If humans have natural rights... why are we in this mess? The answer is we do not have any rights we cannot defend.
You're confusing the definition of natural rights with the definition of legal rights here. Legal rights are rights (or even non-rights) recognized and protected by the justice system. Natural rights simply define the equal respect we
deserve from each other and which others
owe us by virtue of our _________ (insert whatever qualities you want here, such as "free will," "human dignity," or "self-ownership").
I think all entities with the ability to feel pain or the ability to think have rights. The question would be how far the rights of the lesser intelligent species extend.
This is my view as well, which is kind of funny, considering neither of us have articulated our opinions on what kind of rights animals have.
It's easy for us to define the rights of humans with respect to other humans, because we're the highest-order, most intelligent species we know of. We know that humans think, act, and have hopes and dreams for the future.
In my opinion, our human rights of life, liberty, and property - with respect to each other - derive from our equal self-ownership. My life is my own, just as yours is your own, and neither of us are "better" than the other in the sense that we deserve to take full or partial ownership of any other person.
As humans, we generally desire respect from each other, and we're intelligent enough to know and understand this and come up with reasons why. The idea of natural rights and self-ownership becomes a lot hazier when we start talking about animals, though. In many ways, animals are sentient enough to possess some of the same traits that give our own lives and self-ownership meaning...but in many other ways, they are not. Chimpanzees are our closest relatives, and we don't even know if they have hopes and dreams for the future...but we do know they feel love, affection, fear, and pain, they have complex social interactions, and they're actually smart enough that they can construct and use
tools. Bonobos are farther from us genetically, but in many ways they might be smarter than us, since they've already figured out that settling tribal disputes with sex contests is quite preferable to settling them with brutal violence.
Dogs are still similar to us in many ways, but they're farther from us than apes and still less sentient, and in general, every step farther from humans is another step backward in sentience. Bacteria, for instance, are hardly worthy of consideration except when they threaten us (they're not animals anyway, but still).
So...do animals have natural rights with respect to each other?
With respect to other animals of the same species, I believe that animals probably have the same kind of rights that we do, stemming from self-ownership with respect to other members of their species. I mean, even if you're Chimpanzee Ed and your neighbor is Chimpanzee Bob, you don't want him taking it upon himself to kill you. After all, Bob can do with his life as he pleases, but your life is your own...and you'll fight to protect it, too. Interestingly, tribal animals do form societies where they they have some primitive and instinctual notion of rights, and as I mentioned, bonobos might just be more sophisticated than we are with respect to their governance.
The interesting question as it pertains to us is, do animals have natural rights with respect to us?
That is a hard question. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..." We may not be equal in individual talents or qualities, but we are equal in the sense that we all possess the same general range of sentience. We love, we laugh, we cry, we bleed, we create things, we think in abstractions, we have hopes and dreams, etc. Furthermore, in the event that some of us
are "better" enough than others to justify taking partial ownership over the life of another, there's no way to objectively verify and demonstrate who is superior overall and/or by how much anyway, especially to the standard of proof that stripping someone of their liberty should demand! Any roughly equal lifeforms would deserve roughly equal consideration to what we should give to each other, and they would be equally self-owning with respect to us...but the less sentient that animals get, the less that rule applies. There are no other animals - not even chimps - who reach the level of sentience that we are at...but some are close enough that I'd be very hesitant treating them with anything other than respect and care.
I think our emotions can help to guide us here. Our emotions help let us know which animals "feel" close enough that they deserve respect, and they help let us get an instinctual feel for what kind of respect each animal may deserve from us. Our emotions aren't perfect indicators of course, and some people's emotions give them some really off-the-wall readings that place the value of a mosquito on par with the value of a human.
To give a more intermediate example though: Cows are nowhere near equal to us in terms of sentience, so it stands to reason we're probably enough "above" them that we can justify taking some degree of ownership over them. Are we far enough above them that killing and eating them is okay? I'd say, "Probably," but I could be wrong. Are we far enough above them that it's okay to torture them for the sick, sadistic fun of it? I'd say, "Hell no." I believe there's some universal truth about what kind of respect each species of animal deserves from us (and from our future alien overlords, may they look upon us with mercy
), but there's really no way for any of us to know the right answer for sure. The best each of us can do is make our case and try to find some kind of reasonable consensus about moral behavior.
The bottom line of this post, though - the point I really want to make - is this:
Our sentience, free will, capabilities, hopes, dreams, etc. contribute to our equal human dignity. Our rights - with respect to what we deserve from each other - derive from that equal human dignity and equal self-ownership with respect to each other. Simply put, because we are each equally dignified, or at least roughly so, we deserve to be free from the tyranny of another or by many others. Animals are markedly less dignified and sentient than we are, so it stands to reason that they do not necessarily deserve equal self-ownership with respect to human beings...it follows that we can justify at least some level of ownership over them and/or use them for our purposes. However, various animals are still dignified enough and close enough to us in terms of behavior and characteristics that we cannot justify entire, 100%, absolute ownership over them (see "sadistic animal torture"
)...and that's why we have these conversations about what kind of treatment of animals is morally acceptable.
