Speciesism: Why It Is Wrong and the Implications of Rejecting It

By Magnus Vinding

What can justify discrimination against other sentient beings?

In this book, Magnus Vinding explores the issue of species discrimination. He argues that speciesism — discrimination based on species membership — is unjustifiable, and proceeds to examine the practical implications of this conclusion. This examination reveals more than a few ways in which our behavior and attitudes need to change profoundly.

"Most people agree that discriminating against someone on the basis of gender, sex or skin color is morally objectionable, but what about species membership? Speciesism: Why It Is Wrong and the Implications of Rejecting It makes a compelling case that this form of discrimination has no justification either, and addresses the most significant implications. These include both the rejection of animal exploitation and the rejection of the idea that we have no reason to help nonhuman animals in need of aid, including when they are suffering in the wild for natural reasons. This book is likely to challenge many of our assumptions, and will encourage us to think deeper about the moral consideration of nonhuman animals."
— Oscar Horta, professor of moral philosophy at University of Santiago de Compostela, author of Making a Stand for Animals

"Humans hurt, harm and kill billions of sentient beings. We routinely treat nonhuman animals in ways that would earn the perpetrators a life sentence in prison if the victims were humans of comparable sentience. Magnus Vinding makes a compelling case for a moral revolution in human behaviour toward nonhuman individuals. Highly recommended."
— David Pearce, author of The Hedonistic Imperative and Can Biotechnology Abolish Suffering?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Magnus Vinding
• Release date: May 2, 2015
• ISBN: 9781513055985

Magnus Vinding

Magnus Vinding is the author of Speciesism: Why It Is Wrong and the Implications of Rejecting It (2015), Reflections on Intelligence (2016), You Are Them (2017), Effective Altruism: How Can We Best Help Others? (2018), Suffering-Focused Ethics: Defense and Implications (2020), Reasoned Politics (2022), and Essays on Suffering-Focused Ethics (2022). He is blogging at magnusvinding.com

Book preview

Part I: Why Speciesism Is Wrong

1. Why Speciesism Is Wrong

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A defining trait of humanity’s moral progress over the last few centuries is that we gradually have distanced ourselves from discrimination in its many forms. Where it was once the norm that the rich Caucasian man above a certain age had rights that nobody else had, while women and people of certain ethnicities had no rights at all, we have finally come to realize that such discrimination is deeply unethical. We have finally realized that racism, sexism, ableism, and other forms of discrimination against human beings cannot be justified. Not that they do not exist anymore — they do indeed — but they are no longer as widespread as they were 200, 100, or even 50 years ago, and they are now widely regarded as indefensible.

We have finally realized that women should not be given fewer rights because they are women, that people should not be discriminated against because of the color of their skin, and that people who have a disability should not be treated with less care and respect because they have a disability. When it comes to humans, we have finally realized that it is by virtue of sentience alone — the fact that we are conscious beings who can experience suffering and well-being — that we are inherently valuable in moral terms. Our skin color, gender, and sexuality are all irrelevant to our status as beings of inherent moral value, beings who should be respected and treated as ends rather than mere means.

Having realized this much, the question that is now staring us in the face is this: Why have we confined this insight to humans only? Why, when it comes to non-human beings, is it suddenly as if we are back in time, failing to realize that sentience alone is what makes a being morally valuable? Why are we still defending diminished concern for non-human beings — even defending that we can exploit and kill them for frivolous reasons, such as palate pleasure — with reference to the very traits that we recognize to be morally irrelevant when it comes to humans? Indeed, why is speciesism still so pervasive?

Whatever the reason may be, it is not a valid one. Speciesism is unjustifiable for the same simple reason that other forms of discrimination, such as racism, sexism, and heterosexism, are unjustifiable: because it amounts to diminished moral concern for beings based on a morally irrelevant criterion. Just as an individual’s skin color, sex, or sexual orientation is ethically irrelevant, it is likewise not morally relevant which species a sentient being belongs to.

In short, we should recognize that individuals have inherent moral value, and prioritize their well-being, on the basis of their sentience alone — not their skin color, gender, sexuality, or species. To do anything else is to engage in discrimination against certain beings — to give them unjustified disadvantageous consideration.

The conclusion that speciesism is unjustified may seem counterintuitive at first sight, and various attempts have been made to reject it so as to preserve the gap between human and non-human beings that still exists in many people’s moral perception. The remainder of this chapter will reply to some of the most common of these attempts.

Discrimination against non-human animals is not ethically unjustifiable. Human beings and non-human animals are different. Humans have cognitive capacities that other animals don’t have. Humans are far more intelligent.

Human beings are surely different from non-human beings, but men are also different from women, and people who do not have certain mental abilities are also different from people who do. The point being that mere differences do not necessarily justify disadvantageous consideration. The contrast between our view and treatment of humans who do not have certain mental abilities and our view and treatment of non-human animals who also do not have certain mental abilities is especially striking and worth contemplating in this context.

After all, we generally do not find it defensible to grant less moral consideration to humans who do not possess certain cognitive abilities that most other humans possess. On the contrary, we rightly realize that we often have even more reason to help them, as they often need help and assistance more. When it comes to humans, we rightly realize that individuals should be granted full moral consideration regardless of how they would score in an intelligence test, yet we somehow fail to extend this insight to non-human individuals, which reveals a clear double standard in our thinking.

In general, for any trait that we may propose as the missing trait that justifies our discrimination against non-human animals, we can likewise point to certain humans who do not possess the trait in question. Yet in the case