Is Species What Matters?

Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume I, p. 12 of the PDF edition · English translation

2.1. A double standard

Enormous numbers of nonhuman animals suffer and are killed as a result of their exploitation for the most diverse purposes. Moreover, nonhuman animals rarely receive the help they need when they are affected by natural processes such as hunger, thirst, disease, natural disasters, and so on. All of this is widely accepted and rarely questioned. However, if similar attitudes were held toward humans, they would be widely considered unacceptable. Is it possible to justify this moral double standard?

2.2. Do humans matter more simply because they are human?

It is sometimes argued that the reason only humans should receive moral consideration (or should receive it to a greater degree) is the very fact that they belong to the human species¹².

The central problem with this argument is that it does not explain why belonging to the human species would be relevant to questions of moral consideration. What is at issue is precisely what it is about humans that would justify disadvantaging nonhuman animals. Saying that "humans are human" does not provide that answer. That is, the argument assumes in advance what it sets out to prove, committing the fallacy known as begging the question¹³. This fallacy consists in trying to show that the conclusion of an argument is true while already starting from the assumption that it is true and using it as one of the premises.

For example, imagine someone said that only frogs should be respected. We would certainly want to know why. If the person replied, "well, it's simply because frogs are frogs," we would immediately see that this "explanation" explains nothing at all. Yet the same applies to humans.

2.3. Should each of us favor members of our own species?

Another attempt to justify anthropocentrism consists in claiming that only humans should receive moral consideration (or should receive it to a greater degree), not because they belong to the human species, but because they belong to the same species we belong to¹⁴.

Unlike the claim that there is something special about humans simply because they are human, what this attempt claims is that there is something special about the fact that whoever is making a decision belongs to the same species as those who will be affected by it. According to this position, because we belong to the human species, we should favor humans, but if we belonged to, say, the species Sus scrofa domesticus, we should favor pigs. Proponents of this position say they do not need to explain what is special about humans, because they do not claim that "everyone should favor humans," but rather that "everyone should favor members of their own species."

The central problem with this attempt is that it does not explain why whether those affected by a decision belong to the same species as the decision-maker would be relevant to questions of moral consideration. Instead of offering that explanation, this attempt assumes in advance that the species one belongs to is what matters (and that is precisely what is at issue in the debate about speciesism). Therefore, this defense also commits the fallacy of begging the question.

To draw an analogy, imagine a racist claimed that he did not need to explain what is special about the members of his race, because what he is saying is "let each person favor members of their own race" (and not that everyone should favor members of his race). We could still challenge him by asking: "and what is the relevance of race to determining how much consideration we should give someone?" And, clearly, simply saying "let each person favor members of their own race" does not provide that explanation. Yet the same happens when someone says "let each person favor members of their own species."

Of course, there are other attempts to justify anthropocentrism, discussed elsewhere. Our conclusion here, however, is more specific: these two attempts, because they beg the question, fail to justify it.