>>> Ken Hanly <khanly at mb.sympatico.ca> 03/01/00 08:46PM >>>
After all, corporations are not usually considered living beings but they have legal rights. Ecologists etc. could hire lawyers to represent environmental interests and rights just as lawyers now can argue for corporate rights and interests.
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CB: This discussion of animals' legal or moral status raises interesting questions.
This comment is just reacting to part of the post here. Corporations, are collections of people and their rights with respect to certain things or ownership. So, the "rights of corporations" are actually the rights of the owners of the corporations, who are people. Animals are living things, so to the extent that corporations are not living things, animals do not have that in common with them. Means of production, which might be owned by a corporations, are not living things, and do not have rights.
So, I guess the bottom line of what I am saying is that "corporate rights" reduce to peoples' rights, and aren't the basis for attributing rights to animals anymore than other peoples' rights are.
I am not for wanton and non-utilitarian killing or harming of animals. However, my ecologicalism is founded in humanism. The guide to our activities with respect to all other species is first the interests of our own species.
CB