Our Duties to Animals Animal Liberation: All Animals Are Equal —Peter Singer  A prejudice or bias toward the interests of members of one’s own species and against members of other species is called speciesism.  Our present attitudes toward animals are based on a long history of prejudice and arbitrary discrimination.  The basic principle of equality requires equal consideration of interests.

Our Duties to Animals Animal Liberation: All Animals Are Equal— Peter Singer  The vital characteristic that gives a being the right to equal consideration is the capacity for suffering.  The principle of equality requires that a being’s suffering be considered equally with the like suffering of any other being.

Our Duties to Animals Animal Liberation: All Animals Are Equal— Peter Singer  Perhaps the clearest indication of our speciesism is the suffering we inflict on animals in captivity.  We cannot distinguish between animals and humans by appeals to “the intrinsic dignity of human beings.”

Our Duties to Animals The Case Against Animal Rights—Carl Cohen  Whatever else rights may be, they are necessarily human.  Because animals are not beings capable of exercising or responding to moral claims, they therefore have no rights.  Animals are not members of a moral community.

Our Duties to Animals The Case Against Animal Rights—Carl Cohen  On utilitarian grounds, to refrain from using animals in biomedical research is morally wrong.  One cannot coherently object to the killing of animals in biomedical research while continuing to eat them.  Animals ought not to be made to suffer needlessly.

Our Duties to Animals The Case Against Animal Rights— Carl Cohen It is not the case that all sentient animals have equal moral standing. We should embrace speciesism.

Our Duties to Animals The Case Against Animal Rights— Carl Cohen Absurd consequences would follow from embracing a strong position on animal rights. Between animate species, the morally relevant differences are enormous.