Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Speciesism: Why It Is Wrong and the Implications of Rejecting It
    Speciesism: Why It Is Wrong and the Implications of Rejecting It
    Speciesism: Why It Is Wrong and the Implications of Rejecting It
    Ebook80 pages56 minutes

    Speciesism: Why It Is Wrong and the Implications of Rejecting It

    By Magnus Vinding

    5/5

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview

    About this ebook

    What can justify discrimination against other sentient beings?

    In this book, Magnus Vinding explores the issue of species discrimination. He argues that speciesism — discrimination based on species membership — is unjustifiable, and proceeds to examine the practical implications of this conclusion. This examination reveals more than a few ways in which our behavior and attitudes need to change profoundly.

    "Most people agree that discriminating against someone on the basis of gender, sex or skin color is morally objectionable, but what about species membership? Speciesism: Why It Is Wrong and the Implications of Rejecting It makes a compelling case that this form of discrimination has no justification either, and addresses the most significant implications. These include both the rejection of animal exploitation and the rejection of the idea that we have no reason to help nonhuman animals in need of aid, including when they are suffering in the wild for natural reasons. This book is likely to challenge many of our assumptions, and will encourage us to think deeper about the moral consideration of nonhuman animals."
    — Oscar Horta, professor of moral philosophy at University of Santiago de Compostela, author of Making a Stand for Animals

    "Humans hurt, harm and kill billions of sentient beings. We routinely treat nonhuman animals in ways that would earn the perpetrators a life sentence in prison if the victims were humans of comparable sentience. Magnus Vinding makes a compelling case for a moral revolution in human behaviour toward nonhuman individuals. Highly recommended."
    — David Pearce, author of The Hedonistic Imperative and Can Biotechnology Abolish Suffering?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMagnus Vinding
    Release dateMay 2, 2015
    ISBN9781513055985
    Author

    Magnus Vinding

    Magnus Vinding is the author of Speciesism: Why It Is Wrong and the Implications of Rejecting It (2015), Reflections on Intelligence (2016), You Are Them (2017), Effective Altruism: How Can We Best Help Others? (2018), Suffering-Focused Ethics: Defense and Implications (2020), Reasoned Politics (2022), and Essays on Suffering-Focused Ethics (2022).He is blogging at magnusvinding.com

    Read more from Magnus Vinding

    Related to Speciesism

    Related ebooks

    Nature For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Biophilia

      May 6, 2020

      Biophilia
      4 min read

    • Article

      Why Are Humans So Kind, Yet So Cruel?

      Mar 6, 2019

      Under different circumstances, humans can be the kindest, gentlest species or the most murderous. Evolution may hold clues to that Jekyll and Hyde nature.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Self-actualisation

      Aug 10, 2020

      Self-actualisation
      8 min read

    • Article

      1 All About Us

      Jan 29, 2019

      1 All About Us
      3 min read

    • Article

      Meet Your Sexual Wellness Squad

      May 5, 2021

      Meet Your Sexual Wellness Squad
      5 min read

    • Article

      Identity Crisis

      Oct 31, 2021

      In the past decade, the number of young people identifying as transgender has spiked throughout the Western world. The phenomenon has resulted in life-changing interventions for many, including sex-change surgery, and controversy surrounding the use

      8 min read

    • Article

      Making the CULT

      Nov 21, 2022

      Making the CULT
      12 min read

    • Article

      The Courage To Be Yourself

      Dec 5, 2022

      The Courage To Be Yourself
      6 min read

    • Article

      SEX, SCIENCE & STEREOTYPES

      Oct 11, 2020

      It has a provocative title and dedication (“For everyone who blocked me on Twitter”), but your book is evidence-based, nuanced and compassionate. Why did you, a liberal “sex positive, non-traditionalist gay rights supporter”, write a book that delves

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Healing Practice of Cultural Humility

      Feb 6, 2018

      The Healing Practice of Cultural Humility
      4 min read

    • Article

      I Am Intersex.

      Sep 3, 2019

      I officially discovered that I’m intersex when I was 21 years old. Why use the word officially, you might ask? Because even though the process started when I was 18, no one used the word intersex to describe my body’s natural hormonal variations or t

      5 min read

    • Article

      Do Aliens Have Inalienable Rights?

      Apr 13, 2017

      Last January I was walking with my granddaughter along a beach near Melbourne when we noticed several people gathered around a rock pool, peering into the water. Wondering what had attracted their attention, we went over and saw that it was an octopu

      5 min read

    • Article

      Humans Are Wired for Goodness

      Aug 22, 2019

      Nicholas Christakis and I are on the same page: We would definitely sacrifice our lives to save a billion strangers, perhaps even several hundred million, plucked at random from Earth’s population. But, for sure, not a thousand strangers, or a millio

      15 min read

    • Article

      ‘The Case Against The Sexual Revolution’: How Feminism Let Women Down

      Sep 9, 2022

      Louise Perry didn’t believe there was anything controversial about her new book, “The Case Against the Sexual Revolution.” On a video call, she laughs and admits, “I’ve been proven wrong on that front.”  The British author, a columnist for the left-l

      7 min read

    • Article

      It’s Only Human Nature

      Feb 23, 2023

      ‘‘PEOPLE LIKE COLDPLAY and voted for the Nazis. You can’t trust people, Jeremy.” Super Hans, the crack-addicted dispenser of violence and wisdom in the noughties sitcom Peep Show and the Tory cleric, Jonathan Swift, might not be obvious bedfellows. T

      3 min read

    • Article

      Primalfear

      Jul 25, 2021

      Rob Verkerk The Politics of Health An article by Lisa Schonhaar and Gisela Wolf in the UK’s Independent newspaper entitled“5 Habits of Stupid People that Smart People Don’t Have”gives us something of a framework that might help in our efforts to ext

      3 min read

    • Article

      It’s Only Human Nature

      Feb 23, 2023

      ‘‘PEOPLE LIKE COLDPLAY and voted for the Nazis. You can’t trust people, Jeremy.” Super Hans, the crack-addicted dispenser of violence and wisdom in the noughties sitcom Peep Show and the Tory cleric, Jonathan Swift, might not be obvious bedfellows. T

      3 min read

    • Article

      Building Blocks of Belonging

      Sep 14, 2021

      Building Blocks of Belonging
      11 min read

    • Article

      The Joys of Being a Stoic

      Nov 4, 2020

      In September, a writer for HBO’s Watchmen series, Cord Jefferson, was awarded an Emmy. I enjoyed the show’s first season, a sequel to arguably the best movie (and graphic novel) about superhero vigilantism. The plot involves the protagonists combatti

      9 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Speciesism

    5/5

    1 rating0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Speciesism - Magnus Vinding

      Part I: Why Speciesism Is Wrong

      1. Why Speciesism Is Wrong

      ––––––––

      A defining trait of humanity’s moral progress over the last few centuries is that we gradually have distanced ourselves from discrimination in its many forms. Where it was once the norm that the rich Caucasian man above a certain age had rights that nobody else had, while women and people of certain ethnicities had no rights at all, we have finally come to realize that such discrimination is deeply unethical. We have finally realized that racism, sexism, ableism, and other forms of discrimination against human beings cannot be justified. Not that they do not exist anymore — they do indeed — but they are no longer as widespread as they were 200, 100, or even 50 years ago, and they are now widely regarded as indefensible.

      We have finally realized that women should not be given fewer rights because they are women, that people should not be discriminated against because of the color of their skin, and that people who have a disability should not be treated with less care and respect because they have a disability. When it comes to humans, we have finally realized that it is by virtue of sentience alone — the fact that we are conscious beings who can experience suffering and well-being — that we are inherently valuable in moral terms. Our skin color, gender, and sexuality are all irrelevant to our status as beings of inherent moral value, beings who should be respected and treated as ends rather than mere means.

      Having realized this much, the question that is now staring us in the face is this: Why have we confined this insight to humans only? Why, when it comes to non-human beings, is it suddenly as if we are back in time, failing to realize that sentience alone is what makes a being morally valuable? Why are we still defending diminished concern for non-human beings — even defending that we can exploit and kill them for frivolous reasons, such as palate pleasure — with reference to the very traits that we recognize to be morally irrelevant when it comes to humans? Indeed, why is speciesism still so pervasive?

      Whatever the reason may be, it is not a valid one. Speciesism is unjustifiable for the same simple reason that other forms of discrimination, such as racism, sexism, and heterosexism, are unjustifiable: because it amounts to diminished moral concern for beings based on a morally irrelevant criterion. Just as an individual’s skin color, sex, or sexual orientation is ethically irrelevant, it is likewise not morally relevant which species a sentient being belongs to.

      In short, we should recognize that individuals have inherent moral value, and prioritize their well-being, on the basis of their sentience alone — not their skin color, gender, sexuality, or species. To do anything else is to engage in discrimination against certain beings — to give them unjustified disadvantageous consideration.

      The conclusion that speciesism is unjustified may seem counterintuitive at first sight, and various attempts have been made to reject it so as to preserve the gap between human and non-human beings that still exists in many people’s moral perception. The remainder of this chapter will reply to some of the most common of these attempts.

      Discrimination against non-human animals is not ethically unjustifiable. Human beings and non-human animals are different. Humans have cognitive capacities that other animals don’t have. Humans are far more intelligent.

      Human beings are surely different from non-human beings, but men are also different from women, and people who do not have certain mental abilities are also different from people who do. The point being that mere differences do not necessarily justify disadvantageous consideration. The contrast between our view and treatment of humans who do not have certain mental abilities and our view and treatment of non-human animals who also do not have certain mental abilities is especially striking and worth contemplating in this context.

      After all, we generally do not find it defensible to grant less moral consideration to humans who do not possess certain cognitive abilities that most other humans possess. On the contrary, we rightly realize that we often have even more reason to help them, as they often need help and assistance more. When it comes to humans, we rightly realize that individuals should be granted full moral consideration regardless of how they would score in an intelligence test, yet we somehow fail to extend this insight to non-human individuals, which reveals a clear double standard in our thinking.

      In general, for any trait that we may propose as the missing trait that justifies our discrimination against non-human animals, we can likewise point to certain humans who do not possess the trait in question. Yet in the case

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1