Anthropocentrism, Natural Harmony, Sentience and Animal Rights: Are We Allowed to Use Animals for Our Own Purposes?

SIMPLE SUMMARY: The attention of scientists and citizens is increasingly focused on the issue of animals as sentient beings. This inherent quality of animals, although recognized by many countries at a regulatory level, if not well defined in scientific terms can lead to misunderstandings and the wrong consequences. It is important to note that animal sentience, understood as the ability to experience emotions, is limited in extent and restricted to certain animal species. While this understanding may lead some to believe in universal animal rights, this is not logical as the recognition of animal life free from fear, restriction, and suffering is actually a human right, not an animal one. ABSTRACT: Taking a cue from J.W. Yates’ recent work on animal sentience published in this journal, which explores the field and categorizes it as a harmony with nature and a recognition of its values, inferring that the inclusion of animals in the sphere of objective rights is the obligatory step for a real sustainability in all human activities, this opinion paper seeks to challenge some of the claims made in the article and present an alternative perspective on sentience and animal rights. Preliminarily, I propose a semantic word-washing and the use of more precise terms instead of not well-defined ones such as “harmony” in relation to nature and “sentience” in relation to animals, and I affirm that there can be only one point of view, however rich in dialectics, which is the human one for looking at the problems of animal ethics. Below, I present the thesis that concludes that it is not possible to attribute rights to animals, but it is our right and duty to protect their well-being, which requires states to pass laws for their defence. I conclude that while it is acceptable to raise animals for priority human rights (such as food and health), it is also an obligation to properly care for and protect them.