Willful ignorance enables individuals to continue benefitting from animal use, while simultaneously protecting against their moral conscience and its repercussions for their behavior. It is the speciesist’s first line of defense. By staying ignorant, the speciesist can unquestioningly and blindly continue her wrongdoings towards animals. Yet it is easily breached by anyone with the time and determination to find out the truth.
EMNEE VAN DEN BRANDELER: Many animal ethicists have argued that speciesism is a form of discrimination — one that is made on the basis of species membership. A common thread running through animal ethics and the animal rights movement is that once people recognize such speciesism, a trend towards collective political action and anti-speciesist governance will logically ensue. Unfortunately, there seems to be widespread ignorance about this form of discrimination — an ignorance, that amounts to more than a simple non-knowing.
Peter Singer suggests that ‘[i]gnorance […] is the speciesist’s first line of defense. Yet it is easily breached by anyone with the time and determination to find out the truth’. It seems plausible that ignorance is strategically used to avoid moral blame and its repercussions, since the blissfully ignorant speciesist benefits immensely from using animals, i.e., for research, food, entertainment, and so on.
And yet, the topic of ignorance itself has not received much attention from animal ethicists. Neither has speciesism received attention from epistemologists who discuss the theoretical and political role of ignorance. To put this into perspective, the role of ignorance in discriminatory practices has been discussed for other forms of discrimination, such as sexism… The concept of speciesism has played an important role in the field of animal ethics for delineating the moral status of animals.
As first conceptualized by Ryder and later popularized by Peter Singer —speciesism is analogous to other –isms, such as sexism and racism… Speciesism is indeed a form of discrimination, and can therefore constitute a moral wrong. When discrimination among individuals happens on the basis of a morally superfluous trait — such as skin colour, sex, or cognitive intelligence — it is morally objectionable. Therefore, speciesism is best defined as ‘discrimination based on species membership’. Specifically,… the definition of speciesism is ‘discrimination against those who are not classified as belonging to one or more particular species’…
Speciesism is so normalized, that one can indeed quickly disregard how deeply it is embedded in our behaviour as well as in the policies governing the treatment of animals. However, the connection between speciesism and ignorance has received little attention in the literature. The very few animal scholars who have discussed ignorance primarily frame it as an individual strategy to avoid moral blame — and thus only consider a very narrow understanding of ignorance. Namely, they argue that willful ignorance enables individuals to continue benefitting from animal use, while simultaneously protecting against their moral conscience.
Peter Singer has also alluded to this motivation: ‘Ignorance has prevailed so long only because people do not want to find out the truth. “Don’t tell me, you’ll spoil my dinner” is the usual reply to an attempt to tell someone just how that dinner was produced’. In Singer’s example, the speciesist wishes to avoid moral blame and its repercussions for her behaviour. Indeed, meat-eaters tend to defend their behaviour by claiming that meat production is normal, that it is natural, that it is necessary for our health, or that it is not seriously harmful to animals or morally wrong. By staying ignorant, the speciesist can unquestioningly and blindly continue her wrongdoings towards animals.
On the conceptual level, the connection between speciesism and ignorance is much more complicated than a simple non-knowing about speciesism and one’s own speciesist ways, precisely because of the vested interests with respect to using animals. As such, the field of animal ethics requires a deeper understanding of the epistemic dimensions of speciesism. To this end, I will introduce an epistemology of ignorance into the animal ethics debate. Indeed, it is necessary to conceptualize speciesist ignorance as a special form of ignorance, I suggest, because the human-animal-relationship is epistemically specific: this epistemic relationship is especially fragile in comparison with inter-human relationships.
To be sure, epistemic uncertainties also play into inter-human relationships, but they are arguably even more prevalent across species. For instance, there exist many uncertainties about the target of ignorance with respect to animals (i.e., what animals’ interests and desires consist in); crucially, these epistemic uncertainties are misused by humans to undermine animals’ abilities and subjective experiences. And it is this misuse of epistemic uncertainties in the human-animal-relationship, I claim, that makes our ignorance of a specific type, requiring its own conceptualization in the philosophical debate.
On the theoretical level, a conception of speciesist ignorance can perform various functions that make it instrumental to the animal ethics debate. First, it improves our understanding of how (speciesist) ignorance influences injustices towards animals. This conception describes the speciesist status quo with greater accuracy, for instance, by explaining why speciesist ignorance (and the consequential wrongdoings) are so widespread.
Second, a conception of speciesist ignorance urges us to correctly allocate blame, by considering when ignorance about moral wrongdoings may provide an excuse. If I do not know that my action was wrong, it is questionable whether I am blameworthy for this wrongdoing. Under what circumstances and to what degree may speciesist ignorance excuse blame for common actions, such as eating meat?
Third, a conception of speciesist ignorance prompts us to better appreciate how the phenomenon of ignorance comes about, and thereby, to devise effective advocacy strategies and policies to discourage this form of ignorance.
Fourth, a clear conception of speciesist ignorance may change our view of what injustices towards animals consist in. For instance, the injustices which animals suffer at the hands of humans may have an important, hitherto overlooked epistemic dimension. Further, if speciesist ignorance turns out to perpetuate the injustices towards animals, it may also, more fundamentally, constitute an intrinsic facet of injustices towards animals.
On the practical level, recognizing speciesist ignorance as such is especially important, given the high moral stakes of the corresponding speciesist practices. Arguably, our speciesist ways could continue indefinitely for as long as our mistreatment of animals is not widely viewed as a moral issue at all. Such widespread moral ignorance significantly impedes any efforts to implement or even consider the political reforms that would be required to achieve just inter-species societies. For all of these reasons, the animal ethics debate stands to be enriched by an epistemology of speciesist ignorance. SOURCE…
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