The animal ethics discourse online is cancerous. A large part of the reason for this is that a significant proportion of the people who wish to partake in this discourse have no desire to actually engage with any of the animal ethics literature.1 This seems to be disproportionately, though not exclusively, true of people who take anti-animal positions.
As a result, people often advance completely confused objections. Anti-vegans and self-described proponents of speciesism seem to systematically misunderstand the views of the people they’re criticizing. You can see this from the totally inane responses like “plants are alive too!” they often give (the reason we value animals is not because they’re alive).
But another prominent example, and the one I wish to discuss in this article, is their commentary on speciesism. It is commonplace for anti-vegans to accuse animal advocates’ self-proclaimed opposition to speciesism of being insincere. Now I actually do think it’s true that a large number of people who proclaim to oppose speciesism really don’t. But the reasons I as an anti-speciesist give for thinking this are not the same as the reliably terrible reasons self-identified speciesists give for thinking this.
In virtually every case in which such a claim is advanced, it is driven by a failure on the self-proclaimed speciesist’s part to understand what philosophically inclined animal advocates are talking about when they condemn speciesism.2 The same goes for many of the defenses of speciesism that these people like to level.
With that said, let’s talk about a few things that speciesism is not:
Speciesism is not the view that species is correlated with morally relevant characteristics
Many people seem to under the impression that if you think members of a particular species are on average more valuable than members of another species, this makes you a speciesist. This is not speciesist.
This point is explicitly stated by Peter Singer, the philosopher responsible for popularizing the term “speciesism”:
I argued in the opening chapter of Animal Liberation that humans and animals are equal in the sense that the fact that a being is human does not mean that we should give the interests of that being preference over the similar interests of other beings. That would be speciesism, and wrong for the same reasons that racism and sexism are wrong. Pain is equally bad, if it is felt by a human being or a mouse. We should treat beings as individuals, rather than as members of a species. But that doesn’t mean that all individuals are equally valuable.
This misconception is where you get claims like “vegans are speciesist for not valuing the lives of plants”. People also seem to especially love bringing up insects in this context.
Speciesism is the view that species itself is a morally relevant characteristic, not that it’s a trait that happens to be correlated with morally relevant characteristics.
Again, to quote Singer:
Some who have claimed to be defending speciesism have in fact been defending a very different position: that there are morally relevant differences between species – such as differences in mental capacities – and that they entitle us to give more weight to the interests of members of the species with superior mental capacities. If this argument were successful, it would not justify speciesism, because the claim would not be that species membership in itself is a reason for giving more weight to the interests of one being than to those of another. The justification would be the difference in mental capacities, which happens to coincide with the difference in species.
A while ago, I posted an excerpt from a paper from Peter Singer analogizing speciesism to racism. The following person responded to me with a very silly comment.
Here’s another person, who suggests that vegans suddenly lose their opposition to speciesism after a species is small enough, presumably referring to animals like insects:
There are a few things to say about this. First of all, the reason animal advocates think insects are less valuable than other animals is not because of their size. It’s because of other factors: the sentience of insects is much more uncertain than that of other animals, if sentient the welfare capacities of insects would be less than that of other animals, etc.
Second of all, even if they did think that insects were less valuable in virtue of their size, this wouldn’t actually be speciesism - it would be sizeism.
People who say these sorts of things seem to be under the impression that presented with a scenario in which one must choose between saving the life of a typical human vs. a typical ant, the consistent anti-speciesist is committed to saying it’s a coin toss. But this is not at all the case.
The anti-speciesist is committed to something much less radical. All the anti-speciesist is dedicated to is saying that whatever the respective moral worth of an average human vs. an ant, the moral worth of these beings is not influenced by their mere membership in a particular species.
Think about it this way: Suppose that two beings were identical in all respects with the sole exception of their species. Would these two beings differ in moral status? If your answer is no, then congratulations, you’re an anti-speciesist. This is all accepting anti-speciesism amounts to.
Speciesism is not the view that it’s morally permissible to kill animals for food
Not only does a rejection of speciesism not entail that the average animal is equally valuable to the average human, it doesn’t even entail that the average animal is sufficiently valuable for it to be immoral to slaughter them for food. Indeed, it doesn’t even entail that animals are valuable at all.
Sometimes vegans are rather sloppy about this, haphazardly throwing the “speciesist” label at anyone who supports the animal holocaust.3 But many carnists offer non-speciesist defenses of the animal holocaust. For example, it’s common to hear people defend the slaughter of animals for food on the basis of their lower cognitive capacities.
When pointed out that this defense entails that it would also be permissible to kill severely intellectually disabled humans with cognitive capacities equivalent to that of farmed animals, many carnists will respond to this by switching to a speciesist defense. But many will just bite the bullet. Assuming that such people are being honest, this is a non-speciesist view.
Just as a rejection of speciesism does not entail that it is impermissible to kill animals for food, an acceptance of speciesism does not entail that it is permissible to kill animals for food. One can accept ethical veganism while still being a speciesist. Indeed, I suspect most ethical vegans are speciesist (I’ll elaborate more on this claim in the next section).
That humans are more valuable than other animals in virtue of being human doesn’t mean that animals are of sufficiently low value such that they’re permissible to kill.
It is not speciesist to oppose predation
One bizarre claim I’ve seen many people make, including vegans, is that to oppose predation is to engage in speciesism. Here are two examples of people making claims like this but there are many more:
It is unclear how such a view is supposed to be speciesist. Someone who opposes predation, even to the extent that they’re willing to support the culling of predators, is not committed to thinking species is a morally relevant characteristic. The reason they support the culling of Komodo dragons is not in virtue of the fact that they’re members of the species Varanus komodoensis, but rather because they eat other animals alive.
If Komodo dragons were herbivorous, those would advocate culling predators would not advocate killing them.
Suppose an alien race came down to Earth and started brutally torturing and killing us. Would we be engaging in speciesism by fending off these aliens with lethal force? I would not say so. If it’s not speciesist for us to defend ourselves from a species aggressing upon us, why is it speciesist for us to defend prey animals from a species aggressing upon them?
This ties into what I mentioned earlier: Being a member of the species Varanus komodoensis is correlated with a morally relevant characteristic (in this case being a serial killer). But being a member of the species Varanus komodoensis is not itself a morally relevant characteristic.
I think supporting predation is more indicative of speciesism than opposing it. This is not to say that supporting predation entails speciesism. There are possible non-speciesist defenses of predation. But I suspect that in practice, virtually all apologia for predation is driven by speciesist attitudes.4
This is what I was alluding to earlier when I said that I suspect most ethical vegans, including many who proclaim to oppose speciesism, are speciesists. I think virtually all vegans would find it permissible to use lethal violence to save a human from being eaten alive by a predator - but impermissible to use lethal violence to save a gazelle from eaten alive by a predator. I think this would remain the case even if we specified that the human in question had the same mental capacities as the average gazelle.
What explains this asymmetrical attitude if not for speciesism? Maybe there is a non-speciesist symmetry breaker explaining the differing evaluations, but I doubt it.
Utilitarianism is not speciesist
I’ve seen a handful of vegans make remarks like “utilitarianism is speciesism”. Presumably this is because utilitarians do not support the abolition of all animal agriculture - instead thinking that while factory farming is bad, high-welfare animal farms are fine.5
But there is nothing speciesist about this stance - in fact, utilitarianism is an explicitly anti-speciesist ideology. If high-welfare human farms maximized utility, then those too would be deemed good by the utilitarian’s lights. The reason utilitarians don’t actually advocate for such human farms has do with practical concerns as opposed to speciesism.6
Some who are not vegans also accuse utilitarianism of speciesism:
This is a very bizarre claim. One of the core features of utilitarianism is impartiality - it weighs the interests of all beings equally. This rules out any possibility of speciesism. Bacteria don’t have interests, and it’s unclear whether cockroaches do. Assuming they did have interests though, their interests would be just as valuable as that of a dog or pig - or even a human - from the utilitarian point of view.
On More Inclusive Definitions of Speciesism
Some people, including animal advocates, have proposed that we should operate under a broader notion of the term “speciesist” as opposed to the stricter sense I’ve been using here. One motivation for broadening our conception of speciesism is that it’s meant to be analogous with racism and sexism - yet the strict sense in which I’ve been using the term is at odds with common conceptions of racism and sexism.
We don’t deem thinking that race or sex itself is morally relevant to be a necessary condition to be a racist or a sexist. Someone who says that black people matter less because they have low IQs is still racist.
It doesn’t matter why one thinks members of other races, sexes, or species matter less. All that matters is that one does think they matter less. That’s sufficient to make one a racist, sexist, or speciesist.
I think this account has serious problems. They render the verdict that certain attitudes are racist, sexist, and/or speciesist when I’m inclined to say that they’re not. Take the alien example I mentioned earlier in the blog post. Such an account of speciesism would have the result that our negative attitude towards the invading aliens torturing and killing us constitutes speciesism.
We can look at other examples as well. Suppose, for instance, it was the case that most men were rapists. If this were truly the case, I think women would quite rightly deem men to matter less morally on average than their fellow females. However, suppose these women also deemed the select handful of non-rapist males to be on par morally with the average woman. Would it really be right to say these women are sexist?7
Here’s another counterexample: Suppose that a particular racial group tends to have happier lives on average than another. Assuming that their effects on the utility of others are equal, utilitarianism would entail the members of the happier racial group are on average more valuable than the less happy racial group. Does this make utilitarianism a racist ideology?
Perhaps some are satisfied with these results - but I’m not. Can we rescue a broader definition of these bigotries by formulating it in terms of discounting the interests of other groups as opposed to simply deeming them less valuable on average?8
While this may rescue the utilitarian from being labeled a racist, the humans battling an alien invasion and the women who live among a sex filled with rapists are less safe. Many people find the idea of desert adjustment in ethics to be an appropriate one (I am one of them) - we should discount the interests of bad people over the identical interests of good people.9
Suppose the women held that the interests of men should generally be discounted vs. the interests of women. If there were a choice between providing the average man with a delicious vegan ice cream cone vs. providing the average woman with one, they would prefer to give one to the woman - even if both parties would benefit equally from enjoying the tasty treat.10
Suppose that humans fending off the aliens said a similar thing - “It’d be better if one of us got the ice cream cone than one of our assailants!”.
Would this make the women sexist and the humans speciesist? I don’t think so!
There’s an additional problem I have with these accounts: I want to say that racism, sexism, and speciesism are all wrong. To have one of these attitudes is to have an inappropriate attitude - it says something negative about one’s character if they harbor speciesist, sexist, or racist attitudes.
But if we categorize the other attitudes I’ve been talking about under the umbrella of racism, sexism, or speciesism - then I can’t say racism, sexism, or speciesism are wrong!11
This I view as a serious problem. For these reasons, I’m inclined to think that rather than broadening the scope of speciesism, we should rather be narrowing the scope of racism and sexism.
Let’s go back to the person who claims that black people matter less because they have a low IQ. Is this person a racist? One reason we may tempted to say so is that we suspect that this isn’t this person’s true motivation. If it were conclusively demonstrated to them that this claim was false, would they then stop seeing black people as worth less? Or if we presented with a black person and white person who both had the same IQ - would they really view these two people as moral equals? We might be skeptical.
I have similar suspicions about some people who claim to value humans over animals in virtue of traits other than species. I recently heard of a person who claims that humans are more valuable than animals since humans have a soul and animals don’t. I personally doubt that this is their actual motivation. Suppose that it were demonstrated to this person that in fact no being has a soul. Would they then think that humans are on the same moral level as animals? I doubt it.
Note that I am not claiming that such people are necessarily lying about their views. I think it’s possible to be sincerely mistaken about one’s own moral attitudes. Note also that based on the narrow definitions I’ve been proposing, whether these people are racists or speciesists does not turn on whether they realize that race or species is actually what they value.12
All that’s required to be a racist or speciesist is to find race or species morally relevant. It does not matter whether you’re aware of the fact that you find these traits morally relevant.
However, suppose our doubts about these people are mistaken. IQ and possession of a soul really are what they care about - not race or species. In that case, I am inclined to just say that these individuals are not racist or speciesist.
But what if the person who values IQ’s belief that black people have a low IQ is shaped by prejudice? We can also imagine someone who believes that a given animal doesn’t feel pain on a basis they wouldn’t take as a reason to reject that a given human feels pain. Even if capacity to experience hedonic states is really what they value, their views on what beings can experience hedonic states is shaped by prejudice against animals.
I think it’s fair to include these sorts of epistemic double standards under the umbrella of speciesism, racism, sexism, etc. While I still think the definition of speciesism I gave earlier in this article - the view that species is morally relevant - is a good one, I think it should be understood as a definition not of speciesism per se - but as a definition of speciesism as an ethical view. We can call this ethical speciesism.
For a definition of speciesism in general, not just specifically ethical speciesism, I like the definition from Merriam-Webster: prejudice or discrimination based on species.
Equivocation
Suppose one isn’t persuaded by the reasons I’ve outlined for preferring a narrower conception of speciesism. Even if one wants to operate under a broader conception of the term, there is still a problem with many13 of the previous comments I’ve been talking about: they’re obvious instances of equivocation.
If I say “speciesism is wrong”, talking about discrimination on the basis of species itself, and you respond by saying “speciesism is not wrong”, talking about discrimination on the basis of traits correlated with species, you’re just changing the subject! Your response does not target my actual moral view - you’re just using the same word to talk about some other thing.
This is also why many of the hypocrisy accusations make no sense. When I say “speciesism is wrong”, I’m not talking about discrimination based on traits correlated with species, so pointing out that I engage in discrimination based on traits correlated with species doesn’t actually demonstrate that I’m acting out of accord with my stated moral views.
On Some Other Strange Comments About Speciesism
There are a few other bizarre comments people make about speciesism. One of these comments is that speciesism isn’t a “real word”. I’m not really even sure what it means for a word to be “real”, but Oxford Languages14, Merriam-Webster, Cambridge, and Collins all have entries for “speciesism”. It seems a bit bizarre to claim that a word that shows up in several dictionaries isn’t real.
Another claim, while not denying that speciesism is a real word, denies that it’s a real phenomenon. One of the tweets I posted earlier in this article makes this claim. Here’s another person making the claim:
I personally find this very bizarre. It’s one thing to say that discrimination based on species is justified, it’s another thing to say it doesn’t exist. It obviously does exist.
Perhaps such people are operating on a normative definition - under which it’s built into the notion of speciesism that it’s unjustified.15 This usage isn’t standard, but it is one defended by some authors. Even so, I don’t think it’s right that speciesism doesn’t exist - even by these people’s own lights.
I highly doubt that such people would find literally every single real life instance of prejudice on the basis of species to be morally justified. There are some people that think animals don’t matter at all - solely in virtue of the fact that they’re not human. But even lots of self-described speciesists think animals have some degree of moral value! If so, then even defining speciesism as unjustified prejudice or discrimination on the basis of species, it is surely not the case that speciesism does not exist.
It is not lost on me that many of these people are likely engaging in the first mistake I described - conflating speciesism with discrimination based on traits correlated with species. Regardless of whether they’re guilty of this or not though, my critique still stands.
Conclusion
Now that I, Substack user Travis Talks, have written this article, I fully expect all claims of this sort to immediately cease. Especially given what a self-reflective bunch meat-eaters are, I’m sure they will come to see the error of their ways and retract their remarks immediately.
This isn’t exclusive to the domain of animal ethics. Many who discuss the ethics of abortion, for instance, also seem to have no desire to engage with any of the literature on the subject.
In saying this, I don’t mean to imply that all philosophically inclined animal advocates are operating under the same notion of “speciesism” that I go on to describe and defend in this article - just that many of them are.
Some will object to my use of this phrase. Since I have never seen any compelling objection against referring to animal agriculture as a holocaust, I will continue to utilize it anyway.
When I talk of “apologia for predation”, I’m thinking of views that deny it’s even pro tanto bad at all, not views that say it’s pro tanto bad but that the badness is overridden by other considerations (like that overall suffering will increase if predation is eradicated).
Some utilitarians actually do think it would be best to abolish animal agriculture altogether. Though my impression is most take the prior attitude I described.
For more on this, see I'm Not a Speciesist; I'm Just a Utilitarian by Brian Tomasik.
Some may object that you can’t be sexist against men. While I think conceptions of sexism that exclude the possibility of anti-male sexism are seriously flawed, arguing against them is beyond the scope of this article. In any case, the hypothetical can just be adjusted such that the sexes are flipped to accommodate people with this notion of sexism.
There’s an important distinction to be drawn between simply valuing a being less and discounting their interests. I deem the life of an average 20 year old to be more valuable than the life of a 90 year old on the verge of death. But this doesn’t mean that I deem the 20 year old’s interests to be any more important than the 90 year old’s. Their interests both matter equally, it’s just that the 20 year old has a greater interest in continuing to live.
This isn’t necessarily the only form of desert adjustment there is. One could also think - for example - that if someone receives an injury from voluntarily engaging in a stupid stunt, their interest in medical treatment should be weighed less than someone who receives a similar injury but from some random crazy person attacking them. But the discounting of the interests of bad people is the specific form of desert adjustment relevant to the thought experiments I’m describing.
Though perhaps the male rapist would be offended that you’re offering him a vegan ice cream cone as opposed to a dairy ice cream cone produced via rape.
Technically based solely on the examples I’ve given, I would still be able to say racism is wrong - since I think it’s wrong to judge someone’s value solely based on their effect on aggregate utility. But the broad definition of racism I’ve been discussing would categorize other attitudes I wouldn’t deem wrong racist as well.
This comment is motivated by remarks by François Jaquet in the paper Indirect Defenses of Speciesism Make No Sense - in which he contends that narrow conceptions of racism can’t accommodate the intuition that people like the one I mentioned would qualify as racist. I reject this assertion.
I say “many” because not all of the comments are clearly instances of equivocation.
This is where Google and other search engines source their definitions. Unfortunately, I am unable to link to the entry.
For a case against conceptualizing speciesism as a normative notion, see Is Speciesism Wrong By Definition? by François Jaquet. I largely agree with the arguments put forward in this paper.
Footnote 10 sent me 😭
Great post, preaching to the choir of course (sadly)
Nice article. Though I must say I’m a fan of utilising a pejorative (or normative) definition of speciesism. Namely because it can then be utilised as a criticism of a view rather than a description. “That’s just speciesist”.