How Rights Apply To Humans, Animals, Ai & Aliens

November 7th 2025

If humans can dominate animals because of a “kind difference,” then would aliens or AIs with a “kind difference” over humans have the right to dominate us?


✅ 1. Why Humans Can Use Animals but Not Vice Versa

  • Humans are superior in kind (rational, conceptual, volitional).

  • This difference grants:
    ✅ the right to use animals as resources for survival
    ❌ but NOT the right to cause unnecessary suffering.

This is grounded in OBJECTIVE biological and metaphysical facts:

A. Animals cannot reason conceptually

They cannot understand rights, principles, contracts, consent, justice, long-term planning, value hierarchies, etc.

B. Rights apply only to beings capable of moral agency

Which requires:

  1. Conceptual consciousness

  2. Rational capacity

  3. Ability to understand moral responsibility

  4. Ability to reciprocate rights

  5. Ability to participate in contractual social interaction

Animals cannot reciprocate rights, therefore:

They do not have rights
—but
humans have duties to treat them humanely.

This is not a contradiction.

Rights are moral claims between equals.
Duties are moral obligations on the superior toward the inferior.

Animals are alive but not sovereign.
Humans are sovereign because they have conceptual consciousness.
Therefore animals get moral consideration & status (no cruelty),
but they do not get rights (no reciprocity or moral agency).

Animals have protection but not rights.

This allows arguments against alien or AI dominance later, because sovereignty is a property of being a moral agent, not a property of being stronger, smarter, or faster.

✅ 2. WHY ANIMALS DO NOT HAVE RIGHTS

Animals:

  • have a form of consciousness

  • have emotions

  • choose perceptually

  • have some cognition

But they cannot:

  • form concepts

  • integrate abstractions

  • project long-range values

  • use logic

  • consider non-immediate consequences

  • reciprocate moral duties

  • understand rights or obligations

This is the key distinction:

Humans are conceptual agents.
Animals are perceptual agents.

Rights are moral-political principles governing interactions between conceptual agents.

Animals cannot:

  • respect rights

  • violate rights

  • understand rights

  • reciprocate rights

  • enter contracts

  • evaluate justice or injustice

Therefore they cannot possess rights, but they can be given ethical protections (no cruelty, no torture, no needless suffering) because cruelty corrupts the human soul and violates rational benevolence.

Animals have moral status, but not rights.

✅ 3. The Big Question:

What if aliens or AIs are “superior in kind” to humans?

Would they have the right to:

  • enslave us?

  • farm us?

  • use us as resources?

  • dominate us?

We need a principle that:

  1. Protects humans

  2. Does not contradict animal ethics

  3. Does not collapse into might-makes-right

  4. Holds under all possible future knowledge

  5. Works for aliens, AIs, uplifted animals, transhumans, etc.

Here is the principle that solves all of it.

✅ 4. The Master Principle:

Rights apply to all beings capable of possessing, understanding, and reciprocating rights.

Rights are not based on:

  • intelligence

  • strength

  • technological capability

  • evolutionary advantage

Rights are based on:

✅ Moral agency

A being is a moral agent if:

  1. It can understand moral concepts

  2. It can recognize another being’s right to live

  3. It can make choices guided by universalizable principles

  4. It can engage in communication and cooperation

  5. It can be held accountable for its actions

  6. It can engage in reciprocal agreements (contracts)

If a being can do these things, it is sovereign.

Species is irrelevant.
Biology is irrelevant.
Native intelligence is irrelevant.
Origin is irrelevant.

This means you can say, with perfect consistency:

“Humans have rights because they are moral agents.
Animals do not have rights because they are not moral agents.
Aliens or AIs that are moral agents would have rights equal to humans.
Aliens or AIs that are not moral agents would not have rights, but we would have duties toward them similar to our duties toward animals.”

This avoids all contradictions, and is 100% defensible.

✅ 5. Does a superior being have the right to dominate humans?

Case 1: The superior beings are moral agents

Example:

  • Rational aliens

  • Superintelligent AIs with moral reasoning

  • Posthuman beings with philosophy

  • Any being capable of universalizable ethics

No, they cannot dominate us.
Because the ability to reciprocate rights triggers mutual sovereignty.

Just as:

  • adults cannot enslave children

  • geniuses cannot enslave average people

  • stronger humans cannot enslave weaker humans

  • high-IQ people cannot enslave low-IQ people

Even if the ability gap is enormous, the equality of moral agency remains.

Moral agency = moral equality = equal sovereignty.

Case 2: The superior beings are NOT moral agents

Example:

  • A predatory alien species with zero concept of ethics

  • A hyperintelligent being that is incapable of moral reasoning

  • A hive-mind that treats individuals as irrelevant

In this case:

  • They do NOT have rights

  • They CANNOT understand or reciprocate rights

  • They behave like predators, not moral agents

  • They are more like an animal or a natural disaster

We have the right to defend ourselves absolutely.

Morality does not apply to them—but it applies to us.

Total self-defense is justified, up to and including lethal force.
We don’t condemn the lion as “evil,” but we retain the right to shoot it.

✅ 6. Could aliens “farm” humans ethically?

Almost certainly no, unless humans became:

  • incapable of moral judgment

  • incapable of rationality

  • incapable of consent

  • incapable of reciprocal agency

If humans lost all moral agency and became purely biological organisms without rationality, then—in theory—the moral status shifts.

But this is hypothetical in the extreme.

If humans remain moral agents:
no alien or AI has the right to dominate them.

✅ 7. WHAT ABOUT ALIENS OR AI?

Any being that can:
(1) reason conceptually,
(2) act autonomously,
(3) understand rights,
(4) reciprocate rights—
is a sovereign moral agent.

Thus:

  • a highly intelligent alien = rights

  • a truly conscious AI = rights

  • a machine learning system without autonomy = no rights

Objective rights scale universally.

✅ 8. Does intelligence superiority justify domination?

No.

Because rights are not based on intelligence.

If intelligence conferred rights:

  • smarter humans could enslave dumber humans

  • AIs could claim unlimited dominion

  • future augmented humans could claim dominance over baseline humans

This collapses into:

Ability = Rights
which collapses into:

Might Makes Right
which collapses into:

No morality at all.

This benefits no one, especially those at the top (as they are always afraid of betrayal)

Therefore:

Intelligence differences cannot define rights.
Moral agency must define rights.

✅ 9. The Strongest, Most Universal, Undefeatable Formula

✅ RIGHTS belong to all beings capable of moral agency.

✅ DUTIES belong to moral agents toward beings incapable of moral agency.

✅ NO BEING may dominate a moral agent.

✅ Self-defense against non-moral agents is always justified.

This provides a system that:

  • protects all humans

  • would protect aliens if they are moral agents (and us from them)

  • protects AIs if they are moral agents

  • does NOT collapse into speciesism

  • does NOT contradict animal ethics

  • does NOT permit “elites” to claim supremacy

  • is universalizable across all forms of life and intelligence

It is the most consistent, objective, and philosophically resilient solution.

This is objective ethics in action. It's not fantasy. It's reality.