Abstract
“Speciesism” accords greater value to human beings and their interests. It is supposed to be opposed to a liberationist stance, since it is precisely the numerous forms of discounting of animal interests which liberationists oppose. This association is mistaken. In this paper I claim that many forms of speciesism are consistent with upholding a robust liberationist agenda. Accordingly, several hotly disputed topics in animal ethics can be set aside. The significance of such clarification is that synthesizing liberationism with speciesism substantially modifies some of the coordinates of the debates over animal ethics. Secondly, defusing some counterintuitive implications of liberationism may make liberationism more popular than it currently is. Liberationism would no longer demand the eradication of ingrained speciesist intuitions. The paper finally presents a form of speciesism that does oppose liberationism, but is too strong and (fortunately) shared by few.
Notes
Ethics & the Beast: An Argument for Speciesist Liberationism, Princeton University Press.
1983 [1975] Victims of Science: The Use of Animals in Research, London, The National Anti-Vivisection Society Limited, p. 5.
Animal Liberation, Avon Books: New York, 1975, p. 7.
Taking Animals Seriously: Mental Life and Moral Status, 1996, Cambridge UP: NY, p. 28.
The Case For Animals Rights, 1985, University of California Press: Berkeley, p. 155.
“Neo-Speciesism”, Journal of Social Philosophy, XXXV (3): 380–391, 2004, cit. p. 380. For a more general discussion including variations of speciesism, see P. Cavalieri, (2001) The Animal Question: Why Nonhuman Animals Deserve Human Rights, C. Woollard Trans. New York, Oxford UP, Ch. 4.
For one such discussion on the role of special obligations, see R. M. Hare, Moral Thinking: Its Levels, Method and Point, Oxford UP: Oxford, 1981, Ch. 8.
B. A. Brody (2001) “Defending Animal Research: An International Perspective”, in E. F. Paul & and J. Paul, 2001 (eds.) Why Animal Experimentation Matters: The Use of Animals in Medical Research, New Brunswick, Transaction Publishers, pp. 131–148.
M. Bernstein calls these type A and type B actions, “Neo-Speciesism”, Journal of Social Philosophy, XXXV (3): 380–391, 2004.
These are usually arguments by analogy, claiming that the same reasoning cannot be applied in human–human lifeboat cases. The problem with these analogies is that in an anti-speciesist context, such analogies beg the question in assuming that intuitions generated from inter-human moral transactions carry over smoothly to human–animal ones.
See Bernstein Supra, as well as S. Finsen, (1988) “Sinking the Research Lifeboat”, The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 13, pp. 197–212 and Jamieson & Regan: “On the Ethics of the Use of Animals in Science”, Ethical Issues in Scientific Research, E. Erwin, S. Gendin, L. Kleiman Eds. Garland: New York, 1994, pp. 267–302.
Zamir, T. “Killing for Knowledge”, Journal of Applied Philosophy, 2006, 23 (1) 17–40.
Is fund-allocation itself in such cases a lifeboat of a kind (since one is, in effect, devoting resources to the well-being of animals when such funding could have been channeled to studies that might prevent diseases that endanger humans)? This may have made sense if all research funds were devoted to human survival.
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Ethics & the Beast: An Argument for Speciesist Liberationism, forthcoming, Princeton University Press. Published here by permission of Princeton University Press.
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Zamir, T. Is Speciesism Opposed to Liberationism?. Philosophia 34, 465–475 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-006-9039-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-006-9039-3