Home / A. Sentience and moral status / Part DIR
"Humans are superior, so we can use the inferior."
being superior in some capacities doesn't give anyone the right to use those who have them to a lesser degree. The argument confuses description with value, picks as its yardstick precisely the traits in which humans excel and, taken seriously, would authorize the exploitation of "inferior" humans and of us by any "superior" being.
Short answer
Superior at what? We fly worse than swallows and smell worse than dogs. "Superior" only makes sense relative to a yardstick, and choosing as the yardstick the capacities in which humans excel is deciding the result before the contest. Even if we were superior at everything, that wouldn't give us the right to use anyone: an adult surpasses a child at almost everything, and that's exactly why they must protect the child.
For children
You're bigger and stronger than a small child. Does that give you the right to take their snack or push them? No! Whoever is bigger and knows more has more responsibility to look after others, not more permission to hurt them. It's the same with animals: we know far more than a chicken does, and that's exactly why we can choose not to make her suffer.
"If a species far superior to us arrived on Earth, would it have the right to raise us for food?"
Como pode aparecer
"We're the dominant species."
"Man is the king of creation."
"We're above them, it's simple."
"If animals were superior, they'd eat us."
"Humans went to the Moon. Chickens didn't."
"Do you think a cow is worth as much as a person?"
"God made us in His image and likeness."
"We're the pinnacle of evolution."
"Whoever's stronger is in charge."
"Moral status comes in degrees, and the interests of persons weigh more than those of other animals."
"I'm not saying animals don't matter, just that humans matter more." (true or false, it doesn't authorize use)
The strongest version
"Humans are superior, so we can use animals."
Strongest version (steelman):
- P1Humans are superior to other animals in intelligence, language, culture, technology and morality.
- P2Superior beings have greater moral value than inferior beings.
- P3If a being has much greater moral value, it may use beings of much lesser value for its ends.
- CSo humans may use other animals.
The argument circulates in three variants, which this chapter treats together:
- Theological:the human being is the summit of creation, made in the image of God (developed in D4).
- From power:we can because we have the power to, echoing Thrasymachus's thesis in Plato's Republic that justice is the advantage of the stronger (developed in C6).
- Academic:moral status comes in degrees, according to each being's capacities, and the interests of those with higher status weigh more. This is the hierarchical view defended by Shelly Kagan (2019), the most philosophically serious version.
The argument is valid. The problems lie in its soundness: P1 is ambiguous and partly false, P2 is unjustified and P3 doesn't follow even if P2 is accepted.
Full answer
- a
Reconstruction and diagnosis
The argument depends on a word that changes meaning halfway through. "Superior" can be descriptive (having more of a capacity X) or evaluative (being worth more). The move from one sense to the other is exactly what would need to be shown, and it isn't.
Sense of "superior" What happens to P1 What happens to P2 Descriptive: has more of capacity X True for some traits and false for others Doesn't follow: being better at maths doesn't make someone's pain count more Evaluative: is worth more It's already the conclusion P1 then presupposes what the argument should prove (begging the question) There's also a hidden fallacy of division: even if the human species, on average, surpassed others in certain capacities, that wouldn't make each human superior to each animal. A human newborn doesn't surpass an adult chimpanzee in any of the capacities listed in P1.
- b
Where the argument breaks
1. "Superior" only exists relative to a yardstick (P1).
Dogs have a far keener sense of smell than ours, bats navigate by echolocation, migratory birds find their way over thousands of kilometers, bees see ultraviolet. None of these capacities appears on P1's list, and the reason is simple: the list was made of the traits in which humans excel. It's like declaring fish superior to birds using swimming as the criterion.
The idea of a ladder of nature, with humans at the top, comes from the scala naturae of ancient and medieval philosophy, not from biology. In the theory of evolution, all living species are branches of the same tree, with the same evolutionary history since the common ancestor, and none is the "pinnacle". Darwin is said to have noted to himself never to use the words "higher" and "lower" when speaking of species.
2. Superiority of capacities doesn't generate superiority of value (P2).
Among humans, we reject this move without hesitation: no one accepts that a person with a doctorate has more right not to be tortured than someone who can barely read. The principle of equal consideration of interests explains why: the weight of a pain depends on the pain, not on the other abilities of whoever feels it. Different capacities can change what harms a being (see A1, block 11), but they don't decide whether the harm counts.
3. Might isn't right (P3).
In the Republic, Thrasymachus argues that justice is the advantage of the stronger. Much of the history of ethics can be read as a reply to that thesis, and much moral progress has consisted of limiting the power of the strong over the most vulnerable: enslaved people, women, children, people with disabilities. There's also an inversion in the argument: the capacities P1 celebrates, such as moral reflection, are exactly what make us moral agents, capable of having duties. A lion can't choose not to kill; we can. The superiority invoked creates responsibility, not license.
4. Even a moral hierarchy doesn't authorize real exploitation.
Suppose, for argument's sake, that human interests weigh more. A hierarchy adjusts weights; it doesn't zero out interests. To justify current practice, an animal's prolonged suffering and death would have to weigh less than the pleasure of a meal that has substitutes, repeated billions of times a year. Kagan himself, the main philosophical defender of the hierarchy, concludes that our current treatment of animals is a moral atrocity that must end.
- c
Data and sources
Finding Source Reliability Use in the argument Across five studies, speciesism correlated with racism, sexism, homophobia, social dominance orientation and system justification; people devalued certain species even when controlling for what they thought about their intelligence and sentience Caviola, Everett and Faber, 2019 Moderate to high (validated scale; correlational data) Shows that "superiority" is usually a rationalization, not a conclusion drawn from capacities Those who believe in a rigid divide between humans and animals tend to dehumanize immigrants more; texts stressing human-animal similarity increased the humanization of immigrants, even among highly prejudiced people Costello and Hodson, 2010 Moderate (includes an experiment) Links the human-animal hierarchy to hierarchies among humans A philosopher who defends a hierarchy of moral status concludes that the current treatment of animals is an atrocity Kagan, 2019; review by Sebo, 2019 A philosophical source, not an empirical one The best version of premise P2 doesn't support the conclusion A young chimpanzee (Ayumu) supposedly outperformed humans in working memory Inoue and Matsuzawa, 2007 Low: humans with equal training matched or beat the performance (Cook and Wilson, 2010) Don't use as proof. An example of a finding popular among animal advocates that didn't hold up - d
The strongest counter-reply: the hierarchy of moral status
The most sophisticated version drops "we can because we can" and proposes a gradual hierarchy. For Shelly Kagan (2019), moral status comes in degrees and depends on each being's capacities, above all the capacity for wellbeing and the capacity to act for reasons. The interests of a being with higher status weigh more. So as not to downgrade babies and people with profound intellectual disabilities, Kagan appeals to modal personhood: these humans would keep high status because they could have been, or may become, full persons.
- e
Why the counter-reply doesn't reach the conclusion
It doesn't authorize exploitation.
A hierarchy weighs interests; it doesn't erase them. Its own author calls the current treatment of animals a moral atrocity.
Modal personhood is an ad hoc patch.
The patch reveals the problem.
Without it, the hierarchical view would rank humans by capacity. Having to create a special exception to avoid that consequence is a sign the underlying principle fails the parsimony test.
The intuitions used as data are biased.
Jeff Sebo (2019) notes that the hierarchy rests on intuitions about cases, and those intuitions are shaped by preference for one's own species and by convenience. The study by Caviola and colleagues reinforces the point: people devalue species even when controlling for what they think about their capacities.
The sentientist answer remains.
What grounds moral inclusion is there being someone to whom things matter. The complexity of a mind can change what harms it, but it doesn't make its suffering discountable.
Reasoning errors
Logical
Is the form valid?
Equivocation
Begging the question
Fallacy of division
Non sequitur
Hume's law
Epistemological
Does the evidence support it?
Evolutionary progressivism
Selective evidence
Biased intuitions as data
Moral
Is the criterion coherent?
Might as right
Inverting responsibility
Violating equal consideration
Biases
Social dominance orientation
A preference for hierarchies between groups, applied between species too
Associated with speciesism (Caviola et al., 2019) and with rejecting human-animal similarity (Costello and Hodson, 2010)
System justification
Leads people to see the existing order as natural and deserved
Correlated with speciesism (Caviola et al., 2019)
Self-serving bias
The yardstick of superiority is chosen to favor one's own group
A well-documented pattern in judgments about one's own group
In-group bias
Widens the distance between "us" and "them"
A common basis of speciesism and prejudice among humans (Caviola et al., 2019)
Human exceptionalism
Leads people to see humans as outside nature, not part of it
Contradicted by evolutionary biology
Ladder thinking (scala naturae)
Leads people to imagine species arranged on a ladder with a top
A pre-Darwinian idea that persists in common sense
Extrapolations
The principle being tested is: "whoever is superior in capacities is worth more and may use whoever is inferior".
If it applied to…Hierarchies among humansTap to see
Humans with more capacities could use humans with fewer. Since intelligence, education and skill vary in degree, there'd be a scale of value among people: someone with a doctorate would rank above someone who can barely read, and their interests would prevail in any conflict
The scientific racism of the 19th and 20th centuries tried exactly this, measuring skulls to "prove" the superiority of some groups (Gould, 1981)
If it applied to…ChildrenTap to see
Adults could use children for their own ends. An adult surpasses a small child in strength, knowledge, language and planning; if superiority creates a right of use, that difference would be enough
We accept the opposite: the greater the difference in power, the greater the duty to protect
If it applied to…People with disabilitiesTap to see
They'd be worth less than others. If value tracks capacities, those with reduced capacities are worth less, and their lives can be sacrificed for those with more
This was the reasoning of the Nazi Aktion T4 program, which killed disabled people classed as "lives unworthy of life"
If it applied to…Peoples with less technologyTap to see
Technologically more advanced peoples could dominate others. Technology is one of the "proofs" of superiority cited in P1
Colonialism justified itself as a "civilizing mission" on this basis
If it applied to…A superior species or artificial intelligenceTap to see
It could raise humans for food or experiments. The distance between it and us would justify the same treatment we give animals, and we'd have nothing to complain about
Whoever answers "but we feel and suffer" is appealing to sentience
Contradictions
The same person who says "we're superior, so we may use them" doesn't accept that those with more education or intelligence may use those with less.
Repudiates child abuse, the exploitation of workers and harassment of those with less power, but applies to animals exactly the principle condemned in those cases.
If what makes us superior is moral capacity, that superiority should translate into better behavior, not license to cause unnecessary suffering, something the person themselves says they condemn.
If superiority gives a right of use, a superior species would have the right to use us. Almost no one accepts that.
What the argument gets right
What is true
Humans do have capacities that are unique or far more developed than those of other animals: language with recursive grammar, science, culture accumulated over generations, moral reflection. Denying this would be dishonest and would weaken the book. These capacities also matter morally: they make humans responsible for their actions and can make certain losses more serious, such as the loss of long-term life plans. In tragic and rare conflicts, a weighing that takes this into account may be defensible.
But
The argument goes wrong by turning these capacities into a license. The moral reflection that sets us apart is exactly what allows us to recognize the suffering of other beings and choose not to cause it. The superiority the argument invokes is, in the end, the best reason against it.
Connections
Usually comes before
Usually comes after
Go deeper in Questão de Ética
Chapters from the open-access collection A Journey Through Animal Ethics that discuss this argument in more detail:
- The Appeal to Differentiated Degrees of Moral Status Vol. I, ch. 14
References
Provisional author-date format. The links indicate the sources checked in writing this chapter.
Philosophy
- How to Count Animals, more or less. Oxford University Press.
- Plato. The Republic, book I (Thrasymachus's thesis).
- Review of *How to Count Animals, more or less*.
- Animal Liberation.
History and biology
- On the Origin of Species.
- The Mismeasure of Man. W. W. Norton.
Psychology
- The moral standing of animals: towards a psychology of speciesism. *Journal of Personality and Social Psychology*, 116(6).
- Do young chimpanzees have extraordinary working memory? *Psychonomic Bulletin & Review*, 17(4).
- Exploring the roots of dehumanization: the role of animal-human similarity in promoting immigrant humanization. *Group Processes & Intergroup Relations*, 13(1).
- Working memory of numerals in chimpanzees. *Current Biology*, 17(23).