Stephen Law posts an essay on Speciesism, Potential and Normality, largely as a response to the defense of human uniqueness presented by Roger Scruton.1 This is nothing that Peter Singer hasn’t already dealt with, but Stephen’s reasoning is entirely correct. However I argue that reason by itself is insufficient if we wish other people to reconsider their speciesism.
This is because this is not a rights issue in the same way as racism or sexism is – in this case the rights-holders cannot argue for their own rights, and it is therefore up to others to argue for them.2 This being the case, it is critical to deliver a stronger argument that the one than Stephen does here – most people will not be receptive to this reasoning because it goes against such a deeply embedded perspective, and so the case needs to be forceful rather than elegant.
In the comments, Stephen responds:
If you find sexism or racism wrong, my guess is because you find something like this principle plausible: We are justified in discriminating between a and b only if there is some morally relevant difference between a and b that justifies this difference in treatment.
If you don’t sign up to some such principle, why would you consider sexism or racism be wrong? (possibly you would appeal to some other principle) Sexism and racism are wrong, I think, because discrimination that is unjustified by some morally relevant difference = bigotry, and is wrong. And skin colour and sex are not morally relevant when it comes to most racial and sexual discrimination.
Trouble is, this principle then gets us into trouble with other species. Unless there’s some morally relevant difference, our discriminatory practices come out as bigotry – speciesism.
My argument is that the morally relevant difference is that most people consider that humans are the only animals with moral relevance, i.e. that only humans have the capacity for moral judgments. Clearly this distinction breaks down at the borders – a newborn infant has no moral capacity, as far as I can tell – but that is exactly why speciesism makes sense.
It is impossible in practice (and I would argue in theory, although that is a weaker argument) to set up a rule of sophistication that states exactly which humans have sufficient moral capacity to be considered part of the “moral community” and thus subject to moral considerations (such as the right not to be experimented upon).
If you agree that such a rule is impossible, then you must agree that we need a heuristic to decide who is included in our “moral community” or be paralysed by every individual having to make their own judgment every time they meet another person. The obvious boundary is exactly where it is at the moment – with our own species, since this presents an obvious and visible line of demarcation that has the added benefit of being an instinctive human response.
- I don’t think Scruton stands up to scruton-y, ho ho ho – see his recent piece on The Return of Religion for a particularly weak chain of thought. [↩]
- I am one of those people: I favour limited human rights being extended to non-human animals of sufficient intelligence. [↩]
Tags: animal rights, Peter Singer, Roger Scruton, speciesism, Stephen Law
I struggle with this. Apes yes. Beating a horse a rights violation? Wow. Rights matter a lot to me. On the other hand, I don’t think they actually exist outside norms. What you are really attempting to do is to create an algebra of norms–something that’s always dangerous if taken too far. I think social groups big and small make decisions about what rights they want and which they do not. At some point, someone loses out by being counter-culture. We must rely on an ethic of rights scrutiny in the absence of a calculus. Rights will and should be constantly vetted and reassessed…sometimes preserved, but they cannot be derived.
At least that’s my current thinking.
Ryan Lanham
How about this for an axiom: insofar as a creature shows the qualities of humanity, then the rights which humans desire for themselves should be given it. Lots of room for interpretation there!
I too am not sure that rights should apply to babies as much as more conscious creatures, but no mother would subscribe to that. In that case perhaps rights are not intellectually justifiable, but are felt first and justified later.
I’m happy to read that some apes now have some rights in law, but I’m much more concerned about the humans whose legal rights are not upheld. There’s just no getting away from it, in all my experience of the world and its species, I think, predictably, that human suffering is the most deplorable
Ryan: why apes and not horses? If rights don’t exist outside norms, then on what grounds would you criticise (for example) apartheid?
Mat: what are the “qualities of humanity”? If rights are felt first and justified later, then where does the “feeling” come from?