Planet Debate 2005-6

Speciesism Kritik of Human Rights Index 2-3 4 5-7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16-7 18-9 20 21 22-3 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31-2 33 34 35 International Human Rights Discourse is Speciesist 1N Shell LINKS Links: International Human Rights Instruments Links: Human Dignity justification for rights Links: Kantian Philosophy is Speciesist Links: Agency justification for rights Links: Equality Discourse Links: Enlightenment is Speciesist Human Rights are socially constructed IMPACTS Speciesist Discourse is Immoral Speciesism Immoral akin to racism and sexism AT: Speciesism Not Analogous to Racism/Sexism Speciesist Discourse Justifies Domination of Non-humans, rigid species barrier Species Barrier used to Justify Slavery Species Barrier entrenches the logic of the holocaust Speciesism Underlies War and Violence Exclusion of non-human animals undermines efforts to promote human rights AT: AFF LINK/IMPACT ANSWERS AT: Speciesism is Natural AT: Human Dignity is a Justifiable Basis for Human Rights Law AT: Only humans deserve rights AT: Non-humans cant demand their own rights AT: Species Barrier Justified AT: Should solve the problems of humans first AT: Accounting for animal interests undermines the interests of humans AT: Animal Rights dilute Human Rights AT: NO ALTERNATIVE Alternative: Reject Speciesist Foundation for Rights to Develop a new Ethical Framework AT: No Alternative/Not Unique AT: Perm

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International Human Rights Discourse is Speciesist 1N Shell p. 1/2 A. AFFIRMATIVES APPEAL TO INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS -- BOTH THE DISCOURSE AND PHILOSOPHICAL JUSTIFICATION FOR HUMAN RIGHTS IS GROUNDED IN AND FURTHER ENTRENCHES SPECIESISM Kyle Ash, European Environmental Bureau, 2005, Animal Law, Volume 11:1, p. 196 The most commonly stated basis for international human rights is human dignity. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights set the stage with Article I, to which all subsequent human rights treaties refer. Article I states, [a]ll
human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood . . . .2 Human dignity traditionally has been defined by legal theorists and philosophers in a

manner that derives from arrant human chauvinism.3 This is unfortunate for two reasons. First, relying on a speciesist definition of human dignity undermines the cogency of human rights because it is scientifically and philosophically untenable. Second, basing human rights on irrational or metaphysical concepts makes it more difficult to debunk speciesism because of the subsequent recognition that legal rights are manufactured. With the goal
of scientific and multi-cultural legitimacy, international human rights law might otherwise refer to non-metaphysical and permanent bases. This requires eradicating the species-based element.

B. IMPLICATIONS 1. ACCEPTANCE OF SPECIESIST DISCOURSE LEGITIMIZES VIOLENCE AND DISCRIMINATION AGAINST HUMANS AFF CAN NOT ACHIEVE BETTER TREATMENT FOR HUMANS ACTING THROUGH A FRAMEWORK OF SPECIESISM Sheryl Vint, St. Francis Xavier University, 2004, Science Fiction Studies, Books in Review, Volume 31, Part 1, March, http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/birs/bir92.htm
The book is organized into two sections that might be termed theory and practice, and approximately equal space is devoted to each. In his introduction, Wolfe develops his discourse of species and traces how the concept of the animal as Other has long

been the foundation for our very definitions of what it means to be human, and how new developments in science have consistently eroded the criteria by which this boundary has been policed. As Wolfe notes, Haraways influential Cyborg Manifesto (1985) asks us to rethink our subjectivities based on ruptures in the boundary between humans and animals as well as due to fusions of humans with machines. Wolfe suggests, and I agree, that we must pay attention to the different ways the human/animal boundary signifies because the figure of the animal in the West (unlike, say, the robot or the cyborg) is part of a long cultural and literary history stretching back at least to Plato and the Old Testament (6). The central theoretical claim of Animal Rites is that this discourse of speciesism has allowed our theories of the subject to retain a category of those who dont fully count as subjects. Thus, Wolfe argues, as long as this humanist and speciesist structure of subjectivization remains intact, and as long as it is institutionally taken for granted that it is all right to systematically exploit and kill nonhuman animals simply because of their species, then the humanist discourse of species will always be available for use by some humans against other humans as well, to countenance violence again the social other of whatever speciesor gender, or race, or class, or sexual difference (8). 2. SPECIESISM IS IMMORAL IT IMPLICATES THE SAME POWER DIFFERENTIAL AND MORAL OBJECTIONS AS RACISM, SEXISM AND HOMOPHOBIA Steven Best, Professor University of Texas El Paso, 2005, (Visited 9/9/2005), Common Natures, Shared Fates: toward an interspecies alliance politics, http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Philosophy/Debating/Steven%20Best %20articles%20on%20animal%20issues.html When we compare speciesism to classism, racism, sexism, homophobia, and other modes of discrimination, we see they share a similar logic. In each case, there is a rigid dualism established between different groups (e.g., whites vs. people of color, men vs. women, humans vs. animals) that denies their commonality. But these dualisms are not innocent, and the distinctions are arranged in a hierarchy that privileges one group as superior and denigrates the other as inferior. As every power system has a justification, dualistic hierarchies are the theory for the practice of the domination and exploitation of marginalized groups. Every power system involves the category of the Other to posit violations to the norms that are privileged and protected. But, in every case of oppression, the alibi of power is arbitrary and rooted in bias and prejudice rather than a defensible rational standpoint. In classism, racism, sexism, homophobia, and speciesism, we therefore find the same ploys of power involving the logic and structures of exclusion. No matter what group it targets, prejudice is prejudice and needs to be extirpated by an enlightened society. Just as no democracy worth its name can work only for the economic elite, whites, men, or heterosexuals, it is
equally true that the great "world house" envisioned by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. cannot consistently contain speciesism and the vast industries of killing animals for food, sport, experimentation, or entertainment.

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International Human Rights Discourse is Speciesist 1N Shell p. 2/2 C. REJECTION OF SPECIESISM VITAL TO MORAL PROGRESS MUST REJECT THE LANGUAGE OF HUMAN SUPREMACY Steven Best, Professor University of Texas El Paso, 2005, The New Abolitionists: capitalism, slavery and human rights, http://www.impactpress.com/articles/febmar05/best2305.html The next great step in moral evolution is to abolish the last acceptable form of slavery that subjugates the vast majority of species on this planet to the violent whim of one. True moral advance involves sending human supremacy to the same refuse bin that society earlier discarded much male supremacy and white supremacy. Animal liberation requires that people transcend the complacent boundaries of humanism in order to make a qualitative leap in ethical consideration, thereby moving the moral bar from reason and language to sentience and subjectivity. Animal liberation is the culmination of a vast historical learning process whereby human beings gradually realize that arguments justifying hierarchy, inequality, and discrimination of any kind are prejudiced, baseless, and fallacious. Moral progress occurs in the process of demystifying and deconstructing all mythsfrom ancient patriarchy and the divine right of kings to Social Darwinism and speciesismthat attempt to legitimate the domination of one group over another. Moral progress advances through the dynamic of replacing hierarchical visions with egalitarian visions and developing a broader and more inclusive ethical community. Having recognized the illogical and unjustifiable rationales used to oppress blacks, women, and other disadvantaged groups, society is beginning to grasp that speciesism is another unsubstantiated form of oppression and discrimination.

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Links: International Human Rights Instruments INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW BASED ON SPECIESIST FOUNDATION Kyle Ash, European Environmental Bureau, 2005, Animal Law, Volume 11:1, p. 197 Since international law today broadly draws its germination from Europe, both of the above reasons for excluding other animals from legal entitlement can be traced in part to the Judaeo-Christian tradition, in which the Bible explains in the book of Genesis, inter alia, that the Earth and all Earths nonhuman inhabitants are mans to rule.10 Although, like the Judaeo-Christian tradition, other dominant world religions generally preach compassion and responsibility toward other animals, they all profess mans inherent existential superiority.11 This is influenced by the
much more pervasive roots of the secular aspect of speciesism, which conspire to determine that other species are inferior with several different explanations.12 What the explanations all have in common is the claim that other animals either lack or are deficient in qualities for which humans claim pride; for example, human reason, language, and use of symbols, humor, reflective capacity, and self-awareness. 13 Our

tendency to infer these differences between us and other creatures has created a heuristic riddle, to which our answer has been to shift human supremacist claims from one reputed human-only asset to another, as sciences like biology, genetics, and anthropology have revealed evidence that one uniquely human trait after another turns out to be not so unique.14 The law has not kept up, and continues to validate our value-laden misconceptions. APPEALS TO A COMMON HUMANITY TO JUSTIFY HUMAN RIGHTS REIFY THE BARRIER EXCLUDING NON-HUMAN SPECIES* Stephen R. L. Clark, professor of philosophy at Liverpool University, 1994, The Great Ape Project: equality beyond humanity, eds. Cavalieri & Singer, p. 120-1* They thought, that is, that our conspecificity should make a difference to the extent and nature of our obligations. Whereas what is now called racism claims the right to treat human beings of other races less favorably than the racists own, UNESCOs demand was that no differences of race, sex, age, intellect, capacity or creed should license what would otherwise be an obvious injustice. It may be that one historical explanation of the slogans popularity in the West, in
addition to the shocked discovery of what racist jibes about backward races had led to in the West, was the converse discovery that, for example, the Japanese so heartily despised the smelly, hairy Europids they captured. We all began to realize how vulnerable we were.

The natural conclusion has been that species differences do license such injustice, perhaps because such differences are real and predictable, and relevant to the nature of the putative injustice. Those reasons are not wholly wrong, but of course
they hardly touch the real point: some of our conspecifics would not be injured by acts that injure us, just as some creatures not of our species would be injured by those acts. If what matters is only the quality of the putative injury, then there will be many occasions when, if we ought not to injure those capable of being injured, we ought not injure those outside our species, and may do to our conspecifics what, in their case, will be no injury. That we are conspecifics plays no central role in the argument. Nor are any of the merely rationalist arguments very successful: respect for humankinds unity is not well represented by respect for rational autonomy, since not all human beings are thus rational. If

UNESCO wished to oppose the Nazi project (and of course it did) it could hardly do so by endorsing the Nazi preoccupation with such forms of human living as they deemed rational. The object of the declaration was to oppose the
extermination of the mentally unfit or the backward races, and not merely to dispute the Nazis identifications, as though their error was only a case of mistaken identity.

HUMAN RIGHTS JUSTIFIED BECAUSE WE ARE NOT ANIMALS Kyle Ash, European Environmental Bureau, 2005, Animal Law, Volume 11:1, p. 207 Mutua claims that a universal notion across all societies is that humans deserve special protections for the simple reason that we are not animals. Makau Mutua, The Banjul Charter: The Case for an African Cultural Fingerprint in Cultural Transformation and Human Rights in Africa 79 (A.A. An Naim ed., Zed Books 2002). Cohen states that any human being granted personhood has rights by virtue of species membership. Ronald Cohen, Endless Teardops: Prolegomena to the Study of Human Rights in Africa, in Human Rights and Governance in Africa 3, 4 (Ronald Cohen, Goran Hyden & Winston P. Nagan, eds., U. Press of Fla. 1993). INTERNATIONAL LAW IS SPECIESIST ONLY JUSTIFIES PROTECTION OF HUMANS Kyle Ash, European Environmental Bureau, 2005, Animal Law, Volume 11:1, p. 206 Until recently, the metaphysical presupposition that humans are not animals has inhibited the interplay between human psychology, anthropology, and sociology with primatology and biological evolution and vice versa. Assumptions of spiritual differences between chimpanzees and humans have rationalized horrible experiments on chimps, and these assumptions have also impeded more profound analysis of the roots of human social interaction, morality, and culture. 74 Discussing the political theory of Karl Popper, Mario Vargas Llosa says that [i]f we do not subject truthall the truthsto the test of trial and error, if we are not free to question . . ., the mechanics of knowledge is shackled and knowledge itself is perverted.75 While individual sciences may now suffer less from tunnel vision and self-defeating conservatism,76 international law continues to be molded as if Darwins ship, the Beagle, had been lost at sea. International human rights still are defined by Aristotles scala naturae.77 Therefore, the less human an animal is, the less likely it is that it will be protected.

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Links: Human Dignity justification for rights p. 1/3 A. International Human Rights Law Based on Human Dignity UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND ALL SUBSEQUENT INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW GROUNDED IN THE CONCEPT OF HUMAN DIGNITY Antoon De Baets, University of Groningen, 2005, A successful utopia: the doctrine of human dignity, paper presented to 20th International Congress of Historical Sciences, Sydney, http://www.cishsydney2005.org/images/Antoon%20De%20BaetsMT2c.doc Few concepts have been so successful after World War II. The idea is fundamental to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations. Indeed, the Universal Declaration is nothing but an attempt to render the concept of human dignity operational. This is announced from the very first line of the preamble and repeated several times. It is likewise mentioned in the 1945 United Nations Charter, the preamble of the two 1966 Covenants emanating from the Universal Declaration, and virtually all human-rights declarations and conventions. In addition, three-quarters of the constitutions of the worlds 193 states use the concepts of human dignity or personal dignity explicitly.i Even constitutions not using it, imply it strongly.ii What is true for dignity, is also true for its opposite, indignity. Outrages upon personal dignity are explicitly prohibited by the Geneva Conventions and the International Criminal Court. The concept of dignity is increasingly used in legal argument and political discourse. And of course, human dignity is central in all major religious traditions and ethical systems when they speak about the sacred nature of persons.iii ALL INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS INSTRUMENTS DECLARE THAT RIGHTS BELONG TO HUMANS BECAUSE OF HUMAN ATTRIBUTES LIKE DIGNITY Deryck Beyleveld & Roger Brownsword, Sheffield Institute of Biotechnological Law & Ethics, 1998, The Modern Law Review, Volume 61, No. 5, pp. 661-680, [JSTOR] p. 663 What do the leading post-War human rights instruments tell us about the idea of human dignity? In general, where reliance on human dignity is explicit in the case of the European Convention on Human Rights, for example, reliance is merely implicitit is largely foundational, declaratory, and undefined. Thus, the Preamble to each of the constituent instruments comprising the International Bill of Rights the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948 (UDHR), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 1996 (IESCR), and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1966 (ICCPR) provides that recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world; and Article 1 of the UDHR proclaims that All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. However, only twice thereafter do the drafters of the UDHR draw explicitly on the concept of dignity first, in Article 22 (concerning the right to social security and the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for dignity and the free development of personality) and then in Article 23(3) (concerning the right to just and favorable remuneration such as to ensure an existence worthy of human dignity.) INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW GROUNDED IN HUMAN DIGNITY Antoon De Baets, University of Groningen, 2005, A successful utopia: the doctrine of human dignity, paper presented to 20th International Congress of Historical Sciences, Sydney, http://www.cishsydney2005.org/images/Antoon%20De%20BaetsMT2c.doc Few concepts have been so successful after World War II as was the concept of human dignity. The idea is central to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to virtually all the international human-rights instruments, international courts, and to most national constitutions. In the first part, Dignity and Utopia, I show that this success is surprising. Many argue that human dignity does not consist of one but of two concepts: inherent dignity (the inherent worth of human beings) and external dignity (their worthiness of respect). In addition, for some writers, human dignity is an axiom without further ground. Finally, both inherent and external human dignity possess some characteristics with a utopian echo. In the second part, Dignity and History, I demonstrate that human (or personal) dignity is a productive concept in its own right. The present body of human rights was inferred from it. It soon led to the formulation of its counterpartindignity or humiliationor, as it is legally called by the International Criminal Court, outrages upon personal dignity.

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Links: Human Dignity justification for rights p. 2/3 --International Law Defines Human Dignity in a Speciesist Manner HUMAN DIGNITY BASIS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS IS SPECIEST Michael Meyer, Professor Philosophy, Santa Clara University, 2001, Journal of Social Philosophy, Vol. 32, No. 2, Summer, p. 115 Does the very idea of human dignity entail some moral disrespect for nonhuman animals? Put otherwise, does the notion of human dignity smack of speciesism (roughly, a view whereby nonhuman, sentient individuals are denied [adequate] moral standing on essentially arbitrary grounds)? Animal advocates, like James Rachels, often allege[s] that there is a serious clash between the traditional view of human dignity and adequate moral recognition of nonhuman animals: The traditional doctrine of human dignity is speciesist to the core, for it implies that the interests of humans have priority over those of all other creatures. There is a further reasonbeyond those put forth in a critique like Rachelssto be concerned with the claim that the very idea of human dignity is an impediment to the proper moral recognition of animals. The ascendancy of an important modern moral notion like human dignity should not, it seems, also become an occasion for the subjugation of animalsfor example, by providing an alleged rationale for harming them. It would be a cruel irony indeed for an idea that is seen as a source of moral progressby providing a ground for our moral respect for humans regardless of social class, race, etc.to become a source for rationalizing harm toward nonhuman animals. INTERNATIONAL LAW DEFINES HUMAN DIGNITY AND HUMANE TREATMENT AS IN OPPOSITION TO HOW WE TREAT NON HUMAN ANIMALS Antoon De Baets, University of Groningen, 2005, A successful utopia: the doctrine of human dignity, paper presented to 20th International Congress of Historical Sciences, Sydney, http://www.cishsydney2005.org/images/Antoon%20De%20BaetsMT2c.doc If we claim that human dignity is the foundation of human rights and that thinking about human rights is nothing but an attempt to render the concept of human dignity operational, it should be feasible to compile a list of concrete examples of dignity. The most widely accepted of these lists is the Universal Declaration of 1948. The opposite has to be true too: if we are able to compile a list of examples of dignity, we should also be able to compile a list of examples of indignity. The most famous of these lists is to be found in the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 (supplemented with two important Additional Protocols in 1977) regarding the humane treatment of civilians and prisoners in times of war. Ratified by all countries in the world except Nauru (12,000 inhabitants) and therefore major sources of international humanitarian law, they explicitly inspired the definitions of crimes against humanity and war crimes adopted by the International Criminal Court (established in 2002). This is what the commentaries of the Red Cross (the official custodian of the Geneva Conventions) tell us about the concepts of humane and inhumane treatmentand hence, about dignity and indignity: Lengthy definition of expressions such as humane treatment...is unnecessary, as they have entered sufficiently into current parlance to be understood. It would therefore be pointless and even dangerous to try to enumerate things with which a human being must be provided for his normal maintenance as distinct from that of an animal, or to lay down in detail the manner in which one must behave towards him...humanely, that is to say as a fellow human being and not as a beast or a thing. The details of such treatment may, moreover, vary according to circumstances...and to what is feasible...

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Links: Human Dignity justification for rights p. 3/3 HUMAN DIGNITY BASIS FOR INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW GROUNDED IN SPECIESISM Kyle Ash, European Environmental Bureau, 2005, Animal Law, Volume 11:1, p. 207-9 Exclusionary human dignity has been a historically fickle concept, 80 trying the minds of moralists and philosophers who have attempted to provide a permanent definition for what is basically an idea that one day will disappear with or without us. The result has been two general perspectives of dignity. First, there is dignity as empowerment, which is the view espoused by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)81 as well as discourse suggesting that a right to development may be emerging in international law, which would entail access and power over economic resources.82 This view of exclusionary human dignity appeals to the idea of free will and autonomy. Contrarily, the second view is dignity as restraint, which avers that human value is a metaphysical good that cannot be debased for any reason.83 A typical example in international law is Article 2 of the Convention on Human Rights and Medicine, which stipulates that [t]he interests and welfare of the human being shall prevail over the sole interest of society or science,84 even if it does not compromise autonomy or free will.85 Dignity as restraint creates the duties86 expounded by the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights,87 and possibly the emerging rights of indigenous peoples. Both of these views of exclusionary human dignity are supported by Kant, who said, Humanity itself is a dignity; for a human being cannot be used merely as a means by any human being . . . but must always be used at the same time as an end. It is just in this that his dignity (personality) consists, by which he raises himself above all other beings in the world that are not human beings and yet can be used, and so over all things.88 Contrary to philosophy professor Michael Meyers opinion, the Kantian view of human dignity is definitively speciesist because Kant determines human dignity to be rooted in what are typical human traits. Meyer explains that, although Kant does not define human dignity based on being human, he bases dignity on rational capacity, which is of course determined by Kants and Meyers own rational capacity. Meyer does not believe such reasoning is species-based because, as he explains of Kants philosophy, it is not in fact the case that all humans have this capacity.89 As a hypothetical analogy, one could espouse white dignity based on the typical traits of a white person. Certainly this is racist, even if a fair-skinned, straight-haired African may incidentally be more dignified than a dark skinned, curly-haired European. In the same vein, the Kantian view of speciesism is not opposed to the idea of developing rudimentary rights for nonhumans who possess humanlike qualities in terms of morphology, sentience, or cognition. In fact, this is exactly what is happening in international law with other primates, whales, and elephants.90

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Links: Kantian Philosophy is Speciesist KANTS DIGNITY JUSTIFICATION FOR RIGHTS IS SPECIESIST J. Baird Callicott, Department of Philosophy, University of North Texas, 2002, Environmental Values 11: 3-25, [EBSCO], p. 5-6 Because Kants intrinsic value-conferring property, reason or rationality, had long been regarded as a hallmark of human nature. At the dawn of Western philosophy, Aristotle declared that reason or rationality was the differentia that distinguished man, as a species, from the other animals. Anthropos is the uniquely rational animal, according to Aristotle. Thus, Kants approach to ethics appears to be a brief for anthropocentrism and to foreclose the possibility of nonanthropocentrism. Indeed, Kant (1959: 46) goes out of his way to exclude non-human natural entities and nature as a whole from ethical enfranchisement: Beings whose existence does not depend on our will but on nature, if they are not rational beings, have only relative worth as means and are therefore called things; on the other hand, rational beings are designated persons because their nature indicates that they are ends in themselves, i. e. things which may not be used as a means. For Kant, human beings are ends; beings whose existence depends on nature are means. KANT WAS SPECIEST FELT HUMANS OWED NO DUTY TO NON-HUMANS Paola Cavalieri, Editor of the International philosophy journal Etica & Animali, 2005, Are Human Rights Human? visited site on 9/8/2005, http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_4.2/cavalieri.htm IMMANUEL KANT WRITES THAT SO FAR AS ANIMALS ARE CONCERNED, we have no direct duties. Animals are not selfconscious and are there merely as means to an end. That end is man. . . . Our duties towards animals are merely indirect duties towards humanity.[ In the idea that nonhumans are nothing but means one can perceive echoes of Aristotle: the other animals [exist] for the good of man, the domestic species both for his service and for his food, and . . . most of the wild ones for the sake of his food and of his supplies of other kinds.[4] And the thesis of indirect duties betrays a reminiscence of Thomas Aquinass remarks on the subject of biblical injunctions against cruelty to nonhumans: this is . . . to remove mans thoughts from being cruel to other men, and lest through being cruel to animals one become cruel to human beings.[5]

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Links: Agency justification for rights GROUNDING HUMAN RIGHTS IN AGENCY IS SPECIESIST Kyle Ash, European Environmental Bureau, 2005, Animal Law, Volume 11:1, p. 209-10 Because basing human dignity on humanness presents a problem for law and logic, Roger Brownsword argues for a more rigorous approach: To say that humans have dignity, meaning that humans have a value, simply by virtue of being members of the human species will not convince even fellow humans. For, any attempt to privilege the members of a particular species, including the members of the human species, merely by virtue of their species-membership will attract the charge of speciesismsuch a response is arbitrary and it plainly will not do.91 Instead he says the basis for dignity should be agency,92 but this basis fails too, because his description of agency is still based on what he perceives as humanness. Referring to the bioethicist John Harris, Brownsword says human dignity results from our distinctive qualities that enable us to value our existence.93 First, we are dignified because we can make autonomous judgments about our existential value. Second, we thus have the mental capability to overcome our genetic programming and commit suicide. Third, human dignity implies respect for a persons autonomous judgment as to whether she or he will live or die.94 Therefore, humans must have, at the very least, a basic right to life. When we consider that individuals of other species sometimes autonomously make decisions concerning their own lives, whether out of depression or otherwise, this basis for exclusionary human dignity should crumble. With a speciesist mentality it would be easy to discount depressive behavior observed in other animals, such as when stressed elephants get drunk by eating fermented fruits and grains.95 But if there was any question before, we have also conducted laboratory experiments inflicting trauma on nonhuman animals, demonstrating a clear conclusion . . . that humans are not alone in exhibiting self-initiated behaviors that ultimately produce self-harm or death.96 So, how do the bioethicists respond? Simply that humans value their existence more profoundly than do other species because of many uniquely human traits.97 In other words, the speciesist response will remain dogmatic and tautological.98

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Links: Equality Discourse STRUGGLES AGAINST RACISM, SEXISM AND OTHER FORMS OF OPPRESSION EMPLOY SPECIESIST DISCOURSE LEGITIMIZING ITS DESTRUCTIVENESS Matthew Chrulew, Department of English, University of Western Australia, 2004, H-Net Reviews in the Humanities & Social Sciences, March, http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.cgi?path=255911083547452, p. 2 Wolfes most important contribution is, I believe, his insistence on "the irreducibility of species discourse" (p. 124). In a disciplinary context justifiably concerned with the categories of race, class, gender (and so on), too often concern for animals is marginalized. The discourse of species is habitually reduced to a site onto which the real and determinative cultural forces are projected, a field always manipulated according to other ends. It is precisely the racist deployment of "animality" to exclude the non-white, or the sexist deployment of "nature" to exclude the female, which has motivated antiracist and antisexist movements to reclaim the space of the human subject for their own liberation. But the problem, as Wolfe points out on a number of occasions, is not only that such moves fail to challenge the speciesist dominance of the human over the animal--a failure which Wolfe admirably reverses in his foregrounding of the species discourse in these texts--but also the massively destructive institutional context of such discourse. FOUNDATION OF JUSTIFICATION FOR EQUALITY IS ROOTED IN SPECIESISM Paola Cavalieri, Editor of the International philosophy journal Etica & Animali, 2005, Are Human Rights Human? visited site on 9/8/2005, http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_4.2/cavalieri.htm While not being altogether overlooked by philosophers, the first argument is, owing to its simplicity, powerful and widespread mainly at the societal level. To the question of what may draw what we might call, following Bentham, the insuperable line between us and the other animals,[8] this argument replies: the fact that they are not human. On such a perspective, what makes the difference is simply the possession, or lack, of a genotype characteristic of the species Homo sapiens. Is it an acceptable reply? One can doubt it. Those who appeal to species membership work in fact within the framework of the intra-human egalitarian paradigm. And yet, it is just the line of reasoning that has lead to the defense of human equality which implies, by denying moral relevance to race and sex membership, the rejection of the idea that species membership in itself can mark a difference as far as moral status is concerned. If one claims that merely
biological characteristics like race and sex cannot play a role in ethics, because ethics is a theoretical inquiry endowed with its own standards of justification, in which criteria imported from

Ethical views that, while rejecting racism and sexism, accept speciesism - as was defined, with a neologism that alludes to the parallel intra-human prejudices, the view that grants to the members of our [10] own species a privileged status with respect to all other creatures - and racism are twin doctrines.
other domains cannot be directly relevant,[9] how can one attribute a role to a another merely biological characteristic such as species?

EQUALITY DISCOURSE WHICH EXCLUDES NON-HUMANS IS IMMORAL* Christoph Anstotz, professor of special education at Univerity of Dortmund, 1994, The Great Ape Project: equality beyond humanity, eds. Cavalieri & Singer, p. 169* Anyone who interprets the idea of equality so as to find the criterion of equality only in membership of the species Homo sapiens can include profoundly mentally disabled people in the community of equals. It is done as Stolk describes, regardless of their abilities and qualities. This interpretation is as psychologically strong as it is morally weak. For it prefers all and only members of that group who created this interpretation, discriminating without valid reason against all other living beings who are not members of this privileged community of equals. The attempt to realize the idea of equality is made more difficult when those who are not members of the relevant moral community are unable to appeal against their exclusion. Not even the most intelligent chimpanzee can protest, either
directly or through representative drawn from their own kind, against the deprivation of liberty, against being used in painful medical experiments, against being killed for food, or against being exhibited in zoos and circuses. On the other hand, according to the Declaration of the United Nations, the profoundly mentally disabled human is protected from any kind of abuse and degradation, merely on the grounds of membership of the species Homo sapiens. Should the deeper sense of the idea of equality, on which human rights is based,

demand that we provide for the interests and needs of humans but allow discrimination against the interests of nonhuman beings? Wouldnt it be strange if the same idea contains the claim for equality and the permission for discrimination too? Can this idea really involve sympathy and cruelty at the same time? FOUNDATION FOR EQUALITY IS SPECIESIST D. A. Lloyd Thomas, 1979, Mind, Volume 88, No. 352, October, pp. 538-553 [JSTOR], p. 539 In the European tradition the assumption that there is some fundamental respect in which people are equal is probably an inheritance of Christianity, and in some ways that version of the doctrine of human equality offers the most straightforward idea of what is being attempted. Being a member of a certain natural species is not, as such, the important respect in which people are equal. However, being a member of that species confers, ex officio, the required characteristic: all people are equal in that they have a soul, and in the eyes of God all souls are equally worthy. The possession of this characteristic by all can then be used to support demands for certain forms of equal treatment.

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Links: Enlightenment is Speciesist ENLIGHTENMENT AND MODERNISM FOUNDED ON BELIEF IN HUMAN SUPREMACY Charlene Myers, Simon Fraser University, 1999, Violence against humans and other animals, July, http://critcrim.org/redfeather/journal-pomocrim/Vol-4-FeministCrim/001Myers.html The patriarchal institutions of Western society originated in the modern era. Modernism "had its origins in the Enlightenment period," and "was a celebration of the liberating potentials of the social sciences, the materialist gains of capitalism, new forms of rational thought, due process safeguards, abstract rights applicable to all, and the individual" (Milovanovic, 1992a, 1994a; Dews, 1987; Sarup, 1989; Lyotard, 1984; Baker, 1993; cited in Milovanovic, 1997). The effects of the domination inherent within modernist institutions, namely Western (especially Judeo-Christian) religion and science/technology, on Western society have been far-reaching, particularly the myths of man's dominion over the rest of the earth's creatures and women's responsibility for the "fall from grace" (Cartmill, 1993; Merchant, 1996; VanDeVeer and Pierce, 1994). The Holy Bible, King James version, Genesis, Book 1 (cited in Merchant, 1996:29; emphasis added) contains the story which suggests that God instructed Adam and Eve to "be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it," and added that they were hereby given "dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." This biblical dogma has been a major source of justification for the exploitation of animals (VanDeVeer and Pierce, 1994).

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Human Rights are socially constructed HUMAN RIGHTS ARE CONSTRUCTED BY PHILOSOPHERS J. Baird Callicott, Department of Philosophy, University of North Texas, 2002, Environmental Values 11: 3-25, [EBSCO], p. 15 Mention of human rights leads to my third and last point about the pragmatic power and practical difference of theoretical environmental philosophy and its preoccupation with the concept of intrinsic value in nature. Human beings have shoes, teeth, kidneys, thoughts, and rights. Human shoes and teeth are out there for anyone to see. Human kidneys may be observed during surgery or autopsy. We are privy only to our own thoughts and infer the thoughts of others from what they do, what they say, and what they write. However open to view or hidden away, human shoes, teeth, kidneys, and thoughts are all things of this world. But human rights is a name for nothing; it is but an idea a fiction created by Western moral philosophers (Nickel 1992). Theoretical moral philosophers created, more generally, a rights discourse in the West (Gewirth 1992).

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Speciesist Discourse is Immoral INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW BASED ON MORALLY IRRELEVANT FACTOR OF SPECIES MEMBERSHIP Madeleine Flannagan, National President Students Organized to Uphold Life, New Zealand, 2000, The failure to define rights bearers: international human rights legislation, toothless and useless?, http://www.soul.org.nz/pages/resources/un_toothless.htm Further, there is some arbitrariness about IHR legal definitions of human beings. As we noted above an adequate criterion of rights bearers must satisfy certain conditions. When we apply this to IHR legal definitions, there must be a property that 'members of the human family possess' that is not possessed by non-members. Furthermore, this property must constitute a morally relevant difference, it must be a necessary and sufficient condition for a being to possess rights. This is not as
simple as it may first appear: Once the religious mumbo jumbo surrounding the term human has been stripped away, we may continue to see normal members of our species as possessing greater capacities of rationality, self consciousness, communication and so on, than members of any other species; but we will not regard as sacrosanct the life of each and every member of our species, no matter how limited its capacity for intelligent even conscious life may be. If we compare the severely defective new born infant with a non human infant a dog or a pig , for example we

will often find the non human to have superior capacities, both actual and potential, for rationality self consciousness, communication and so on, and anything else that can plausibly considered morally significant. Only the fact that the defective infant is a member of the species homo-sapiens leads it to be treated differently from a dog or pig. Species membership alone however is not morally relevant.[16] Singer asks, "what is the difference between animals and
humans that justifies treating them differently?" Can we find some morally relevant difference that justifies us doing so? Or is this Singer's analysis is insightful the only major difference seems to be that humans are members of the species homo-sapiens. But

surely this is arbitrary i.e. not morally relevant The fact that a person is the member of some group or has a certain DNA code in itself is not a ground for attributing rights. Granting right to a member of some group for only this reason is akin to racism or sexism. MORALITY BASED IN SPECIESISM IS MORALLY UNTENABLE Paola Cavalieri, Editor of the International philosophy journal Etica & Animali, 2005, Are Human Rights Human? visited site on 9/8/2005, http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_4.2/cavalieri.htm But if none of the major arguments advanced in defense of the ends/means doctrine[16] - the appeal to the possession of a genotype Homo sapiens, the appeal to the possession of rationality as a precondition of morals, and the reference to this very same capacity as a means to intersubjective agreement - can justify maintaining nonhuman animals in their present inferior moral state, it seems plausible to conclude that traditional morality is untenable. SPECIES MEMBERSHIP IS NOT A MORALLY RELEVANT BASIS TO JUSTIFY DISCRIMINATORY TREATMENT Hugh LaFollette & Niall Shanks, East Tennessee State University, 1996, Philosophy, The origin of speciesism, pp. 41-60, http://www.stpt.usf.edu/hhl/papers/species.htm Are bare biological differences moral[ly] relevant? We don't see how. To say we are humans (rather than dogs or ducks) is just to say that we members of `group or population of animals potentially capable of interbreeding'. But a bare biological divide cannot be morally relevant. That is exactly why racism and sexism are morally indefensible: they assume a mere biological divide marks an important moral divide. Of course, there are differences between the races and the sexes, but so what? The differences are merely biological. Of course, there are differences between the species, but so what? However, Cohen and other speciesists think species differences are more fundamental than racial and sexual differences. But exactly what this means and why he thinks species differences are morally relevant is not obvious. Why should our primary classification (whatever that means) be our species rather than biological class (mammals), biological order (primates), sub-species distinctions (race), or cross-species distinctions (gender)? For some purposes (identifying units of evolutionary selection) species may be considered biologically primary; for other purposes (identifying creatures susceptible to sickle cell anemia), sub-species distinctions may be primary; and for still other purpose (identifying creatures capable of giving birth) cross-species distinctions might be best. Finally, even if we could determine one and only one of these classifications was biologically primary, how would that make this particular biological divide morally relevant?

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Speciesism Immoral akin to racism and sexism SPECIESISM LOGICAL PARALLEL TO RACISM AND SEXISM* Peter Singer, Professor of Bioethics, Princeton, 2004, Animal Rights: Current debates and new directions, eds. Sunstein & Nussbaum, p. 79-80* Speciesism is logically parallel to racism and sexism, in the sense that speciesists, racists, and sexists all say: The boundary of my own group is also the boundary of my concern. Never mind what you are like, if you are a member of my group, you are superior to all those who are not members of my group. The speciesist favors a larger group than the racist, and so has a larger circle of concern, but all of these prejudices use an arbitrary and morally irrelevant factmembership in a race, gender, or speciesas if it were morally crucial. SPECIESIST DISCRIMINATION COMMITS THE SAME HARMS THAT RACIAL AND GENDER EQUALITY DISCOURSE IS DESIGNED TO REDRESS Paola Cavalieri, Editor of the International philosophy journal Etica & Animali, 2005, Are Human Rights Human? visited site on 9/8/2005, http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_4.2/cavalieri.htm At the center of the theory of human rights lies the protection of the vital interests - in welfare, in freedom and in life - of some beings. Of which beings, exactly? Though the most common, and apparently tautological, answer is of human beings, such a move is, as we have seen, precluded by the fact that discrimination based on species is analogous to those forms of discrimination that the very doctrine condemns in sexism and racism. Most of the
philosophers who confront the issue seem to be somehow aware of this problem. When it is bestowed a role, in fact, reference to species is introduced in a hurried and oblique way[18]. What, then, plays in an effective, and not rhetorical, way the role of explaining the why of human rights - of illustrating, that is, what it is that, in the members of our species, justifies the equal attribution of the particular sort of moral claims lumped together under the label of human rights?

ARGUMENT THAT HUMANS HAVE RIGHTS BY VIRTUE OF BEING HUMANS IS SPECIESIST AS IMMORAL AS RACISM D. A. Lloyd Thomas, 1979, Mind, Volume 88, No. 352, October, pp. 538-553 [JSTOR], p. 541 It might be replied, however, that this form of humanism can be reconciled with empiricism. Why not say that the property upon which human worth supervenes is simply that of being a member of a certain natural species, homo sapiens That property surely is open to straightforward empirical confirmation. The odd thing about this suggestion is that it appears to require the humanist to assent to a doctrine which, in another form, he is apt to call racism. It has often been said that to make a distinction between how people should be treated on the ground that one is, say, black, and the other white, is irrational. It is to make a distinction between cases based on a consideration of no relevance whatsoever. The humanist who would make human worth dependent upon nothing more than being a member of a certain natural species is in similar trouble. SPECIESISM IS A BIAS AS PERNICIOUS AS RACISM AND SEXISM* Steven M. Wise, Animal rights attorney and professor Vermont Law School, 2002, Drawing the Line: science and the case for animal rights, p. 24* Mamets book is an allegory about racism and sexism and every other ism by which humans arbitrarily favor their own kind. Its also about speciesism. Coined nearly thirty years ago by British psychologist Richard Ryder, speciesism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as discrimination againstanimal species by human beings, based on an assumption of mankinds superiority. In other words, its a bias, as arbitrary and hateful as any other. The English philosopher R.G. Frey, who opposes rights for nonhuman animals, cannot think of anything at all compelling that cedes all human life of any quality greater value than animal life of any quality. NO MORAL RELEVANCE TO SPECIES MEMBERSHIP DIFFERENTIAL TREATMENT ANALOGOUS TO RACISM Madeleine Flannagan, National President Students Organized to Uphold Life, New Zealand, 2000, The failure to define rights bearers: international human rights legislation, toothless and useless?, http://www.soul.org.nz/pages/resources/un_toothless.htm
Singer admits that religious perspectives can offer an answer to this question. According to Judeo-Christian thought, there is a relevant difference between human beings and animals, one that may not consist purely in capacities to act as a person or agent. Human beings have certain metaphysical properties that justifiy them being treated differently. They have a certain relation with God, or in other traditions they have an immortal soul. Singer writes this off as "religious mumbo jumbo." When we reject the existence of God and Souls and adopt a

natural (secular) perspective, humans are just animals, Any property that we consider morally relevant is not limited to humans or universal to them. Animals can have these properties to a greater extent than some humans. There is nothing special about humans. Consequently, our different treatment of one, is really a speciesism analogous to racism.

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AT: Speciesism Not Analogous to Racism/Sexism COMPARING SPECIESISM TO RACISM AND SEXISM IS APPROPRIATE POWERFUL WAY TO DEMONSTRATE NEED TO BE AWARE OF OUR PREJUDICES Hugh LaFollette & Niall Shanks, East Tennessee State University, 1996, Philosophy, The origin of speciesism, pp. 41-60, http://www.stpt.usf.edu/hhl/papers/species.htm
Anti-vivisectionists charge that animal experimenters are speciesists people who unjustly discriminate against members of other species. Until recently most defenders of experimentation denied the charge. After the publication of `The Case for the Use of Animals in Biomedical Research' in the New England Journal of Medicine, experimenters had a more aggressive reply: `I am a speciesist. Speciesism is not merely plausible, it is essential for right conduct...'1. Most researchers now embrace Cohen's response as part of their defense of animal experimentation. Cohen asserts that both rights and utilitarian arguments against the use of animals in research fail because they `refuse to recognize the moral differences among species'.2 If we appreciate the profound differences between humans and non-human animals, he says, we would understand why animals do not and could not have rights and why animal pain does not have as much moral weight as human pain. Animal liberationists think

speciesism is immoral because they mistakenly equate it with racism and sexism. Cohen claims this equation is `unsound', `atrocious', `utterly specious', and `morally offensive'. Doubtless Cohen is right that the charge of speciesism is founded on an analogy with racism and sexism. He is mistaken, however, in asserting that the comparison is categorically illicit. Animal liberationists compare speciesism with racism to focus our attention on the human tendency to unreflectively accept contemporary moral standards. We are fallible. Even our deeply held views may be wrong. Our ancestors forgot (or never knew) this important lesson. Thus, although most were not evil people, they indisputably did evil things. We must be leery less we likewise err in our treatment of animals. Of course these historical observations do not entail that our treatment of animals is morally unacceptable. It does, however, suggest we should critically examine our treatment of animals, especially when liberationists have offered arguments which are plausible, even if, in the end, people do not find them conclusive. SPECIESISM AND RACISM SIMILAR ENOUGH THAT THE COMPARISON IS APPROPRIATE Hugh LaFollette & Niall Shanks, East Tennessee State University, 1996, Philosophy, The origin of speciesism, pp. 41-60, http://www.stpt.usf.edu/hhl/papers/species.htm This is especially sage advice given the close historical connection between speciesism and racism. Historically the two are inextricably intertwined, the former being used to bolster, explain, and justify the latter.3 Of course, it does not follow that contemporary speciesists are racists or that all forms of speciesism are indefensible. It does show, however, that speciesism and racism are sufficiently similar so that analogies between them cannot be blithely dismissed as category mistakes. MUST DEMONSTRATE MORALLY RELEVANT DIFFERENCES BETWEEN HUMANS AND NONHUMANS TO WIN THE ARGUMENT THAT SPECIESISM DISTINCT FROM RACISM Hugh LaFollette & Niall Shanks, East Tennessee State University, 1996, Philosophy, The origin of speciesism, pp. 41-60, http://www.stpt.usf.edu/hhl/papers/species.htm
Of course experimenters could argue that there are differences between speciesism and racism differences which make speciesism morally justified and racism morally objectionable. But that must be shown. To show that the comparison between racism and speciesism

is specious, apologists must argue that although we cannot justify treating blacks and whites differently simply because they are members of different races, we can justify treating humans and non-human animals differently simply because we are members of different species. How, though, can that be shown? Humans and non-human animals are biologically distinct.4 But the issue is not whether they are different, but whether they are different in morally relevant respects. Morality requires that we treat like cases alike. A teacher should give equal grades to students who perform equally; she should give unequal grades only if there is
some general and relevant reason which justifies the difference in treatment. For instance, it is legitimate to give a better grade to a student who does superior work; it is illegitimate to give her a better grade because she is pretty, wears pink, or is named `Molly'.

SPECIESISM IMPLICATES THE SAME EVIL AS RACISM AND SEXISM AT YOU CANT COMPARE THEM Gary L. Francione, Professor of Law, Rutgers University. 2005, Franciones Animal Rights FAQ, http://wiki.blitzed.org/User:grifferz/Francione's_Animal_rights_FAQ A related question that often arises in this context is whether speciesism is "as bad" as racism or sexism or other forms of discrimination. As a general matter, it is not useful to rank evils. Was is "worse" that Hitler killed Jews than that he killed Catholics or Romanies? Is slavery "worse" than genocide? Is sexism "worse" than slavery and genocide, or
is it "worse" than slavery but not worse than genocide? Frankly, I am not even sure what these questions mean, but I suspect that persons considering them assume implicitly that one group is "better" than another. In any event, these forms of discrimination are all terrible,

and they are terrible in different ways. But they all share one thing in common: they all treat humans as things without protectable interests. In this sense, all of these forms of discrimination -- as different as they are -- are similar to speciesism, which results in our treating animals as things.

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Speciesist Discourse Justifies Domination of Non-humans, rigid species barrier p. 1/2 SPECIESIST DISCOURSE LEGITIMATES VIOLENCE AGAINST ANIMALS ENTRENCHES THE LOGIC OF DOMINATION Charlene Myers, Simon Fraser University, 1999, Violence against humans and other animals, July, http://critcrim.org/redfeather/journal-pomocrim/Vol-4-FeministCrim/001Myers.html The discourses arising out of the modernist era have certainly had an impact on beliefs about the worth of animals other than humans. An historical account of the influence of Western ideologies, particularly Judeo-Christian religion and science, will set the stage for the comparison of violent behaviours inflicted on both human and animal victims by human perpetrators. As we will see, a "logic of domination," (Warren, 1990; cited in VanDeVeer and Pierce, 1994:246) consistent with a patriarchal, modernist viewpoint, has led to relative acceptance of abusive treatment of animals. Furthermore, "speciesism" (Ryder; cited in Singer, 1975:7), a form of bias which favours human interests over animal interests (Singer, 1975), has had a profound effect on the treatment of animals other than humans, and its impact, too, will be examined. SPECIESIST DISCOURSE DEFINES THE HUMAN IN A WAY THAT EXCLUDES NON-HUMANS FROM MORAL CONSIDERATION Sheryl Vint, St. Francis Xavier University, 2004, Science Fiction Studies, Books in Review, Volume 31, Part 1, March, http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/birs/bir92.htm In his second chapter, Wolfe outlines a tradition from Wittgenstein through Derrida that he argues creates a space for a truly postmodern or posthumanist concept of the subject and a ground for an ethical system that isnt premised on a category of those to whom an ethical duty is not owed. Wolfe traces a philosophical tradition of defining ethics and the human through those criteria that exclude animals from both discourses. The question of the animals ability to use language, to respond in a way that signifies intelligence, is central to this tradition. Wolfe eventually arrives (through Kant, Heidegger, Levinas, Wittgenstein, Lyotard, and Derrida) at a call for us to disarticulate the concepts of language and species. Thus, we arrive at a new concept of what language is, one that entails showing how the difference in kind between human and animal that humanism constitutes on the site of language may instead be thought of as a difference in degree on a continuum of signifying processes disseminated in a field of materiality, technicity, and contingency, of which human language is but a specific, albeit highly refined instance (79). Turning next to Maturana and Varelas work on autopoesisfamiliar to sf scholars from N. Katherine Hayless cogent use of it in How We Became Posthuman (1999)Wolfe then suggests that we need to extend our concept of what the speaking subject is from simply the biological organism to that organisms situation within and interaction with its environment. SPECIESISM LEGITIMIZES ABUSE OF AND VIOLENCE AGAINST NON-HUMANS Charlene Myers, Simon Fraser University, 1999, Violence against humans and other animals, July, http://critcrim.org/redfeather/journal-pomocrim/Vol-4-FeministCrim/001Myers.html Beyond being linked to the discriminatory treatment of human women by human men (sexism), the domination of other animals by humans exposes yet another category of discrimination, based upon "speciesism" (Ryder; cited in Singer, 1975:7; also see note 4, p. 25). Speciesism is at least one type of prejudice which informs the belief that "moral superiority justifies subordination" (VanDeVeer and Pierce, 1994:247), and is thus an impetus for discrimination against animals. Singer (1975:7) defines speciesism as "a prejudice or attitude of bias toward the interests of members of one's own species and against those of members of other species." Thus, it can be argued that animal abuse, as well as the lack of concern expressed over this violence, occurs as a direct result of speciesism, and is simply one example of the belief that humans have the "right" to dominate any species considered "lower" than humans on the evolutionary ladder. An examination of hunting, "laboratory" experimentation, and flesh eating will now be undertaken with a view to shedding light on the violent acts exhibited toward humans and other animals, the domination inherent within them, and the reasons for the different responses the acts evoke. I would argue that it is hypocritical to deplore violence against humans while sanctioning acts that are nearly identical toward the other animals, and the following examples will clearly demonstrate the similarity of these acts of violence.

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Speciesist Discourse Justifies Domination of Non-humans, rigid species barrier p. 2/2 SPECIESIST DISCOURSE NORMALIZES HUMAN DOMINATION OVER NON-HUMANS Charlene Myers, Simon Fraser University, 1999, Violence against humans and other animals, July, http://critcrim.org/redfeather/journal-pomocrim/Vol-4-FeministCrim/001Myers.html If the alternative view that animals are not subordinate to humans is taken, it might then follow that it is morally wrong to use them for our own purposes without their consent. However, speciesist arguments, beyond providing justifications for exploitation, create the situation whereby instrumental use of animals by humans does not even need to be questioned. If the other animals are presumed to be in existence, either in full or in part, for the use of humans, the debate is concluded before it begins. This is the crux of the problem with philosophical and ethical arguments informed by speciesismthey have been perpetuated within the dominant discourse for so long that they have become entrenched in many societies, and those who question the "logic" of such arguments are deemed "irrational" (Adams, 1994; Robbins, 1987). However, the arguments in support of utilizing animals for whatever purposes humans desire are not based on logic, but rather on religious tenets which were created by, and for the benefit of, males within a patriarchal society, and which were given further sanction upon the advent of the scientific revolution. SPECIESISM LICENSES THE HATRED OF NONHUMAN ANIMALS* Kim Stallwood, PETA, 1996, Animal Rights: the changing debate, ed. Robert Garner, p. 195* The basis for this domination is the social construction of speciesism, which is based on the assumed superiority of Homo sapiens and which segregates nonhuman from human animals. This segregation, in turn, licenses a hatred of animals. Animal activist Jim Mason, writing in An Unnatural Order (1993), calls that hatred misothery and explains that it gives humans license to exempt the labor of nonhuman animals from moral consideration. Consequently, in every human society, whether communist, capitalist, or developing world, the labor of nonhuman animals is used without any moral consideration to provide services and to produce commodities for human consumption.

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Species Barrier used to Justify Slavery p. 1/2
ADHERENCE TO A RIGID SPECIES BARRIER BETWEEN HUMANS AND NONHUMAN ANIMALS REINFORCES AN INSTRUMENTAL VIEW OF NONHUMAN ANIMALS AS RESOURCES. THIS LOGIC OF EXCLUSION HAS HISTORICALLY BEEN USED TO DENY FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS BASED ALONG RACE AND GENDER LINES TO GROUPS THAT HAVE NOW BEEN INCLUDED IN THE COMMUNITY OF PERSONS. BREAKING THIS BARRIER IS VITAL TO ESTABLISHING A MORAL ETHIC THAT CHALLENGES WAR AND SLAVERY. NOBEL PRIZE WINNING ECONOMIST AMARTYA SEN EXPLAINS IN 2001:

[Amartya Sen, Nobel Prize-winning economist, master of Trinity College. Living like Bonobos: An Ecofeminist Outlook on Equality. Great Ape Standing And Personhood. 2001 http://www.personhood.org/feminist/feminist.html] Whenever living, feeling beings are treated as commodities, their unique natures and capacities are subverted to the purposes of others. They are enslaved. Enslaved individuals are valued as things rather than as persons. Thus, slavery affects humans and non-humans in similar ways. If such a comparison offends any of us, it should affect no human group
disproportionately. Whatever our financial situation, whatever our educational background, whatever the tone of our skin, whatever the shade and texture of our hair, we are all apes. There is no cause for alarm in the recognition of our common heritage. As we shall see, some apes lead lives that could serve well as ethical models for all of us.

It is a common tactic to compare one oppressed group to a second group which is even more different or despised to degrade the first. Women, Jews, and Africans have all experienced this phenomenon in recent times. All have been compared, in a derogatory manner, to non-humans. Modern feminists and slavery critics pay particular attention and reserve their most pointed critiques for discrimination accompanied by comparisons of the oppressed group to nonhumans, for such comparisons, in social context, really provided a justification for the exploiters to treat other groups as sub-human. As Alice Walker points out, a significant proportion of readily-available pornographic material, particularly material featuring black women as subjects, continues to draw these insidious parallels. Rather than decry the comparison of humans and other feeling beings, it is important to find the basis for exploitation that fosters oppression wherever it is found. What benefit is derived from ordering varied groups according to levels of importance? Yet, if we did take the time to perform a serious comparison, we might be surprised at our
discoveries. For example, the Bonobos - a group of hominids who live in the swamp forests of central Zare - create and inhabit an egalitarian and peaceful world. They have caused a fair amount of controversy in human academic circles, because they don't fit in with the conventional image of the male-controlled ape cultures. Bonobos don't discriminate between the heterosexual and homosexual members of their society. Bonobos' use of a wide variety of sexual behaviours to diffuse aggression is so marked that it caused one scientist Frans de Waal to observe that "the art of sexual reconciliation may well have reached its evolutionary peak in the bonobo." This capacity seems to have resulted in the nearest thing to egalitarianism in any living hominid culture. "We may be more bonobo-like than we want to admit," says Frans de Waal. But why would we decline to admit to having Bonobo-like qualities? We might do well to emulate Bonobo society. In contrast to Bonobo culture, humankind displays a striking propensity for creating oppressive hierarchy out of difference. Perceived differences between men and women have been, and continue to be, used by men to devalue and demean women, to rename women, to render women invisible, and to destroy millions of children before they have a chance even to become women. Likewise, the classification of animals into species enables humans to proclaim that we occupy an imaginary upper link in the taxonomological chain, to demean and manipulate other animals, to destroy and consume them. Cultural perceptions of difference form the templates for societal norms that law both reflects and enforces. Controlling groups create

privileges that correlate with the traits which separate themselves from others who exist on the territory they strive to control. This is the dynamic of racism. It is the dynamic of sexism. And it is the dynamic of a phenomenon philosopher Richard Ryder has termed speciesism. As this essay is being written, Bonobos are being wiped from their forest homelands by bloody human civil wars and related starvation, which has meant the consumption of Bonobos' bodies as food. Were humans more like the peaceful Bonobos, it is possible that both groups would be spared the ravages of war, and the horrors of slavery as well. SPECIEISM IS THE LOGIC OF SLAVERY Gary L. Francione, Professor of Law, Rutgers University. 2005, Franciones Animal Rights FAQ, http://wiki.blitzed.org/User:grifferz/Francione's_Animal_rights_FAQ No. Racism, sexism, speciesism, and other forms of discrimination are all analogous in that all share the faulty notion that some morally irrelevant characteristic (race, sex, species) may be used to exclude beings from interests from the moral community or to undervalue interests in explicit violation of the principle of equal consideration. For example, speciesism and human slavery are similar in that in all cases animals and enslaved humans have a basic interest in not being treated as things and yet are treated as things on the basis of morally irrelevant criteria. To deny animals this basic right simply because they are animals is like saying that we should not abolish race-based slavery because of the perceived inferiority of the slaves' race. The argument used to support slavery and the argument used to support animal exploitation are structurally similar: we exclude beings with interests from the moral community because there is some supposed difference between "them" and "us" that has nothing to do with the inclusion of these beings in the moral community. The animal rights position maintains that if we believe that animals have moral significance, the principle of equal consideration requires that we stop treating them as things.

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Species Barrier used to Justify Slavery p. 2/2 ARGUMENTS THAT HUMANS HAVE UNIQUE RATIONALITY OR MORAL WORTH ENTRENCH SPECIESIST ATTITUDES THAT JUSTIFY HUMAN SLAVERY Charles Patterson, social historian, 2005, (visited site on 9/9/2005), Animals, slavery and the holocaust, http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Philosophy/Morality/CHARLES%20PATTERSON%20--%20ANIMALS, %20SLAVERY,%20AND%20THE%20HOLOCAUST.htm In 1917 Sigmund Freud put the issue in perspective when he wrote: "In the course of his development towards culture man acquired a dominating position over his fellow-creatures in the animal kingdom. Not content with this supremacy, however, he began to place a gulf between his nature and theirs. He denied the possession of reason to them, and to himself he attributed an immortal soul, and made claims to a divine descent which permitted him to annihilate the bond of community between him and the animal kingdom." The domination, control, and manipulation that characterizes the way humans treat animals who come under their control has set the tone and served as a model for the way humans treat each other. The enslavement/domestication of animals paved the way for human slavery. As Karl Jacoby writes, slavery was "little more than the extension of domestication to humans." In the first civilizations that emerged in the river valleys of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and China, the exploitation of animals for food, milk, hides, and labor was so firmly established that these civilizations sanctified the notion that animals existed solely for their benefit. That allowed humans to use, abuse, and kill them with total impunity. It also led humans to place other humans--captives, enemies, strangers, and those who were different or disliked--on the other side of the great divide where they were vilified as "beasts," "pigs," "dogs," "monkeys," "rats," and "vermin." Designating other people as animals has always been an ominous development because it sets them up for humiliation, exploitation, and murder. As Leo Kuper writes in Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century, "the animal world has been a particularly fertile source of metaphors of dehumanization." SPECIESISM LIKE RACISM IS THE LOGIC OF SLAVERY Steven Best, Professor University of Texas El Paso, 2005, The New Abolitionists: capitalism, slavery and human rights, http://www.impactpress.com/articles/febmar05/best2305.html It is time no longer just to question the crime of treating a black person or any other human victim of violence "like an animal"; rather, we must also scrutinize the unquestioned but more fundamental wrong of exploiting and terrorizing animals. Whereas the racist mindset creates a hierarchy of superior/inferior on the basis of skin color, the speciesist mindset demeans and objectifies animals by dichotomizing the evolutionary continuum into human and nonhuman life. As racism stems from a hateful white supremacism, so speciesism draws from a violent human supremacism, namely, the arrogant belief that humans have a natural or God-given right to use animals for any purpose they devise. Both racism and speciesism serve as legitimating ideologies for slavery economies. After the civil war, the Cotton Economy
became the Cattle Economy as the nation moved westward, slaughtered millions of Indians and buffalo, and began intensive operations to raise and slaughter cattle for food. Throughout the twentieth century, as the U.S. shifted from a plant-based to a meat-based diet, meat and dairy industries became giant economic forces. In the last few decades, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies have become major components of global capitalist networks, and their research and testing operations are rooted in the breeding, exploitation, and killing of millions of laboratory animals each year

PROPERTY STATUS MEANS THAT NONHUMAN ANIMALS ARE TREATED AS SLAVES* Steven M. Wise, Animal rights attorney and professor Vermont Law School, 2002, Drawing the Line: science and the case for animal rights, p. 15* As legal things, nonhuman animals are treated today as human slaves were treated once and continue to be treated in those few places in which human slavery is unlawfully practiced. The African American writer Alice Walker says that this, even for those of us who recognize its validity, is a difficult one to face. Especially so if we are the descendants of slaves. Or of slave owners. Or of both. Especially so if we are responsible in some way for the present treatment of animals [or]if we are complicit in their enslavement and destruction, which is to say at this juncture in history, master.

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Species Barrier entrenches the logic of the holocaust THE ABSOLUTE EXCLUSION OF ALL NONHUMAN ANIMALSEVEN THOSE FOR WHOM NO MORALLY RELEVANT DISTINCTIONS CAN BE ARTICULATED AS JUSTIFICATION ENTRENCHES THE LOGIC OF THE HOLOCAUST. We do not endorse the gendered language in this evidence. Roger Fouts, Professor of Psychology; and Distinguished Professor of Research at Central Washington University. 04 APES, DARWINIAN CONTINUITY, AND THE LAW. Animal Law. 10 Animal L. 99 2004 According to the Cartesian worldview, the mind is idealized for both political and theological reasons. Man's domination of the less fortunate defectives is justified, and he is given a direct line to God through the Rational Soul-Mind that is unique to him. The defectives were seen as godless or ignored by God. With regard to the origin of language, Sarles bluntly makes this point when he states: "By setting man as unique because of his mind, it (language) idealizes the normal use of language and sets up a group of defective (or animal-like) humans, e.g. retarded persons, deaf persons, people who speak differently from the majority. The problem is implicitly, perhaps necessarily, racist." n117 One only has to look at the history of Western Civilization to see how this view has been used to justify everything from slavery in all its forms (e.g. the domination and oppression of women and the exploitation of children) to genocides committed against peoples such as the Jews, the Gypsies, or the Armenians. Western Civilization, which claims to be ruled by the Rational Mind, has yet to meet a people who lived in harmony with nature it did not destroy on contact, and our civilization continues to do so. Just as we have used our "special nature" to justify the exploitation of members of our own species, we have used it as well to exploit and destroy our fellow organic beings, whether they are free-living or captive chimpanzees, cows, rats, or trees.

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Speciesism Underlies War and Violence SPECIESISM UNDERLIES WAR, RACISM, TERRORISM AND VIOLENCE Charles Patterson, social historian, 2005, (visited site on 9/9/2005), Animals, slavery and the holocaust, http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Philosophy/Morality/CHARLES%20PATTERSON%20--%20ANIMALS, %20SLAVERY,%20AND%20THE%20HOLOCAUST.htm Where does all the war, racism, terrorism, violence, and cruelty that's so endemic to human civilization come from? Why do humans exploit and massacre each other so regularly? Why is our species so violence-prone? To answer these questions we would do well to think about our exploitation and slaughter of animals and its effect on human civilization. Could it be that we oppress and kill each other so readily because our abuse and slaughter of animals has desensitized us to the suffering and death of others?

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Exclusion of non-human animals undermines efforts to promote human rights p. 1/2 AT: SHOULD NOT QUESTION THE BASIS FOR INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW ONLY WAY TO FACILITATE PROGRESSIVISM FOR EXPLOITED GROUPS Kyle Ash, European Environmental Bureau, 2005, Animal Law, Volume 11:1, p. 207 The most commonly stated basis for human rights is the idea that humans are special because they are not other animals, whether in reference to human dignity or otherwise.78 The flawed philosophical and scientific argument for speciesism thus negates the current legal basis for human rights. This is one reason why questioning the basis for human rights may not seem like a good idea, since we have still so far to progress in protecting women, the poor, and indigenous peoples. As long as the legal rights exist, it does not matter how. On the other hand, basing human rights on flawed reasoning may also inhibit the progression, legitimacy, and long-run perspective of international human rights law. Furthermore, absent a legitimate claim to human supremacy, this type of human rights is antithetical to the fundament that the law emulates justice. IMPOSSIBLE TO VIEW ANIMALS AS MERE RESOURCES WITHOUT IT INFECTING HOW WE VIEW EACH OTHER* Mark Rowlands, Professor of Moral Philosophy, University of Hertfordshire, 2002, Animals Like Us, p. 196*
There are many problems with viewing the world and the things in it a simply resources. The arrogance involved is, of course, breathtaking. But, from the point of view of human beings, there is a more pressing drawback. It is impossible to view the world and everything in it

primarily as a resource without this infecting the way we view each other. This is the logical culmination of the resource-based view of nature: humans are part of nature, and therefore humans are resources too. And whenever somethinghumans or otherwiseis viewed primarily a resource, things generally dont go well for it. The logic of the situation, and its implications for human beings, is exemplified in our treatment of animals. Almost every facet of this treatment screams out the idea that they are nothing more than renewable resources. They are things to be eaten, things to be experimented on, things to be stared at, hunted or killed for our entertainment. In most
countries, farm and laboratory animals are classified, in law, as property. A recent attempt by Compassion in World Farming and other animal welfare groups to have animals reclassified as sentient beingsa change that would have enormous ramifications for the way animals are raised and transportedwas recently thrown out of the European High Court because of the anticipated economic consequences. What makes this particularly staggering is that animals are sentient creatures is undeniably true. In the European Union, apparently, truth comes a poor second to profit. However, when you are talking about fundamental ways of conceptualizing and understanding the world, what goes

around comes around. The instrumental view of animals necessarily infects our views of humans. In philosophy, the industry term for the logic that characterizes the development of a situation is dialectic. This final chapter, then, examines the dialectic by which the instrumental view of animals becomes transformed into an instrumental view of human beings, and the unfortunate consequences this transformation yields. UNIVERSALIZING ALL NONHUMAN ANIMALS AS THINGS OR PROPERTY WILL FRAME HOW WE VIEW OTHER HUMANS* Mark Rowlands, Professor of Moral Philosophy, University of Hertfordshire, 2002, Animals Like Us, p. 205-6* Heidegger, with whom we began this chapter, talked of the view of nature as a resource as stemming from a conceptualization of the world he called a gestell, which can be translated framework or matrix. The danger of the gestell, or one of its dangers, is its tendency to universality. If we view nature, and all things in it, as simply resources, then it is inevitable we eventually acquire the same view of human beings. But viewing human beings as resources has two facets. Obviously, one thing it means is that you will view other human beings as resources. Less obviously, you are yourself a human being, and you will come to think of yourself as a resource also.

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Exclusion of non-human animals undermines efforts to promote human rights p. 2/2 SPECIESISM MUST BE UNDERSTOOD AS ANOTHER FORM OF OPPRESSION COMMODIFICATION OF NON-HUMANS JUSTIFIES MIS-TREATMENT OF EACH OTHER Steven Best, Professor University of Texas El Paso, 2005, (Visited 9/9/2005), Common Natures, Shared Fates: toward an interspecies alliance politics, http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Philosophy/Debating/Steven%20Best %20articles%20on%20animal%20issues.html
Understanding the intimate relationship between human and animal oppression blocks the tired objection voiced to those who express concern for animals, "But what about human suffering?" Whether they realize it or not, activists who promote veganism and animal rights are ipso facto engaging a vast complex of problems in the human world. For when human beings are violent to animals, they are violent

toward one another; when they instrumentalize animals as mere resources for their own consumption, they stunt their own psychological growth and capacities for compassion; when they destroy the habitat of animals, they impair the ecological systems they too require; and when they slaughter animals for food, they exacerbate the problem of world hunger, they compound the environmental crisis in a myriad of ways, and they devastate their own health and drain human resource budgets. In her compelling book "The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery", Marjorie Spiegel shows that the exploitation of animals provided a model, metaphors, and technologies and practices for the dehumanization and enslavement of blacks. From castration and chaining to branding and ear cropping, whites drew on a long history of subjugating animals to oppress blacks. Once perceived as beasts, blacks were treated accordingly. In addition, by denigrating people of color as "beasts of burden," an animal metaphor and exploitative tradition facilitated and legitimated the institution of slavery. The denigration of any people as a type of animal is a prelude to violence and genocide. Many anthropologists believe that the cruel forms of domesticating animals at the dawn of agricultural society ten thousand years ago created the conceptual model for hierarchy, statism, and the exploitation treatment of other human beings, as they implanted violence into the heart of human culture. From this perspective, slavery and the sexual subjugation of women is but the extension of animal domestication to humans. Patterson, Mason, and numerous
other writers concur that the exploitation of animals is central to understanding the cause and solution to the crisis haunting the human community and its troubled relationship to the natural world.

VIEW OF ANIMALS AS RESOURCES YIELDS ACCEPTANCE OF THE CONCEPT OF ACCEPTABLE LOSSES* Mark Rowlands, Professor of Moral Philosophy, University of Hertfordshire, 2002, Animals Like Us, p. 212*
We are literally killing ourselves, and killing each other. We foul our water, our air and our food. The great killers of todaycancer and heart diseaseare increasingly inflicted on us by the corporations that churn chemicals out into our air, our rivers and our groundwater, and by the food producers that pile our plates full with food high in fat and laced with poisonous chemical cocktails. Do we fight this? Do we rage against what is being done to us and to our world? On the contrary, our complicity in the dialectic is unquestionable. What are we in this great scheme of things? Acceptable losses. As long as not too many of us die, then our deaths are an acceptable trade-off for economic gain and material luxury. Environmental degradation on an unprecedented scale? Ditto. In the gestell everything is a resource ourselves and our world included. Everything is up for grabs, anything can be traded off against anything else. And, in this process, a losswhether human or environmental that is not too great, and which procures something else that is valued more, is an acceptable one. We are acceptable losses. Why dont we do anything about it? Because, implicitly, we have come to understand and accept this fact. Not only do we understand other people as resources, this is also how we understand ourselves. This is the culmination of the resource-based view of the world; the logic of the gestell. We are simply one resource against others. Our position is hopeless, and we are, consequently, helpless. We are not responsible for what we do, and what we let others do to us, because we are just acceptable losses. Why should we pretend otherwise?

We are killing ourselves, and killing each other. If I were religiously inclinedwhich I am notI would be tempted to describe these as our sins. And what do we do with sins? We get someone else to take our sins upon them. Whether they want to or not! Animals can suffer for us, not only for those things that have been thrust upon us, but also for those things that we have brought upon ourselves. They suffer for our smoke-induced lung cancer, for our obesity-induced heart disease, for the sloppy and irresponsible way we have used antibiotics. We, their selfstyled masters, are lazy and stupid and, above all, ungrateful. But thats OK. If anything, these are just other sins, and someone, or something, else can be made to take our sins upon them, and suffer so that we might not have to. Jesus is, apparently, live and well, but somewhat unwilling this time around. Hes living as a Draize rabbit, and LD50 mouse, a heroin monkey, and a smoking dog.

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AT: Speciesism is Natural NATURAL TENDENCY TO FAVOR YOUR OWN SPECIES DOES NOT MAKE IT MORALLY ACCEPTABLE Hugh LaFollette & Niall Shanks, East Tennessee State University, 1996, Philosophy, The origin of speciesism, pp. 41-60, http://www.stpt.usf.edu/hhl/papers/species.htm Stephen Post offers one answer. He claims speciesism is grounded in `species loyalty'.5 Species loyalty is "the outgrowth of millennia of human evolution shaped by natural selection....[This] `kin selection' or `kin altruism' is deeply ingrained in the human `biogram'".6 In short, speciesism is morally justified because it is biologically natural to favor one's kin. To say that such loyalty is natural, however, suggests it is unavoidable something we do instinctively, something we cannot avoid. But, since some people are non-speciesists, speciesism cannot be natural in this strong nomological sense. Hence, when Post claims favoritism toward kin is `natural', he must mean something weaker that biological creatures have a tendency to favor their own species. He must also believe this biological tendency should be encouraged by morality and law. Why should we assume, however, that such a tendency (if it exists) is morally permitted, let alone required? There are other biological tendencies we think morality should constrain. Why is this particular tendency morally sacrosanct? For instance, we probably have a tendency to prefer those who look like us those who have the same tint of skin and slant of eye. (Perhaps we think of them as kin?) We also have biological tendencies toward aggression. Our hormones sometimes move us to have sex at inappropriate times. But we do not encourage, praise, or morally sanctify these tendencies. Morality should tame them, not lionize them. Therefore, if some `natural' tendencies are morally permitted while others are prohibited, then the bare tendency cannot be what is moral (or immoral). In short, we are not convinced speciesism is natural; but even if it were, we see no reason to believe morality should promote or even permit it. The deficiencies of speciesism can be vividly demonstrated by a bit of science fiction. Suppose aliens arrive on earth. They are phylogenetically discontinuous with humans they are not even carbon-based life-forms. We find them aesthetically repulsive. They look like giant slugs and we call them Slugantots. We have no natural sympathies for them. However, we find their behavior reveals that they are intelligent, purposive, sentient creatures although the exact contours of their abilities elude us because of their peculiar embodiment.

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AT: Human Dignity is a Justifiable Basis for Human Rights Law NO SUCH THING AS INHERENT HUMAN DIGNITY IT IS A FICTION IN WHICH WE BASE OUR NEED FOR RIGHTS Antoon De Baets, University of Groningen, 2005, A successful utopia: the doctrine of human dignity, paper presented to 20th International Congress of Historical Sciences, Sydney, http://www.cishsydney2005.org/images/Antoon%20De%20BaetsMT2c.doc A few authors reject the double option. In 1996, John Coetzee (in 2003 the Nobel Prize for Literature) defended a zero option: Nor do we inherently possess dignity. We are certainly born without dignity, and we spend enough time by ourselves, hidden from the eyes of others, doing the things that we do when we are by ourselves, to know how little of it we can honestly lay claim to. We can also see enough of animals concerned for their dignity (cats, for instance) to know how comical pretensions to dignity can be... [D]ignity is a state we claim for ourselves. Affronts...to the dignity of our persons are attacks not upon our essential being but upon constructs constructs by which we live, but constructs nevertheless. This is not to say that affronts to...dignity are not real affronts, or that the outrage with which we respond to them is not real, in the sense of not being sincerely felt. The infringements are real; what is infringed, however, is not our essence but a foundational fiction to which we more or less wholeheartedly subscribe, a fiction that may well be indispensable for a just society, namely, that human beings have a dignity that sets them apart from animals and consequently protects them from being treated like animals (It is even possible that we may look forward to a day when animals will have their own dignity ascribed to them, and the ban will be reformulated as a ban on treating a living creature like a thing.) The fiction of dignity helps to define humanity and the status of humanity helps to define human rights. There is thus a real sense in which an affront to our dignity strikes at our rights. Yet when, outraged at such affront we stand on our rights and demand redress, we would do well to remember how insubstantial the dignity is on which those rights are based... As for respect, it is tempting to suggest that this is a superfluous concept True respect is a variety of love and may be subsumed under love... iv For Coetzee, human dignity does not exist, and if it does, only in the sense of a construct. It is a foundational fiction and its inextricable counterpartrespectis superfluous. It is real only in the sense that human beings take the fiction seriously and act upon it. For being fictional, Coetzees dignity is remarkably dynamic: it does not exist, but infringements of it do; it does not exist, but it could well be extended to all living creatures in the future. The zero option raises two crucial questions: Does dignity exist at all? To what extent is it utopian? HUMAN DIGNITY SELF REFERENTIAL WE HAVE DIGNITY BECAUSE WE ARE HUMAN Antoon De Baets, University of Groningen, 2005, A successful utopia: the doctrine of human dignity, paper presented to 20th International Congress of Historical Sciences, Sydney, http://www.cishsydney2005.org/images/Antoon%20De%20BaetsMT2c.doc Others think that human dignity is a single concept which is founded in itself or that it does exist because human beings live together. Most of those who think that dignity exists as a single phenomenon, interpret it as external. For Joel Feinberg, human dignity is not grounded in anything more ultimate than itself; it is a circular concept: human dignity is based on humanity, but it is unclear what is it about our humanity that gives it dignity. For him, human dignity expresses an attitude of respect toward the humanity in each person.v

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AT: Only humans deserve rights LIMITING RIGHTS EXTENSION TO THOSE WITH CAPACITY FOR UNDERSTANDING IRRATIONAL* Joan Dunayer, Animal Rights Activist, 2004, Speciesism, p. 123* As I demonstrated in chapter 5, new-speciesist rationales for favoring humans and the nonhumans who most resemble them are unfair and logically inconsistent. Because much suffering isnt directly related to understanding, the extent to which a particular individual possesses the understanding of a normal adult human is beside the point, Steve Sapontzis notes. The law prohibits the torture of humans because they can suffer, not because they have language (some dont) or are rational (I often feel that most arent). Other animals do reason, including in humanlike ways, but neither physical nor psychological suffering requires human-like intelligence. Beatings hurt and hunger aches whatever an individuals IQ. Most animals will suffer from imposed immobility. Social animals will suffer from isolation. Curious ones will suffer from monotony. Suffering matters, whoever is doing the suffering. And thought and perception matter, whoever is doing the thinking and perceiving. Each sentient being represents a mental world. Any form of consciousness should suffice to confer legal personhood. DESCARTES VIEW THAT ANIMALS CAN BE TREATED HOWEVER WE WISH NOT WIDELY ENDORSED* Cass Sunstein, Law Professor, University of Chicago, 2004, Animal Rights: Current debates and new directions, eds. Sunstein & Nussbaum, p. 5-6* If we understand rights to be legal protections against harm, then many animals already do have rights, and the idea of animal rights is not terribly controversial. Of course some people, including Descartes, have argued that animals lack emotions and that people should be allowed to treat them however they choose. But to most people, including sharp critics of the animal rights movement, this position seems unacceptable. Almost everyone agrees that people should not be able to torture animals or to engage in acts of cruelty against them. And indeed, state law includes a wide range of protections against cruelty and neglect. We can build on state laws to define a simple, minimalist position in favor of animal rights: The law should prevent acts of cruelty to animals.

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AT: Non-humans cant demand their own rights HIERARCHICAL BASIS OF OPPRESSION NECESSITATES HUMANS TO MAKE THE DEMAND FOR INCLUSION OF NONHUMANS Steven M. Wise, Professor Animal Rights Law at the Harvard Law School, 2000, Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals Questia p. 13-14 Aristotle forged many intellectual molds in science, ethics, taxonomy, politics, psychology, and philosophy. Some were not broken for hundreds, even thousands, of years. One of them was the syllogism. He virtually invented it ("Socrates is a man; all men are mortal; therefore Socrates is mortal"). Whether intentional or not, Aristotle's own place on the Great Chain of Being illustrated a syllogism. It was this: "Greek males occupy the top rung of the Great Chain of Being; I am a Greek male; therefore I occupy the top rung." Over the centuries, it generalized to this: "Only groups to which I belong occupy the top rung; I belong to those groups; therefore I occupy the top rung." It has remained in constant use in determining who has what rights. We'll call it "Aristotle's Axiom," and it is an axiom because no one ever, ever, assigns a group to which he or she belongs to any place in a hierarchy of rights other than the top. Mel Brooks nicely summarized Aristotle's Axiom in his movie The History of the World, Part One: "It's great to be the king!" These hierarchies are created in two ways. One group either pushes every other group below by force or threat of force or persuades the others that they belong on the lower rungs. Soldiers like the first way; philosophers, legal writers, taxonomists, and priests prefer the second. The problem for nonhuman animals is that they can neither fight nor write. Well, they can fight a little, and some times do very well one-on-one. But they are uniformly terrible at organized warfare against humans, and we are excellent at slaughtering them. That is why until humans learn to fight for them or write for them, nonhuman animals will never have any rights.

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AT: Species Barrier Justified BELIEF IN RIGID BARRIERS BETWEEN HUMANS AND NON-HUMANS GROUNDED IN FANTASIES MASQUERADING AS TRUTH* Stephen R. L. Clark, professor of philosophy at Liverpool University, 1994, The Great Ape Project: equality beyond humanity, eds. Cavalieri & Singer, p. 122-3* I said before that either we are simply natural products of evolutionary processes or we are not. If we are, then it seems clear that there are no rigid boundaries between species groups, that species, and other taxa, are quite real, but only as Realgattungen. There is a real difficulty, however, in believing this, despite the efforts made by other contributors to this very volume to expound a fully naturalized epistemology. The argument, which is a powerful one even if it has not convinced all theorists, runs as follows. If we are the products of evolutionary processes, then we have no good ground for thinking that our thoughts are anything but none-too-harmful fantasies. As Nietzsche saw, we must presume that we have evolved as the descendants of creatures who could ignore a lot, who could live out their fantasies. There is nothing in evolutionary epistemology to give us reason to expect that we would care about the abstract truth, or ever be able to obtain it. If the theory is correct, we have no reason to think that we could find out any correct theories, beyond (at best) such truths or falsehoods as we need to obtain the next meal or avoid being one. And so we have no reason to suppose that any theory that we have devised is really true, including the current theory of evolution. Only if the divine reason is somehow present in us can we expect that we would find our truths, or trust our moral instincts. That, after all, was what Enlightenment thinkers thought, borrowing a Platonic doctrine about the powers of reason that does not fit the neo-Aristotelian framework I have so far described. This alternative picturethat evolutionary theory does not leave room for the kind of being we have to think we are (namely truth-seeking and would-be moral images of a divine reason)is what has often lain behind attempts to insist upon a radical disjunction between apes and people. But there is a better answer. Plato, after all, denied that it was sensible to contrast human and nonhuman things, creatures of our specific kind and all others. We might as well divide the universe into cranes and non-cranes. By his account (or at least the account developed from his writings), there are indeed real natures, but they are not identical with the things that partly remind us of them. Even we ourselves are not wholly identical with the Form of Humanity, though we are called to serve it. The Form of Humanity, is the divine reason, and we are indeed more human, in this sense, insofar as we think and do as the divine reason requires. The true image of humanity, for us, is the saint or perfect sage. ALL SENTIENT BEINGS ENTITLTED TO THE SAME LEVEL OF MORAL CONSIDERATION* Joan Dunayer, Animal Rights Activist, 2004, Speciesism, p. 124* Sapontzis espouses a more egalitarian philosophy. He advocates not only that all sentient nonhumans be freed from human exploitation but also that they have equal rightsequal not in the sense of being entirely the same as humans but in the sense of affording equal protection. All sentient beings (nonhuman and human) have equal value, he asserts; theyre entitled to the same level of moral and legal protection. In her most recent work, Paola Cavalieri too rejects an animal hierarchy. In her view, all conscious beings should receive full moral status, which would entail an equal right to be spared suffering, as well as an equal right to life. Also, she maintains that nonhumans need a number of legal rights in addition to the right not to be property.

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AT: Should solve the problems of humans first HUMAN SUFFERING IS NOT AN EXCUSE TO IGNORE ANIMAL SUFFERING* Jane Goodhall, World Renowned Expert on Chimpanzees, 1994, The Great Ape Project: equality beyond humanity, eds. Cavalieri & Singer, p. 14-5* Finally, there is a growing concern for the plight of nonhuman animals in our society. But those who are trying to raise levels of awareness regarding the abuse of companion animals, animals raised for food, zoo and circus performers, laboratory victims and so on, and lobbying for new and improved legislation to protect them, are constantly asked how they can devote time and energy, and divert public monies, to animals when there is so much need among beings. Indeed, in many parts of the world humans suffer mightily. We are anguished when we read of the millions of starving and homeless people, of police tortures, of children whose limbs are deliberately deformed so that they can make a living from begging, and those whose parents force themeven sell theminto lives of prostitution. We long for the day when conditions improve worldwidewe may work for that cause. But we should not delude ourselves into believing that, so long as there is human suffering. Who are we to say that the suffering of a human being is more terrible than the suffering of a nonhuman being, or that it matters more?

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AT: Accounting for animal interests undermines the interests of humans 1) MOST CONFLICTS BETWEEN HUMAN AND ANIMAL INTERESTS ARE CONSTRUCTED AND INVOLVE TRIVIAL HUMAN INTERESTS* Gary Francione, Professor of Law, Rutgers, 2004, Animal Rights: Current debates and new directions, eds. Sunstein & Nussbaum, p. 132-3* Because animals are property, we treat every issue concerning their use or treatment as though it presented a genuine conflict of interests, and invariably we choose the human interest over the animal interest even when animal suffering can be justified only by human convenience, amusement, or pleasure. In the overwhelming number of instances in which we evaluate our moral obligations to animals, however, there is no true conflict. When we contemplate whether to eat a hamburger, buy a fur coat, or attend a rodeo, we do not confront any sort of conflict worthy of serious moral consideration. If we take animal interests seriously, we must desist from manufacturing such conflicts, which can only be construed in the first place by ignoring the principle of equal consideration and by making an arbitrary decision to use animals in ways in which we rightly decline to use any human. 2)CHOOSING A HUMAN OVER A NON-HUMAN ANIMAL IN A TRUE EMERGENCY SITUATION DOES NOT JUSTIFY TREATING THEM AS PROPERTY* Gary Francione, Professor of Law, Rutgers, 2004, Animal Rights: Current debates and new directions, eds. Sunstein & Nussbaum, p. 133* There may, of course be situations in which we are confronted with a true emergency, such as the burning house that contains an animal and a human, where we have time to save only one. Such emergency situations require what are, in the end, decisions that are arbitrary and not amenable to satisfying general principles of conduct. Yet even if we would always choose to save the human over the animal in such situations, it does not follow that animals are merely resources that we may use for our purposes. We would draw no such conclusion when making a choice between two humans. Imagine that two humans are in the burning house. One is a young child; the other is an old adult, who, barring the present conflagration, will soon die of natural causes anyway. If we decide to save the child for the simple reason that she has not yet lived her life, we would not conclude that it is morally acceptable to enslave old people, or to use them for target practice. Similarly, assume that a wild animal is just about to attack a friend. Our choice to kill the animal in order the save friends life does not mean that it is morally acceptable to kill animals for food, any more than our moral justification in killing a deranged human about to kill our friend would serve to justify our using deranged humans as forced organ donors. 3) ANIMAL RIGHTS DONT PRECLUDE SELF-DEFENSE AND PROTECTIVE ACTIONS* Joan Dunayer, Animal Rights Activist, 2004, Speciesism, p. 125* Except that humans shouldnt interfere with predator-prey relationships among free-living nonhumans, I also think were morally entitled to kill someone (as always, human or nonhuman) who directly, immediately threatens our life or that of another. Ive been asked, If a lion attacked your child or our dog, wouldnt you wish that you could intervene? I would intervene. Id do everything in my power to defend my (hypothetical) child or dog. If necessary, Id kill the lion. But Id just as readily kill a human attacker. I think we have a right to kill anyone who is invading our body or that of another (again, with the exception of natural
situations among free-living nonhumans.) For example, its justifiable defense of self or another, such as a dog or cat, to kill parasites (unless theyre external and can be removed benignly). Everyone has a right to bodily integrity. In keeping with US law, I think an

individual is entitled to kill an attacker if thats the only way to prevent being raped. 4) REGARDING ANIMALS AS PART OF THE COMMUNITY OF EQUALS DOES NOT MEAN THAT WE CANT CHOOSE HUMAN INTERESTS OVER THE ANIMALS IN CASES OF GENUINE CONFLICT, OR THAT ANIMALS MUST BE GIVEN THE SAME RIGHTS* Gary Francione, Professor of Law, Rutgers, 2004, Animal Rights: Current debates and new directions, eds. Sunstein & Nussbaum, p. 133-4* In sum, if we take animal interests seriously, we are not obliged to regard animals as the same as humans for all purposes any more than we regard all humans as being the same for all purposes; nor do we have to accord to animals all or most of the rights that we accord to humans. We may still choose the human over the animal in cases of genuine conflictwhen it is truly necessary to do so but that does not mean that we are justified in treating animals as resources for human use. And if the treatment of animals as resources cannot be justified, then we should abolish the institutionalized exploitation of animals. We should care for domestic animals presently alive, but we should bring no
more into existence. The abolition of animal exploitation could not, as a realistic matter, be imposed legally unless and until a significant portion of us took animal interests seriously. Our moral compass will not find animals while they are lying on our plates. In other words, we have to

put our vegetables where our mouths are and start acting on the moral principles that we profess to accept.

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AT: Animal Rights dilute Human Rights p. 1/2 1)DENYING BASIC RIGHTS TO NON-HUMAN APES UNDERMINES FOUNDATION FOR HUMAN RIGHTS* Steven M. Wise, Animal rights attorney and professor Vermont Law School, 2002, Drawing the Line: science and the case for animal rights, p. 8*
Based on the present state of scientific knowledge about the minds of these animals, I will argue that the case for legal rights for some of them is overwhelming; for others, currently not. But each determination will be saturated in the highest legal values and principles, free of the pervasive legal bias against nonhuman animals, and deeply anchored in scientific fact. To deny the most deserving amongst nonhuman

animals basic rights is arbitrary, biased, and therefore unjust. It undermines, and finally destroys, every rationale for basic human rights as well. And states without justice, wrote St. Augustine, are nothing but robber bands. 2)BASING RIGHTS EXTENSION ON SENTIENCE WOULD STRENGTHEN RIGHTS FOR VULNERABLE HUMANS* Joan Dunayer, Animal Rights Activist, 2004, Speciesism, p. 17* Making sentience the sole criterion for legal rights not only would protect nonhumans; it also would affirm the rights of the most vulnerable humans. If mallards and butterflies had legal rights, the rights of autistic and senile humans would be more, not less, secure. Opponents often claim that nonhuman rights would diminish human rights. To the contrary, laws that protect the most vulnerable beings protect us all. 3)ENSLAVEMENT OF ANIMALS SET THE STAGE FOR ENSLAVEMENT OF PEOPLE* David Nibert, Professor of sociology, Wittenburg University, 2002, Animal Rights/Human Rights: entanglement of oppression and liberation, p. 198-9*
Writing about this process, and providing yet another insight into the entanglements of the oppression of humans and other animals, Elizabeth Fisher notes:

Humans violated animals by making them their slaves. In taking them in and feeding them, humans first made friends with animals and then killed them. To do so, they had to kill something in themselves. When they began manipulating the reproduction of animals, they were even more personally involved in practices which led to cruelty, guilt, and subsequent numbness. The keeping of animals would seem to have set a model for the enslavement of humans, in particular the large scale exploitation of women captives for breeding and labor, which is a salient feature of the developing civilization. 4)TURN: USING RIGHTS DISCOURSE FOR ANIMAL RIGHTS STRENGHTENS THEIR POWER DOES NOT TRIVIALIZE THEM. Helena Silverstein, Professor, Lafayette College of Government and law, 1996, Unleashing Rights: law, meaning and the animal rights movement, p. 51-2*
Although stretching rights to animals initially fosters claims of absurdity that may undermine the power of the language, upon more careful inspection, the stretch is hardly absurd. Most of the absurdity claims arise from superficial responses such as animal rights means pigs in school, driving cars, and voting and animal rights activists hate humans and love animals. These types of allegations can be easily dismissed in such a way as to reinvigorate rights with power. All animal rights philosophers and proponents agree that granting rights to animals does not imply granting animals the same rights that humans hold, just as proponents of human rights agree, for instance, that the rights of children can be restricted. In addition, the allegation that animal advocates hate humans

is largely exaggerated. In fact, philosophical and movement literature concerning animal interests frequently reaffirms human rights. 5)DENYING RIGHTS TO ANIMALS BECAUSE IT MIGHT RISK TRIVIALIZING RIGHTS FOR HUMANS IS THE LOGIC THAT ALLOWS THE ARBITRARY RESTRICTION Helena Silverstein, Professor, Lafayette College of Government and law, 1996, Unleashing Rights: law, meaning and the animal rights movement, p. 50* If these view is accepted, then the slippery slope argument must be rejected. To deny rights to animals simply because extending rights might lead to problems further down the slope is not persuasive. Indeed, applying the slippery slope argument to deny the extension of rights to animals fosters an arbitrary demarcation at the level of species. The danger of such a capricious demarcation is clear when we consider that the same line can be drawn further up the slope, as it has in the past, within the human species. The slippery slope argument thus is not unique to animal rights. It was the kind of argument expressed by many who wished to deny rights to blacks, women, and other marginalized groups. If we agree that the slippery slope argument does not justify denial of human rights, we similarly have to agree that it does not, in itself, warrant denial of animal rights.

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AT: Animal Rights dilute Human Rights p. 2/2 6)ANIMAL RIGHTS STRENGTHENS THE CASE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS* Helena Silverstein, Professor, Lafayette College of Government and law, 1996, Unleashing Rights: law, meaning and the animal rights movement, p. 231* The alternative identity images of humans and nonhumans are noteworthy because not only do they elevate animals to the level of rights-bearing entities, they further speak to human rights. On the one hand, identifying animals as rights-bearing beings places considerable limits on what we now take to be human rights. If animal rights are accepted, the rights of humans to eat and wear what we choose is no longer viable. On the other hand, as argued in earlier chapters, animal rights reinforce certain human rights and, in turn, human identity. Because the notion of animal rights goes beyond rationality, it maintains the rights and identities of those humans who lack rationality, including the rights of the mentally disabled and children. 7)JUDICIAL REFUSAL TO RECOGNIZE AUTONOMY INTERESTS OF GREAT APES UNDERMINES FOUNDATION FOR HUMAN RIGHTS* Steven M. Wise, animal rights attorney and law professor, 2003, The Animal Ethics Reader, eds. Armstrong & Botzler, p. 542-3* Courts recognize human dignity-rights in the complete absence of autonomy only by using an arbitrary legal fiction that controverts the empirical evidence that no such autonomy exists. Conversely, courts refuse to recognize dignity-rights of the great apes only by using a second arbitrary legal fiction in the teeth of empirical evidence that they possess it. But legal fictions can only be justified when they harmonize with, or least do not undermine, the overarching values and principles of a legal system. Thus the legal fiction that a human who actually lacks autonomy ha it is benign, for at worst it extends legal rights to those who might not need them. At best it protects the bodily integrity of the most helpless humans alive. But the legal fiction that great apes are not autonomous when they actually are undermines every important principle and value of Western justice: liberty, equality, fairness, and reasoned judicial decision making. It is pernicious. 8)ARGUMENTS FOR ANIMAL RIGHTS STRENGTHEN THE CASE FOR PROTECTIONS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS FOR MARGINAL CASES* Tom Regan, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, North Carolina State University, 2004, The Case for Animal Rights, p. xiii* Second, The Case does more than argue for animal rights. It seeks to describe and ground a family of basic human rights, especially for the most vulnerable members of the extended family, for example, young children. (For a later development of my theory applied to children, see Regan, 1989). As I have said on many occasions, I never would have become an animal rights advocate if I had not first been a human rights advocate. While in the past, the main interest of friend and foe alike had been (and understandably so) in my argument for animal rights, I hope new readers will not overlook, and will test the mettle of, my more fundamental argument for human rights.

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Alternative: Reject Speciesist Foundation for Rights to Develop a new Ethical Framework MUST REFORMULATE AN ETHIC OF RIGHTS THAT ACCOUNTS FOR NONHUMANS AS WELL CANT MEET HUMAN INTERESTS WITHOUT ADDRESSING NON-HUMAN INTERESTS Steven Best, Professor University of Texas El Paso, 2005, (Visited 9/9/2005), Common Natures, Shared Fates: toward an interspecies alliance politics, http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Philosophy/Debating/Steven%20Best %20articles%20on%20animal%20issues.html The need for justice is universal. In his "Letter From Birmingham Jail," Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly." Racism and sexism, for instance, have divided the working community and prevented them from achieving the power of a united front against corporate exploiters. Human beings must see that this "inescapable network of mutuality" includes nonhuman animals and that their plight is our plight, even if one cares only about human problems. In so many ways, what we do to the animals, we do to ourselves. Any form of hierarchical consciousness can feed into and reinforce another; and thus we must continually attack dualistic, discriminatory, and hierarchical frameworks until the hydra-headed monster of prejudice and oppression is slayed entirely.

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AT: No Alternative/Not Unique UNIQUENESS IRRELEVANT SPECIESISM IS IMMORAL AND MUST BE REJECTED AT EVERY STEP Charlene Myers, Simon Fraser University, 1999, Violence against humans and other animals, July, http://critcrim.org/redfeather/journal-pomocrim/Vol-4-FeministCrim/001Myers.html Despite the fact that humans' domination of animals is currently generally accepted does not lead to the conclusion that it is acceptable. It is sincerely hoped that postmodernist discourses will be successful in challenging the authority of those who suggest other animals exist on this planet either solely or in part for the benefit of humans. Apart from the advantages that can be obtained for humans by treating the other animals with respect, the other animals are entitled to live their lives free from violence at the hands of those who are presumed to walk the higher moral ground. I am unable to express this sentiment more eloquently than did Henry Salt (cited in Adams, 1990:126), who in 1921 declared the following: As long as man kills the lower [sic] races [or species] for food or sport, he will be ready to kill his own race for enmity. It is not this bloodshed, or that bloodshed, that must cease, but all needless bloodshedall wanton infliction of pain or death upon our fellow-beings.

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AT: Perm PERM FAILS CANT ACCOMMODATE NON-HUMAN ANIMALS UNDER HUMAN RIGHTS LAW Kyle Ash, European Environmental Bureau, 2005, Animal Law, Volume 11:1, p. 195-6 Expanding the circle of international human rights to include nonhumans is counterintuitive and perhaps legally impossible. In international law, the primary basis for human rights is that we are not like other animals. For example, the preamble of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights states that fundamental human rights stem from the attributes of human beings, which justifies their international protection . . . .1 Instead of building upon existing legal doctrine, animal rights lawyers should be seeking a redefinition of human rightsnot an expansion. CANT ADD ANIMALS IN TO EXISTING HUMAN RIGHTS LAW NEED TO REDEFINE ITS FOUNDATION IN A NON-SPECIESIST MANNER Kyle Ash, European Environmental Bureau, 2005, Animal Law, Volume 11:1, p. 212-3 The logic of Kant and Mill has been useful to our understanding of the shortcomings of natural law, but it has not contributed to a better understanding of the natural world. Their views of other animals are the typical justification for speciesism in international law, as represented by treaties, declarations, and the writings of academics. Upon analysis, the tacit justifications for speciesism in international law are all non sequitur. Speciesism reflects the backwardness of law in that it has not adequately integrated modern qualities of science, namely to be evolutive, to exhaustively refer to empirically-deduced collective knowledge, and to be interdisciplinary. In his book, The Health of Nations, Philip Allott says, [t]he reality of the human world is a species-specific reality made by human beings for human beings.107 International law retains the archaic notion that humanity transcends the biosphere. Allott says he is terrified of accepting that knowledge, mind, and meaning are part of the same world that they have to do with.108 However, elevating ourselves to god-like status creates a moral hazard for the way we relate to each other and all other life. Was that not the lesson of our brush with fascism? In international law, the victory of compassion will not be in expanding the circle of human rights, but in redefining their foundation. Human dignity will remain a misnomer as long as it is defined in exclusionary terms. PERM FAILS CANT JUST ADD ANIMALS INTO HUMAN RIGHTS FRAMEWORK NEED A RADICAL TRANSFORMATION Peter Staudenmaier, Human Rights Advocate and Philosopher, 2003, Ambiguities of Animal Rights, Issue # 5, March, http://www.communalism.org/Archive/5/aar.html As an attempt to extend traditional ethical frameworks to non-human nature, animal rights is simultaneously much too ambitious and much too timid. It fundamentally misconstrues what is distinctive about humans and our relation to the natural world as well as to the realm of moral action, and at the same time treats higher animals anthropomorphically while completely ignoring the vast majority of creatures that make this planet what it is. But the problem with animal rights thinking goes deeper still. The very project of simply extending existing moral systems, rather than radically transforming them, is flawed from the start. ANIMAL INTERESTS CAN NEVER PREVAIL IN A FRAMEWORK THAT SAYS ONLY HUMANS HAVE RIGHTS* Gary L. Francione, Professor of Law, Rutgers University, 1994, The Great Ape Project: equality beyond humanity, eds. Cavalieri & Singer, p. 249-50* There is however, general consensus that animals ought not to be subjected to unnecessary pain or unjustified killing. Although animals are viewed as property that cannot possess rights, there are many laws that purport to provide some level of protection for animals in a variety of different circumstances. The problem is that when humans try to determine whether suffering or death is necessary, they inevitably engage in hybrid reasoning in which they balance human interests, including the legal fact that humans are regarded as having rights, and especially rights in property, and animal interests, which are unsupported by accompanying claims of right. And nonhumans are a form of property that humans seek to control. Under this framework, animals can virtually never prevail as long as humans are the only rightholders and animals are merely regarded as propertythe object of the exercise of an important human right.

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All constitutions were found on: charter88.org.uk; confinder.richmond.edu; constitution.org; oceanalaw.com; oefre.unibe.ch/law/icl; psr.keele.ac.uk. Out of 193 constitutions, 145 (75.1%) contain the concept, most of them in a prominent place (survey date: April 2004). Human dignity also figures prominently in Articles I2 and II1 of the Draft Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe (Brussels, 18 July 2003). An example is the constitution of the United States (one of the oldest still functioning); see Meyer, Introduction, 1. The concept also appears in an code of ethics for historians. See American Historical Association (AHA), Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct (http://www.historians.org/; Washington: AHA Professional Division, 2005), Section 7 (employment), 4th paragraph (dignity of candidates applying for a job). John Coetzee, Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 1415. Joel Feinberg, Social Philosophy (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973), 8894; see also Feldman, Human Dignity, I, 687; Robert Goodin, The Political Theories of Choice and Dignity, American Philosophical Quarterly, 18, no. 2 (April 1981), 91100, here 97; Arnold Toynbee, Traditional Attitudes towards Death, in: idem, et alii, Mans Concern with Death (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1968), 5994, here 5964 (The sense of human dignity.)

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