Speciesism and the parallel to racism and sexism

Speciesism is bad and an irrational stance in moral decision making

In this article I'll attempt to make the case that speciesism should be rejected and seen as a parallel to things like racism and sexism.

The argument that will be supported in this article is:

P1) Taking away someone's ability to suffer, think, experience or act, does not change someone's species

P2) If P1 is true, no morally relevant traits are inherent to species

P3) Discrimination against someone based on morally irrelevant traits is wrong

 C) Discriminating against someone based on species is wrong

What speciesism is

First a clear working definition of speciesism: The discrimination between individuals based on species membership.

So to be clear on what this means, let's take an example of two individuals, one being a pig and the other a human. Each of them have a set of traits that separate one from the other. A pig has four legs, is shaped quite differently, makes different sounds, typically has a lower level of intelligence and problem solving capabilities, different preferences and so on. And we may have many different reasons to treat these individuals differently based on these traits, and otherwise differentiate between the individuals.

However, speciesism is when, upon making a moral distinction, regardless of the aforementioned traits, the species membership is taken to be morally relevant or morally decisive. Let's look at the following example:

Why is it okay to exploit a pig for food but not a human?

"Because humans are highly intelligent, have long term future wishes, have a strong moral compass, have people to care for them, and so on."

However, not all humans are highly intelligent, have long term future wishes, have a strong moral compass or friends with strong emotional bonds to them, or any other thing that a given animal presumably lacks and that humans typically have. Would those humans who lack those traits be morally distinct such that they have the same moral value as a pig?

For those who answer "no, they still have a higher moral value than pigs because they are human, and the pig is not", that's where speciesism comes into the picture. At that point, none of the traits that were given to morally differentiate the two individuals are relevant, other than the member of the species they belong to.

I don't think, as I expect most would agree, that a human has a lower moral value if they have the same intellectual capacities as a pig. The question becomes why should then the pig be of lower moral worth than humans? Is it only species membership?

Many would simply say, yeah, I don't see what's wrong with being speciesist. The rest of the article attempts to point out why speciesism is bad, not whether someone is or is not a speciesist.

Why racism and sexism are bad

You probably already agree that racism and sexism are bad, but I will still give my reasons for why I think that is, and then show how those reasons relate to speciesism.

To start with, they have parallel definitions.

Racism: discrimination between individuals based on race.

Sexism: discrimination between individuals based on sex.

Disregarding the relevant properties

There are things that separate people of different races, and males from females, that we should give consideration to in various circumstances. For example, women can have pains due to their menstrual cycle. Let's consider the following chart:

Name	Lisa	Michael
Female/Male	Female	Male
Has painful menstrual cycle	Yes	No

In order for someone to figure out whether they should give special consideration to Lisa or Michael with regard to reducing menstrual cycle pains, they have to look at the properties that differentiate Lisa and Michael - in this example only name, sex and the property of actually having a painful menstrual cycle. They know that having a painful menstrual cycle is something that typically can only be true of women. So it's tempting to say therefore that Lisa gets higher consideration because she is female. However, given the chart above, the part about being male or female is actually irrelevant. The only information needed is the bottom row that says whether Lisa or Michael actually has a painful menstrual cycle. If we lacked information about who has the painful menstrual cycle, it makes sense to assume that females are the ones who can have the risk to begin with and determine that they are the ones to give the consideration to. But the reason for that ultimately should be because they are believed to have a menstrual cycle, not because they have the right sex.

If instead the bottom row of the chart was reversed, and Michael had the painful menstrual cycle and Lisa did not, but we disregarded the bottom row of the chart and instead only cared about the sex and drew moral conclusions from that, then this would be discrimination between individuals based on sex instead of the actual relevant property - having the pain that we seek to reduce. Doing so would be sexist.

Not only is this bad because it produces a bad and unfair outcome, where Michael receives no help because he has the wrong sex, but it's also an irrational decision to give moral consideration based on sex when there instead are other properties that determine who needs help.

Superiority based on sex or race

Another form sexism and racism can take is by putting one group as superior over another based on belonging to a certain sex or race. And I'm not talking about being "superior at" something, such as being superior at winning a certain competition, but being superior full stop. More important, of higher value, more worthy of protection and respect. And when investigating why this one group is superior to another, one would find that there aren't any other properties than sex or race that can account for morally categorizing men and women differently, or white and black or any other gender or skin color. 

For instance, someone might (wrongfully) say that women are worth less because they are annoying - however if we presented a woman who is not annoying, and a man who is annoying, and yet the category "man/woman" remains unchanged - that men are still said to be superior to women - then the property that makes women worth less cannot be that they are annoying, since it wouldn't be categorically true of women, but also since the man remained morally superior despite being annoying. Otherwise, if they instead said that yes, that man who is annoying also has a lower worth, and that woman who isn't annoying doesn't have a lower moral worth, then the category is not sex, but instead "being annoying", which contradicts the original category of sex. So it wouldn't be the case that women are worth less, it would rather be that annoying people are worth less, to this person.

Another example - someone says black people are worth less because they are lazy. We find a black person who isn't lazy, and a white person who is lazy. If the non-lazy black person still has lower worth then clearly laziness wasn't the issue. And if the lazy white person remains of higher worth, then the reason why black people were given lower moral worth couldn't be because they're lazy. Otherwise if the non-lazy black person now has higher moral worth, and the lazy white person has lower moral worth, then the category wasn't race, but rather laziness, and as such black people aren't categorically of lower worth to this person, and it would rather be some sort of "lazyism" rather than racism.

These examples show that the moral worth, to the sexist or racist, is not dependent on various properties of the group they have chosen other than the ones that are minimally true of the group itself - being male/female, white/black. Otherwise they wouldn't be a sexist or racist, but someone who discriminates on properties that are not inherent to being male/female, white/black. Still of course despicable metrics of moral worth, in these cases.

The reason why sexism and racism are bad, I believe can be shown with this argument:

P1) Taking away someone's ability to suffer, think, experience or act, does not change someone's sex or race

P2) If P1 is true, no morally relevant traits are inherent to sex or race

P3) Discrimination against someone based on morally irrelevant traits is wrong

C) Discriminating against someone based on sex or race is wrong

P1

Imagine you have a human who is black, and you bit by bit imagine a world where they never had the ability to suffer, think and experience anything at all, including their ability to do anything. They'd essentially be the moral equivalent to a rock, as nothing could cause them harm. However, their features that determine their race still remain and didn't change during this process.

P2

If it's then true that the race remains, then we know that the features that were stripped away aren't inherent to someone's race. If they were, then said person would lose their race upon being stripped of their sentience. The point of this premise is to show that you will end up taking away all the traits of a person (whichever they are) that you think has any moral significance, until they are truly morally equivalent to a rock, and if their race remains, then none of those traits are inherent to race.

P3

I think this is common sense that if a trait is not morally relevant, then discriminating based on that trait is wrongful.

It would follow then that discriminating based on race would be wrong.

Why speciesism is bad

If you believe, as I do, that simply being man or woman or white or black, irrespective of anything else that is true of an individual, has no moral significance at all, then I think this serves as a good foundation for accepting that speciesism is a moral wrong.

A speciesist proposes that there is a moral category based on species membership that places different moral value on individuals, irrespective of the properties of the species in question. So same as the aforementioned examples within sexism and racism, it's not because one species is hardworking, clever, compassionate, beautiful and any other traits that someone may attempt to put as a reason for their categorization but only species membership. Let's however do one example just to show the parallel: someone says pigs have lower worth because they aren't nearly as smart as humans - we find a pig that is as smart as an average human, and a human that is as smart as an average pig. If the pig still has lower moral worth, then it's not because pigs are less intelligent. If instead the human we found now gets lower moral worth, the same as the pig, then the category of discrimination is not species but intelligence.

This again just shows that to the speciesist, the properties other than species membership are not relevant. It could be a pig that's reading a book next to you, occasionally talks about things that are bothering them, spends most of their time fighting for justice. But they are still of the species pig, and consequently of lower moral worth to the speciesist.

Some intuitive reasons why discriminating based on species membership is bad

Spock, a character from Star Trek, is not human, but clearly behaves like a human and is alike such that anyone of sound mind would treat him as a fellow human and with equal moral worth. A speciesist would have no defense against someone who proposed Spock loses moral worth in virtue of being of a non-human species.

Imagine that you learned that someone you love very much turned out to be adopted, and upon investigation, the DNA tests showed that they were not technically human, in spite of having passed as a human their whole life. A speciesist would have no defense against someone who proposes their friend loses moral worth in virtue of being of a non-human species.

Imagine that someone (a fellow human, or a host of alien invaders) categorically values non-humans over humans and wishes to kill humans because they are of the wrong species. What defense can someone give that doesn't contradict speciesism?

Note that "bad" here refers not only to unhappy consequences, but to an actual deficiency in the reasoning behind speciesism. The next section will attempt to make that clear by posing a parallel argument to the one above.

The link between racism, sexism and speciesism

All three forms of discrimination seem to have in common that the discrimination happens on something that can be considered physical biological properties but not experiential abilities - it doesn't inherently say anything about properties such as capacity for suffering, capacity for reasoning, capacity for having grand future plans, or any other thing that relates to their experience, preferences or other thing that is usually proposed as reasons to give someone moral consideration. The easiest proof for this, as seen above, is that not all members of any of these categories (race, sex, species) have the same capacities as the other individuals in the same category. Some are impaired in different ways such that they could lose any of the aforementioned capacities, without losing their race-, sex- or species membership.

If race, sex and species say nothing about inherent properties other than physical attributes that are unrelated to the individual's lived experience, then they all share this common criteria for being grouped into different moral categories. Thereby, if sexism or racism are irrational in virtue of being grouped on such an unimportant physical detail, then speciesism is consequently also irrational in virtue of being grouped the same way.

Ultimately the reason why I think sexism and racism are irrational are grounded in a belief that moral relevance happens beyond such groups, and always relates to someone's experience. Since a rock lacks any experience, the rock has no intrinsic morally relevant properties to me, but the same isn't true for animals and humans who do experience these things.

People disagree on fundamental beliefs (axioms) for all kinds of reasons, but these are nonetheless based in values that I expect a lot of people to share.

Here's the argument again to support the main point of the article, and it runs parallel to the argument for sex and race:

P1) Taking away someone's ability to suffer, think, experience or act, does not change someone's species

P2) If P1 is true, no morally relevant traits are inherent to species

P3) Discrimination against someone based on morally irrelevant traits is wrong

 C) Discriminating against someone based on species is wrong

Summary of the premises:

P1

Imagine you have a pig, and go through the hypothetical worlds, as we did with the black person, in which the pig loses everything that makes them an interactable being with any experience, wants or needs, and we might as well imagine them dead. What makes them a pig isn't changed by such a process.

P2

If their species remains after such a process, then no morally relevant traits are inherent to species.

P3

Same rule applies here as with sex or race - discriminating based on morally irrelevant traits is just wrong.

And by accepting these premises it would follow that categorically discriminating against non-human animals would be wrong.

An objection someone might make is to P2, that the species itself is the morally relevant trait, and it doesn't in fact relate to experience of any kind. The idea here is that if they would accept the first argument about sexism and racism but reject this one, then proposing parallel objections to the argument against racism and sexism should yield an obvious flaw in the objection to the species argument.

So the parallel objection would be that sex or race is in fact the morally relevant trait, and it doesn't relate in any way to experience. And if that was the case, you'd be left with an argument for superiority based on race or sex, which I presume would be unacceptable outcomes. The end result is conflicting theories based on what seems as arbitrary appeals to group membership, and the reasoning for excluding one group from moral consideration (species) would be met with the same objection to exclude another (sex or race). Truthfully you could make the same argument against sentience, in that it is an equally arbitrary group, however I think discounting experiences as morally relevant should be much less favourable to most reasonable people.

Rebuttals

Rebuttal 1: Humans are biologically wired to care more about their own species than other species, so speciesism is inherently justified.

Answer: Even if that's true for the majority of humans, that doesn't tell us whether we should support it or deem it justified. I'd put that under the is/ought fallacy. It's also the case that many humans are "wired" to care more about their own in-groups, whether they are sex or race. But are they inherently justified? I would say not. It's nonetheless plausible to me that rejecting speciesism on an ideological level can lead us to make ever more rational moral decisions, if still ultimately limited by an inherent bias towards one's own species

Rebuttal 2: You can't talk about species without talking about a host of properties that belong to that species that define whether they have moral worth. They're inherent to the species. So you can't reduce a species down to just DNA and other things that don't determine someone's experience or abilities.

Answer: I think my proof stands. If you can imagine any member of that species but with impairments that take away some of those properties, you either have to say it has become a different species or that those properties aren't inherent to the species. I think the former is clearly wrong, so it does ultimately reduce down to something very strict and narrow which has no moral relevance.

 

Rebuttal 3: Species separation is murky and there aren't any hard rules, similar to how there aren't any hard rules between a language and a dialect. Some general rules work most of the time, such as viable offspring, but when it comes down it, there can be more variation within species than between species. If you're adding or subtracting major traits such as sentience or other major cognitive abilities, then just because it isn't as visible as horns or fur, it doesn't mean that it can't change the species when removed.

Answer: However we define species and prod at the borders of what makes something one species or another, the consequence of affirming speciesism while taking that view would be that some impaired people aren't in fact of the human species, and there wouldn't be a defense against a speciesist who proposed they lose all their moral worth in virtue of effectively being of a different species. If instead one sought to dismantle the concept of species, then I think for one that this isn't something that most speciesists would do, but also that you could do similar things with sex or race and altogether deny that there is such a thing as racism and sexism. However the forms of discrmination we're referring to are real, and in any case just as arbitrary, whether we choose to call that racism, sexism, speciesism or something else.

Rebuttal 4: Species has to make up more than just unimportant physical characteristics, otherwise we run into absurd conclusions that are obviously false and should be rejected outright. For instance, if the cognitive capacities for pleasure and pain are the same between a human and a non-human, you may come in situations where you should save the non-human animal instead of the human. But humans are always of higher worth than other animals, even when their experiences are the same.

Answer: I wholeheartedly disagree. I'll give you any day of the week that what I would do may not align with what I should do, but this is sooner a personal flaw rather than an absurdity of non-speciesist ethics.

However if the experience two individuals have is the same, and it would harm you or others greatly for the rest of your life to save a non-human over a human, then we should probably at least take that into account, since your own or others' suffering matters too. However I think we should still strive towards reducing our bias towards our own species so that conflicts of interest can become less severe to the decision maker.

Rebuttal 5: You're advocating for nazi ideology, where humans are ranked according to traits they have or lack.

Answer: No, nazi ideology is much closer to sexism, racism and speciesism than what I'm proposing. People are already ranked according to traits they have or lack. In the pandemic there are ethical dilemmas where people's age and likelihood of survival are taken into account. On the contrary, I'm seeking to advocate for ceasing discrimination based on arbitrary metrics. This doesn't doom humans to experimentation - let's go the other way - rather it includes animals into our consideration such that there is no underlying ideology that implies that humans can be discriminated by just belonging to an arbitrary group.