om wrong. Non-human animals do not have the ability to recognize when or if their rights are being violated. Simply by reacting to pain an animal does not necessarily mean that the animal is aware that something morally wrong is being done to it. Since animals are unable to understand when their rights have been violated or if they have been violated at all they cannot bring about any action to change such activity. Non-human animals are unable to even conceive a sense of what is right and there is nothing that they themselves can do to prevent their rights from being violated. Only through humans speaking on behalf of an animal does an animal gain rights. But, should an animal deserve rights because a human being can speak on behalf of it? I hardly think so. Unlike animals, even an intellectually challenged human has the ability to enter or leave an agreement. Since animals are unable to assert their needs and defend their own rights they need a human to act as a tool to see to it that the rights of the animal is protected. Feinberg goes on to say that those that are deserving of rights are those that can or have the ability to have interests (184). Feinberg continues with two qualifications of a being deserving of rights: 1.) they must be able to be represented further, it is impossible to represent a being that has no interests, and 2.) "because a right holder must be capable of being a beneficiary in his own person, and a being without interests is a being that is incapable of being harmed"(184). The argument may be made that shouldn't animals be considered to have a right to moral consideration based on the fact that they have intrinsic value in themselves? No, animals do not have intrinsic value in themselves. They are only given importance through human's interaction with them and thus have instrumental value for humans. As Feinberg argues, "we do have duties to protect threatened species; not duties to the specie...
