentient animals have a right not to be made to suffer and a right not to be killed, but that most of them have no interest in leading a freely chosen life and therefore no prima facie right to liberty. Our obligations lie in ending practices that cause suffering and death, not in ending every form of use or ownership. The approach is political as well as moral: Cochrane presents it as "democratic underlabouring" meant to inform and persuade political communities. It was the second book in the Columbia series Critical Perspectives on Animals and grew out of the author's doctoral thesis at the London School of Economics.

Chapter 1: Introduction

The opening chapter sets out the claim that animal rights and animal liberation can be decoupled and positions the book between the utilitarian line associated with Peter Singer and the rights line associated with Tom Regan. It previews the interest-based approach and the policy areas to which it will be applied.

Chapter 2: Animals, Interests, and Rights

The theoretical chapter. Cochrane argues that sentient animals have well-being and so have interests, and that rights rest on interests rather than on agency or cognitive sophistication. Following Joseph Raz, he holds that an individual has a right when an aspect of its well-being is a sufficient reason to place others under a duty. He defends this against objections that rights require moral agency or social relations, that animals lack interests, and that plants and inanimate things would have them too, and contrasts it with an aggregative utilitarianism that does not take individuals seriously enough. The chapter also distinguishes prima facie rights from concrete rights, a distinction used throughout the rest of the book.

Chapter 3: Animal Experimentation

The first application. Cochrane argues that animals have strong interests in not suffering and not dying and that experiments causing either are illegitimate, while painless experiments in which the animal is not killed are permissible other things being equal. He considers and rejects the arguments that benefits outweigh the suffering, that humans owe more to their own species, and that human lives are more valuable. Part of this chapter builds on his earlier article on animal interests and animal experiments.

Chapter 4: Animal Agriculture

Animals have concrete rights not to suffer or be killed while raised for food, so factory farming and killing animals for flesh cannot be defended. Cochrane answers objections based on human liberty, jobs and health, and the claim that farmed animals would not exist without the practice. He accepts that milk and eggs, and flesh from animals that die naturally, may be permissible under conditions that avoid suffering and killing, and he discusses the deaths of animals in crop harvesting and the killing of animals by predators.

Chapter 5: Animals and Genetic Engineering

Because live animals are not engineered and embryos have no interests, the question is whether an animal has a right not to have been engineered. Cochrane argues that engineering is ordinarily permissible if it gives the animal opportunities for well-being similar to or better than ordinary members of its species, and impermissible where it produces disease or disability that deprives the animal of those opportunities. He rejects objections from instrumentalisation, repugnance, character and dignity.

Chapter 6: Animal Entertainment

The chapter covers pets, zoos and circuses, hunting and fishing, and animal sport such as racing. Animals have no right not to be kept or displayed, but they do have a right not to suffer, which restricts which animals can be kept and under what conditions. Cochrane favours stricter regulation of pet-keeping, condemns blood sports, and judges current racing practice harshly while leaving room for reformed versions.

Chapter 7: Animals and the Environment

Only conscious beings have interests, so species, ecosystems and plants cannot hold rights. Cochrane rejects Aldo Leopold's land ethic as a basis for moral status and argues that strict environmental protection is nonetheless required by the interests of sentient animals. He discusses endangered species and the killing of animals to protect favoured ecosystems, and favours contraception over culling.

Chapter 8: Animals and Cultural Practices

The final applied chapter asks whether human interests in culture and religion can outweigh animals' interests in not suffering or being killed. Cochrane argues that they cannot, even where this means the end of practices defined by the harm they cause, and he considers freedom of religion, equal opportunity and the charge of hypocrisy.

Chapter 9: Conclusion

The conclusion restates the case for decoupling rights from liberation. Cochrane argues that the theory would have radical consequences if applied, though it permits some use and ownership, and rejects violent interventions on behalf of animals as counterproductive and illegitimate.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–2

• Interest-based rights approach: following Raz, an individual has a right if an aspect of its well-being is a sufficient reason to place others under a duty.
• Decoupling rights from liberation: animals can have strong rights without having a right to freedom from all use.
• Prima facie versus concrete rights: a right that exists in the abstract may or may not survive in a particular situation.

Chapters 3–5

• Rights not to suffer and not to be killed: the two rights that the book applies to experiments, farming and engineering.
• Right not to have been engineered: a way of treating genetic engineering without assigning rights to embryos.

Chapters 6–9

• Non-conscious entities lack rights: species, ecosystems and plants do not have interests of their own.
• Cultural interests and animal interests: culture and religion cannot always outweigh protection from harm.
• Democratic underlabouring: the book's own account of how normative argument serves political persuasion.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A defined and original position. The publisher's description and the blurbs call it the first sustained attempt to ground a full account of animal rights in an interest-based theory, and the first to deny an intrinsic right to liberty. Robert Garner, Paula Casal and Gary Francione, who disagrees with it, each endorse it as serious or provocative work.
• Theory and application are joined. One chapter develops the theory and six apply it, so readers can see the same principle tested on experiments, farming, engineering, entertainment, the environment and culture.
• Unusual policy topics. The book treats pet-keeping, indigenous hunting, religious slaughter and engineering, which are less discussed than farming and laboratories.
• Clear and accessible prose. Reviewer John Hadley described the reasoning as uncontroversial for anyone who accepts that animals matter at all, and the writing as accessible.

Limitations

• A tension at the centre. Hadley argued that by denying animals the capacities to value freedom, Cochrane keeps rights close to a person-centred orthodoxy and weakens the challenge to it. Readers who think liberty matters to animals will find the key premise contested.
• Abolitionists will not be persuaded. Because the book permits some use and ownership, it is open to the objection that it concedes too much. Francione's endorsement of the book's quality comes with the statement that he disagrees with it.
• The scope is political theory. The book relies on Raz's account and on the moral-rights literature, and it assumes the reader will follow a fairly technical argument about interests and duties.

Where It Fits in the Course

This is a theoretical monograph, best read after the two works it answers. Peter Singer's Animal Liberation is the utilitarian starting point and Tom Regan's Empty Cages is the accessible rights-based account; Cochrane defines his own view by contrast with both. Cora Diamond's article questions whether the whole style of argument is right, which offers a different challenge from Cochrane's refinement within it. Carol Adams's Neither Man nor Beast approaches the issue through feminist theory.

It is also a more demanding book than the essay collections of Singer's Applied Ethics or Ethics in the Real World, and a good sequel for readers who want to see what a rights theory looks like when it is applied to policy.

How to Use This Book

Suitable for upper-level undergraduates and graduate readers with some exposure to moral and political philosophy. Read Chapters 1 and 2 closely; they carry the argument. Then read the applied chapters selectively: Chapter 3 or 4 first to see the method at work, and the others according to interest. Chapter 8 pairs well with debates on multiculturalism and religious freedom, and Chapter 7 with environmental ethics.

Keep Regan's and Singer's books open as comparison texts, and note where Cochrane's conclusions differ from theirs. The conclusion is a compact summary and a useful first read if you only need to know what the book defends.