Genuine question: Isn't everyone speciesit? Obviously I think that a human is worth more than a worm, because the human is much more complex and intelligent. Why do some vegans accuse people of speciesism? Like what do they even mean with that? Again, genuine question, I'm not trying to hate.
Being against speciesism isn't the same as treating all organisms equally. It's about not using species as a reason to treat differently. Things like intelligence, neural complexity, size, etc are not species, and you can use those as reasons to treat organisms differently.
The most common way that speciesism is shown is when people get extremely protective about the treatment of pet species like dogs and cats, while just accepting horrible abuses to livestock species like cows and pigs. Even though these livestock are just as intelligent and suffer just as much under this treatment.
This is the answer.
OP: Let’s say you’re hiring someone for a job. Two candidates are equally qualified (one man, one woman), but you pick the man because you think women are less deserving. That’s an example of sexism.
Now, let’s say the man actually has more qualifications and experience. You pick him for these reasons, not because you don’t like women, but because she’s not as qualified as the male candidate. That would not be an example of sexism because your decision was not based upon their sex difference.
A worm and a human have a large variety of differences that would affect moral decision making when comparing the two. A dog and a pig, not so many.
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"Things like intelligence, neural complexity, size, etc are not species" - why is it more moral to say "an organism is more worthy of consideration cause it has this organ developed more", but not "this organism is more worthy of consideration cause it is a member of my social group"?
Your question is mostly off topic when it comes to OP's question.
If you want to debate, take it to /r/debateavegan .
Because more developed neural system increases capability to suffer, but belonging to a social group does not. So it is not about specific organs either, it's about the whole.
But why is the capacity to suffer (which is a one specific biological self preservation system) more important than, say, self-preservation system based on enzymes, that plants use?
That would be interesting philosophical discussion, but it is adjacent to subject of OP's post, which is speciesism.
Seems like that mode of thinking (some brand of sentientism) is the most common alternative to speciesm, especially in the context of vegans, so it seemed useful to get to the bottom of.
that's a good term. the post above actually changed my mind with their actual good definition of specieism. i thought i was speciest before, but i need to find a new definition. i discriminate moral worth on sentience level, sustainability concerns and ecosystem importance.
If so, then would you choose a life of an (more sentient) AI over a human being, or a more sentient alien over a human being? Sentientism seems to only really work due to the temporary convenience of us being on the top of sentience ladder in our eyes (and obviously only if you apply some axiomatic importance to sentience itself, which would be good to finally get to the bottom of).
yeah i would have to, to be logically consistent. i can't decide that, that outcome is inconvenient and feels wrong, thus change my mind based on emotion. A more intelligent person even, is worth more than I (perhaps you). Where i think the dynamic changes is that, i have self preservation, stuff like social contract will come into play.
And that's something I'd strongly disagree with. The most intelligent person ever might very well be extremally unpleasant, uncooperative and even unproductive. The virtue of intelligence alone seems even less reasonable than many other models of discriminating some features against other.
Idk, why would you hesitate to step on a sleeping cat but not hesitate to step on your front lawn?
Cause of knee-jerk empathy, but what does that have to do with morality? Empathy is literally "enough like me = important". You want morality based on that alone?
"enough like you" in what regard?
In the regard where a baby-like puppy triggers infinitely more empathy than a fly larvae
Yea and why does it do that? Or are you incapable of further insight?
I just told you, cause it matches visual patters we're programmed to feel species towards. That's why we feel empathy towards plushies and baby dolls, but would not feel any towards super-sentient aliens in a form abstract enough not to resemble humans at all.
hey bro, you actually changed my mind on this. I have been in and around vegan arguments for quite a few years, and this is the first time i've actually seen a good definition of specieism. I considered myself specieist, i'd tell people "if you'd hesitate to choose between saving the life of an elephant or an ant, you're a psychopath" as an argument in favor of specieism.
i need a new term, i prejudice things like sentience, sustainability, ecosystem role as being morally important on a sliding scale. (which is why i am not vegan, but agree with their arguments against factory farming etc. i am perfectly comfortable eating crustaceans, most invertebrates, some fish and other very low sentient level animal life, same as insect mortality in farming of plants).
Sentientists morally value sentient beings, though they would not justify unnecessary harm, if the option to harm no sentient being is available.
The point is not that worms are worth more to us than humans. The point is that worms’ lives are clearly worth more to them than a silk saree, and as such, when we have access to countless excellent silk-free fabric options for sarees, how is it not speciesist to continue with the cruel status quo?
They may not be as strong as you or me at human measures of intelligence, but when it comes to feeling pain, they are no less than you or me.
brother, they have no cerebral cortex. they lack the hardware for what you're suggesting.
The thing with all of these "-ism's" is that they all rely on hypothetical, unrealistic comparisons.
Example; You have to choose one to live and one to die, a newborn baby human, and a 90 year old human.
Obviously the vast majority of people would choose the baby to live, and that does not make them "ageist" because its simply a pragmatic choice based on the extremely limited confines of the silly, unrealistic hypothetical.
Now take a realistic situation; you can choose to kill, cook and eat a perfectly healthy pig...or a perfectly healthy dog. If you look at those 2 options and think the pig is the "obvious" choice, then thats speciesism, Because its not based on anything more than societal norms.
The speciesism only becomes more obvious when we take out the hypothetical to the real choice many people face every day; kill and eat the pig, or simply eat something else.
The argument is not that the pigs life is worth more than a dogs or a humans, but simply worth more than your tastebuds.
> If you look at those 2 options and think the pig is the "obvious" choice, then thats speciesism, Because its not based on anything more than societal norms.
Well, _actually_, pig meat probably has more universally palatable taste (less gamey), and is not as tough as dog meat.
Also, dogs have much higher risk of the meat containing parasites dangerous to humans, such as Toxocara canis, than "industrial" pig meat. If dogs were bred as food with modern food safety standards, then this would probably be no bigger risk, than for example Trichinella in pigs, but that is hypothetical scenario.
It does not detract for your point, but pigs vs dogs is just a bad example... Pig meat would be the obvious choice in today's world at least.
The ultimate point i was trying to get to (admittedly i tend to ramble) was that the hypotheticals are mostly bullshit and the only one worth asking is the ACTUAL choice most people make every day; kill and eat a perfectly healthy animal in a horrific way, or just eat something else.
Yeah everyone is speciesist to an extent. I do have a bias towards humans, like if I could only save a dog or a human, I would save the human.
But that bias towards humans doesn’t mean that I think we should inflict violence on dogs indiscriminately.
An example of speciesism would be thinking it’s acceptable to slaughter cows but not horses, or pigs but not dogs, just on the basis of species membership.
There’s no difference in cognition or pain perception that would justify protecting those species from slaughter. There’s a good argument that it’s better to kill a mussel vs. killing a dog. Because mussels are animals but don’t have brains.
Yes, I am speciesist. Doesn’t mean I don’t recognize that eating other Animals is unnecessary. Tbh I don’t Like Animals, I barely tolerate most humans but I wouldn‘t eat a human.
Not buddhists
That’s a humanocentric pov. The life of a worm is as important to that worm as the life of a human is to that human. A worm does not care about human complexity or intelligence but it will always try to avoid its death. It’s about recognising that lives of all species matter.
brother, a worm has 2 nerve clusters of ganglia, capable of coordinating movement and basic detection of light, pressure etc, it has just about as much wants and needs as a carrot. "want" or perception of any kind requires something similar to a cerebral cortex.
Brother, try to kill a worm, and see if it shown any signs of not wanting to be killed.
you can program a Tesla to electrify if it detects something is tampering with it, does it "want" to not be harmed or stolen? There are plants that close its leaves when touches, does it "want" to not be eaten? Take even the leafcutter ant, they cut leaves and farm fungi to feed the colony, nobody is going to argue they're in the agricultural age and thus smarter than chimpanzees and elephants etc. sophistication of behavior and strategy is not evidence of complex thought, only of complex, iterative adaptation to environment (evolution is amazing).
to be sentient, one must possess the hardware to run that software. an earthworm cannot fly because it has no wings, and it cannot feel because it has no cerebral cortex.
I don’t understand the point of this argument. Have I ever said there’s a complex thought? There’s no need for a complex thought. Every life form wants to keep living. The definition or mechanism of that “want” is irrelevant.
re-reading my last comment, i am not sure if it comes across as sassy? if it did, i don't intend to be and i'm sorry. i'll explain myself further.
"want" or perception of any kind, is actually kind of complex cognition, in the sliding scale. Imagine, lines of code to run software, versus sentient and aware AI.
an earthworm is more like a calculator, with its simple brain following basic stimuli and processing inputs from nerves.
any projection of a "want" onto an earthworm can also be projected on a plant "wanting" to project its genes into the future and to survive.
Please read my last comment because I feel like you are wasting your time and mine as well. I don’t care about all of that. It is irrelevant to the argument. It’s not up to a human to judge whether a worm’s life is of a lesser value because of any argument that can be made from a pov of a human. Thats humanocebtric. The value of a woms life is equal to any other form of life from non humanocebtric POV because as any live organism, also a worm “wants” to keep living.
I understand you are trying to explain what the idea of having a “want” entails. But you don’t need all that to simply avoid dying and seeking to keep being alive.
Does a carrot also want to live in the same way? Are you consistent on this? I'm genuinely lost as to your position. I dont know whether you agree on the factual matter that earthworms have no sentience or capacity to suffer or if you're using "want" in a more philosophical or abstract sense. I am also a human, the only way to process any moral weighting or decision making is inherently humanocentric yes, same as you.
When it comes time to decide if to value an earthworms life, it is explicitly up to the human since we are the decision makers in this context. Anyway, if we are truly at an impass on this, then I wish to cause no bad blood or frustration in any capacity, I do want an answer for insight though, on how you're using "want" in regards to the earthworm, I feel like you're trying to explain it at the end of your comment but I cant parse it.
It doesn't necessarily mean that you can't still value humans over other animals or you can't value mammals over insects or something. It's more the idea that you shouldn't say that an animal's suffering "doesn't matter" because they're from one of the species you don't care about. Even with humans you might still pick someone over and another, if you're on a sinking ship and there's only so many lifeboats then you might value your family's lives over others but that doesn't mean that you'd go around harming or killing non-family members under normal circumstances. Same with animals, obviously you'd choose to save a human over a worm but that doesn't suddenly make it okay to go around inflicting needless suffering on animals because they're from a certain species.
With the worm example though since we assume they don't have much capacity for suffering the level of care required would still be less than for that of a dog or a pig for example. So it's more about just not using their species as a justification for inflicting suffering.
Not buddhists
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Speciesism is meant to be understood like other isms: unreasonable discrimination not based upon relevant characteristics of the individual. A dermatologist recommending different sunblock to people of different races isn't racism. A university not recruiting paraplegic people for their football program isn't ableist.
In the same way, treating the poisoning of aphids in plant farming differently from if it were elephants, dogs, or chickens being poisoned, isn't speciesism. Those beings are actually much more sentient than aphids and capable of experiencing much more suffering.
A good example of speciesism is humans reacting differently to pigs and chickens versus dogs and penguins, despite their strong similarities in personal characteristics, just because culture has normalized the exploitation of the former.
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I think it depends on how far you take it. Unfortunately, many religions purport that everything on earth is here for humans. If instead, humans were seen as a part of nature and even stewards, the entire planet would be much better off.
Interesting. I don’t think a human is worth more than a worm, or is more valuable, but I guess some do.
i think assuming worms are less complex than humans isn't correct, like how are you measuring complexity? if it's just genetic complexity, the ginkgo bilboa tree is more complex than any animal, it has more information stored in its dna than any animal does. so if you are basing value just based on complexity, the ginkgo tree would be more complex than both the human and the worm.
if it's just 'which evolved first', then you'd be saying that sunflowers are less complex than dinosaurs, because sunflowers evolved after dinosaurs did. does that mean a sunflower has more value than a t-rex?
and obviously if it's just intelligence and not complexity you are using, why are pigs less valued than rabbits and cats, when pigs are far more intelligent? pigs are even slightly smarter than dogs, you can teach a pig to play videogames, but you can't teach a dog to play videogames. and crows beat them all, a crow is more intelligent than any common pet, by many orders of magnitude, crows can build their own tools and have their own vocabulary that they use to communicate with other crows, far beyond what cats and dogs are capable of.
so i think valuing species by complexity and intelligence has too many problems for that to be a good basis of comparison of value. bees, for instance, are incredibly stupid, they're pre-programmed robots, and yet they have far more value in the ecosystem than crows do, who are opportunistic feeders. so which would you value more, bees for their importance in pollination, or crows for their ability to recognize human faces on sight?
like if you're gonna use a basis of comparison at all, shouldn't the value to the ecosystem be paramount, not intelligence or complexity? because if you removed all the worms in the world, ever human and basically every other complex plant and animal is dead. because worms irrigate the soil, no worms, no soil as we know it. it'd all be rock and sand. all you'd have left would be some simple bacteria if all the worms disappeared. if you removed all the humans in the world, most other species will get along just fine. so in terms of importance to the ecosystem, worms beat out humans by a long shot.
I'd say that the best defense of using the label of speciesism isn't the insistence that all species must be treated exactly equally, but an observation of moral inconsistency.
Rather than trying to rate each species by how much we should care about them, I would say it's speciesist to care about some animals and not others, given they have all the same relevant characteristics. For example, I think it's inconsistent for someone to get upset at kicking a dog, but not care about cows being slaughtered en masse. Dogs and cows have all the same behaviors and biology that would indicate sentience, albeit expressed in different ways. In my mind, that's speciesism because there's an arbitrary moral line drawn between animals we eat and animals we protect.
To me, the argument that species should matter equally as long as they are animals is actually speciesist too. What is the difference between placozoans and non-animals that could possibly be morally relevant? The answer is there isn't. Yet vegans who insist on abstaining from exploiting all animals have to place placozoans under the mantle of protection without any biological or behavioral reasons. This isn't practically relevant, of course. But it highlights the problem with using blanket classification of the animal kingdom instead of what we actually care about; sentience.
I just think the speciesism label can cut both ways depending on how it is used. I'd rather highlight the inconsistent moral standards than get bogged down in labels anyway.
This isn't what you've asked but you already got some great answers that I don't think I can top.
I do want to add, for your consideration:
This is also true of humans. Some humans are more intelligent than others. Some are more capable of complex thought and that capability can be reliably measured. Some are capable of complex thought but others assume they aren't because of biases or differences in communication.
It's worth pointing out that this type of thinking - that certain life forms are less valuable and less worthy of consideration due to a perceived lack of intelligence - is what has historically led humans to harm each other. And I think when we use intelligence as the metric by which we determine value among non-human life forms, we're bound to also use that metric to determine the value of human life, even if subconsciously. I don't think that's a good thing.
You love dogs but not the cow. So you pay for someone to stab the cow to death so that you can enjoy a sandwich. All whilst petting your dog. Its hypocrisy, it's speciesism
Valuing humans more than other species is not speciesism. That sentiment is virtually universal, including among many vegans.
Speciesism is better described as human supremacy: the false belief that humans are superior to all other species on Earth and are therefore entitled to dominate, exploit, and kill individuals of other species and justify it on the basis that they are not human. It is viewing other animals as objects and resources who exist for you rather than sentient individuals who exist for their own reasons, who have just as much right to live freely on this Earth as we think we do.
In the example of human and the worm, you are speciesist if and only if you deliberately and intentionally kill or injure the worm (rights violation) whilst avoiding deliberately and intentionally killing or injuring a human being (rights violation) on basis that the worm has less moral worth than the human.
If you deliberately and intentionally kill or injure both OR you avoid deliberately and intentionally killing or injuring both on the same basis then you are not a speciesist. Hope this clarifies the vegan standpoint on speciesism for you.