Embed Notice

@CosmicTrigger incidentally it's interesting if you think about it that my reasoning here is completely side steps all of the typical canned vegan criticisms: I am not resting my value of human life and my disvalue of non-human animal life on the basis of trying to determine what is and is not a human, so they're typical criticisms of the fact that there is no definition of human being that doesn't leave some human beings out or include some animals doesn't really apply. I'm interested only in the qualitative properties of any potential moral subjects presented to me.

Likewise, I am not engaging in special pleading on the part of the human species at all here! I'm not giving humans a special worth or value compared to other animals based just on our species. I'm saying that any species that can obtain the qualitative properties that I care about can be cared about by me and as it so happens pretty much only human beings have those qualitative properties. I've noticed this isn't even about an abstract discussion of which species are actually self-conscious and intelligent and which aren't, although I do think that is the mechanism by which human beings have the qualitative properties that I do care about and other animals typically don't. Speaking of which I would fully value any non-human species that had the properties I'm after as much as humans! So you can't really accuse me of speciesism because I'm not judging anyone on the basis of their species but merely on the basis of the content of their character — or, more accurately whether their character has content at all!