Professor Carl Cohen: Why Animals Do Not Have Rights скачать в хорошем качестве

Professor Carl Cohen: Why Animals Do Not Have Rights

This presentation by Professor Carl Cohen (University of Michigan, USA) was recorded at the University of Heidelberg on July 26, 2006. Philosopher Carl Cohen begins with an analysis of the concept of rights, and their relation to obligations. This relation, he argues, is not reciprocal, although it is often mistakenly believed that it is. Therefore, although it is certainly true that we have many weighty obligations to animals, it does not follow that these obligations arise from their rights. Rights, he shows, are a central element in the human moral condition, but have no place in the moral lives of animals. Professor Cohen goes on to explain the consequences of this view, and he vigorously defend the uses of animals - mice, and rats, and rabbits - in medical investigations. Such uses of animals, he argues, cannot infringe the rights of animals because animals are of such a nature that they cannot be the possessors of rights.