Thatās not what āspeciesismā means. Speciesim isnāt the view that an individual human matters more than animals, itās the view that humans matter more because they are human, and not because of some objectively important capacity. Singer who popularized the term speciesism (though he didnāt invent it) has never denied that a (typical, non-infant) human should be saved over a single animal.
Good to know! I havenāt actually read āAnimal Liberationā or etc; Iāve just seen the word a lot and assumed (by the seemingly intentional analogy to racism, sexism, etc) that it meant āthinking humans are superior to animals (which is bad and wrong)ā, in the same way that racism is often used to mean āthinking europeans are superior to other groups (which is bad and wrong)ā, and sexism about men > women. Thus it always felt to me like a weird, unlikely attempt to shoehorn a niche philosophical position (Are nonhuman animalsā lives of equal worth to humans?) into the same kind of socially-enforced consensus whereby things like racism are near-universally condemend.
I guess your definition of speciesism means that itās fine to think humans matter more than other animals, but only if thereās a reason for it (like that we have special quality X, or we have Y percent greater capacity for something, therefore weāre Y percent more valuable, or because the strong are destined to rule, or whatever). Versus it would be speciesist to say that humans matter more than other animals ābecause theyāre human, and Iām human, and Iām sticking with my tribeā.
Wikipediaās page on āspeciesismā (first result when I googled the word) is kind of confusing and suggests that people use the word in different ways, with some people using it the way I assumed, and others the way you outlined, or perhaps in yet other ways:
The term has several different definitions.[1] Some specifically define speciesism as discrimination or unjustified treatment based on an individualās species membership,[2][3][4] while others define it as differential treatment without regard to whether the treatment is justified or not.[5][6] Richard D. Ryder, who coined the term, defined it as āa prejudice or attitude of bias in favour of the interests of members of oneās own species and against those of members of other speciesā.[7] Speciesism results in the belief that humans have the right to use non-human animals in exploitative ways which is pervasive in the modern society.[8][9][10] Studies from 2015 and 2019 suggest that people who support animal exploitation also tend to have intersectional bias that encapsulates and endorses racist, sexist, and other prejudicial views, which furthers the beliefs in human supremacy and group dominance to justify systems of inequality and oppression.
The 2nd result on a google search for the word, this Britannica article, sounds to me like it is supporting āmyā definition:
Speciesism, in applied ethics and the philosophy of animal rights, the practice of treating members of one species as morally more important than members of other species; also, the belief that this practice is justified.
That makes it sound like anybody who thinks a human is more morally important than a shrimp, by definition is speciesist, regardless of their reasons. (Later on the article talks about something called Singerās āprinciple of equal consideration of interestsā. Itās unclear to me if this thought experiment is supposed to imply humans == shrimps, or if itās supposed to be saying the IMO much more plausible idea that a given amount of pain-qualia is of equal badness whether itās in a human or a shrimp. (So you could say something likeāhumans might have much more capacity for pain, making them morally more important overall, but every individual teaspoon of pain is the same badness, regardless of where it is.)
Third google result: this 2019 philosophy paper debating different definitions of the termāIām not gonna read the whole thing, but its existence certainly suggests that people disagree. Looks like it ends up preferring to use your definition of speciesism, and uses the term āspecies-egalitarianistsā for the hardline humans == shrimp position.
Fourth: Merriam-Webster, which has no time for all this philosophical BS (lol) -- speciesism is simply āprejudice or discrimination based on speciesā, and thatās that, apparently!
Fifth: this animal-ethics.org websiteālong page, and maybe itās written in a sneaky way that actually permits multiple definitions? But at least based on skimming it, it seems to endorse the hardline position that not giving equal consideration to animals is like sexism or racism: āHow can we oppose racism and sexism but accept speciesism?āāāA common form of speciesism that often goes unnoticed is the discrimination against very small animals.āāāBut if intelligence cannot be a reason to justify treating some humans worse than others, it cannot be a reason to justify treating nonhuman animals worse than humans either.ā
Sixth google result is PETA, who says āSpeciesism is the human-held belief that all other animal species are inferiorā¦ Itās a bias rooted in denying others their own agency, interests, and self-worth, often for personal gain.ā I actually expected PETA to be the most zealously hard-line here, but this page definitely seems to be written in a sneaky way that makes it sound like they are endorsing the humans == shrimp position, while actually being compatible with your more philosophically well-grounded definition. Eg, the website quickly backs off from the topic of humans-vs-animals moral worth, moving on to make IMO much more sympathetic points, like that itās ridiculous to think farmed animals like pigs are less deserving of moral concern than pet animals like dogs. And they talk about how animals arenāt ours to simply do absolutely whatever we please with zero moral consideration of their interests (which is compatible with thinking that animals deserve some-but-not-equal consideration).
Anyways. Overall it seems like philosophers and other careful thinkers (such as the editors of the the EA Forum wiki) would like a minimal definition, wheras perhaps the more common real-world usage is the ill-considered maximal definition that I initially assumed it had. Itās unclear to me what the intention was behind the original meaning of the termāwere early users of the word speciesism trying to imply that humans == shrimp and youāre a bad person if you disagree? Or were they making a more careful philosophical distinction, and then, presumably for activist purposes, just deliberately chose a word that was destined to lead to this confusion?
No offense meant to you, or to any of these (non-EA) animal activist sources that I just googled, but something about this messy situation is not giving me the best ātruthseekingā vibes...
Iāve definitely heard speciesism used both ways, but I think itās usually used without much reference to an exact view, but as a general āvibeā (which IMO makes it a not particularly useful word). But, I think people in the EA-side of the animal advocacy world tend to lean more toward the āitās discriminatory to devalue animals purely because they arenāt a member of the human speciesā definition. Iād guess that most times its used, especially outside of EA, itās something more like the āitās discriminatory to not view all animals including humans as being of equal valueā view but with a lot of fuzziness around it. So Iād guess it is somewhat context dependent on the speaker?
I share your impression that itās often used differently in broader society and mainstream animal rights groups than it is by technical philosophers and in the EA space. I think the average person would still hear the word as akin to racism or sexism or some other -ism. By criticizing those isms, we DO in fact mean to imply that individual human beings are of equal moral value regardless of their race or sex. And by that standard, Iād be a proud speciesist, because I do think individual beings of some species are innately more valuable than others.
We can split hairs about why that isācapacity for love or pain or knowledge or neuron count or whatever else we find valuable about a lifeābut it will still require you to come out with a multiplier for how much more valuable a healthy ānormalā human is relative to a healthy normal member of other species, which would be absolutely anathema in the racial or sexual context.
Thatās not what āspeciesismā means. Speciesim isnāt the view that an individual human matters more than animals, itās the view that humans matter more because they are human, and not because of some objectively important capacity. Singer who popularized the term speciesism (though he didnāt invent it) has never denied that a (typical, non-infant) human should be saved over a single animal.
Good to know! I havenāt actually read āAnimal Liberationā or etc; Iāve just seen the word a lot and assumed (by the seemingly intentional analogy to racism, sexism, etc) that it meant āthinking humans are superior to animals (which is bad and wrong)ā, in the same way that racism is often used to mean āthinking europeans are superior to other groups (which is bad and wrong)ā, and sexism about men > women. Thus it always felt to me like a weird, unlikely attempt to shoehorn a niche philosophical position (Are nonhuman animalsā lives of equal worth to humans?) into the same kind of socially-enforced consensus whereby things like racism are near-universally condemend.
I guess your definition of speciesism means that itās fine to think humans matter more than other animals, but only if thereās a reason for it (like that we have special quality X, or we have Y percent greater capacity for something, therefore weāre Y percent more valuable, or because the strong are destined to rule, or whatever). Versus it would be speciesist to say that humans matter more than other animals ābecause theyāre human, and Iām human, and Iām sticking with my tribeā.
Wikipediaās page on āspeciesismā (first result when I googled the word) is kind of confusing and suggests that people use the word in different ways, with some people using it the way I assumed, and others the way you outlined, or perhaps in yet other ways:
The 2nd result on a google search for the word, this Britannica article, sounds to me like it is supporting āmyā definition:
That makes it sound like anybody who thinks a human is more morally important than a shrimp, by definition is speciesist, regardless of their reasons. (Later on the article talks about something called Singerās āprinciple of equal consideration of interestsā. Itās unclear to me if this thought experiment is supposed to imply humans == shrimps, or if itās supposed to be saying the IMO much more plausible idea that a given amount of pain-qualia is of equal badness whether itās in a human or a shrimp. (So you could say something likeāhumans might have much more capacity for pain, making them morally more important overall, but every individual teaspoon of pain is the same badness, regardless of where it is.)
Third google result: this 2019 philosophy paper debating different definitions of the termāIām not gonna read the whole thing, but its existence certainly suggests that people disagree. Looks like it ends up preferring to use your definition of speciesism, and uses the term āspecies-egalitarianistsā for the hardline humans == shrimp position.
Fourth: Merriam-Webster, which has no time for all this philosophical BS (lol) -- speciesism is simply āprejudice or discrimination based on speciesā, and thatās that, apparently!
Fifth: this animal-ethics.org websiteālong page, and maybe itās written in a sneaky way that actually permits multiple definitions? But at least based on skimming it, it seems to endorse the hardline position that not giving equal consideration to animals is like sexism or racism: āHow can we oppose racism and sexism but accept speciesism?āāāA common form of speciesism that often goes unnoticed is the discrimination against very small animals.āāāBut if intelligence cannot be a reason to justify treating some humans worse than others, it cannot be a reason to justify treating nonhuman animals worse than humans either.ā
Sixth google result is PETA, who says āSpeciesism is the human-held belief that all other animal species are inferiorā¦ Itās a bias rooted in denying others their own agency, interests, and self-worth, often for personal gain.ā I actually expected PETA to be the most zealously hard-line here, but this page definitely seems to be written in a sneaky way that makes it sound like they are endorsing the humans == shrimp position, while actually being compatible with your more philosophically well-grounded definition. Eg, the website quickly backs off from the topic of humans-vs-animals moral worth, moving on to make IMO much more sympathetic points, like that itās ridiculous to think farmed animals like pigs are less deserving of moral concern than pet animals like dogs. And they talk about how animals arenāt ours to simply do absolutely whatever we please with zero moral consideration of their interests (which is compatible with thinking that animals deserve some-but-not-equal consideration).
Anyways. Overall it seems like philosophers and other careful thinkers (such as the editors of the the EA Forum wiki) would like a minimal definition, wheras perhaps the more common real-world usage is the ill-considered maximal definition that I initially assumed it had. Itās unclear to me what the intention was behind the original meaning of the termāwere early users of the word speciesism trying to imply that humans == shrimp and youāre a bad person if you disagree? Or were they making a more careful philosophical distinction, and then, presumably for activist purposes, just deliberately chose a word that was destined to lead to this confusion?
No offense meant to you, or to any of these (non-EA) animal activist sources that I just googled, but something about this messy situation is not giving me the best ātruthseekingā vibes...
Iāve definitely heard speciesism used both ways, but I think itās usually used without much reference to an exact view, but as a general āvibeā (which IMO makes it a not particularly useful word). But, I think people in the EA-side of the animal advocacy world tend to lean more toward the āitās discriminatory to devalue animals purely because they arenāt a member of the human speciesā definition. Iād guess that most times its used, especially outside of EA, itās something more like the āitās discriminatory to not view all animals including humans as being of equal valueā view but with a lot of fuzziness around it. So Iād guess it is somewhat context dependent on the speaker?
Ok, maybe I was too fast to take the definition I remember from undergrad 20 years ago as the only one in use!
I share your impression that itās often used differently in broader society and mainstream animal rights groups than it is by technical philosophers and in the EA space. I think the average person would still hear the word as akin to racism or sexism or some other -ism. By criticizing those isms, we DO in fact mean to imply that individual human beings are of equal moral value regardless of their race or sex. And by that standard, Iād be a proud speciesist, because I do think individual beings of some species are innately more valuable than others.
We can split hairs about why that isācapacity for love or pain or knowledge or neuron count or whatever else we find valuable about a lifeābut it will still require you to come out with a multiplier for how much more valuable a healthy ānormalā human is relative to a healthy normal member of other species, which would be absolutely anathema in the racial or sexual context.