posted August 06, 2009 11:54 AM         

Speciesism

Speciesism involves assigning different values or rights to beings on the basis of their species membership. The term was coined by British psychologist Richard D. Ryder in 1973 to denote a prejudice based on physical differences.[1] "I use the word 'speciesism'", he explained two years later, "to describe the widespread discrimination that is practised by man against other species [...]. Speciesism and racism both overlook or underestimate the similarities between the discriminator and those discriminated against."[2]

The term is used mostly by advocates of animal rights and veganarchism, who believe that it is irrational or morally incorrect to regard animals (which are acknowledged to be sentient[3] beings) as mere objects or property. The view is motivated by an acceptance of Darwinism and the logical upshot which suggests that humans as they are today would be just as speciesist towards their lesser evolved forms.[4] Some philosophers and scientists, however, disagree with the condemnation of speciesism, arguing that it is an acceptable position and behaviour, as a form of human supremacy.

Philosophers Tom Regan and Peter Singer have both argued against the human tendency to exhibit speciesism. Regan believes that all animals have inherent rights and that we cannot assign them a lesser value because of a perceived lack of rationality, while assigning a higher value to infants and the mentally impaired solely on the grounds of their being members of the supposedly superior human species.[5] Singer's philosophical arguments against speciesism are based on the principle of equal consideration of interests.

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Richard Dawkins touches briefly on the subject in The Blind Watchmaker and The God Delusion, elucidating the connection to evolutionary theory. He compares former racist attitudes and assumptions to their present-day speciesist counterparts. In a chapter of former book entitled "The one true tree of life", he argues that it is not just zoological taxonomy that is saved from awkward ambiguity by the extinction of intermediate forms, but also human ethics and law. He describes discrimination against chimpanzees thus:

“ Such is the breathtaking speciesism of our Christian-inspired attitudes, the abortion of a single human zygote (most of them are destined to be spontaneously aborted anyway) can arouse more moral solicitude and righteous indignation than the vivisection of any number of intelligent adult chimpanzees! [...] The only reason we can be comfortable with such a double standard is that the intermediates between humans and chimps are all dead.[6] ”

Dawkins more recently elaborated on his personal position towards speciesism in a live discussion with Singer at The Center for Inquiry on December 7, 2007. [7]

“ What I am doing is going along with the fact that I live in a society where meat eating is accepted as the norm, and it requires a level of social courage which I haven't yet produced to break out of that. It's a little bit like the position which many people would have held a couple of hundred years ago over slavery. Where lots of people felt morally uneasy about slavery but went along with it because the whole economy of the South depended upon slavery. ”

David Nibert seeks to expand the field of sociology "in order to understand how social arrangements create oppressive conditions for both humans and other animals". He compares speciesism to racism and sexism.[8]

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Animal holocaust

Main article: Animal rights and the Holocaust

David Sztybel holds that the treatment of animals can be compared to the Holocaust in a valid and meaningful way. In his paper Can the Treatment of Animals Be Compared to the Holocaust? using a thirty-nine-point comparison Sztybel asserts that the comparison is not offensive and that it does not overlook important differences, or ignore supposed affinities between the human abuse of fellow animals, and the Nazi abuse of fellow humans. The comparison of animal treatment and the Holocaust came into the public eye with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals' "Holocaust on your Plate" exhibit. Sztybel equates the racism of the Nazis with the speciesism inherent in eating meat, or using animal by-products particularly those produced on factory farms.[15] However, even among the supports of the concept of speciesism as a critical tool, such comparisons are not always supported. Y. Michael Barilan writes that speciesism is not the same thing as "Nazi racism" because Nazi racism extolled the abuser and condemned the weaker and the abused. He describes speciesism as the recognition of rights on the basis of group membership rather than solely on the basis of moral considerations.[16]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciesism
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I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts. For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.