The starting point
Every day, animals are exploited and killed for many purposes. On top of that, animals living in the wild suffer a lot from hunger, thirst, disease, cold, heat, and injuries. If the victims were human, almost everyone would find this unacceptable and try to help. With animals, most people think it's normal.
The most common excuses
Throughout Volume I, we saw several attempts to justify this difference. Humans would matter more because they:
- are human, or are the same species as us;
- have a soul or a special dignity;
- have (or could have) reason, language, a sense of justice, or culture;
- have bonds of love, solidarity, or politics with each other;
- belong to a species, which is biological; or because ignoring animals is natural, or is tradition.
The question that knocks them all down
For each of these excuses, you can ask the same question: what does this have to do with whether someone can be hurt?
Knowing math doesn't change how much a burn hurts. Having an old tradition doesn't change the fear of the one who's about to die.
The argument from relevance
The author proposes what he calls the argument from relevance. It works like this:
- To know who we owe consideration to, what matters is who can be harmed or helped by what we do.
- Those who can be harmed or helped are sentient beings, who feel good and bad things.
- Many animals are sentient.
- So we should give them consideration.
In short
- All the excuses for ignoring animals fail at the same point: they have nothing to do with being able to suffer.
- What matters is who can be harmed or helped.
- That includes all beings who feel, of any species.