joanna wrote:
>
> Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> >I agree with Miles that the concept of "animal rights" is silly. Rights
> >must be won! They are not a given for humans as far as that goes.
> >
> >
> Does this mean that anyone who can't fight for their rights, can't have
> rights?
>
> Children?
> The senile?
> The disabled?
>
Humans do not exist as isolated individuals, and the groups you name do not exist as isolated groups; they form part of various other groups who _do_ (often) fight for their rights, and it is through those struggles that the "rights" of the children become established. And on a list to which Marta contributes we can hardly regard the "disabled" as not fighting for their rights. Rights are simply _not_ metaphysical entities which exist independently of history. Dogs have rights because and _only_ because they are so intimately enmeshed in human social relations in many (not all) societies. Where they are not so enmeshed, they have no rights. (But don't abstract this argument from my earlier remarks on the political basis of opposition to cruelty to animals.)
Carrol
P.S. How broad is your definition of "senile"? My grandmother, though in many ways senile from around the age of 85, clearly enjoyed life, ate vigorously, argued with herself in the mirror, up to a year or two before her death at the age of 102. The last words my father ever spoke to me were "I wish I were dead" just before continued strokes reduced him to a total vegetable. Two quite different cases. The main right my completely senile father should have had was the right to die.