PHI 2396 Study Guide - Fetus, Deontological Ethics, Categorical Imperative
Document Summary
Claim to equality does not depend on iq, and if it did, humans would be able to exploit one another. Animals do suffer, and demonstrate this through primitive non-linguistic ways that are recognized even by humans, so no language governed communication is not valid. Behavioral signs prove that someone/thing is in pain better than a statement, as they could simply lie. If someone told us they were not in pain while severely burned and covered in blood, we wouldn"t believe them. Speciesism involves using animals purely as a means. Unacceptable as if we believed that suffering should be avoided + it"s ok to kill, all animals would be killed. Also unacceptable as killing animals to satisfy our taste for meat violates kant"s ci (means to an end) Value-laden: any deviation from the mean is disease. Descriptive: normal is typical, and anything that doesn"t fall under the species normal trait is abnormal.
