Could the Possession of Capacities or Relationships Justify Speciesism?

Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume I, p. 17 of the PDF edition · English translation

4.1. The appeal to capacities

It is sometimes argued that only humans matter (or matter to a greater degree) because they possess certain capacities¹⁷, such as reason; language; freedom; a sense of right and wrong; a sense of justice; autonomy; culture, and so on. These capacities enable humans to do things such as: make mutual agreements; understand the notion of rights; respect the rights of others; claim their rights, and so on.

Proponents of this view commonly claim things like: "animals cannot have rights because they have no duties"; "animals cannot have rights because they are incapable of fighting for their rights"; "animals do not suffer injustice because they do not understand what justice is," "only cognitively sophisticated beings should be respected," and so on.

4.2. The appeal to relationships

At other times it is said that only humans matter (or matter to a greater degree) not because they possess certain capacities, but because they have certain relationships with one another¹⁸, such as relationships of affection, mutual solidarity, political relationships, and power relationships. An example of an appeal to political relationships is the claim that we are justified in giving lesser consideration to nonhuman animals (or even in disregarding them completely) because they do not contribute their labor to our society¹⁹. An example of an appeal to a power relationship, in turn, is the claim that we are justified in doing whatever we please with nonhuman animals simply because we have the power to do so²⁰.

4.3. Problems common to all these arguments

A first problem, common to all these arguments, is that many humans do not possess these capacities or relationships²¹. For example: babies, children up to a certain age, and humans who are victims of certain diseases or accidents that prevent the exercise of those capacities or relationships. If the lack of these capacities or relationships in these humans does not justify treating them worse (much less justify disregarding them completely), then neither could it justify treating nonhuman animals worse (much less justify the suffering and deaths to which they are routinely subjected).

The second problem is that none of these arguments explains why possessing those capacities or relationships would be relevant to questions of moral consideration. This is simply assumed in advance. Yet that is exactly what these arguments would need to explain, since it is not obvious (indeed, as we have seen, it is widely rejected when humans are affected by our decisions).

The third problem is that there are reasons to think that whether or not one possesses these capacities or relationships is completely irrelevant to questions of moral consideration²². What is at stake in questions of moral consideration is the possibility that our decisions will harm or benefit those affected by them. So what seems relevant to knowing whom to give moral consideration to is knowing who can be harmed or benefited. Possessing those capacities or relationships does not determine who can be harmed and benefited. What determines that is sentience (that is, the capacity to have positive and negative experiences).