Planet Debate 2011 September/October l-d release Animal Rights
Singling Out Apes for Protection Speciesist
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Singling Out Apes for Protection SpeciesistADVOCATING RIGHTS FOR ONLY SOME CATEGORIES OF NONHUMANS IS SPECIESIST Joan Dunayer, Animal Rights Activist, 2004, Speciesism, p. 77 Unlike old-specieisists, animal rights advocates believe that moral and legal rights should extend beyond our species. At present, however, much animal rights theory is not egalitarian; it displays a relatively new brand of speciesism, which I’ll call “new speciesism.” New-specieists advocate rights for only some nonhumans, those whose thoughts and behavior seem most human-like. They maintain a moral divide between human and most other animals, whom they devalue. Further, new specieists accord greater moral consideration and stronger basic rights to humans than to any other animal. They see animal-kind as a hierarchy with humans at the top. SHOULD NOT LIMIT MORAL CONCERN TO ANIMALS LIKE US – SHOULD EMBRACE ALL ANIMALS CAPABLE OF FEELING Steve F. Sapontzis, Professor of philosophy, California State University, 1994, The Great Ape Project: equality beyond humanity, eds. Cavalieri & Singer, p. 272 Consequently, if we recognize that all beings with feelings should be liberated from human exploitation precisely because they are feeling beings, we will have overcome speciesism and freed our morality from anthropocentric prejudice. In such a morality we are called on to recognize not only that the exploitation of human-like animals, such as nonhuman great apes, is wrong (prima facie) but also that the exploitation of rats, lizards, fish and any other kind of feeling being, human-like or not, intellectually sophisticated or not, is wrong (prima facie).
Steve F. Sapontzis, Professor of philosophy, California State University, 1994, The Great Ape Project: equality beyond humanity, eds. Cavalieri & Singer, p. 270-1 Nevertheless, there is a strong tendency, even among advocates of animal rights, to retain a close association between “person” in the descriptive sense, where it is just another name for human beings. Some writers, such as Tom Regan, suggest that only the more intellectually sophisticated nonhuman animals merit the protection of their interests against human exploitation and others, such as Peter Singer, maintain that more intellectually sophisticated lives have a higher value than do less intellectually sophisticated lives. It is not surprising that intellectuals retain a bias in favor of the intellectual, but the bias opens the door to critics, such as J. Baird Callicott, who contend that animal rights remains an anthropocentric value system. Instead of being human chauvinists, these critics maintain, animal liberationists are human-like chauvinists, but that represents only a minor change.
Rejecting our species bias – overcoming speciesism—requires that we also reject our bias in favor of the intellectual (at least as a criterion of the value of life or of personhood in the evaluative sense). Overcoming speciesism requires going beyond the modest extension of our moral horizons to include intellectually sophisticated, nonhuman animals, such as chimpanzees and whales. It requires recognizing not only that the origin of value does not lie in anything that is peculiarly human; it also requires recognizing that the origin of value does not lie in anything that is human-like or that humans maybe assured that they have the most of (because they are the most intellectually sophisticated beings around.) Singling Out Apes for Protection SpeciesistGREAT APE PROJECT’S AIMS ARE NEO-CARTESIAN Lesley J. Rogers & Gisela Kaplan, Professors of Neuroscience and Animal Behavior, University of New England, 2004, Animal Rights: Current debates and new directions, eds. Sunstein & Nussbaum, p. 194-5 The other stream of neo-Cartesians comes from within subschools of animal liberation. This, to an extent, includes the Great Ape Project and writers like Wise (2002). They propose to give animals, such as the great apes and even parrots, elephants, dolphins, and whales, human legal rights. It may come as a surprise to some that we claim this to be neo-Cartesian as well. We do so because proponents of selective animal rights either base their claims on the Descartian principle cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am), or at least they cannot break away from the Cartesian bind. Wise (2002) wants to assign a score for cognitive abilities to each animal and then make a cut-off point for either awarding or not awarding legal rights. By implication, those that are deemed incapable of thinking (are not intelligent or self-aware), according to criteria set by human society, are also not of moral interest (appoint that also Immanuel Kant made). Moral obligation may end completely or, in some more favorable scenario, moral obligation may exist but according to a set of substantially reduced or different standards than applied to humans. Animals lacking in the qualifying criteria could once again be cast adrift as “things.” This idea ultimately falls victim to the perception of an ordered world by gradation of achievement. Gradation of achievement, incidentally, is also typically linked to DNA correspondences. The closer the connection to humans, the more likely the species is to make the grade. Tantalizingly promising, as the rights-by-consciousness idea may be, it is dangerously laissez-faire. In this view, rights seem to be tied to a binding precondition. Organisms need to show the irrefutable existence of thought and complexity, and rights are then concerned with these conditions, not with life itself. Animal rights are not implausible and represents a very important new debate in our use of animals, as long as such debates do not surreptitiously resurrect scala naturae and make intelligence the linchpin for worthiness. Considerations of animal welfare and animal rights aside, such views block our ability to look for examples of behavioral complexity whenever they may occur. There has been a tendency to focus far too exclusively on the primate line, and this primatecentric view is ultimately part of the gradation-of-achievement syndrome.
Joan Dunayer, Animal Rights Activist, 2004, Speciesism, p. 5 In sum, speciesism is both an attitude and a form of oppression. Viewing humans as superior to other animals, speciesists weigh human interests more heavily than equally vital or more-vital non-human interests. It’s speciesist to exclude any non-human being from full and equal moral consideration for any reason. This, then, is the definition of speciesism that I’ll develop and defend throughout the book: a failure in attitude or practice, to accord any nonhuman being equal consideration and respect.
Joan Dunayer, Animal Rights Activist, 2004, Speciesism, p. 15 This stance is neither logical nor fair. Giving all humans and no nonhumans rights would be justifiable only if (1) all humans and no nonhumans possessed the required characteristic(s) and (2) the characteristic(s) had moral relevance. In reality, with regard to all proposed characteristics, some humans lack them and at least some nonhumans possess them. More importantly, sentience is the only valid criterion for basic rights.
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