Economics Dictionary of Arguments

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Speciesism: Speciesism is the belief that one species (typically humans) is superior to others, justifying differential treatment or exploitation of animals based on their species. It's criticized for ignoring the interests and rights of non-human beings. See also Racism, Animals, Animal language, Humans, Species, Equality, Inequalities.
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Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments.

 
Author Concept Summary/Quotes Sources

Peter Singer on Speciecism - Dictionary of Arguments

I 66
Speciecism/Artenism/P. Singer: When asked if belonging to a species is the deciding factor for which living beings we are allowed to eat, for example, and which we are not allowed to eat, we easily end up in a slippery slope, i. e....
I 67
...a drawn border can be shifted further and further.
Animals/P. Singer: I therefore want to raise the status of animals instead of lowering the status of humans.
Solution/P. Singer: to avoid a slippery slope, we can say that all knowing (sentient) animals, be they self-confident or not, have fundamental rights.
>Rights
, >Animals, >Consciousness, >Knowledge.
I 68
Species/P. Singer: if we treat mentally handicapped people unlike animals only because of the fact that they are human, this means that we treat individuals not on the basis of the qualities they have at the moment, but on the basis of the properties that are normal for their species. It is interesting that this argument is used to justify that we treat members of our own species better than members of other species ((s) i.e. animals), but not when it comes to race or gender.
>Species, >Groups, >Racism.
Average/Intelligence/P. Singer: We have seen that whatever makes the average of groups, there are always individuals from an average worse group who perform better than the individuals from the
average worse group. Therefore, we cannot justify that a limit line should be drawn in one case in relation to membership of a species and in another case in relation to gender or race. We cannot allow beings to be treated as individuals once and in another case as belonging to a group.
>Individuals, >Person.
Human/P. Singer: that leads to the question as what we see ourselves essentially: as members of the species human, or as individuals who are self-confident or just knowing individuals?
>Self-consciousness.
I 69
Some of us have stronger feelings for their cats than for their neighbours. It would be absurd to prescribe that people should not feel the way they do. Ethics does not require us to eliminate personal relationships, but it does require that when we act, we treat the moral claims of those affected by our actions with a certain degree of independence from our feelings for them.
>Ethics, >Morality, >Actions.

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Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments
The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition.

SingerP I
Peter Singer
Practical Ethics (Third Edition) Cambridge 2011

SingerP II
P. Singer
The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically. New Haven 2015


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