What biological speciesists are effectively doing is making a shared biological category the primary (or relevant) determining factor for ethical consideration when it comes to our treatment of animals in general. They are effectively saying that we ought not to harm or eat any animal with whom we share this specific classification or category, but those that fall outside the category are fair game so long as they are edible. That begs the question; why that particular category? For example, one may argue, it would be permissible to eat members of the other sex because there is an observable biological distinction between humans of different sexes.
KINGSLEY UCHE: Most people think that it is morally permissible, all things being equal, to kill and eat non-human animals, while seeing no inconsistency with the simultaneously widely held view that doing the same to human animals is morally reprehensible. Once upon a time, there was no need to justify that position. However, the advent and steady rise of the ethical vegan movement has forced meat eaters to come up with arguments and justifications for their position… Speciesism, while not being an argument in and of itself, it is the underlying motive for many, if not all, of the bad arguments people put forward against ethical veganism. For theoretical convenience, there are two types of Speciesists: the ‘Biological Categorisation Speciesist’ (BCS) and the ‘Rationalising Speciesist’ (RS).
Biological categorisation speciesists are those who unapologetically wear their Speciesism on their sleeves. To justify the majority view I outlined at the beginning of this post, the BCS may work under the negatively framed assumption that we ought not eat other humans because they fall into the same biological classification as us at the species level. What those in this camp are effectively doing is making a shared biological category the primary (or relevant) determining factor for ethical consideration when it comes to our treatment of animals in general. They are effectively saying that we ought not to harm or eat any animal with whom we share this specific classification or category, but those that fall outside the category are fair game so long as they are edible. However, that begs the question; why that particular category? What stops us from extending the inclusive category a step backwards? For example, one may argue, using similar logic,… it would be permissible to eat people of other races because there is an observable distinction between people of different races. Or more clearly, that it would be permissible to eat members of the other sex because there is an observable biological distinction between humans of different sexes. Thus, when it comes specifically to the ethics of our diet, harmful discrimination based solely on species isn’t any less arbitrary than harmful discrimination based on race or sex.
This brings me to the second type of Speciesist – the Rationalising Speciesist. Most meat eaters fall into this category. They are the ones who try to explain why Speciesism, unlike racism and sexism, is justified when determining which beings’ interests should count morally. The rationalising speciesists argue that unlike race or sex differences – which they concede are arbitrary and lacking any moral significance – species differences involve morally significant traits like differing levels of cognition. The reasoning here is that since humans have autonomy and are capable of rationality, self-awareness, or reciprocal moral relationships, to the degree that other animals are not, then it is not arbitrary to assign humans special moral treatment which prevents us from killing and eating other humans, whereas animals are fair game because they either lack all of those qualities entirely or possess them in very low resolutions.
The problem with that argument is that it is, to put it crudely, a load of bullshit. A more refined way to put it is that it is essentially a smokescreen motivation. A little probing and one would quickly find that those are not the real reasons meat eaters desist from killing other humans for food. We can be sure of this because there are many humans – including infants, humans with profound cognitive disabilities, and individuals in irreversible comas – who simply lack that kind of higher-order cognition, and possess far lesser autonomy, self-awareness, and cognition than many non-human animals (e.g chimps, dolphins, elephants, pigs, cows, etc). Yet most people, including the rationalising speciesists and meat-eaters generally, would not consider infants, severely cognitively impaired humans, or those in irreversible coma as kosher…
Speciesist sentiments are not limited to the favouring of humans over non-humans; it also manifests in the favouring of some animal species over others e.g the favouring of dogs over pigs. If moral interest is considered only in the case of beings who are or could be persons, then what justifies the outrage that proud pork eaters, especially in the West, exhibit whenever they see an Asian or an African killing a dog for food despite the fact that pigs have similar levels of cognition as dogs? In other words, if dogs are accorded moral interests my many Western meat eaters despite not possessing either actual or modal personhood, why aren’t pigs and other animals accorded the same?…
The failure of speciesism is not necessarily an indication that human and non-human animals ought to be accorded equal consideration in every given context, neither is it even to say that ethical veganism is necessarily the morally correct view,… it is just to say that if one is going to bring up Speciesism as a justification for why killing non-human animals for food is morally permissible, they should at least be able to provide working explanation for why Speciesism is unlike the other arbitrary classification models humans have historically and continue to use to perpetuate injustices – models which are, for good reasons, widely considered irrelevant… Simply alluding to the superiority of the human species, regardless of how that superiority is measured, is not an argument for why harming members of other sentient species is morally okay, even if one is justified in considering those other species to be inferior. SOURCE…
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