# Contested concept: rights

_**What you are reading**: one contested-concept page in Deliberus's deliberation graph. Deliberus maps human reasoning — including claims that are contested, mistaken, or extreme — so that disagreement can be examined precisely. A claim's presence here is not an endorsement: the graph records that someone argued it, how it connects to other reasoning, and how far scrutiny has gotten. The metadata on this page describes the state of that scrutiny, not the truth of the claim._

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- **Contestedness**: criterion
- **Diagnosis**: The disagreement is over whether rights follow from capacities, from agency, or from kind membership. Resolving it decides whether extending rights to marginal humans forces their extension to animals.
- **Canonical**: `/concept/rights` (data: `/concept/rights.json`)

## Senses in use
- **Entitlements owed to humans qua humans, including disabled ones, but not to animals** — used in 4 claim(s)
- **Entitlements that require understanding of right and duty (reciprocity)** — used in 3 claim(s)
- **Protections that respect and safeguard moral agency** — used in 2 claim(s)

## Claims using this term
- [It makes sense to understand people as having rights so their [moral agency] is respected and may be protected.](/claim/claim_22464f69d4d2.md) _(sense: Protections that respect and safeguard moral agency)_
- [There is nothing wrong with granting rights to disabled humans while denying [rights] to animals.](/claim/claim_596d125483c2.md) _(sense: Entitlements owed to humans qua humans, including disabled ones, but not to animals)_
- [It is perfectly valid to use humanity as a moral status.](/claim/claim_629bee3faa10.md) _(sense: Entitlements owed to humans qua humans, including disabled ones, but not to animals)_
- [[Understanding a being as having rights so that its moral agency is respected and may be protected] just doesn't work for other animals.](/claim/claim_7205b92c24ad.md) _(sense: Protections that respect and safeguard moral agency)_
- [Animals cannot possess rights because they cannot understand the ideas of right and duty.](/claim/claim_9057f83fa25f.md) _(sense: Entitlements that require understanding of right and duty (reciprocity))_
- [If it were correct that animals cannot possess rights because they cannot understand the ideas of right and duty, then children and mentall…](/claim/claim_96fb79b3021e.md) _(sense: Entitlements that require understanding of right and duty (reciprocity))_
- [Children and mentally ill people cannot understand the ideas of right and duty.](/claim/claim_a5d82310dcec.md) _(sense: Entitlements that require understanding of right and duty (reciprocity))_
- [a human being reduced to the mental level of a cow does have [rights]](/claim/claim_af1f11d1572c.md) _(sense: Entitlements owed to humans qua humans, including disabled ones, but not to animals)_
- [a cow has no rights](/claim/claim_e198fb8c3810.md) _(sense: Entitlements owed to humans qua humans, including disabled ones, but not to animals)_