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International Animal Rights ConferenceInternational Animal Rights Conference
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PRESENTATION
Friday, 09.09.2016   19:30-20:20   Room A
Self-determination and an autonomous life: the basic right for nonhuman animals
Martin Balluch
 

The primary approach to animal advocacy is animal suffering. That seems to be a measurable objective quantity and does not refer to spiritual or metaphysical assumptions. That sounds good, but it ends up being paternalistic. If to avoid suffering is the primary objective at all costs, we behave as if we know better what those "dumb" animals should do and act as if they are exchangeable containers of different amounts of suffering. In practice, we treat them as imbeciles, incapable of choosing their own way of life. Absurdly, many traditional uses of nonhumans are based on this approach, like hunting. But there are good scientific grounds to see nonhuman animals as beings with a free will, autonomy and reason. And for such beings, the primary objective should be liberation from human dominance. Animal rights is one of the means of helping to achieve that. These different approaches to animal advocacy turn out to lead to sometimes different campaign goals in practice. For example, animal liberation will question the practice of feeding wild animals, which is common among hunters, as it disrupts their social self-organization and makes them dependent on humans.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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