EQUALITY FOR ANIMALS

RACISM AND SPECIESISM

• Following Betham: animals have a right not to be mistreated because "they suffer"
• Animals are sentient -- capable of experiencing pleasure and pain
• Sentient beings have interests in having pleasure not having pain
• So, Animals have interests
• these interests should be considered in our moral calculations
• and weighed equally to comparble human interests therein
• Speciesism: "it is hard to imagine any other change of moral attititude that would cause so great a reduction in the sum total of suffering in the universe [as elimination of speciesism]" (61)
• characterized
• failure to give (enough) consideration to non-human animals' interests in our moral calculations
• giving excessive preference to the interests of one's own species in one's moral deliberations
• compare
• racism: giving excessive preference to the interests of one's own race.
• sexism: giving excessive preference to the interests of one's own sex.

SPECIESISM IN PRACTICE

SOME OBJECTIONS

• How do we know animals can feel pain?
• Reply: much as we know other people do: ample evidence
• pained-seeming behavior & physiological similarities
• They eat each other, so why shouldn't we eat them?
• Reply: they're not rational agents & we are; so they're not morally responsible for not harming others, but we are.
• Differences Between Animals and Humans
• human's suffer in ways other animals can't, true.
• anticipation, regret & other forms of psychological suffering
• even so: where animals do suffer (& enjoy) comparably; their feelings deserve equal consideration.
• speciesism = weighing interests more just because they're human
• Ethics and Reciprocity: Kantian & Social Contractarian Objection
• Argument
• Rights (moral patiency) imply duties (moral agency).
• Animals have no moral duties (not moral agents).
• So animals have no moral rights (not moral patients).
• Reply: patiency implies agency principle is unsound.
• Reductio: The same line of argument would deny mentally innompetent humans rights not to be mistreated; an unacceptable conclusion; so P=>A should be rejected.
• Sentience qualifies you for patienthood or rights.
• Rationality required for moral agency or duties.