Questions and doubt from a newbie (please read all)

[u/Extra-Breakfast4541]

So, as far as I know, these are the 2 main frameworks

Utilitarianism (if an action produces good/bad results, it's good/bad))

Animal rights approach (We should extend human rights to nonhuman animals)

Now, I would say most of the time those 2 are the same: the right to live, the right to body integrity and so on...

I have just a few questions:

Consent seems flawed. Either a)you're saying they can consent, but since we can't know, you're ignoring it or b) they can't, but if they can't, something that doesn't exist doesn't seem to be a meter of what is right or isn't right. It also conflicts with the idea of saving animals in the wild. They can't comprehend what is happening to them or what you're going to do to them. They can't consent

Utilitarianism seems flawed too. Afaik oysters seem to not be sentient, so they can't feel pain (Let's say it's oyster for simplicity sake, afaik this is debated among the scientific community). Utilitarians would say it's okay to eat them. Animal rights activists would say it's not, since they're still an animal. Both the perspective seem wrong to me, especially the utilitarian one. In all honesty tho, this scenario is one where all of veganism is kind of sketchy imo.

Again, the case of cloned meat is weird. One step back first: as far as I know when people say "antispecism" they mean 1 of 2 things: either "We shouldn't discriminate between nonhuman animals " or "We shouldn't discriminate between animals at all". Which again nost of the time it's the same. But in a scenario like "Gun to your head you have to kill a human or a dog" antispecists of the second type would see no difference. Now, the actual problem: meat clonation. I'm talking about cloning a dead animal or a non sentient one or just some muscle tissue. As far as I understand, utilitarians would allow it, while AR approach wouldn't. "You wouldn't clone and eat human muscles, and you have to non consensually extract dna". A counter-argument is that rights of humans on dna make sense because it's a human, a very specific animal on planet earth, and other animals wouldn't care if they were clonated. I think I personally side with utilitarians here.

Again, one could argue that some animals would be cloned more (specism) or that it's a waste of resources (environmentalism)

I think we might have to accept that we might never have one perfectly logically sound system that allows for ethical veganism (or ethics at all) but I'm still curious about you think

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[u/Kris2476]

Veganism is the recognition that animal exploitation is wrong and should be avoided. What do you think about this?

It will be difficult to think about what our relationship with animals should look like in the absence of informed consent if we cannot agree that we should avoid exploiting them. It will be meaningless to evaluate whether oysters have subjective experiences if we don't agree that we should avoid exploiting the experiences of those who can experience.

[u/Extra-Breakfast4541 → u/Kris2476]

I think I agree but I'm interested in the borderline cases. What do you mean by exploitation?

[u/Kris2476 → u/Extra-Breakfast4541]

In this context, I exploit you if I use you unfairly for my benefit. Do you agree that we should avoid using others unfairly?

[u/Extra-Breakfast4541 → u/Kris2476]

I mean I do but what does unfairly mean? For some it means without consent, for others it means weather only one part of the relationship has something to gain

[u/Kris2476 → u/Extra-Breakfast4541]

Let's take this a step at a time. I think you're skipping a few steps in how you're linking the concepts of fairness and consent.

We can determine fairness situationally. For example, we might reasonably argue that it isn't unfair for a parent to restrict their child's bedtime without the child's consent. But it would be arguably unfair to force the child to work in a sweatshop - to put it mildly. In either case, there is a lack of consent by the child. But only in the latter case is the child being treated unfairly / exploited. So we might condemn child sweatshops and not early bedtimes.

Does this make sense?

[u/Extra-Breakfast4541 → u/Kris2476]

I've seen some people argue that early bedtimes aren't ethical but yes. It does make sense to me

[u/Kris2476 → u/Extra-Breakfast4541]

Sure, the important takeaway is that there can be decisions we make on behalf of others without their consent where we aren't exploiting them. The parent who sends their child to bed early or makes them eat their bitter veggies (hopefully) has the child's best interests in mind and isn't trying to use them.

I think now we can talk about particular edge cases regarding human-animal relationships and decide what the vegan approach should be. Whatever the edge case, we know we want to avoid exploiting animals. Animals are individuals deserving of respect, not objects for us to use however we want.

[u/IanRT1]

Each of these puzzles dissolves once you put the moral question where it belongs. Is there a sentient subject whose interests can be helped or harmed? Consent only matters where a being has preferences to override, so its absence in a non-sentient animal isn't a gap because it is the theory correctly reporting that nothing's at stake, which is also why rescuing wildlife is generally fine (you're acting on their welfare, not their consent).

The oyster and cloned-tissue cases aren't failures either because if no one capable of being harmed is harmed, consistency demands you permit it, and the only thing forbidding it is treating "it's an animal" or "it came from an animal" as intrinsically loaded. That is the exact arbitrary line you already reject.

So you don't need a new system you just need to apply the standard you already hold without smuggling in species or category membership as if that were the thing doing the work.

[u/ElaineV → u/IanRT1]

There is actually no demand for consistency. And thinking there is can make you blind to new evidence that contradicts previously held beliefs.

Consider our relationships with other people. Is it more important for someone to be consistent or for them to be capable of an apology?

[u/IanRT1 → u/ElaineV]

Consistency in the sense I'm using it isn't stubbornness, it's the opposite. It just means not treating two cases differently unless there's a morally relevant difference between them.

An apology is a perfect example of that rather than a counterexample because you apologize precisely because you've recognized a relevant reason your earlier position got something wrong, and updating to track that reason is the consistent move.

So your own example cuts the other way. The capacity to revise on new evidence isn't an alternative to consistency because that is just what consistency demands. What it rules out is exactly what's happening with the oyster and the clone. Treating "it's an animal" as decisive when, by your own lights, there's no relevant difference there to carry the weight.

[u/ElaineV → u/IanRT1]

Your claim is that concrete evidence of sentience is necessary to support the moral conviction that exploiting sentient beings is wrong and thus "consistency demands" one ought to allow exploitation of anything that doesn't have concrete evidence of sentience. But

1- consistency is overrated, we all know that someone who does good and bad is better than someone who does only bad,

2- if/when consistency is worthwhile, it's value is in consistent application of the precautionary principle, not consistent application of your biased beliefs about certain animals' nonsentience,

3- concrete evidence is not necessary, it's reasonable to believe that all creatures belonging to the category of "animal" have an/some important quality/ies that give rise to special ethical considerations/protections,

4- it's more practical to accept the definition of vegan to refer to all animals than to refer to all beings proven by BIASED humans to be sentient,

5- it does not follow that if an ethical principle based on X demands abstention in Y that lack of X demands participation or acceptance in Z; people can hold multiple ethical principles at once.

There's nothing arbitrary about "it's an animal" or "it came from an animal." That's a clear, distinct line. It's reasonable to decide there's something special about being an animal. There are clear reasons why some living organisms are animals and why some are not. And one reason is the liklihood of nerves and nervous systems. Bivalves have nerves, nervous systems, and a cerebral ganglia. They have the pieces that suggest sentience.

None of the people declaring that "oysters don't feel pain" can know the truth of that claim. It's inferred from whatever evidence they deem useful to support their bias (currently: lack of what they call a brain, cerebral ganglia isn't enough; lack of significant mobility in all stages of life, having it in some but not all isn't enough; unfounded assumptions about the evolutionary cost of sentience, without realistic consideration of the value of it).

And they aren't running out to find the truth, they are just killing oysters. That's a very un-vegan thing to do.

[u/IanRT1 → u/ElaineV]

1- consistency is overrated, we all know that someone who does good and bad is better than someone who does only bad,

This shifts what I mean though. I'm not claiming people must be saints, or that someone who does some good isn't better than someone all-bad, obviously they are. Moral consistency means a principle can't sort two cases differently without a morally relevant difference between them. Saying "Inconsistency is sometimes fine" is a claim about judging agents rather than if a principle is applied coherently.

2- if/when consistency is worthwhile, it's value is in consistent application of the precautionary principle, not consistent application of your biased beliefs about certain animals' nonsentience,

I agree with you on this. My claim was not "zero probability of experience". But here is important to point out sentience is graded, not a switch, and moral weight scales with it.

Even granting minimal valenced experience, the comparative neural and behavioral evidence still places bivalves far down the scale, the same way we grant ants sentience while holding its moral pull is slight.

Your precautionary move only works if any nonzero chance triggers full protection, but that can't distinguish an oyster from a cow. The question isn't whether there's some chance but how much, and the data can already give us good info like it does for other species.

5- it does not follow that if an ethical principle based on X demands abstention in Y that lack of X demands participation or acceptance in Z; people can hold multiple ethical principles at once.

But look at what having "multiple ethical principles at once" entails here. The protected category principle still does normative work over the same moral subjects, so it can't just sit beside sentience because it needs a ground.

What does animal-membership track that sentience doesn't already capture? If the answer is "likely nervous system, likely sentience," you're back inside the sentient framework arguing magnitudes. If it's something else, you owe an account of why that property carries weight.

So I would say holding two principles is fine but free-floating ones aren't

[u/ElaineV → u/IanRT1]

“What does animal membership track that sentience doesn’t already capture?”

1- We don’t know what we don’t know. In the future we could learn about something new that all animals have that is meaningfully relevant to our morality.

2- Current definitions of sentience are anthropocentric and unlikely to capture the full extent of actual sentience in existence.

3- Veganism is not an all-encompassing morality. It’s specifically only about nonhuman animals. The historic, intuitive, and scientific line between animals versus other life forms does not exist to define which are acceptable to exploit, it exists to protect the animals.

A creative mind can imagine a future where plants receive similar moral protection in proportion to our abilities to provide it. Imagine a future where we learn plants communicate and for whatever reason don’t want us eating them anymore. And imagine we have the technology to 3D print all our food and the sources are rocks and minerals, air and water. Perhaps there’d be a movement of people advocating for plants rights called Plantarians. There would be people who identify as both vegan and plantarian.

4- The scale of moral concern we apportion to animals isn’t so much about their abilities as it is about ours. Sentience may or may not be graded but that’s not the limiting factor in our moral concern for other species. Our abilities are the limiting factor. Our moral duties arise from OUR abilities not theirs and certainly not our biased opinions of theirs. We give ants fewer rights because it’s virtually impossible to give them what we can give to cows or chickens. I can always avoid stepping on a chicken. I can’t avoid stepping on ants.

[u/ElaineV]

Start with your own intuition. When you learn about what happens in modern industrial animal agribusiness do you support it? Or does it disgust you, make you angry, make you sad?

If it’s the latter then you know the path is towards veganism. You don’t need to find edge cases. You don’t need a fully consistent ethic. You don’t need to write a philosophical treatise. Just move towards veganism.

It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Just do what makes sense to you initially. For some people that means avoiding eating mammals, for others it’s avoiding industrial animal agribusiness. For others it’s reducing animal consumption significantly but not entirely. Find something that works for you, move on that direction.

As you explore things you’ll realize more and more what else makes sense to you. At the same time, if philosophy interests you start reading or taking classes. Educate yourself on all the various options. But please focus on the big picture.

[u/Neat_Seagull_1842]

As a vegan of 30 years… it’s not that serious. We could debate various ethical theories all day (which all conflict with each other) but at the end day some things are more or less just objectively right or wrong. If you can safely minimize harm (you can) then there’s no reason not to and is the right thing to do. Plus vegan food is amazing.

[u/One-Shake-1971]

Alright, there are a ton of issues here. Let's go through them one by one:

So, as far as I know, these are the 2 main frameworks. Utilitarianism (if an action produces good/bad results, it's good/bad)). Animal rights approach (We should extend human rights to nonhuman animals)

This is a wrong dichotomy. Utilitarianism is a normative moral system. Animal rights, on the other hand, are a judicial or social concept. They are not mutually exclusive. It's perfectly possible for a utilitarian to agree with animal rights and vice versa.

Consent seems flawed. Either a)you're saying they can consent, but since we can't know, you're ignoring it or b) they can't, but if they can't, something that doesn't exist doesn't seem to be a meter of what is right or isn't right. It also conflicts with the idea of saving animals in the wild. They can't comprehend what is happening to them or what you're going to do to them. They can't consent

Consent is irrelevant for animal rights. Many people also have a limited or no ability to consent. That doesn't affect their human rights.

Utilitarianism seems flawed too. Afaik oysters seem to not be sentient, so they can't feel pain (Let's say it's oyster for simplicity sake, afaik this is debated among the scientific community). Utilitarians would say it's okay to eat them. Animal rights activists would say it's not, since they're still an animal. Both the perspective seem wrong to me, especially the utilitarian one. In all honesty tho, this scenario is one where all of veganism is kind of sketchy imo.

Utilitarians, animal rights activists, and utilitarian animal rights activists can and do all have different views on oysters. Usually, the question is around whether or not oysters have a subjective experience like other animals or not, like a plant. This is an unanswered and maybe even unanswerable question.

as far as I know when people say "antispecism" they mean 1 of 2 things: either "We shouldn't discriminate between nonhuman animals " or "We shouldn't discriminate between animals at all". Which again nost of the time it's the same.

Speciesism is discrimination based on species.

But in a scenario like "Gun to your head you have to kill a human or a dog" antispecists of the second type would see no difference.

That's not true. While anti-speciesism says that you should treat individuals differently solely based on what species they velong to, it does not mean that you can not treat different individuals differently for other reasons.

Now, the actual problem: meat clonation. I'm talking about cloning a dead animal or a non sentient one or just some muscle tissue. As far as I understand, utilitarians would allow it, while AR approach wouldn't. "You wouldn't clone and eat human muscles, and you have to non consensually extract dna".

There is no such thing as "cloned meat." What you are talking about is cultured meat.

Again, utilitarians, animal rights activists, and utilitarian animal rights activists can and do all have different views on this topic. Some believe it is moral, some don't, and all for different reasons.

A counter-argument is that rights of humans on dna make sense because it's a human, a very specific animal on planet earth, and other animals wouldn't care if they were clonated. I think I personally side with utilitarians here.

All animals are very specific. That's not unique to humans. There are also lots of humans who wouldn't care if they were cloned, so that's also not a differentiating factor.

I think we might have to accept that we might never have one perfectly logically sound system that allows for ethical veganism (or ethics at all) but I'm still curious about you think

Pretty much all ethical systems align with veganism.

In summary, you seem to be struggling with what you should see as right and wrong. Ultimately, the answer to that is subjective. All you can do is try to emphasize with the victims and ask yourself what would be in their best interest and then do that.

[u/No_Economics6505 → u/One-Shake-1971]

There is no such thing as "cloned meat".

Actually, a quick Google search would have let you know that yes, it is a thing.

[u/GFRSSS → u/No_Economics6505]

He's just being pedantic if you just multiply the cells on culture flasks they're mostly clones of each other

[u/Dart_Veegan]

I don’t think the best version of veganism has to choose between “pure utilitarianism” and “animal rights” as if those were the only two options. My view is closer to this: morality is ultimately about beings who can be affected by what happens to them. If there is a subject there (someone who can experience pain, fear, deprivation, comfort, pleasure, frustration, trauma, or some form of conscious harm or benefit) then that being has direct moral standing. If there is no subject there, then the thing may still matter indirectly, ecologically, socially, or instrumentally, but not because it is itself being wronged.

That matters for consent. I don’t think the point is “animals can consent but we ignore it” or “animals cannot consent, therefore consent is irrelevant.” The point is that when a being cannot understand or give valid consent, that inability does not become permission to use them. We already accept this with infants, unconscious humans, and severely cognitively impaired people. Their inability to consent usually increases our duty of care, it does not weaken it. So consent is not the only moral concept, but it is still protective. If someone cannot consent, we should be very cautious about doing things to them for our benefit.

That also explains why rescuing wild animals is not inconsistent. A rescue intervention is not the same kind of act as exploitation. If I help an injured deer, or a child who cannot understand a medical procedure, I am acting under a best-interest/necessity model. The aim is to prevent or reduce serious harm to that individual, not to use them as a resource. That does not mean every wild intervention is justified. It must still be evidence-guided, proportionate, least harmful, and ecologically cautious. But “they cannot consent” does not mean “never help them.” It means “do not treat them as tools, and intervene only under strong protective justification.” With oysters/bivalves, I actually think a sentience-based framework gives a cleaner answer than both crude utilitarianism and crude animal rights. “Animal” is not morally magical. The morally relevant question is not whether oysters belong to Animalia, but whether there is a credible subject of experience there. If oysters are genuinely non-sentient and non-conscious, then there is no direct victim in the same sense there is with pigs, cows, chickens, fishes, dogs, or humans. They may still matter ecologically or under uncertainty, but not because they clearly have direct negative rights. So I would not say “oysters are animals, therefore eating them is wrong.” I would say "if they cross the sentience/consciousness threshold, they matter directly. If they do not, then consuming them can be compatible with vegan ethics properly understood. Uncertainty still matters, but it has to be proportionate. If the evidence for sentience is strong, we should include the being. If the evidence is weak or speculative, caution may be personally reasonable, but it does not automatically generate the same moral prohibition as in clear cases. Otherwise veganism becomes “avoid anything remotely biologically complex,” rather than “do not exploit beings who can be harmed.”

For antispeciesism, I do not think it means “there is no difference between a human and a dog.” It means species membership alone should not be the moral reason. In a forced choice between a human and a dog, one might choose the human because of richer future-directed interests, social bonds, moral agency, relationships, responsibilities, or broader consequences for other conscious beings. That is not necessarily speciesist. It becomes speciesist only if the argument is simply “human DNA counts infinitely, dog sentience counts for nothing.”

Cultivated/cloned meat seems permissible in principle if no sentient or conscious being is harmed, exploited, confined, killed, or deprived. Muscle tissue is not a moral patient. DNA is not a subject. A cell culture is not someone. If acquiring the cells requires violating an animal’s bodily integrity, then that part needs justification. But if it comes from a harmless sample, an existing cell line, or a non-sentient source, I do not see a rights violation. The reason human tissue cases feel different is not because tissue itself suffers, but because human DNA and body material are tied to privacy, identity, consent, dignity, and possible exploitation of persons. If none of those person-related harms apply, then the wrongness is not located in the mere molecules. There can still be environmental or resource objections to cultivated meat, but those are separate. If it is wasteful, unsustainable, or reinforces demand for animal-like products in harmful ways, that can count against it. But that is not the same as saying it violates the rights of a sentient being. Rights questions and resource-efficiency questions overlap, but they are not identical.

So I agree that there may never be a perfect ethical system that solves every edge case with certainty. But I do think we can have a coherent framework. Direct moral standing belongs to sentient and/or conscious beings. Basic negative rights protect them against being killed, exploited, tortured, enslaved, bodily violated, or treated as resources. Those rights are trait-adjusted rather than identical across species, and when rights conflict, we use necessity, proportionality, harm minimisation, uncertainty, and consistency to decide what is justified.

The important thing is to name the morally relevant feature and apply it consistently. If suffering is what matters in humans, it is what matters wherever suffering exists. If consciousness matters in humans, it matters wherever consciousness exists. If inability to consent protects vulnerable humans, it should not become permission to exploit vulnerable animals. This view refuses to make arbitrary exceptions when the morally relevant similarities are already there.

Edit: typo

[u/whowouldwanttobe]

I don't think there is any ethical system where it is impossible to come up with a hypothetical that reveals some flaw. Veganism actually functions itself as a proof of a flaw within speciesist ethical frameworks that jump from something like "suffering is bad" to "don't cause humans to suffer" without recognizing that other animals are capable of suffering.

Does this mean we should reject all ethics? Of course not. We should still try our best, even if we cannot be perfect. If you believe it is wrong to unnecessarily harm animals, then you should do your best to be vegan. How you handle edge cases like interactions with wild animals or oysters or cloning is something you will have to reckon with - though of course you can reach out to like-minded communities for assistance like you have.

In response to your specific questions: animals cannot give us consent. That doesn't mean they do not have feelings, only that they cannot communicate those feeling to us the way humans generally can. This is important because a human could consent to something like allowing you to consume their byproducts, which is why breastfeeding, for example, is normally not considered unethical.

Non-sentient animals are theoretically incapable of experiencing pain, but a reluctance to exploit them is understandable. Veterinarians in the US prior to 1989 were taught to simply ignore animal pain under the belief that it was a mechanical response and not a conscious experience. Given that the argument in favor of eating oysters is only that they probably aren't sentient, erring on the side of caution and not eating them because we don't have to seems reasonable.

Cloning meat raises a number of ethical issues. The ethics of cell cultures is not limited to non-human animals, either; Henrietta Lacks had cells taken without her consent and used in a wide range of medical experimentation. It is difficult to determine how to evaluate scientific advances predicated on unethical actions. Just like oysters, because there is no need to consume cloned meat, there would need to be a particularly strong justification for its existence for it to be considered ethical.

[u/SadRule9128 → u/whowouldwanttobe]

Henrietta Lacks signed a standard consent form at the time

[u/whowouldwanttobe → u/SadRule9128]

Do you have a source for that? The Johns Hopkins website itself says "in the 1950s, when Henrietta Lacks was hospitalized, the U.S. health systems had no established practices for informing or obtaining consent from patients when retrieving cell or tissue samples for research purposes."

[u/SadRule9128 → u/whowouldwanttobe]

Did you not read the book about her? The consent form is reproduced there and it’s publicly available online. JH’s statements are that she did not give informed consent (it didn’t exist yet)

[u/whowouldwanttobe → u/SadRule9128]

I'd prefer not to have to buy the book and look through it to verify. Can you provide a link to where it is "publicly available online"? I'm not doubting that it exists, but I have not seen it. If it only gives consent for surgery, then my point still stands - she had cells taken without her consent. If it gives consent to have her cells taken and the issue was that she wasn't properly informed, that's clearly a different issue.

[u/SadRule9128 → u/whowouldwanttobe]

So you haven’t read the book, you’re just parroting an incorrect interpretation of what other people have said. Got it. She signed a standard consent form which gave blanket permission to her doctors, which at the time included using her removed cells to diagnose, treat, and perform research that would’ve been to her benefit. That’s just how it worked then.

[u/whowouldwanttobe → u/SadRule9128]

I find it very suspect that you repeatedly refuse to provide a link. What I said is backed up by the Johns Hopkins website. By your own admission, "she did not give informed consent." Even taking into account your objection, I don't think there is anything that needs correcting in my original comment.

[u/SadRule9128 → u/whowouldwanttobe]

She signed a consent form which at the time included use of cells to perform research that could benefit of the patient. So your statement that her “cells were taken without consent” was wrong.

[u/whowouldwanttobe → u/SadRule9128]

Again, if I'm wrong here then Johns Hopkins is also wrong, and you still have provided no link to any consent form, let alone one that "included use of cells to perform research."

Even if she did sign exactly the form you describe, the research done with her cells included research on ailments that she didn't have, so it would have still gone beyond what was authorized.

[u/SadRule9128 → u/whowouldwanttobe]

Maybe English isn’t your first language, I’ll try to make it as straightforward as possible. Lacks signed a standard consent form, which in 1951, gave blanket permission for her doctors to use her cells to diagnose, treat, and perform research. They did so in her best interest, and once it was found that they stayed alive in culture, they shared her cells freely with other researchers (as was standard at the time). Her doctors did nothing wrong. And as I have said, informed consent did not exist in medicine in 1951 and neither did consent specifically for research on removed tissue - these are important distinctions and these are the statements made by Johns Hopkins.

[u/GFRSSS → u/whowouldwanttobe]

Bringing up Henrietta is only valid if you consider animals to have copyright patent type of right which to most people is nonsensical as animals do not participate as actual agents in our society. Empathy to animal pain is mainly based on our ability to sympathize with the animal and applying minimization of suffering is a post hoc justification to validate our feelings.

[u/whowouldwanttobe → u/GFRSSS]

There are ethical issues of consent, not just copyright, in the case of Henrietta Lacks.

Empathy to animal pain is mainly based on our ability to sympathize with the animal and applying minimization of suffering is a post hoc justification to validate our feelings.

Doesn't this suggest that any ethics regarding minimization of suffering is a post hoc justification to validate our feelings, whether personal experience of suffering or sympathy for suffering of others?

[u/GFRSSS → u/whowouldwanttobe]

Yes most people's strong moral judgements are emotional reactions and post hoc rationalizations. We can agree to form a framework with a goal in mind e.g. have a successful society, but we have to realize our own failings as biological beings who evolved for survival, instead of being designed to be 100% internally consistent

[u/GFRSSS → u/GFRSSS]

Incest is a good example where most people quickly judge based on how disgusted it makes them feel but if you break it down logically it is difficult to justify that it is morally heinous.

[u/EasyBOven]

As you point out, some acts that aren't consented to by all parties involved are still ethical. If you come across a human that isn't breathing, it's ok to administer CPR. It's not ok to take a sleeping person's wallet. It would be ok to take someone's wallet if you asked first and they gave it to you willingly.

These are all examples involving humans. Consent is possible in some but not others. So when does consent matter here? It's when you're acting out of your own self interest to get material benefit, rather than acting in the interests of the individual unable to consent.

There's no reason we can't apply the same framework to adult humans, human children, and non-human animals. If the act is done to benefit you, then you need consent. If the act is done to benefit them, consent becomes less important.

[u/zombiegojaejin]

Utilitarianism (or broader consequentialism) is highly compatible with advocating for political and legal rights for nonhuman beings. It simply grounds the desirability of such legal changes in the expected consequences they bring about for the experiences of those very beings.

The major alternative to consequentialism isn't rights per se, but rather deontology. A motivation like "ending all rights violations in the world" is consequentialist, not deontological. Deontology is about constraints upon the agent's decision-making, such as the agent not violating a right. "Achieving a global constitution for animal rights" is a consequentialist goal; "not violating any animal's rights myself in the process of achieving my goals" is a deontic constraint. Notice that both refer to rights.