In 2022 the Canadian publisher, Tellwell Talent, released the 86–page book, Animal Rights, a book that provides a focused contribution to the serious literature relevant to comprehending and extending a scientific take on rights. Through the publisher, the author provided this background:
“A right is the protection of an interest, and a basic right is a foundational right shared by all members of the moral community protecting that universally shared interest that makes possible more particular rights. The basic right protects an interest in not being coercively exploited. What could possibly be a more relevant defining criterion for whose interest in experiencing pleasures and avoiding/escaping pain is protected under a basic right than to have that interest? Obviously, it makes no sense for insentient things like trees and rocks to have rights since those things have no interest in them. The alternative thus far has been to arbitrarily select humans to exhibit valid basic-rights claims and ignore all the other animals even though they have just as much interest in not being coercively exploited as humans. As we have seen and will see in even more depth in a coming chapter, species membership is arbitrary and speciesist. It is clearly an instance of unjust discrimination, just like sexism and racism. If the basic right to not be coercively exploited is to be applied justly, the criterion of sentience ensures all beings with that most basic interest have that basic interest protected. This is consistent with our view that certainly at least all humans have a valid basic-rights claim. The selection of this criterion involves no unjust discrimination because it covers all beings with the interest in question.”
This book is available worldwide in all major online book stores in softcover (ISBN 978-0-2288-7597-0) and hardcover (ISBN 978-0-2288-7596-3) and ebook (ISBN 978-0-2288-7595-6) formats.
Readers with any interest in the questions of rights in general, or animal rights in particular, should not miss this book.
The BOOKS page features a detailed description of the book along with the book’s covers and Table of Contents.