A Challenge to Animal Rights Activists (StumpJumper)

[This post is a continuation of the Animal Rights? post that Zombyboy started yesterday. Please read that post and all of the comments before reading this one.]

The main issue that we need to address when discussing "animal rights" is one of subjectivity vs. objectivity. Too much of this discussion is and has been based on subjective interpretations of various terms and concepts. What we need to do is focus on an objective standard. Both Zombyboy (with agreement from Lummox JR) and JJ have offered what they believe to be standards for the granting of "rights." Look at these two quotes:

JJ: "Dogs, like many animals including humans, belong to the group of beings who can suffer from imprisonment, injury, and killing."

JJ: "The position seems to be that only groups capable of fighting for rights deserve them. By this reasoning, babies and certain severely disabled people deserve no rights. But the fact is that, like many animals, these individuals are deserving of rights because they have the capacity to suffer."

Zombyboy: "Humans have rights, animals do not."

Zombyboy: "Humans have responsibilities, animals do not."

Lummox JR: "But these rights are afforded children because they're a part of the human group that fought for them."

Zombyboy and Lummox JR have offered a totally objective definition of a group for which rights and responsibilities exist: the human species. They have offered numerous reasons for this classification, the foremost of which is that humans can reason and have used this reason to define the concept of a "right," a concept which does not exist within the animal kingdom. Since there is never any doubt regarding the membership of a being in this group there is never a question as to whether or not this group has rights.

JJ, so far, has offered nothing but subjective reasons for granting rights. "Suffer" is an abstract concept. What, exactly, is suffering? Does a plant suffer when it is pulled from the ground to be added to my salad? That it dies is without question and, therefore, the gardener has killed it. Did it suffer from being killed? If we define the simple fact of losing life to be suffering then we will be awfully short on food as even vegans will be guilty of causing living beings to "suffer from... killing." Moreover, this subjective definition has the potential to degrade the value human life and, by consequence, cause untold injustices and, to quote JJ, "suffering." If I can make a convincing argument that a particular class of human "suffers" more from being alive than by being dead, what is to prevent me from killing that person? If I wander by a homeless person sleeping in the street in the dead of the Cleveland winter should I offer them assistance or should I kill them? The answer is obvious. Moreover, it is based on the objective definition of the homeless person being a member of a group with rights that Zombyboy and Lummox JR set forth.

Here, then, is my challenge to you, JJ (and also to all other "animal rights" believers): Please offer me an objective definition of the group of beings that deserve "rights" and make it one that will not be broken the first time that it is "inconvenient" to not do so (for example, when you find that your house is overrun by cockroaches or termites).

And for the record, JJ, I used the term "convenient" deliberately, because of this quote form you: "But for my part, rights are universal (though ethical action isn't necessarily equally convenient across cultures and classes)." Sorry, but I do not believe that ethics are a matter of convenience. Hopefully, I don't have to explain why.