"They're just animals."

Como pode aparecer

The strongest version

Strongest version (steelman):

1. P1Members of the human species have full moral status.
2. P2Members of other species don't.
3. P3The difference between P1 and P2 is species membership itself, not some capacity derived from it.
4. CSo we may use animals and may not use humans.

This is the most honest formulation of the argument, and also the hardest to defend. When P3 is dropped and a capacity is pointed to (rationality, language, soul, self-awareness), the argument stops being A10 and becomes A1, A3, A4 or A8, each already answered. When P3 is kept, the argument assumes species is morally relevant in itself. This is called bare speciesism.

The term "speciesism" was coined by Richard Ryder in 1970, in a leaflet distributed in Oxford, and popularized by Peter Singer in 1975. The current definition, in Oscar Horta's formulation, is unjustified disadvantageous consideration or treatment of those who don't belong to a certain species.

The argument is valid, but circular in practice: P3 asserts exactly what was under discussion. Its force isn't logical; it's psychological.

Full answer

1. a

   Reconstruction and diagnosis

   This chapter is different from the previous ones. A10 doesn't offer a wrong criterion: it refuses to offer a criterion. That's why it works as the last trench, and why the other objections tend to end up here.

   There's a simple test that structures the whole chapter. Ask the speaker for a characteristic C such that:

   1. every human being has it, including babies, people with profound intellectual disabilities and people with advanced dementia;
   2. no animal has it;
   3. it's relevant to the treatment in question, that is, to being killed, confined or hurt.

   Is there a characteristic C?

   • No, it's just the speciesBare speciesism: prejudice without a criterion
   • Yes, C is a specific traitDoes every human have C?
     • NoSpecies overlap: it excludes protected humans
     • YesIs C relevant to pain and death?
       • NoAn irrelevant criterion, like knowing algebra
       • YesThen the criterion is sentience, which animals have

   In more than two thousand years of philosophy, no one has produced a characteristic that passes all three tests. Either it excludes humans we protect, or it's irrelevant to the harm in question, or it coincides with sentience.

2. b

   Where the argument breaks

   1. It's circular.

   P3 says species matters because it matters. The conclusion is the premise itself, in other words.

   2. Species is a biological category, not a moral one.

   Species are groupings useful to biology, with fuzzy boundaries, hybrids and gradual transitions over evolution. As early as 1970, Ryder put it this way: if all organisms are on a single physical continuum, they should also be on a single moral continuum. Nothing in the definition of species explains why it would generate value.

   3. The structural analogy with other prejudices.

   Bare speciesism has the same logical form as other exclusions: taking membership of a group as sufficient reason to discount interests. Care is needed here, and chapter L7 deals with it: asserting a similarity of logical structure isn't asserting equivalence between victims or comparing historical suffering. The point concerns the form of the argument, not who suffered more.

   4. There's empirical evidence that bare speciesism exists.

   In the study by Caviola, Everett and Faber (2019), people assigned less moral value to certain species even when their beliefs about those animals' intelligence and sentience were controlled for. In other words, it isn't that they judge the pig less capable: they judge the pig less worthy for being a pig. And this attitude correlates with racism, sexism, homophobia and social dominance orientation.

   5. The boundary isn't even consistent within a culture.

   Dogs are family here and food elsewhere; cows are sacred in India and burgers here; horses are food in France and companions in the UK and the US. The line between "animal to eat" and "animal to love" shifts with the map, which shows it doesn't track any property of the animals.

3. c

   Data and sources

   Source	What it offers	Note
   Ryder, original leaflet, 1970	Coins the term "speciesism": if there's no essential difference between humans and other animals, why the almost total moral distinction?	A short historical document, written in Oxford
   Singer, Animal Liberation (1975)	Popularizes the term and defines speciesism as a bias in favor of the interests of one's own species	Checked: Animal Liberation, 1975)
   Horta, "What is Speciesism?" (2010)	Defines speciesism as unjustified disadvantageous consideration or treatment of those who don't belong to a certain species	The standard conceptual reference
   Caviola, Everett and Faber, 2019	People devalue certain species even when controlling for beliefs about intelligence and sentience; speciesism correlates with racism, sexism, homophobia and social dominance	Five studies, a validated scale
   Kagan, "What's Wrong with Speciesism?" (2016)	Argues that most people aren't speciesists but "modal personists"	The best available reply, discussed in (d)

4. d

   The strongest counter-reply: we aren't speciesists, we're modal personists

   Shelly Kagan proposes an elegant test. Imagine Superman: he doesn't belong to the human species, and yet no one thinks his suffering matters less for that. If species were really what we counted, we should discount him. Since we don't, Kagan concludes that what we value isn't species but being a person, or having been able to be one. He calls this modal personism: a baby and a person with a profound disability count because they could have been, or could become, full persons. The resulting thesis is that our differential treatment isn't brute prejudice but a defensible position.

5. e

   Why the counter-reply doesn't reach the conclusion

   It concedes the essential point.

   If what matters isn't species, then "they're just animals" is wrong, and the debate becomes about which capacity matters. That already takes A10 off the stage and leads us to A1, A8 and A12.

   The "could have been" is obscure.

   In what sense could a baby with anencephaly have been a person? If the answer is "because it's of the right species", modal personism dissolves back into speciesism, as several critics have pointed out.

   The empirical evidence contradicts the diagnosis.

   Kagan argues people aren't speciesists. The data from Caviola and colleagues indicate the opposite: there's devaluation by species even when beliefs about capacities are controlled for.

   The practical conclusion doesn't follow.

   Even granting degrees, intense suffering and death in exchange for taste aren't justified, as Kagan himself acknowledges by calling the current treatment of animals a moral atrocity (see A2).

   The Superman test works in favor of anti-speciesism.

   If the suffering of a being of another species counts when he's strong and like us, it should count when he's weak and different. What changes between the two cases is our interest, not the principle.

Reasoning errors

Biases

Extrapolations

The principle being tested is: "belonging to another biological group is enough for someone's interests to be disregarded".

Contradictions

What the argument gets right

Connections

A10 is a root: almost all chains end here. That's why there are so many "comes before" connections.

References