Consideration of rights - Definition

The term consideration of rights first appeared in Peter Singer's Animal Liberation. The idea is that individual rights are unimportant philosophically; what is instead much more relevant is the consideration of rights for each individual.

For example, when drafting up a list of rights that all human beings should have, it is both unneccessary and unimportant to say that all human beings have the right to become pregnant. Clearly, an entire segment of the population (males) does not even have this capability, and so defining this as a right of all humans is wholly unimportant.

In the same way, Singer states that it is ludicrous to say that all animals should hold the same rights; whereas a democratic society might claim that all humans should have the right to vote, that same society would never say that all other animals should have that same right. To do so would be unneccessary, unimportant, and incorrect. But this does not mean that non-human animals should be given less consideration of rights. Just because some individual animal should not have the right to vote does not mean that it should enjoy no rights at all. Instead, Singer argues, a consideration of the animal's rights should be equal to that of the consideration already given to human beings.

It should be noted that not all philosophers who speak on this subject agree with the concept of giving equal consideration. (See Bonnie Steinbock and William Baxter). Nevertheless, these philosophers do not contest the term consideration of rights; they merely argue that the consideration of rights given to individual beings is not only arbitrary, but should be arbitrary.