I've looked at this before... in a post about 'being judgy'. And it seems that's what I will be writing my first essay about.
Here's the question:
Would it be speciesism —a form of prejudice akin to sexism or racism —to deny that the interests of a squirrel merit equal moral consideration to those of a human?
I fancy starting with a thought experiment:
Lucy is walking in the countryside. She comes across a pond where she sees a child and a squirrel drowning. She can only save one of them. Lucy tosses a coin; saves the squirrel and the child drowns.
I will then say 'Lucy considers that to deny that the interests of a squirrel merit equal moral consideration to those of a human would be speciesism. Is she right to do so?'
As a contrarian, I rather want to argue that she would be right. Peter Singer would say this:
Lucy is walking in the countryside. She comes across a pond where she sees a normal child and a severely cognitively disabled child drowning. She can only save one of them. Lucy saves the normal child and the cognitively disabled child drowns. And she is right to do so.
This, in his view, would mean that she would also be right to save the child rather than the squirrel. It's not about the species.
What makes a squirrel less worthy of saving is that the squirrel is assumed to be less cognitively able, to have fewer desires for the future, less conception of a self and so on. Also the child can live a longer life and would thus be deprived of more years of (greater or richer) happiness than the squirrel. Also the suffering of the child's family is salient.
What if the squirrel has babies? And they'll all die if she doesn't return? More to the point, squirrels breed faster than humans and assuming they all live happy squirrel lives, though the level of happiness may be lower, they'll create many more subjects capable of experiencing squirrel level happiness. In time, more aggregate happiness could be created by saving the squirrel.
I'm inclined to think that the imposition of human level consciousness as a morally salient factor is, in itself, speciesist. So, there we go. I'm going to be a contrarian.
Comments