rights-by-property

Compiled with AI assistance and selectively reviewed. Please consult the cited passages; the books remain the authoritative source. About this companion

Editorial synthesis · provisional

Definition

Rights-by-property is the author’s critical label for admitting beings to moral standing because they possess a qualifying trait, such as sentience or subjecthood. It describes the structure of a criterial gate, including the judgment about who qualifies at its uncertain margins. The criticism concerns that machinery of admission, while retaining concern for the animals whose standing it seeks to defend.

Explanation

AB presents the label after distinguishing Singer’s consideration of suffering from Regan’s inherent-value rights. Those theories should not be collapsed into one doctrine merely because the author identifies a shared qualifying-property structure. The narrative note also limits what the marginal-cases objection establishes.

RB3 develops a stronger critique of container logic: uncertain boundaries require a human gatekeeper, while the animal’s striving is already real before recognition. Diamond’s ordinary-language criticism and the political turn in animal ethics remain separately attributed steps in this argument, not interchangeable versions of the same theory.

PB’s earlier essay similarly questions the granting of rights by human fiat. The proposed entry records these book-specific criticisms without making the label a universally accepted classification or inferring that legal protections, humane concern or all forms of rights have thereby been rejected.

Scope and attribution

Retain the inherited subentry recommendation and book-owned critical vocabulary.

AB — The Actual Book

The exact critical label concerns trait-based admission, with an express note limiting the critique.

Occurrence locators: 184, 185; Notes: 248.

PB — The Possible Book

The earlier essay questions human fiat as a basis of animal standing.

Occurrence locators: Reproduced historical essay: 200.

RB3 — The Real Book, Volume III: Murmurations

The extended container critique develops distinct interlocutors and a regime alternative.

Occurrence locators: 236, 237, 238, 239, 324.

Background used in the editorial explanation

Named theories and mechanisms are distinguished from neighboring background, homonyms and the author’s own synthesis. Reproduced AI passages retain their separate voice.