Biology Reference
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interest to enjoy higher pleasure and a richer life) will find defenders maintaining that
these are important human interests. Liberationists would worry that accepting the
fourth definition above is not limited merely to swallowing the speciesist intuitions in
lifeboat situations, but extends to legitimating all kinds of animal-exploitative practices
that promote important human interests, and that
pace
the pacifying tone of my argu-
ment, this last implication
is
detrimental to liberationism. There is thus a slippery
slope leading from survival to other human interests. Justifying the first would vindic-
ate the others too.
Yet like other philosophically credible responses to slippery slopes, a liberationist
can draw the line very high: human survival trumps animal survival, yet nothing
short of survival does. Drawing the line in this way is consistent since making anti-
animal concessions in survival conflicts does not carry over logically or probably to
other concessions. Interhuman survival conflicts, for example, also modify our moral
intuitions: we justify extreme conduct in such situations that we will not extend to
scenarios that do not involve survival. Secondly, slippery slopes work both ways: if
an antiliberationist places too much importance on slippery slopes, and if she admits
that some marginal human interests should not override highly important animal ones,
for example, admitting that some experiments should not be done, or that maltreating
animals is possible, then the slippery slope would work its way up: if animals are
not to be tortured, what legitimates locking them up in zoos? If their interests count
for something, what prevents them from counting for more?
We can now formulate the active discounting speciesist definition that does finally
oppose liberationism, since it includes quantitative and qualitative determination:
Speciesism (5): Non-survival-related human interests, important as well as marginal
ones, legitimately trump major interests of nonhumans (in the sense that it is justified
to actively disadvantage nonhuman animals, even when such privileging significantly
affects a large number of them). Such privileging is justified because these trumping
interests belong to humans.
It is this version of speciesism that legitimizes any of the actual animal-related ex-
ploitative practices that liberationists would like to abolish, and it is the only one that
they need to argue against. Speciesism in any of the previous senses should not
trouble liberationists.
JUSTIFYING SPECIESISM
I have so far claimed that many versions of speciesism are consistent with libera-
tionism. But I have not yet said why speciesism is itself justified. This aspect of my
argument is less important because I am less worried about the viability of speciesism
as such and more concerned about correcting some distortions in the present debates
