Does the moral badness of pain depend on who feels it? A common, but generally only implicitly stated view, is that it does not. This view, ‘unitarianism’, maintains that the same interests of different beings should count equally in our moral calculus. Shelly Kagan’s project in How to Count Animals, more or less is to reject this common view, and develop an alternative to it: a hierarchical view of moral status, on which the badness of pain does depend on who (...) feels it. In this review essay, we critically examine Kagan’s argument for status hierarchy. In particular, we reject two of the central premises in his argument: that moral standing is ultimately grounded in agency and that unitarianism is overdemanding. We conclude that moral status may, despite Kagan’s compelling argument to the contrary, not be hierarchical. (shrink)

I defend the bold claim that self-described speciesists are not really speciesists. Of course, I do not deny that self-described speciesists would assent to generic speciesist claims (e.g. Humans matter more than animals). The conclusion I draw is more nuanced. My claim is that such generic speciesist beliefs are inconsistent with other, more deeply held, beliefs of self-described speciesists. Crucially, once these inconsistencies are made apparent, speciesists will reject the generic speciesist beliefs because they are absurd by the speciesists’ own (...) lights. (shrink)

Many approaches to dignity endorse the Human Scope Thesis (HST), according to which almost all humans and almost only humans have dignity. I argue that justifications for this thesis are doomed to fail. Proponents of the HST can be broadly divided into two camps, according to how they defend this thesis against the Scope Challenge. This challenge states that there is no non-arbitrary way of restricting the scope of dignity that includes almost all and almost only humans. Naturalistic Accounts attempt (...) to find a property which roughly matches the HST, while Conventionalist Accounts attempt to explain why endorsing the HST is necessary to achieve coherence with the human rights project. I argue that neither strategy overcomes the Scope Challenge. I then draw out the important implications of this. Even as dignity retains relevance to all humans, it must move beyond the mere human, so as to include nonhuman animals. (shrink)

To date, much of the speciesism debate has centered on an ethical question: Can speciesism be justified, or is it immoral, as the analogy with racism suggests? Another question has received less attention: How prevalent is speciesism? Animal ethicists have largely assumed that speciesism is pervasive in our societies. After all, almost everyone routinely treats animals in ways they would never treat fellow humans. This widespread assumption is now being challenged. Some philosophers are beginning to question whether speciesism is an (...) accurate diagnosis for our conduct. This paper defends the orthodox view against such critiques. It refutes three challenges to the existence of speciesism—one posed by Travis Timmerman, another by Shelly Kagan, and a third inspired by Stijn Bruers. Some of these arguments rely on a flawed understanding of speciesism; all generate implausible empirical predictions. (shrink)

Peter Singer famously argues that speciesism, like racism and sexism, is based on a preju-dice. As Singer argues, since we reject racism and sexism, we must also reject speciesism. Since Singer articulated this line of reasoning, it has become a widespread argument against speciesism. Shelly Kagan has recently critiqued this argument, claiming that one can endorse speciesism with-out doing so on the basis of a prejudice. In this paper, I defend Kagan’s conclusion (that one can endorse speciesism without being prejudiced). (...) However, many philosophers have found Kagan’s argument deeply unsatisfactory; so, I advance an alternative argument, different from Kagan’s, in support of his conclusion. My argument runs as follows: I argue that, if there is epistemic peer dis-agreement about a view, then the parties to this disagreement cannot reasonably label each other as prejudiced in their beliefs about this view. Then, I argue that there is epistemic peer disagreement about the truth of speciesism, from which it follows that the parties to this disagreement cannot rea-sonably label each other as prejudiced. Thus, one can affirm speciesism without being prejudiced. If I am correct that one can affirm speciesism without being prejudiced, then Singer’s argument (that if one rejects racism, one must reject speciesism) is unsound. (shrink)

According to Shelly Kagan, the moral status of an individual is determined by the extent to which the individual has (has now, might/will have, or could have had) certain psychological capacities. Roughly speaking, the greater one's relevant psychological capacities, the higher their moral status. In this paper, I offer a twofold critique of Kagan's hierarchicalism. On the one hand, I argue against the primary argument in favor of Kagan's view (the argument from distribution) by challenging the key intuition on which (...) the argument relies, thereby reducing the appeal of Kagan's position. On the other hand, using Kagan's general methodology, I argue that a good reason to reject Kagan's account of moral status is that he fails to explain away the counterintuitive result of his theory in the case of normal variation. (shrink)

Em analogia com outras discriminações, como o racismo ou o sexismo, o especismo é concebido como uma forma de discriminação moral com base na espécie. Em grande medida, a discussão contemporânea sobre a importância moral dos animais surgiu e desenvolveu-se em torno da crítica e da defesa do especismo. Este artigo oferece uma visão da discussão filosófica contemporânea sobre o especismo. Após uma breve introdução, apresenta-se uma definição de especismo e caracterizam-se vários tipos de especismo, sendo o Antropocentrismo o mais (...) relevante. Depois, expõe-se um argumento proeminente contra o Antropocentrismo: o argumento dos casos marginais. Por fim, algumas posições antropocêntricas são criticamente discutidas. (shrink)

J. M. Bernstein argues that to capture the depths of the harm of torture, we need to do away with the idea that we possess intrinsic and inviolable worth. If personhood is inviolable, then torture can inflict only apparent harm on our standing as persons. Bernstein claims that torture is a paradigm of moral injury because it causes what he calls “devastation”: The victim experiences an actual degradation of his or her personhood. Bernstein argues that our value is given to (...) us through mutual recognition and hence can be lost. In this paper, I argue that if our human value can be lost, then it first must be built up. If it must be built up, then the question of our status before the building begins must be answered. Bernstein faces a problem of human beings who fall outside relations of mutual recognition and hence are valueless. His best option for answering this problem is to point to the centrality of the body in his account of recognition, but doing so reveals a notion of intrinsic worth implicit in his account. I call for a revision of Bernstein's account that can hold on to devastation without eschewing intrinsic worth. (shrink)