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Glossary

89 concepts used in the collection, in plain language, with the chapter where each one is discussed.

Basic concepts

Animal exploitation: Using animals as resources: for food, clothing, testing, entertainment, labor or companionship. Vol. IV, ch. 1 →
Anthropocentrism: A form of speciesism that puts humans at the center: only humans would matter in themselves, or they would matter more. Vol. I, ch. 1 →
Equal consideration: The principle that harms and benefits of the same size should have the same weight, whatever the species, race or gender of whoever receives them. Vol. II, ch. 5 →
Intelligentism: Discrimination based on degree of intelligence: giving more weight to those who are more cognitively complex. Vol. VI, ch. 8 →
Moral agent: Someone who can be held responsible for what they do, because they understand moral reasons. Babies and animals are not moral agents. Vol. I, ch. 10 →
Moral consideration: Taking into account, in our decisions, someone's good for their own sake, and not only because of the effects on others. Vol. I, ch. 1 →
Moral patient: Someone who can be morally affected by other people's decisions and therefore must be taken into account. A moral patient does not need to be a moral agent. Vol. I, ch. 10 →
Moral status: The degree of moral importance given to someone. The special status thesis says some individuals have priority even when they suffer less. Vol. I, ch. 14 →
Sentience: The capacity to have positive and negative experiences, such as suffering and enjoyment. A sentient being can be harmed and benefited. Vol. II, ch. 3 →
Speciesism: Discrimination against those who do not belong to a certain species: giving less weight (or none) to harms and benefits just because of the species of whoever receives them. Vol. I, ch. 1 →
Valence: The positive or negative character of an experience: what makes something feel good or bad. Vol. VI, ch. 8 →
Veganism: The position of not taking part in animal exploitation, refusing products and services that depend on it, as far as possible. Vol. IV, ch. 3 →

Arguments and tests

Appeal to authority: Accepting a conclusion because someone important defended it, instead of evaluating the reasons offered. Vol. I, ch. 13 →
Appeal to nature: Arguing that something is right because it is natural. Something being natural does not mean it is good or just. Vol. I, ch. 8 →
Appeal to tradition: Arguing that something is right because it has always been done. Many traditions have been unjust. Vol. I, ch. 9 →
Argument from relevance: What matters for moral consideration is being able to be harmed or benefited; that depends on sentience, not on species or intelligence. Vol. II, ch. 1 →
Argument from species overlap: If lacking certain capacities does not justify treating some humans worse, then lacking them does not justify treating animals worse either. Also called the argument from marginal cases. Vol. II, ch. 2 →
Benefit of the doubt: When we are unsure whether a being is sentient, we should err on the side of caution: the mistake of treating it as an object costs more than the opposite mistake. Vol. II, ch. 13 →
Burden of proof: The obligation to justify a claim. Whoever defends harming someone needs to justify the harm. Vol. VIII, ch. 8 →
Euthyphro dilemma: Is something good because an authority approves of it, or does the authority approve of it because it is good? If the second, what matters is the reasons, not the authority. Vol. I, ch. 13 →
Impartiality test: Asking what we would choose if we did not know which position we would occupy among those affected, including which species we would be. Vol. II, ch. 10 →
Magnitude Thesis: The strength of our reasons to avoid harming someone and to benefit them depends on the size of the harm or benefit, not on species. Vol. I, ch. 14 →
Special Status Thesis: The idea that some individuals have a "trump card," usually called dignity, that gives them priority even when they would be harmed less. Vol. I, ch. 14 →
Veil of ignorance: A device from Rawls: choosing principles without knowing who we will be in society. Applied to animal ethics, without even knowing our species. Vol. II, ch. 10 →

The harm of death

Deprivation: An explanation of the harm of death: it prevents (deprives) the individual from having the positive experiences they would have had. Vol. III, ch. 1 →
Epicurean view of death: Epicurus's idea that death is not a harm, because when it comes the individual no longer exists to be harmed. Vol. III, ch. 1 →
Harm of death: The harm that death does to the one who dies. The most widely accepted view: death deprives the individual of the good things they would have lived. Vol. III, ch. 1 →
Psychological connectedness: How much someone keeps of their memories, intentions and desires between two moments. Some views say death harms less those who have little connectedness. Vol. III, ch. 7 →
QALY: Quality-adjusted life year: measures how much lifetime someone loses and how good that time would have been. Used in public health. Vol. III, ch. 5 →
Replaceability: The idea that killing an animal is not wrong if another one is brought into existence in its place. The collection shows why this idea fails. Vol. III, ch. 8 →

Environmentalism and nature

Biocentrism: The view that every living being, sentient or not, deserves moral consideration. Vol. VI, ch. 15 →
Biodiversity: The variety of species in a place. It is a measure of species, not of the well-being of individuals. Vol. V, ch. 5 →
Ecocentrism: The view that ecosystems and nature as a whole have moral value of their own. Vol. V, ch. 1 →
Ecological balance: The relative stability of population sizes over time. It does not, by itself, show that the animals are doing well. Vol. V, ch. 5 →
Environmentalism: In this collection: views that give intrinsic value to nonsentient entities, such as species and ecosystems, even when that is worse for sentient beings. Vol. V, ch. 1 →
Holism: A view that values the whole (species, ecosystem, biotic community) rather than the individuals that make it up. Vol. V, ch. 2 →

Wild animals

Altruistic killing: A proposal to destroy habitats so that fewer animals are born and suffer. It is debated among advocates for wild animals themselves. Vol. VII, ch. 36 →
Natural harms: Harms that animals suffer from natural processes, such as hunger, disease, parasitism, cold and disasters. Vol. VII, ch. 3 →
Paternalism: Acting for someone's good against what they prefer. Vol. VII, ch. 12 →
Predation: One animal hunting and eating another. The collection discusses whether and when we would have reasons to intervene. Vol. VII, ch. 31 →
Primary productivity: The amount of biomass produced by plants in an environment. Reducing it tends to reduce the number of animals born to suffer. Vol. VII, ch. 31 →
Welfare biology: A proposed field of research to study animals in their environments from the point of view of what affects them positively or negatively. Vol. VII, ch. 27 →
Wild animals: Animals that live in the wild, outside direct human control. They are the vast majority of sentient beings. Vol. VII, ch. 1 →
r-selection: Reproducing by having huge numbers of offspring, almost all of whom die young. It is the rule among animals and explains why suffering prevails in nature. Vol. VII, ch. 3 →

The future and s-risks

Broad and targeted strategies: Broad strategies try to have a good impact in almost every scenario; targeted ones bet on specific scenarios. Vol. IX, ch. 9 →
Expected value: The severity of a scenario multiplied by the probability that it will happen. For bad scenarios, we speak of expected disvalue. Vol. IX, ch. 1 →
Influence triad: The three factors that determine an agent's impact on sentient beings: their intentions, their knowledge and their power. Vol. IX, ch. 13 →
Longtermism: The position that positively influencing the long-term future is a moral priority. Vol. IX, ch. 4 →
Risk factor: Something that is not a catastrophe in itself but greatly increases its chance or severity, as in medicine. Vol. IX, ch. 8 →
S-risks: Risks that suffering will occur in the future on a gigantic scale, greater than all the suffering that has existed on Earth so far. Vol. IX, ch. 1 →
Substratism: Discrimination based on the material a body is made of (organic or not). Carbonism is its form directed against nonorganic beings. Vol. XII, ch. 11 →
Temporal impartiality: Giving the same weight to suffering no matter when it happens: today, a hundred years from now or a million years from now. Vol. IX, ch. 2 →
X-risks: Existential risks: risks of the annihilation of humanity or the permanent loss of its potential. Vol. IX, ch. 1 →

Activism and strategy

Abolitionism: Advocating an end to animal exploitation, and not merely its regulation. Vol. VIII, ch. 11 →
Cultivated meat: Meat produced from cultivated cells, without raising and slaughtering animals. Vol. VIII, ch. 12 →
Disguised normative objection: A disagreement about goals presented as if it were only a strategic doubt ("that would be great, but it won't work"). Vol. VIII, ch. 8 →
Indirect arguments: Advocating an end to consuming animals for the sake of health or the environment, rather than because of the harm done to the animals themselves. Vol. VIII, ch. 4 →
Neglectedness (criterion): The fewer people are already working on a problem, the more difference each additional person makes. Vol. VIII, ch. 1 →
Shifting the focus: Taking speciesism out of the center of the debate by discussing only health, the environment or practical details. Vol. VIII, ch. 6 →
Total and sufficient approaches: The total approach defends a complete ethical view; the sufficient approach shows that certain goals can be accepted from many different views. Vol. VIII, ch. 5 →
Tractability: How much of a problem can be solved with the resources available. Vol. VIII, ch. 1 →
Welfarism: An ambiguous term that can name anyone from those who accept exploiting animals "without cruelty" to those who defend reforms as a path to abolition. Vol. VIII, ch. 10 →

Biases

Cognitive bias: A systematic distortion in the way we judge, which leads us to wrong conclusions without our noticing. Vol. X, ch. 1 →
Identifiable victim effect: The tendency to help one victim with a face and a name more than many anonymous victims. Vol. X, ch. 1 →
Moral licensing: Feeling entitled to act badly after having done something good. Also called the moral credential effect. Vol. X, ch. 4 →
Motivated reasoning: Evaluating arguments more strictly when they go against what we want to believe, and less strictly when they favor us. Vol. X, ch. 5 →
Scope neglect: Failing to adjust our concern to the size of a problem: we react almost the same way to a thousand or a million victims. Vol. X, ch. 1 →
Status quo bias: Preferring things the way they already are, just because they are that way. Vol. X, ch. 2 →

Ethical theory

Consequentialism: A family of theories whose focal point is consequences: the right thing is whatever produces the best results. Vol. XI, ch. 5 →
Contractualism: Theories according to which morality is whatever would be agreed upon by the parties under suitable conditions. Vol. XI, ch. 6 →
Deontology: A family of theories whose focal point is rules or duties, which hold even when breaking them would bring better results. Vol. XI, ch. 5 →
Discourse ethics: The theory that valid norms are those that everyone affected would accept in a free dialogue. Vol. XI, ch. 6 →
Egalitarianism: Theories that place value on reducing inequalities between individuals. Vol. XI, ch. 6 →
Ethics of care: A theory centered on relationships and on attention to the concrete needs of the vulnerable. Vol. XI, ch. 6 →
Focal point: What each family of theories considers most fundamental: consequences, rules or character traits. Vol. XI, ch. 5 →
Hedonism: The theory that well-being consists of positive experiences and the absence of negative ones. Vol. XI, ch. 2 →
Incommensurability: When two values cannot be measured on a common scale. Vol. XI, ch. 7 →
Instrumental value: The value something has as a means of achieving something else that is valued. Vol. XI, ch. 1 →
Intrinsic value: The value something has as an end, in itself, and not as a means to something else (instrumental value). Vol. XI, ch. 1 →
Maximin: The rule of choosing the option whose worst outcome is the best: giving maximum priority to those who are worst off. Vol. XI, ch. 6 →
Metaethics: The field that studies the nature of moral judgments: whether there are moral truths, whether they are objective, how we know them. Vol. I, ch. 15 →
Negative utilitarianism: A version of utilitarianism that gives priority to reducing suffering over increasing happiness. Vol. XI, ch. 6 →
Normative ethics: The field that investigates what we ought to do and why: which actions are right or wrong. Vol. XI, ch. 5 →
Pluralism: Views that recognize more than one valuable aspect, which must be weighed against one another. Vol. XI, ch. 7 →
Prioritarianism: Benefits count more the worse off the one who receives them is. Vol. XI, ch. 6 →
Sufficientarianism: What matters most is that everyone reaches a sufficient level of well-being. Vol. XI, ch. 6 →
Theories of well-being: They investigate what makes someone's life go well: pleasure (hedonism), the satisfaction of desires, or a list of objective goods. Vol. XI, ch. 2 →
Utilitarianism: A form of consequentialism that seeks to maximize the total well-being of those affected. Vol. XI, ch. 6 →
Virtue ethics: Theories whose focal point is character: the right thing is what a virtuous person would do. Vol. XI, ch. 5 →