Speciesism — The Central Concept in Debate
What it is
Speciesism is a term coined by philosopher Peter Singer to describe discrimination based on species membership — specifically, the practice of giving less moral consideration to beings who belong to species other than one's own, on the basis of species membership alone rather than on the basis of any morally relevant difference in their capacities or characteristics. The concept is central to utilitarian animal ethics and to the animal liberation movement, and it has generated as much philosophical controversy as any term in contemporary ethics.
The argument
Singer's argument for the impermissibility of speciesism is structural rather than empirical: it claims that speciesism is wrong for the same reasons that racism and sexism are wrong. Racism assigns moral consideration based on race, which is not in itself a morally relevant characteristic — what matters, morally, is the capacity to suffer and to have interests, not the color of one's skin. Sexism assigns moral consideration based on sex, which is not in itself a morally relevant characteristic. Speciesism assigns moral consideration based on species, which is likewise not in itself a morally relevant characteristic — what matters is the capacity to suffer, which is not correlated with species membership in any way that could justify the extreme differential in treatment that currently exists.
The responses
The concept of speciesism has attracted responses from multiple philosophical directions:
1. The Kantian response: Some philosophers argue that species membership is indeed morally relevant because only members of the human species are capable of moral reasoning, reciprocal obligation, and the kind of rational autonomy that grounds rights. On this view, giving humans greater moral consideration than animals is not arbitrary discrimination but recognition of a genuinely morally relevant difference. Singer's response: this is a principle that cannot be applied consistently without excluding many humans (infants, people with severe cognitive disabilities) from full moral consideration — the "marginal cases" problem.
2. The relational response: Roger Scruton and other critics argue that moral consideration arises within communities of mutual obligation, not from abstract characteristics. Humans can participate in moral communities in a way that animals cannot; therefore, the structure of rights and obligations that governs human communities does not apply to animals. This is not a denial that animals deserve some consideration — Scruton explicitly argued for animal welfare obligations grounded in human virtues — but it is a rejection of the claim that animals deserve the same moral consideration as humans.
3. The naturalist response: Some argue that it is natural for members of a species to prefer their own species, and that this natural preference is not morally objectionable. Singer's response: the fact that a preference is natural does not make it right.
4. The religious response: Many religious traditions ground the special status of humans in theological claims — that humans are made in the image of God, that humans alone have immortal souls, that the world was created for the benefit of human beings. These claims are available to those who accept the relevant theological frameworks, but cannot ground secular ethical arguments.
Cultural significance
The concept of speciesism has moved from academic philosophy into mainstream animal advocacy discourse and has had genuine impact on how discussions of animal treatment are framed in public culture. The specific comparison to racism and sexism has been both its most powerful rhetorical feature and its most controversial: critics argue that comparing the treatment of animals to the treatment of human beings in the history of racism is offensive to the victims of racism; proponents argue that the comparison is structural, not experiential, and that recognizing the parallel is necessary for consistent ethical reasoning.
The future
As scientific understanding of animal cognition and sentience expands, the empirical basis for speciesism — the assumption that animals are so much less conscious, less sentient, or less morally significant than humans as to justify any differential treatment whatsoever — becomes increasingly difficult to sustain. Whether this scientific shift will produce corresponding changes in ethical attitudes and institutional practices is one of the central empirical questions in the ethics of eating animals.
Reference notes
Cross-link to: Peter Singer and Animal Liberation, Tom Regan and Animal Rights, Animal Sentience, Factory Farming, The History of Animal Welfare Legislation. Tags: Philosophy > Concepts, Ethics > Speciesism.
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