All Animals Are Equal

In recent years a number of oppressed groups have campaigned vigorously for equality. The classic instance of such a campaign is the Black liberation movement, which demanded an end to the prejudice and discrimination that had made them second-class citizens. The immediate demands of the Black liberation movement and its initial successes, though limited, served as a model for other oppressed groups. We are familiar with the liberation movements of Spanish-Americans, gays, and a variety of other minorities. When a majority group—women—begins their campaign, some think that we have come to the end of the road. Even in those liberal circles that have long prided themselves on their freedom from prejudice and discrimination against racial minorities, it was said that sexism[1] was the last form of discrimination that was universally accepted and practiced without any concealment or pretense.

But one should always be wary of speaking of sexism as "the last remaining form of discrimination." If we have learned anything from the liberation movements, we should have learned how difficult it is to be aware of the latent prejudices in our attitudes toward particular groups until these forms of discrimination are effectively pointed out.

A liberation movement demands an expansion of our moral horizons. Practices that were previously regarded as natural and inevitable come to be seen as the result of an unjustifiable prejudice. Who can say with confidence that none of his or her practices and attitudes may legitimately be called into question? If we wish to avoid being numbered amongst the oppressors, we must be prepared to re-think all our attitudes, even the most fundamental. We need to consider our attitudes from the point of view of those who have been disadvantaged by them, and by the practices that follow from them. If we can make this unaccustomed mental switch we may discover a pattern in our attitudes and practices that consistently operates to the benefit of one group—usually the one to which we ourselves belong—and to the detriment of another. If so, we may conclude that there is a case for a new liberation movement.

My aim here is to advocate that we make this mental switch in respect of our attitudes and practices toward a very large group of beings: members of species other than our own—the group of beings usually misleadingly called animals. In other words, I am urging that we extend to other species the basic principle of equality that most of us recognize should be extended to all members of our own species.

All that I have said may seem far-fetched, to be regarded more as a kind of parody or mockery[2]  of other movements than as a serious objective. In fact, in the past the idea of “animal rights” was practically used as a satire on the cause of women’s rights. When Mary Wollstonecraft[3], a pioneer of the later feminist movement, published her book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman[4]  in 1792, her ideas were widely regarded as nonsense, and were ridiculed and mocked in a publication under the pseudonymous title A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes[5] . The author of this satire (who was actually Thomas Taylor[6], a distinguished Cambridge philosopher), by showing that Wollstonecraft’s arguments could be taken one step further and applied to animals, sought to refute them. [He argued that] if it was reasonable to apply these arguments to women, why could they not be applied to dogs, cats, and horses? The arguments seemed to work equally well for this class of “brutes”; but that animals should have rights was manifestly absurd; therefore the reasoning that led to this conclusion must be unsound, and if the arguments were unsound when applied to brutes, then they must also be unsound when applied to women, since the same arguments were used in both cases.

One way in which we might reply to this argument is by saying that the case for equality between women and men cannot validly be extended to nonhuman animals. Women, for example, have the right to vote because they are just as capable of making rational decisions as men are; dogs, on the other hand, are incapable of understanding the significance of voting, and therefore cannot have a right to vote. There are countless other ways in which women and men are very similar, while humans and other animals differ greatly. So, it might be said, women and men are similar beings and should therefore have equal rights, while humans and nonhumans are different beings and should not have equal rights.

The thought underlying this reply to Taylor’s analogy is correct to some extent, but it does not go far enough. There are many differences between humans and other animals, and these differences must give rise to some differences in the rights that each group possesses. However, acknowledging this obvious fact is no barrier to the case for extending the basic principle of equality to nonhuman animals. The differences that exist between women and men are equally undeniable, and supporters of women’s liberation are aware that these differences may give rise to different rights. Most feminists hold that women have the right to an abortion on request. But it does not follow that because these people are campaigning for equality between women and men they must also support the right of men to have an abortion. Since a man cannot have an abortion, it is meaningless to talk of his right to have one. Since a pig cannot vote, it is meaningless to speak of granting the right to vote to pigs. There is no reason why either the women’s liberation movement or the animal liberation movement should get involved in such nonsense. Extending the basic principle of equality from one group to another does not imply that we must treat both groups in exactly the same way, or grant exactly the same rights to both groups. Whether we should do so will depend on the nature of the members of the two groups. I must argue, then, that the basic principle of equality is equality of consideration[7]; and giving equal consideration to different beings may lead to different treatment and different rights.

Hence, there is a different way of responding to Taylor's attempt to deride the arguments of Wollstonecraft, a way that does not deny the differences between humans and nonhumans, but goes more deeply into the question of equality and, by finding nothing absurd in the idea that the basic principle of equality applies to so-called "animals" as well, arrives at this desirable conclusion. I believe that if we examine the basis upon which our opposition to sexism and racism[8] rests, such a conclusion will follow. We will then consider that if we were to demand equality for blacks, women, and other oppressed groups, yet ignored equal consideration for nonhumans, our demand would rest on an unstable foundation.

When we say that all human beings, whatever their race, creed, or sex, are equal, what are we claiming? Those who wish to defend a hierarchical, inegalitarian society[9] often point out that, whatever our test may be, the falsity of the claim that all humans are equal will be easily demonstrated. Like it or not, we must face the fact that humans differ in shape and size; they differ in moral capacities, intellectual abilities, the amount of benevolence and sensitivity to the needs of others, the capacity to communicate effectively with others, and the capacities to experience pleasure and pain. In short, if the demand for equality were based on the actual equality of all human beings, we would have to abandon demanding such equality. In that case, demanding this kind of equality would be an unjustified demand.

Yet still, one might hold the view that the demand for equality among humans is based on the actual equality of the different races and sexes. Although human beings differ as individuals in various ways, there are no differences between races and sexes as a whole. From the mere fact that a person is black, or a woman, we cannot infer anything else about that person. This, it might be said, is the very error of which racism or sexism is unjustly guilty. The white racist claims that whites are superior to blacks, but this claim is a false claim—although there are differences among individuals, some blacks are superior to some whites in all the capacities and abilities that could conceivably be attributed to them. The opponent of sexism will concede the same point: a person's sex [a priori] cannot be a guide to their abilities, and this point is the reason why discrimination on the basis of sex is unjustified.

This line of argument constitutes a possible path of objection to racism and sexism. However, for someone genuinely seeking equality, this is not a suitable path, because the assumption of this path could, under certain circumstances, compel one to accept a maximally inegalitarian society. The fact that human beings differ as individuals, and not as races or sexes, would be a valid answer to someone defending a hierarchical society like South Africa, a society in which all whites are considered superior to all blacks in every situation. But the existence of individual differences that cut across racial and sexual lines will not equip us against a more sophisticated opponent of equality, someone who, for example, holds the interests of individuals with an IQ above one hundred to be superior to the interests of those with an IQ below one hundred. Would a hierarchical society of this sort be better than one based on race or sex? I believe the answer to this question is negative. But if we tie the moral principle of equality to the actual equality of the various races or sexes, in their general form, our opposition to racism and sexism in this form will provide us with no basis for objecting to this kind of inegalitarianism.

There is a second, more important reason why we should not base our opposition to racism and sexism on any kind of factual equality, even the minimal kind that claims that differences in capacities and abilities are evenly distributed among different races and sexes: we can have no absolute guarantee that these abilities and capacities really are distributed equally, irrespective of race or sex, among human beings. So far as actual abilities are concerned, there do seem to be certain measurable differences between races and sexes. These differences certainly do not appear in every individual case, but only when averages are taken for a given group. And still, a point of great importance is that we do not know how much of these differences is really due to the different genetic endowments of the races and sexes, and how much to environmental differences that are the result of past and continuing discrimination. Perhaps it will eventually be proved that all the important differences are environmental rather than genetic. Anyone opposed to racism and sexism will certainly hope that this is the case, for it will make the task of ending discrimination so much easier; nevertheless, to base one's opposition to racism and sexism on the belief that all significant differences are environmental in origin is a very dangerous thing to do. The opponent of racism who takes this line will not be able to avoid conceding that if differences in ability did after all prove to have some genetic connection with race, racism would in some ways be defensible.

It would be sheer folly for an opponent of racism to base his whole case for equality on a dogmatic commitment to one particular outcome of a difficult scientific issue which is still a long way from being settled. While attempts to prove that differences in certain selected abilities between races and sexes are genetic in origin have not been conclusive, the same is true of attempts to prove that these differences are largely environmental. At this stage of investigation, although we may wish that our view on this matter is correct, we cannot claim to know for certain that it is.

Fortunately, there is no need to pin the case for equality to one particular outcome of this scientific research. The appropriate response to those who claim to have found evidence that differences in abilities between races or sexes are genetically based is not to stick to the belief that the genetic explanation must be wrong, whatever evidence to the contrary may turn up: instead we should make it quite clear that the claim to equality does not depend on intelligence, moral capacity, physical strength, or similar matters of fact. Equality is a moral ideal, not a simple assertion of fact. There is no logically compelling reason for assuming that a factual difference in ability between two people justifies any difference in the amount of consideration we give to satisfying their needs and interests. The principle of the equality of human beings is not a description of an alleged actual equality among humans: it is a prescription of how we should treat human beings.

Jeremy Bentham[10] integrated the fundamental principle of moral equality into his utilitarian ethical system in the form of this rule: "Each to count for one and none for more than one." In other words, the interests of every being affected by an action must be taken into account and given the same weight as the interests of other beings. A later utilitarian, Henry Sidgwick[12], points to this point in this manner: "The good of any one individual is of no more importance, from the point of view (if I may say so) of the Universe, than the good of any other."[13] More recently, prominent figures in contemporary moral philosophy have shown a very broad agreement in acknowledging, as a fundamental presupposition for their moral theories, a similar requirement to show equal consideration to the interests of everyone—although these writers generally cannot agree on how this commitment can best be formulated.[14]

One meaning of this principle of equality is the statement that our concern for others should not be based on what they are like, or what abilities they possess—although precisely what this concern requires us to do may vary according to the characteristics of those affected by what we do. Opposition to racism and sexism must ultimately be grounded on this same basis; and, according to this principle, speciesism[15] must also be condemned. If possessing a high degree of intelligence does not give one human being the right to use another for his or her own ends, how can possessing high intelligence entitle humans to exploit nonhumans?

Many philosophers have proposed the principle of equal consideration of interests, in various forms, as a fundamental moral principle; but, as will soon become clear in more precise detail, most of them have not acknowledged that this principle applies to members of other species just as it applies to our own. Bentham was one of the few who grasped this. In an illuminating passage, written at a time when black slaves in the territories under British rule were being treated in ways that most of us now treat nonhuman animals, Bentham wrote:

The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may one day come to be recognized that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum[16] are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month, old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?[17]

In this text Bentham points to the capacity for suffering as the vital characteristic that gives a being the right to equal consideration. The capacity for suffering—or more precisely, the capacity for suffering and/or enjoyment or happiness—is not like another characteristic such as the capacity for language, or understanding complex mathematics. Bentham does not say that those who try to mark the “insuperable line” that determines whether a being’s interests should be taken into account happen to have chosen the wrong characteristic. The capacity for suffering and enjoyment of things is in general a prerequisite for having interests at all, a condition that must be satisfied before we can speak meaningfully about interests in any way. It would be nonsense to say that it is not in the interests of a stone to be kicked along the road by a schoolboy. A stone does not have interests because it cannot suffer. Nothing that we can do to it could possibly make any difference to its welfare. A mouse, on the other hand, does have an interest in not being tormented, because it will suffer if it is treated in this way.

If a being suffers, there can be no moral justification for ignoring that suffering. No matter what the nature of the being, the principle of equality requires that its suffering be counted equally with the like suffering of any other being. If a being is not capable of suffering, or of experiencing enjoyment or happiness, then such a discussion about that being would be pointless. This is why the limit of sentience[18] (using the term as a convenient, if not strictly accurate, shorthand for the capacity to suffer or experience enjoyment or happiness) is the only defensible boundary of concern for the interests of others. To mark this boundary by some other characteristic like intelligence or rationality would be to mark it in an arbitrary way. And if marking this boundary is so arbitrary, why not choose some other characteristic, like skin color, instead?

The racist violates the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of his own race when there is a clash between their interests and the interests of those of another race. Similarly, the speciesist allows the interests of his own species to override the greater interests of members of other species.[19] The pattern is the same in each case. Most human beings are speciesists. I shall now very briefly describe some of the practices that show this.

For the great majority of human beings, especially those who live in cities and industrial societies, the most direct form of contact with members of other species is at mealtimes: when we eat them. In doing so we treat them purely as means to our ends. We regard their life and well-being as subordinate to our pleasure in the taste of a particular kind of food. I say “taste” deliberately—this is purely a matter of pleasing our palate. It could not be defended on nutritional grounds, for it has been established beyond doubt that we can satisfy our need for protein and other essential nutrients far more efficiently with a diet that replaces animal flesh by soybeans, or products made from soybeans, and other high-protein vegetable products.[20]

اما مسئله صرفا در عمل کشتن گونه دیگر جهت لذت بردن از طعم های مطبوع و گوارای ما نیست. رنجی که ما بر حیوانات در حالیکه زنده هستند وارد می کنیم حتی شاید در مقایسه با این واقعیت که برای کشتن آنها آماده می شویم دلالت آشکارتری بر گرفتاری ما به گونه پرستی داشته باشد.[21]  برای آنکه گوشت را در یک بهای متوسطی تولید کنیم که مردم بتوانند از عهده تهیه آن برآیند، جامعه ما روش های تولید گوشت را آنچنان بر خود هموار می کند که حیوانات حسّاس را برای تمامی زندگانی شان محدود به زندگی در شرایطی نامناسب و محبوس می کند. در این شرایط با حیوانات همچون ماشین هایی رفتار می شود که علوفه را به گوشت تبدیل می کنند، و از هرگونه ابداعی در این زمینه که بتواند سبب "نرخ بالاتری از تبدیل" شود استقبال می شود. آنچنانکه یک مقام رسمی در این زمینه گفته است، "تنها زمانیکه سودبخشی متوقف شود سبعیّت موردِ اذعان قرار می گیرد".[22] . . .

همچنانکه گفته ام، از آنجاییکه هیچ یک از این اعمال برای تهیه غذا چیزی بیش از لذت ما از طعم ها و مزه ها نیست، اعمال ما در مورد پرورش و کشتن دیگر حیوانات جهت تغذیه از آنها نمونه بارزی از قربانی کردن مهم ترین منافعِ دیگر موجودات به منظور ارضاء منافعِ سطحی خود ما محسوب می گردد. برای اجتناب از گرفتار آمدن به چنین شکلی از گونه پرستی ما باید این اعمال را متوقف کنیم، و هریک از ما تعهدی اخلاقی برای دست کشیدن از حمایت از چنین اعمالی داریم. رسوم و عادات ما پشتوانه ای است که صنعت گوشت بدان نیازمند است. تصمیم برای دست کشیدن از مهیا کردن چنین پشتوانه ای شاید دشوار باشد، اما چنین تصمیمی دشوارتر از کار یک سفیدپوستِ جنوبی نیست که برای مقابله با سنت های جامعه خود و آزاد کردن بردگان دست به کار شد: اگر ما عادات غذایی خود را تغییر ندهیم، چگونه می توانیم برده دارانی را محکوم کنیم که طریق زندگانی خود را تغییر نمی دهند؟

شکل دیگری از تبعیض می تواند در عمل شایع آزمایش صحت یا عدم صحّت موادّی خاصّ بر روی دیگر گونه ها، یا آزمایش برخی نظریه های روانشناختی درباره اثر مجازات ها و یادگیری های طاقت فرسا بر روی حیوانات، یا آزمایش سلامت ترکیبات گوناگون جدید بر روی حیوانات و . . . ملاحظه شود.

In the past, arguments about vivisection[23] often overlooked this point, because they were presented in absolutist terms[24]: if thousands of humans could be saved by an experiment on one animal, would the opponent be prepared to let those thousands die [for the sake of one creature's survival]? The way to answer this purely hypothetical question is to pose another: would the experimenter be prepared to perform his experiment on an orphaned human infant, if that were the only way to save more lives? (I use the word "orphan" here to avoid the complication of the feelings of the infant's parents, although in doing so I have adopted a very generous position toward the experimenter, since nonhuman subjects of experiments are not orphans.) If the experimenter is not prepared to use an orphaned human infant for his experiments, then his readiness to use nonhumans is a clear case of discrimination, since adult apes, cats, mice, and other mammals are more aware of what is happening to them, more self-directing, and, so far as we can tell, at least as sensitive to pain as any human infant. There seems to be no other relevant characteristic that human infants possess that adult mammals do not have to the same or a higher degree. (One might try to argue that what makes it wrong to experiment on a human infant is that the infant will, when independent, become more than a nonhuman, but to be consistent this person would have to oppose abortion as well, since the fetus has the same potential as the infant—in which case, even preventing conception could be wrong, since the egg and sperm, jointly, have the same potential. In any case, this argument gives us no reason for selecting a nonhuman rather than a human for experiments that cause serious and irreversible brain damage.)

Thus, when the experimenter performs an experiment on a nonhuman for a particular purpose, based on the belief that such a purpose would not justify him in using a human being at an equal or lower level of sentience, awareness, capacity for self-direction, etc. [compared to an animal], he shows a bias toward his own species. To anyone familiar with the results that have largely been obtained through experiments on animals, there can be little doubt that if this bias were eliminated, the number of experiments performed would be less than half of those performed today.

Experimentation on animals, and feeding on their flesh, are perhaps the two major and fundamental forms of speciesism in our society. But in comparison with these two common forms, the third and final form of speciesism, though relatively less significant and more minor, may hold a special appeal for the kind of people for whom this article is written. I am referring here to speciesism in contemporary philosophy.

Philosophy ought to question the basic assumptions of its age. Thorough, critical, and meticulous consideration of what most people take for granted and act upon is, I believe, the fundamental task of philosophy, and it is this task that makes philosophy a worthwhile activity. It is regrettable that philosophy does not always fulfill this historical role. Philosophers are human too, and they, like everyone else, are subject to all the preconceptions of the society to which they belong. Sometimes they succeed in freeing themselves from the dominant ideology of their society; more often, they become sophisticated defenders of such an ideology. In this case, philosophy as it is practiced in academic settings today does nothing to challenge one's preconceptions about their relationship with other species. It is evident from the writings of those philosophers who address various issues that they, like most people, begin with the same unexamined assumptions, and what they say in various fields serves to comfortably reassure the reader in their speciesist habits.

I can illustrate this claim by referring to the writings of various philosophers in different fields. For example, those philosophers interested in the subject of rights[25] try to delineate the boundaries of the realm of rights in such a way that it equally includes the biological boundaries of various species of thinking humans[26], including children and even the mentally disabled, but excludes other beings with equal or greater capacities compared to these latter two groups, who are useful to us only at mealtimes or in medical laboratories. I think that if I focus on the issue that centrally concerns us here, namely the issue of equality, a more fitting result will be achieved for this article.

The fact that the issue of equality, in moral and political philosophy, has always been formulated in terms of human equality is significant. The effect of this is that the philosopher, or the student, never questions the equality of other animals, and this points to philosophy's failure to challenge accepted beliefs. Nevertheless, philosophers find it difficult to discuss human equality without raising the question of the status of other animals in a paragraph or two of their discussion. The reason for this, which should be clear from what I have already stated, is that if humans are to be considered equal to one another, we need a sense of "equality" that does not depend on any actual or descriptive quality of capacities, talents, or other qualities. If equality is to be related to the actual characteristics of humans, these characteristics must be the lowest common denominator among humans, so low that no human lacks them. But after reasoning in this manner, the philosopher encounters the difficulty that the assumption of such a set of characteristics that includes all humans will not include only humans. In other words, it becomes apparent that in the only sense in which we can, as a claim about fact, correctly assert that all humans are equal, at least some members of other species are also equal—that is, in addition to being equal to one another, they are also equal to humans. But if, on the other hand, we consider the statement "all humans are equal" in a non-factual way, perhaps as a prescription, then, as I previously stated, it becomes even more difficult to exclude nonhumans from the sphere of equality.

This conclusion is not what the egalitarian philosopher fundamentally intended to claim. But instead of agreeing with this basic conclusion to which the course of their argument naturally points, most philosophers try to reconcile their beliefs in human equality and animal inequality through arguments that can only be described as devious.

As a first example, I refer here to William Frankena's well-known article[27] entitled "The Concept of Social Justice."[28] In this article, Frankena opposes the idea of realizing justice based on merit, because he believes that this kind of justice can lead to maximally inegalitarian outcomes. Instead of this kind of justice, he proposes the principle that:

all men are to be treated equally, not because they are equal, in any respect, but simply because they are human. They are human because they have emotions and desires, and are able to think, and hence are capable of enjoying a good life in a sense in which other animals are not.[29]

But what is this capacity for enjoying a good life that all humans possess, while other animals are not considered to possess such a capacity? Other animals also have emotions and desires and appear to be capable of enjoying a good life. We may doubt that they can think—although the behavior of some apes, dolphins, and even dogs suggests that some of them possess the ability to think—but is thinking relevant to our discussion here? Frankena is prepared to accept that by "good life" he does not mean "a morally good life in the strong sense as a happy or satisfying life," so thinking does not seem essential for enjoying a good life; indeed, emphasizing the need for thought for egalitarianism would entail numerous difficulties, since only some people have the capacity to lead lives that are reasonably satisfying, or morally good. Surely every sentient being has the capacity to lead a life that is happier or less miserable than another's life, and can therefore claim to fall under this rule. In this respect, the distinction between humans and nonhumans is not a sharp, clear-cut distinction, but rather a continuum along which we gradually move, with overlaps between species, from simple capacities for enjoyment and satisfaction, or pain and suffering, toward more complex capacities.

Philosophers, in search of a position where they can find a basis for a moral gulf that distinguishes humans from animals, tend to resort to verbiage when they cannot find such a tangible difference that performs this task without undermining human equality. They resort to high-sounding phrases like "the intrinsic dignity of the human individual";[30] they speak of "the intrinsic worth of all persons" as if persons (humans?) have a value that other beings do not possess,[31] or they say that humans, and only humans, are "ends in themselves," and "everything other than a human person has only instrumental value for humans."[32]

The idea of ascribing a distinct dignity and worth to humans has a long history; the roots of such an idea can be traced directly to the views of the Renaissance humanists[33], and for instance in the Oration on the Dignity of Man[34] by Pico della Mirandola[35]. Pico and other humanists based their estimation of human dignity on the idea that humans occupy a central and pivotal position in the "Great Chain of Being," which encompasses everything from the lowest forms of matter to God himself; but this view of the universe, in turn, goes back to both traditional and Judeo-Christian teachings. Contemporary philosophers have freed themselves from these metaphysical and religious constraints and speak freely of human dignity without needing such ideas. Why should we not attribute "intrinsic dignity or worth" to ourselves? It seems unlikely that humans would deny the privileges we so generously bestow upon them. Indeed, when one thinks only of humans, speaking of the dignity of all humans can be very liberal and progressive. In doing so, we implicitly condemn slavery, racism, and other forms of violence against humans. We accept that we are, in fundamental ways, equal to the poorest and most ignorant members of our own species. It is only when we think of humans as a small subgroup of all the beings inhabiting our planet that we can come to realize that in elevating the status of our own species, we are at the same time lowering the status of all other species.

The truth is that the appeal to the intrinsic dignity of human beings solves egalitarian problems only so long as these problems are not challenged. When we raise the question of why it should be that all humans—including infants, the brain-damaged, the mentally ill, Hitler, Stalin, and so on—are considered to possess a dignity or worth that elephants, pigs, or chimpanzees cannot even attain, we find that this question is as difficult to answer as our original request for the relevant fact that justifies the inequality between humans and other animals. In fact, these two questions are truly one question: talking about intrinsic dignity or moral worth merely pushes the problem back one step, because any satisfactory defense of the claim that all and only humans possess intrinsic dignity must refer to some capacities or characteristics that all and only humans are deemed to possess. Philosophers frequently introduce concepts of dignity, respect, and worth at a stage where other reasons seem absent, but this kind of reasoning hardly seems convincing. For them, fine-sounding phrases are the last resort to escape reasoning.

In such cases, there are still those who think they can find some relevant characteristic that distinguishes all humans from all other species, and here, I must again point to the existence of those humans who, compared to most nonhumans, are quite clearly below the level of consciousness, self-consciousness, intelligence, and sentience. By these humans, I mean human infants, as well as those individuals suffering from severe and irreversible brain damage—those we know as intellectually disabled humans.

Philosophers who seek to find that characteristic which distinguishes humans from other animals rarely group this category of humans with other groups of animals. And it is not difficult to see the reason for this. To continue down this path without rethinking our attitudes toward other animals would entail that we have the right to perform painful experiments on intellectually disabled humans for trivial and mundane reasons; and similarly, it would result in our having the right to breed and kill these humans for food. For most philosophers, these conclusions are considered just as unacceptable as the notion that we should stop treating nonhumans in this manner.

Of course, when we discuss the issue of equality we may ignore the problem of the mentally ill, or set it aside as a trivial and insignificant matter.[36] Such a path is considered the easiest way to escape this challenge.

What else remains? My final example of speciesism in contemporary philosophy seeks to show what happens when a writer is prepared to confront the question of human equality and animal inequality without ignoring the existence of the mentally ill, or resorting to vague and ambiguous statements on the matter. Benn's[37] clear and candid article entitled "Egalitarianism and the Equal Consideration of Interests"[38] fits this description of mine.

Benn, after noting the "manifest inequalities among human beings," and in my view correctly, argues in favor of equal consideration as the only possible basis for egalitarianism. But Benn, like other writers, only thinks of "equal consideration of human interests." Benn is quite explicit in his defense of this limitation of equal consideration:

. . . not having the human form is not a disqualifying condition. No matter how faithful and intelligent a dog may be, it would be a kind of excessive sentimentality to attribute interests to it in a manner equal to those of humans . . . if, for instance, someone had to choose between feeding a hungry child and a hungry dog, anyone who chose the dog would generally be judged morally unsound, and such a person would be incapable of recognizing the fundamental inequality of the claims. This is what distinguishes our attitudes towards animals from our attitudes towards the mentally disabled. It would be strange to say that we should respect the dignity or personality of a mentally disabled person in a way similar to a sane and reasonable person . . . but there is nothing strange in saying that we should respect their interests equally, that is to say, we should give the same serious consideration to the interests of each of them as is necessary for some criteria of well-being that we can recognize and endorse.

This claim of Benn's about the basis of the consideration we should have for the mentally disabled seems correct to me, but why should there be any fundamental inequality of claims between a dog and a mentally disabled person? Benn realizes that if the principle of equal consideration of interests were based on rationality, no reason could be given against using the mentally disabled for research purposes, just as we currently do with dogs and guinea pigs. The point, he says, should not be this: "Surely we distinguish the mentally disabled from animals in this respect." Whether the usual distinction is justifiable or not is not a question Benn raises; rather, his problem is how such a distinction can be justified. His answer to this question is as follows:

. . . we respect the interests of humans and deem them superior to those of dogs not insofar as they are rational beings, but because rationality is the human norm. We say it is as unfair to take advantage of the deficiencies of a mentally disabled person who falls short of this norm, as it is to steal from a blind person. If we do not think about dogs in this way, it is because of the distinction between different species. Hence, the characteristics that distinguish a normal human being from a normal dog make it reasonable for us to speak of the interests, capacities, and also the claims of other humans in the same way we speak of our own, possessing such interests ourselves. But although these characteristics can provide a point of distinction between humans and other species, they do not in fact constitute conditions of membership qualification [in a species], or criteria for demarcating the class of persons who should morally be taken into account; and this is precisely because a human being, despite lacking the normative characteristics of their class, does not become a member of a different species.

The final sentence of this text fails to provide a convincing argument. Benn concludes that a mentally disabled person may not possess superior characteristics to a dog; however, this does not mean that the mentally disabled person is a member of "other species" like dogs. Therefore, using a mentally disabled person for medical research in the way we use dogs in this field would be "unjust." But why? The irrationality of the mentally disabled person is not their own doing, and the same is true for dogs, as neither of these beings is responsible for their mental and intellectual level. If abusing a single disabled individual is unjust, why is abusing a more general limitation just? I find it difficult to see in his argument anything more than a defense of preferring the interests of members of our own species simply because they are members of our own species. For those who think there is more to his argument than this, I suggest the following mental exercise. Suppose a difference in IQ between two races, for example, whites and blacks, were proven. Then, in Benn's original text, wherever the word "humans" is used, substitute "whites," and wherever the word "dog" is used, substitute "blacks"; then replace the term "rationality" with the phrase "high IQ," and wherever Benn speaks of the "mentally disabled," replace it with the phrase "dull whites" (meaning whites whose IQ is below the normal IQ range of other whites). Finally, replace the word "species" with the word "race." Now examine the text with these changes. It has become a defense of a rigid, exceptionless distinction, based on IQ, between whites and blacks, a defense that tolerates no overlap or commonality between these two groups in this regard. And this revised text is certainly unjust, and this is not merely because we have added fabricated assumptions to it. The point is that Benn, in the original text, despite the accepted instances of overlap and commonality between species, is defending a rigid distinction in the degree of consideration given to the interests of other species. If the original text did not, at first glance, appear as unjust as the revised text, it is largely due to the fact that while we are not racists regarding ourselves, most of us are speciesists. Benn's approach, like other similar articles, serves as a warning about the ease with which the best minds can fall victim to the dominant ideology.

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* This article is a translation of:

“All animals are equal”, in TOM REGAN & PETER SINGER (eds.), Animal Rights and Human Obligations. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1989, pp. 148-162

Published in the monthly scientific-specialist journal Ettela'at-e Hekmat va Ma'refat, Aban 1390, translated by: Behnam Khodapanah. (With slight editing and correction)

[1] sexism

[2] parody

[3] Mary Wollstonecraft

[4] Vindication of the Rights of Women

[5] A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes

[6] Thomas Taylor

[7] consideration

[8] racism

[9] inegalitarian

[10] Jeremy Bentham

[11] utilitarian

[12] Henry Sidgwick

[13] The Methods of Ethics (7th Ed.), p. 382.

[14] For example, R. M. Hare, Freedom and Reason (Oxford, 1963) and J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Harvard, 1972); for a brief account of the essential agreement on this issue between these and other positions, see R. M. Hare, "Rules of War and Moral Reasoning," Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 1, no. 2 (1972).

[15] speciesism

[16] os sacrum

[17] Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. XVII.

[18] sentience

[19] I owe the term speciesism to Richard Ryder.

[20] In order to produce 1 pound of protein in the form of beef or veal, we must feed 21 pounds of protein to the animal. Other forms of livestock are slightly less inefficient, but the average ratio in the United States is still 1:8. It has been estimated that the amount of protein lost to humans in this way is equivalent to 90 percent of the annual world protein deficit. For a brief account, see:

Frances Moore Lappe, Diet for a Small Planet (Friends of The Earth/Ballantine, New York 1971), pp. 4—11 .

[21] Although one might think that killing a being is obviously the ultimate wrong one can do to it, I think that the infliction of suffering is a clearer indication of speciesism because it can be argued that at least part of what is wrong about killing a human being is that most humans are aware of their existence over time and have desires and purposes that extend into the future; see, for example:

1. Tooley, "Abortion and Infanticide," Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol . 2, no. I (1972)

Certainly, if one adopted such a view one would have to hold—like Tooley—that killing a human infant or a mentally defective human is not in itself wrong and is less serious than killing certain higher mammals that probably have an awareness of their own existence over time.

[22] Ruth Harrison, Animal Machines (Stuart, London, 1964). For an account of farming conditions, see my Animal Liberation (New York Review Company, 1975) from which "Down on the Factory Farm," is reprinted in this volume [Animal Rights and Human Obligations].

[23] vivisection

[24] absolutist

[25] rights

[26] homo sapiens

[27] William Frankena

[28] The Concept of Social Justice

[29] In R. Brandt (ed.), Social Justice (Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1962), p. 19.

[30] Frankena, op. cit. p. 23.

[31] H. A. Bedau, "Egalitarianism and the Idea of Equality," in Nomos IX: Equality, ed. J. R. Pennock and J. W. Chapman, New York, 1967.

[32] C. Vlastos, "Justice and Equality," in Brandt, Social Justice, p. 48.

[33] humanists

[34] Oration on the Dignity of Man

[35] Pico della Mirandola

[36] For example, Bernard Williams, "The Idea of Equality," in Philosophy, Politics, and Society (second series), ed. P. Laslett and W. Rundman (Blackwell, Oxford, 1962), p. 118; J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, pp. 509—10.

[37] Benn

[38] Nomos IX: Equality; the passages quoted are on p. 62ff

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Peter Singer

Translated by: Behnam Khodapanah

Published in the scientific-specialist monthly Ettela'at-e Hekmat va Ma'refat, November 2011 (with minor editing and revision)

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