Human and nonhuman rights

Abstract

This paper tries to rethink the notion of human rights and to evaluate whether we should redefine them in light of the main challenges presented by advances in technoscience (genetic engineering, robotics, nanotechnology etc.). It claims that there are basic, intrinsic rights to personhood, which, on the one hand, allow us to justify a moral claim to a posthuman existence (should it become possible) and to attribute rights to artificial agents, while, on the other hand, granting the moral entitlement to remain human. This shows that the notion of human rights is far from becoming obsolete, as claimed by some scholars. The paper is divided into five parts. It (1) presents reasons for rethinking the notion of “a right” in order to apply it to beings other than humans (e.g., nonhuman animals, robots etc.); (2) discusses the metaethical problem concerning the meaning of “a right”; (3) presents a basic system of rights that are intrinsic to personhood and that can be attributed to different kinds of agents (human or not); (4) analyzes whether there is a right to a posthuman existence or a right to remain human; and finally, (5) presents some reasons to justify such a system of rights.