"No duties, no rights."

Como pode aparecer

The strongest version

Strongest version (steelman). The classic formulation is Carl Cohen's, in a 1986 article in the New England Journal of Medicine defending the use of animals in research:

1. P1Rights arise, and can only be defended, among beings who make, or can make, moral claims on one another.
2. P2Animals lack the capacity to understand and apply moral rules.
3. C1So animals have no rights, and in Cohen's words, "they can have none".
4. P3Those without rights may be used, subject to any duties of kindness.
5. C2So using animals is permitted.

Cohen anticipates the objection from humans lacking this capacity and replies that the capacity for moral judgment "is not a test to be administered to human beings one by one", because "the issue is one of kind". That way out is examined in chapter A11.

The same structure appears in contractualism: morality would be an agreement among rational agents, and only parties to the agreement would be protected by it. It's worth noting that John Rawls, although he excluded animals from the domain of justice, held that we have duties of compassion and humanity toward them.

The argument is valid. Its soundness fails at P1, which confuses who makes rules with whom the rules protect, at P2, which is partly false, and at P3, which doesn't follow: lacking legal rights isn't the same as moral permission.

Full answer

1. a

   Reconstruction and diagnosis

   The argument lives on a conceptual confusion that moral philosophy resolved long ago.

   Role	Who it is	What it requires	Examples
   Moral agent	Someone who can have duties and be held responsible	Understanding rules, deliberating, choosing	Typical adults
   Moral patient	Someone who can be harmed or benefited	Being sentient	Babies, people with dementia, people in a coma, animals

   Every moral agent is also a patient, but not every patient is an agent. Argument A7 demands of the patient the credentials of the agent. It's like refusing medical care to anyone who isn't a doctor.

   There's also a leap between C1 and C2. Even if animals had no rights in the strict legal sense, it doesn't follow that we may do whatever we like with them. A consequentialist ethics doesn't even need the language of rights: avoidable suffering is enough to give a moral reason against it.

2. b

   Where the argument breaks

   1. It proves too much.

   Newborns, people with profound intellectual disabilities and people in a coma have no duties and can't make claims. By P1's criterion, they'd have no rights. Almost no one accepts that, which is enough to reject the premise.

   2. The law itself works this way.

   Guardianship exists precisely to represent those who can't make claims. Future generations, who can't reciprocate anything or take part in any agreement, appear in constitutions and environmental treaties as owed consideration. Inability to complain has never been an obstacle to legal protection.

   3. The "it's a matter of kind" way out is circular.

   Cohen answers the human cases by saying moral capacity characterizes the species, not each individual. But that means judging someone by what other members of their species have, which is exactly the point in dispute. If we applied the same reasoning to intelligence, we'd say a baby can do algebra because adult humans can. Chapter A11 deals with this in detail.

   4. P2 is empirically questionable.

   Animals cooperate, return favors and punish cheating. Vampire bats share food with those who have fed them before, in a pattern of reciprocity documented by Wilkinson (1984). This doesn't make reciprocity a moral criterion, and the book doesn't want to fall into that trap. It only shows that the premise describes animals poorly.

   5. Even the critics admit duties.

   Rawls excluded animals from the domain of justice, but affirmed duties of compassion and humanity toward them. Cohen defends their use in research and still recognizes human obligations of kindness. Conclusion C2, "so we may use them as we please", isn't supported even by the argument's own authors.

   6. The law has already begun to move.

   In January 2022, Ecuador's Constitutional Court ruled, in the case of the monkey Estrellita, that individual animals are subjects of rights protected by the rights of nature, and ordered the state to produce specific legislation. In the United Kingdom, the sentience law came to recognize cephalopods and decapods. None of this required animals to take on duties.

   7. Those who receive care needn't be able to give it.

   Requiring that someone be capable of acting morally in order to be considered is like requiring a patient to be a doctor in order to be treated. The beneficiaries of an activity needn't be able to perform it. See Questão de Ética, vol. I, ch. 10.

3. c

   Data and sources

   Source	What it says	Note
   Cohen, 1986, *NEJM*	Rights arise, and can be intelligibly defended, only among beings who actually do, or can, make moral claims against one another; animals "therefore have no rights, and they can have none"	The most cited formulation of the argument, accompanied by a defense of animal research
   Cohen, 1986	The capacity for moral judgment that distinguishes humans from animals "is not a test to be administered to human beings one by one"; "the issue is one of kind"	A reply to species overlap, examined in A11
   Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1971)	Excludes animals from the domain of justice, but affirms duties of compassion and humanity toward them	Even classical contractualism doesn't authorize cruelty
   Constitutional Court of Ecuador, Estrellita case, 27 Jan. 2022	Individual animals are subjects of rights protected by the rights of nature; the state was instructed to create specific legislation	The monkey died in state custody before the final decision, as the case itself records
   Wilkinson, 1984, *Nature*	Vampire bats share food reciprocally, favoring those who have fed them	Shows P2 describes animals poorly, without making reciprocity a moral criterion
   Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice (2006) and Justice for Animals (2023)	Criticizes contractualism for leaving out both animals and people with disabilities, and proposes a capabilities approach	Checked in the Harvard University Press catalog (2006)

4. d

   The strongest counter-reply: the moral community

   The strongest version doesn't say animal suffering is irrelevant. It says rights are a specific instrument, born of reciprocal relationships within a moral community, and that extending them to those who can't take part in that community would be a conceptual mistake. Incapable humans would be included by belonging to the kind, and because excluding them would threaten the stability of the community itself. Animals would remain protected by indirect duties of kindness.

5. e

   Why the counter-reply doesn't reach the conclusion

   It makes the protection of the vulnerable contingent.

   If a baby is protected because it suits social stability, then in a scenario where that convenience vanished, the protection would fall with it. Moral intuition says the opposite: the baby is protected for its own sake.

   Inclusion "by kind" is the species boundary under another name.

   Asked why the kind matters more than the individual, the answer comes back to "because they're human", which is A10.

   The contract's own device points the other way.

   Mark Rowlands showed that if the veil of ignorance also covered species, the contractors would choose rules protecting all sentient beings.

   Indirect duties would already be enough to condemn the practice.

   If we have duties not to cause unnecessary suffering, industrial livestock farming, with confinement, mutilation and slaughter at scale, doesn't pass even that minimal filter.

   Arguing about the word doesn't change the fact.

   We can debate whether the term "rights" fits. What doesn't change is that someone is being harmed, and that's the relevant moral reason.

Reasoning errors

Biases

Extrapolations

The principle being tested is: "whoever can't have duties or make claims has no rights".

Contradictions

What the argument gets right

Connections

References