PHI 1102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Speciesism

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: PHI 1102
• Professor: Mark Brown

Document Summary

Animal"s interests are the basis for their having rights - rights that are equal to humans. Singer argues that the simple fact that animals have the ability to experience pain and pleasure puts them on an equal moral footing with human beings. Regardless of intelligence or reason or any other criterion humans consider important, animals like us feel pain and therefore as a consequence of this one criterion alone we should not cause them to suffer. Speciesism is an attitude of bias against a being because of the species to which it belongs. Typically, humans show speciesism when they give less weight to the interests of nonhuman animals than they give to the similar interests of human beings. Speciesism, the practice of treating members of one species as morally more important than members of other species; also, the belief that this practice is justified.