#26 - Philosopher: Wolves do not tolerate an attack by one

[Adam Tyson]

I don't think that assumption is required for this argument, dshen123. The conclusion is that you cannot deny that animals have rights on the grounds that they do not obey moral rules, and they attempt to prove that by showing that they behave in ways that suggests that they do obey moral rules. Thus, the author is saying "your conclusion can't rest on that evidence, because that evidence is not true." It really has nothing to do with rights, or how rights relate to moral rules. It's just that you can't say they don't follow moral rules, because these examples suggest that they do.

I suppose the argument does imply that some people are making the assumption that having rights implies the capacity to obey moral rules. But that assumption is not one that the author makes, or that we need to make, because the author is only saying that's a bad argument. The author might think that assumption is valid, but that it doesn't apply to all animals. Or, they may think it's not a valid assumption. Either way, that assumption is not essential to our author's argument.

This would be like saying "it's wrong to say that I cannot be good at basketball because I am not tall, because I am actually very tall." It doesn't matter that the original argument assumes that being tall is necessary for being good at basketball, and that such an assumption may be incorrect. What matters is that I'm tall, so you can't base your conclusion on the claim that I'm not.