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Animal rights is the concept that all or some animals are entitled to possess their own lives, and that animals are deserving of moral rights to protect their autonomy and well being. The animal rights view rejects the concept that animals are merely capital goods or property intended for the benefit of humans. (46) The concept is often confused with animal welfare, which is the philosophy that takes cruelty towards animals and animal suffering into account, but that does not necessarily assign specific moral rights to them.

The animal rights philosophy does not necessarily maintain that human and non-human animals are equal. For example, animal rights advocates do not call for voting rights for chickens. (47) Some also would make a distinction between sentient or self-aware animals and lower life forms, with the belief that only animals with self-awareness should be afforded the right to possess their own lives and bodies, without regard to how they are valued by humans. Others would extend this right to all animals, even those without developed nervous systems or consciousness. (48) They maintain that any human or human institutions that commoditizes animals for food, entertainment, clothing, scientific testing, or for any other purpose, infringes upon their fundamental rights to possess themselves and to pursue their own ends, which, therefore, is unethical.

Of course, this argument assumes that a particular species or individual animal is capable of “having ends” which it is capable of “pursuing” in any meaningful manner. Few people would deny that other great apes are highly cognitive animals who can reflect on their own condition and goals and can become frustrated when their freedoms are severely curtailed. In contrast, many other animals, like jelly fish, have only extremely simple nervous systems, and are little more than simple automata, capable only of simple reflexes but incapable of formulating any “ends to their actions” or “plans to pursue” them, and equally unable to notice whether they are in captivity or free. (49) By the criteria that Biologists use, jelly fish are undeniably animals, while from an “animal rights” perspective, it is questionable whether they should not rather be considered “vegetables”. Clearly, merely being alive is not enough to be accorded “rights”, as no one has yet seriously proposed that plants should be accorded rights (even though some plants are clearly worthy of protection, but that is another matter). (50) There is as yet no consensus with regards to which qualities make a living organism an “animal in the animal rights sense”.

参考译文：

46. 动物权利的概念经常与动物福利相混淆，关于动物福利的观点会考虑残害动物和动物痛苦等问题，但它不一定赋予动物具体的道德权利。

47. 有些人还在有知觉力或者有自我意识的动物与更为低级的生命形式之间划清界线，相信只有具有自我意识的动物才能享有拥有自己生命和身体的权利，而不用考虑人类如何对待它们。

48. 他们坚持认为，任何把动物商品化的个人或者机构，如把动物用于食物、娱乐、服饰、科学试验或者其他任何目的，都是对拥有自己、追求自己的目标等动物基本权利的侵犯，因此是不道德的。

49. 按照生物学家使用的标准，海蜇毫无疑问属于动物之列，而从“动物权利”角度来看，是否不该把它们看作“蔬菜”是值得怀疑的。

50. 关于哪些品质使一种活的生命成为“动物权利意义上的动物”，到现在（至今）还没有达成一致意见。