NATURE Has Enforceable Rights?
I recently spoke at Gonzaga Law School about the animal rights movement. I trust a good time was had by all. Now, I find out that it isn't just animals that are supposed to have rights, but nature itself (herself?).
This was sent to me by a friend about an upcoming event at Gonzaga:
Rights of Nature
The Center for Justice is hosting the "Rights of Nature" speaking tour on April 16th at the
Barbieri Court Room at Gonzaga Law School at 7:00 pm.
"Rights of Nature" recognizes the legally enforceable right
of natural communities and ecosystems.
Guest Thomas Linzey will be speaking at the event as part of a nation-wide tour with Cormac Cullinan, a South African lawyer and author of Wild Law.
Cullinan will speak about the need to build a new legal structure of law anchored on the recognition that natural systems possess inherent rights, and will speak about Thomas Berry's influence on his work. Linzey will speak about "on the ground" work being done in Pennsylvania and elsewhere in which municipal governments have begun adopting local laws that recognize the legally enforceable rights of natural communities and ecosystems.
Besides, if "nature" were recognized as having "inherent rights," it would be balderdash. What would really be going on would be the law granting activists of a certain political stripe the power to enforce their ideological views about the environment and ecosystems on the rest of society. Whatever these views and policies would be, mother nature would be quite oblivious and indifferent to all the goings on.
Labels: "Nature Rights."
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 10:03 PM
19 Comments
19 Comments:
"Besides, if "nature" were recognized as having "inherent rights," it would be balderdash. What would really be going on would be the law granting activists of a certain political stripe the power to enforce their ideological views about the environment and ecosystems on the rest of society. Whatever these views and policies would be, mother nature would be quite oblivious and indifferent to all the goings on."
Be careful what you say, this paragraph could come back to haunt you for it could just as easily be used against your stance on fetal rights/ Terri Schiavo. For I think either fetuses, embryos, and those in perpectual vegetative states are just as oblivious to their rights.
Royal, at the time unborn humans and those in vegetative states are oblivious to their rights, but, if left unmolested, fetus's grow up and become aware of their rights, and folks in vegetative states were at one point aware of their rights. The difference is nature has never been and will never be aware of her rights.
When you are unconscious are you aware of your rights? Is it okay for you to be killed while you are asleep and oblivious to your rights?
A fetus or embryo doesn't have rights and isn't recognized as such by law, but somebody who is allegedly PVS (a subjective term and is NOT equivalent to being "brain-dead," by the way) does have rights. Just because somebody isn't "aware," a notion that can't be proven when the person afflicted cannot communicate, doesn't mean they don't have rights.
Somebody on this blog has swallowed the George Felos/Peter Singer crackpot theories about personhood hook, line, and sinker.
"at the time unborn humans and those in vegetative states are oblivious to their rights, but, if left unmolested, fetus's grow up and become aware of their rights, and folks in vegetative states were at one point aware of their rights. The difference is nature has never been and will never be aware of her rights."
I totally agree, but I wasn't writing to your, as yet, unwritten comment, but responding to Welsey's post. And yes, Wesley's post could easily be re-written to justify no rights anywhere as it implies a recognition of rights a condition precedent to having them. That would get rid of embryo, PVS, and as you also mention, the rights of the asleep.
It wouldn't make sense, would it? So, maybe Wesley's post is balderdash, because the intellectual awareness of rights isn't necessary to have them.
Susan wrote,
"Somebody on this blog has swallowed the George Felos/Peter Singer crackpot theories about personhood hook, line, and sinker."
Susan, are you referring to me? Because I think I rarely, perhaps almost never, actually say what I actually believe and feel in my comments.
However, I am quite concerned with logic and reasoning (albeit, my grammer sometimes suffers from haste). I remember what at least Wesley writes in other situations, so if I see a post where the reasoning contradicts something else, I will point it out.
Royale: I have dealt with the matter you raise in other places and on this blog. Human rights are species wide. At least at some level, all humans have rights because they are human. Otherwise, we have to earn our status on a daily basis, which opens the door to oppression of the weak. These rights are based on objective criteria, not subjective.
Among the reasons for such rights are that human beings are, alone in the universe as far as we know, truly moral animals. We have transcended the tooth and claw of Darwinian struggle to some extent. We choose. We create, etc.
There would never be any rock, any elephant, any chimp, and fungus about which we could say the same.
It is not contradictory. Indeed, holding as Singer does that each organism should receive equal consideration and have their relative value judged according to each's capacities of the moment is a prescription for tyranny against the weakest and must vulnerable humans.
Wesley, true you have spent at length discussing human exceptionalism. You also spent at length discussing your perceived problems with personhood theories. Taken together, I'm surprised you actually make this statement, as it implies a sense of awareness as a condition to rights:
"Whatever these views and policies would be, mother nature would be quite oblivious and indifferent to all the goings on."
I think it's important to recognize the difference between a type of entity and the specific "token" of an entity. A human being is the type of entity that is by nature supposed to be conscious. If a given human being is not conscious, this is a result either of a privation--illness, disability, birth defect--or simply because the human being hasn't developed yet to the point of consciousness. But the entity type remains the same. That's why we "exceptionalists" posit rights of all human beings, even if not conscious.
"Nature" or "an ecosystem" is not the kind of thing that ever is conscious by its nature. That's just not the type of thing it is. Therefore it's ridiculous, in fact, meaningless, to give it rights.
""Nature" or "an ecosystem" is not the kind of thing that ever is conscious by its nature. That's just not the type of thing it is. Therefore it's ridiculous, in fact, meaningless, to give it rights"
I don't follow. I don't see how it is meaningless to give Nature rights simply because it lacks conciousness when we give rights to other things that lack consciousness.
I understand that embryos have the potential to acquire consciousness, but the fact is that they don't. Thus, giving them rights based on "potential consciousness" is just as meaningless as it is something that lacks the capacity to ever acquire consciousness.
From a critic's perspective, I think the better argument is just to stick with human exceptionalism and not discuss consciousness.
Royale: My point, taken as whole, is that only humans would even know the issue had arisen. Nature would go on being nature, fauna would be fauna. The entire enterprise would be a human political action.
I'm fine with sticking to human exceptionalism as a surd. But I do in fact think it has something to do with the view that *what kind of being* you are and what goods are "proper" or "natural" to that kind of being is relevant to the special worth of humans. In other words, even if you don't have consciousness, consciousness is proper or natural to the kind of being you are. That's not "potential consciousness," that's talk about entity types.
I'm beginning to think some of my friends are right when they say that nominalism is a major problem in today's pop philosophy.
I'm still struggling to see the relevance unless you're suggesting that rights should be tied to one's awareness of the rights.
I would offer a correction, only conscious humans would be aware of such rights that humans would give to Nature.
This is all so similar to corporations and estates. They have rights and status, but certainly are not aware of them. Nature, I would think, would provide a far more compelling case for rights. Hell, the lowliest bacteria mold would.
Royale: Totally inapt comparison. Corporations and estates are human associations or institutions that have been made "artificial" persons under the law primarily for business, but also, political purposes. The management/administration of such juridical entities, of course, are human beings who puruse the preceived interests of the association. Not the same at all as nature, fauna, or flora.
The point is that only human beings (and by extension, sometimes their institutions) have rights and responsibilities. This is because we are exceptional.
By the way, I don't believe corporations should be considered persons. Nor do I believe corporations should have rights akin to citizens. They were created to permit limitation of liability, which is fine. But just as corporations can't vote, nor should they enjoy as entities have the rights of citizens other than those needed to conduct business. The individuals who own them and run them, of course, should have those rights.
From a reader: "Our world is going through the 'change of life.'"
Was this just a trick to get Royale arguing that non-sentient things can have rights, even if they are not aware of them?
"arguing that non-sentient things can have rights, even if they are not aware of them?"
Apparently they do - corporations, fetuses, Terri Schiavo, or even sleeping people.
"The point is that only human beings (and by extension, sometimes their institutions) have rights and responsibilities. This is because we are exceptional."
If that was your actual point, then look back to my original comment. I just warned about against using language such as that because it furthers the agenda of personhood theorists.
Does nature have certian "rights?"
Y'know, oddly enough, I'm not horribly opposed to this yet because I don't know enough about the theory, but depending on how it's presented, it might have something in common with stewardship.
Basically, stewardship goes, we don't own the Earth - God does (however one perceives God). That means that the planet and animals on it are allowed to be used but not abused, because eventually the rightful owner is going to collect His property.
Now, I don't believe that animals, rocks, trees, etc. are on par with Humans - I believe that anything with human DNA that eats, eliminates, and reproduces is special and was meant to run this show. But we still have rules regarding each other's property - I'm not allowed to hack Wesleys' blog and post lewd pictures over it because it's not mine. Royale's not allowed to run over somebody else's cat for the fun of it because she belongs to another person and he'd be required to pay some kind of restitution.
I do think there are some limits that people go over that are unnecessary and I think they should be held accountable for doing so, but I don't think nature itself has any individual rights. Depending on how it's presented, I could go either way on the issue.
Here's the difference, Tabs: Stewardship and human exceptionalism posit that humans have a distinctly human duty toward animals, the environment, etc. Advocacy from animal rights or nature rights advocate that these entities or ecological systems have enforceable rights that are at least equal to those asserted by humans for humans. This would mean that the right of a slug to life could become equal (in theory) to that of a human.
But here's an interesting irony. It is all phony. Those doing the enforcing will be humans with a certain political ax to grind. In other words, it would still be an activity that illustrates human exceptionalism, but with certain types in control of the exceptional activities having a distinctly anti-human mindset.
Wesley:
Point taken. If we have a *duty* toward animals and the earth, that means that we must be exceptional to take on the task, since no other animals have the same sense of duty that we do.
So it's not so much that nature has "rights" as it is we have a responsibilty.
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