Making a Stand for Animals

Oscar Horta

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000598865
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Zoology
• Index: Biological Sciences

Engaging and thought-provoking, this book examines how humans see and treat other animals and argues that we should extend equal consideration and respect to all beings, human and nonhuman alike.

Our world is plighted by 'isms'such asracism andsexism, but we may have overlooked a very important one: speciesism. Speciesism is a form of discrimination against those who don't belong to a certain species. It drives us to see nonhuman animals as objects, rather than individuals with their own interests and with the ability to feel and suffer. This book questions all of the assumptions speciesism is based upon. It raises many challenging questions over humans' very complicated attitudes toward other animals. Thinking about how animals are used as well as the suffering of wild animals, and what the future may be for all beings, this book calls for society to seriously take into account the interests of all animals.

For all who care about animals, or simply how to make the world a better place, this book is essential reading.

Chapter 1 Speciesism A form of discrimination

DOI: 10.4324/9781003285922-2

The Planet of the Apes

Let’s start with an imaginary situation. Suppose some unexpected event alters the course of human evolution so that the descendants of current humans evolve by becoming less intelligent. After many generations, they end up as beings with cognitive capacities similar to those that most adult chimpanzees currently have. However, they still look like humans do today. For their part, the descendants of chimpanzees evolve in a way that makes them more intelligent. They end up having the capacities that most adult humans currently have.

It so happens that in this story, the future chimpanzees hunt humans down. They confine them in cages and exploit them for other purposes. That is, they treat them in ways humans currently treat chimpanzees.

As most of us know, a similar situation is presented in a series of films. What do we think about the way future chimpanzees behave in them? Do we approve of what they do to human beings? Most people who watch these films disapprove. There are some chimpanzees in the films who behave benevolently toward humans and that oppose the discrimination against them. And those who view these films think that these characters behave justly.

This situation is puzzling because many people who think this also support the current exploitation of animals. That is, they think it is acceptable to do to animals the same things that humans suffer in The Planet of the Apes, and this attitude seems contradictory. In this chapter, we examine whether it can be justified.

“Animals”: what's in a name?

We can start by considering a small linguistic point that is revealing about our attitude toward animals. There’s another curious point in The Planet of the Apes films. The future chimpanzees refer to the future humans, but not to themselves, as “animals.” This is interesting, as, today, we use that word with the opposite meaning, that is, we refer to chimpanzees, but not to human beings, as “animals.”

Why is this? The reason is that the word “animals” is commonly used to name only those animals that are from a species different from ours. However, this meaning is inaccurate. Humans are not vegetables, fungi, or bacteria: like chimpanzees, we’re animals (in fact, like them, we belong to what in biology is called the family of hominids, which is classified within the order of primates). This fact, which is taught in the natural sciences in schools, is fairly obvious. However, it contradicts the way we typically use the word “animal.” We say “animals” when we should say “animals from species different from our own.”

For this reason, in this book, terms such as “nonhuman animals” and other similar expressions are often used. Doing so allows us to use more accurate language and reminds us of the need to avoid this confusion.¹

In fact, it’s revealing that this remark is needed. It shows that many people feel uncomfortable with human beings being animals. We often want to think that we’re special and apart from the rest,² which leads us to forget reality and to have a distorted view of the kind of beings humans are. However, this issue is not the main problem. The more serious issue is that we use this idea to try to justify our behavior toward other animals. Accordingly, we harm them in many different ways. We use them as we please and treat them in ways that we would never treat human beings. This difference in treatment has very serious consequences for them.

Introducing speciesism

This attitude toward nonhuman animals is very common. Therefore, it should be very easy to see, but it often goes unnoticed. This is because this attitude has traditionally been viewed as something normal, as everyday common sense, and it can be very hard for us to notice that our attitudes might be inappropriate or even harmful. In this regard, the lack of consideration for animals is not without precedent. Today and throughout history, human beings have been discriminated against for many reasons. These include sex or gender; skin color and physical features; social origin; sexual orientation; and intellectual and physical capabilities. Those who have benefited from this discrimination have usually considered these reasons legitimate. Today, however, many people believe they are totally unjustified, and with good reason. If someone suffers some harm, the fact that this individual has a certain skin color or is identified as a man or as a woman won’t make them suffer any less, or make their suffering less important. What matters when it comes to respecting someone is not their circumstantial features such as their skin color; rather, it is the fact that they can suffer harm because of what we do. And our actions can cause very serious harm to the victims of discrimination. That’s what matters.

In light of this, the question arises: Given the way we behave toward animals of species other than ours, couldn’t we also be discriminating against them?

A growing number of people think so. In fact, there is a word for this belief. Among the names of the forms of discrimination suffered by human beings, the most well-known may be “racism” and “sexism.” When it comes to our attitudes toward animals, there is a similar name, speciesism.

What is speciesism?

This word, “speciesism”, has been in use for several decades and has been widely used in academia, research, and culture, as well as by the general public.³ What does it mean? It’s not difficult to guess, as it’s analogous to other words we already know, such as those mentioned above: “racism” and “sexism.” Let’s change the words “sex” or “race,” from which those terms derive, to “species,” and we will understand its meaning. Speciesism is the discrimination against those who don’t belong to a certain species. Discriminating against someone means treating them worse for unjustified reasons. If we discriminate against nonhuman animals, that is an instance of speciesism. So, in fact, we’re dealing with a new word and using it to name something very old.

Increasingly, people believe that racism and sexism are unacceptable. What about speciesism? Is it acceptable? If so, how?

In the next section, we’ll look at several answers to this question, and assess whether they are right.

“Humans matter most, just because”

Speciesism is often defended in a very simple way, which amounts to saying that humans matter “just because.” This defense assumes that human beings are special just because we are human, that is, because of the species to which we belong, without any further reason.⁴ This assumption doesn’t provide reasons in favor of anything. It’s just an affirmation without any justification.

This position is not always expressed clearly. For example, those who hold it sometimes state that ethics “by definition” only deals with human beings. However, in fact, this claim amounts to nothing more than stating that only human beings matter because we say so, without giving further explanation. This is what it means to defend something just because.

We usually think that this is not an appropriate way to defend any point of view. Suppose that someone said that racism is acceptable “just because.” That would not be any justification at all. However, if it were valid to say “just because” in a certain case—for example, to defend speciesism—then it should be valid to do so to defend any other position. If we don’t accept “just because” defenses of discrimination against certain human beings, then we shouldn’t accept them in the case of speciesism either.

There are other reasons to deny that we should respect only those who belong to the species Homo sapiens. In fact, there is nothing magical that makes belonging to a certain species, by itself, something special. Consider the following.

Relatives in common

Imagine a row representing your ancestors on the maternal side. Your mother is in the first position. Just behind her is your grandmother and behind her your great-grandmother, followed by your great-great-grandmother, and so on. If we continue going backwards for only a few hundred generations, we will reach the Paleolithic. Now, if we keep traveling back through time, we will find the ancestor that humans have in common with animals of other species. We will reach a point where an ancestor of ours will also be the ancestor of other animals, such as chimpanzees and bonobos. In other words, suppose that next to the row with our ancestry, there is another row with the ancestry of chimpanzees. At some point we find an animal who is both our ancestor and the ancestor of chimpanzees, and the two rows will merge into one.

One might think that the line would have to be very long, perhaps long enough to circle the entire planet. In fact, the row would be a bit more than 90 miles long (close to 150 kilometers);⁵ by train or car, we might pass it in less than one and a half hours. Furthermore, if we were to move further back in that line, beyond the point where we meet our common ancestor with chimpanzees, we would eventually reach other points where we would find our common ancestors with every other animal.

Now, think about all those ancestors of ours who we would pass in that hour and a half as we make our way along the row. They would be, so to speak, halfway between humans and other animals. Imagine that they still existed. Would we discriminate against them because they are not totally human? If so, at which point in the row would we do so? Would we draw a line somewhere dividing the row in two and say, “we will respect those before this point but not those who come after”?

The truth is that doing this would be quite arbitrary. In that row, there are no clear divisions at any particular point, only very small gradual differences from mothers to daughters. At present, different species are distinguished in a very marked way because the animals that once existed between each of them are no longer here. If they continued to exist, then there would be no clear point to make such a distinction.⁶

This argument suggests that belonging to a particular species is less important than it seems. However, in fact, we have even stronger reasons to affirm this. Consider the following case, which is, again, taken from a well-known story:

E.T. the extraterrestrial

An extraterrestrial being we call E.T. accidentally lands on Earth. Some human beings want to use him to do harmful research, and so they kidnap him. But there are others who care about him. A group of teenagers comes to the rescue. They finally manage to save him, and he’s able to fly back home.

E.T. is not a human being. However, most people think that is not a reason for us not to care about him. Many people all around the world know the story of E.T., and most of them are happy that he is rescued, even though humans could benefit from experimenting on him. This happiness is clearly at odds with the idea that only human beings deserve full respect.⁷

In fact, there are many other examples of this in literature, cinema, and mythology. Let’s take a look at some of them.

What happens if someone is not human?

Think about the following list of characters who appear in different stories (you may not know all these characters, but you probably know at least some of them): The Lord of the Rings’s hobbits, Blade Runner’s replicants, the fairies featured in many tales, divinities such as Minerva or Venus, characters in films and shows such as Chewbacca or Spock, Pinocchio, Bambi, the androids in films and shows such as Artificial Intelligence or Westworld, or in Isaac Asimov’s novels, Nemo the fish and so on.

These fictional characters have at least two things in common. The first is that they are not human beings. But this does not prevent us from caring about what happens to them when we see or read the stories in which they appear. This is due to the second thing they have in common: different as they are, all these characters can feel and suffer, and thus be affected by whatever may happen to them. This is true of many other celebrated characters from novels, movies, and popular traditions. We care about what happens to these characters, and we empathize with them. This shows that, for us to worry about what happens to someone, it is not necessary that they belong to the species Homo sapiens.

It may be argued that these are fictional characters. But that doesn’t really make a difference here. If we see someone in a film torturing a child, we can tell whether that person is doing something morally objectionable without having to ask whether the film is entirely fictional or a true story. In fact, in some films and shows such as Her, Tron, or Black Mirror, there are even examples of pieces of software that feel and suffer, and we can see that in those films it’s right to feel empathy for them and for other characters to defend them.

This being so, the conclusion is clear. There’s nothing magical in human DNA that makes humans the only beings that are especially important. This means species alone can’t be the reason to respect someone.

But maybe there’s some other reason why we should give full respect only to humans. Maybe humans have some characteristics that other animals lack which makes them special. We will now see if this is so.

The idea that human beings matter more because of their intelligence, sympathy, or power

It’s often claimed that we should respect only human beings because they are intelligent and other animals are not. According to this view, only human beings can have abstract thoughts, use a language, solve complex problems, etc., and due to this, other animals matter less or don’t matter at all.

There is a different argument that is sometimes used to defend the same position. Some people say that we have a special feeling of sympathy or solidarity toward other human beings and that, in turn, we don’t feel that sympathy toward other animals. According to this view, this sympathy justifies us in only respecting human beings.

In other cases, it is argued that humans are more powerful than other animals and it is legitimate for us to do what we please to animals⁸ simply because we have the power to do so.

All these reasons (intelligence, sympathy, power, etc.) are very different, but they have been used to defend exactly the same position: that humans matter more than other animals. We will see next whether they are convincing or not.

False assumptions about the differences between humans and other animals

At first glance, the assumptions from which these arguments start may seem correct. On reflection though, we can see that they are not. To begin, consider intelligence. It’s often said that only human beings are intelligent or rational, but this claim is inaccurate. It’s incorrect to say that humans have intelligence or rationality and that other animals don’t. Being intelligent or rational is not a matter of “all or nothing.” Rather, there are differences in the degree and ty...