What kind of nature is it that warrants the thought that human beings are owed some special kind of moral treatment? “Speciesists” typically hold that it is our rational nature, our nature as beings possessed of a radical capacity for intellection and free choice, that grounds the obligation that other rational beings have to treat humans with fundamental forms of moral respect. Beings which are not special in the way that we are, who do not have the same nature that we have, cannot be the objects of the same kind of moral concern that human beings are. For the alleged “speciesist” sees our treatment of human beings as determined by the special kind of thing human beings are. How should we think of our moral obligations to animals? If we have such obligations, what grounds them? And is it the same as the ground for the obligations we have to human beings?īelieving that the grounds for our obligations to humans are different from the grounds for our obligations to animals is sometimes called “speciesism.” The label is typically used pejoratively, but the underlying view is in fact quite sound.
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