Speciesism and Speciescentrism

Social work and speciesism.

Jane Addams (1940) perhaps the most prominent of the founders of modern social work, describing the impetus to dedicate herself to the welfare of others and develop Hull House, wrote, "We had been to see a bull fight rendered in the most magnificent Spanish style, where greatly to my surprise and horror, I found that I had seen, with comparative indifference, five bulls and many more horses kil...

Neo-speciesism.

Speciesists believe that membership in a particular species is morally relevant. Morally relevant properties entitle their possessors to have their interests considered preferentially relative to those individuals who lack that property. Those dispensing consideration incur obligations or, minimally, options, to act with bias. As a matter of fact, all known speciesists are human speciesists, no...

Speciesism Revisited

Do human non-persons have basic rights simply because they are members of a species characterized by personhood? Are we justified if we give IIDral preference to human non-persons over non-human non-persons with equivalent mental capacities, provided that the latter do not belong to a species characterized by personhood? Michael Wreen has argued for this speciesist view in his recent, important...

In Defense of Speciesism

The concept of a right to life has received a great deal of attention recently, chiefly because it figures so prominently in many arguments con~ cerning a wide variety of moral issues. Arguments concerning the morality of abortion, capital punish­­ ment, infanticide, famine relief, and animal consumption and experimenta­­ tion, for instance, frequently invoke th is con cept, so cia rity about i...

The origin of speciesism.