Maybe you think it would be wrong to discriminate on the basis of substrate, so we need the legal system to recognize robot rights, a theme Northern Illinois University media studies professor David Gunkel explores in his new book of that name. How humanity’s idea of who deserves moral concern has grown — and will keep growing. Only organisms that value one experience more than another deserve moral consideration. The first route isn’t particularly promising as evidenced by the fact that if we found out that some small percentage of the “human” population were actually rational space aliens disguised as humans, we wouldn’t infer from this that they didn’t matter morally. Defending anthropocentrism against the charge of speciesism requires arguing either that species membership is morally relevant or that there is some other morally relevant feature that all and only humans have. You argue there are certain situations where we could replace the animals we experiment on with humans…During the Covid pandemic, I supported 1Day Sooner, an organisation of well informed volunteers offering to test the efficacy of candidate vaccines.

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” The piece basically decries that 50 years after the release of Animal Liberation, animals are still treated badly before they are killed. But the idea that plants are sentient is hotly contested — a status reflected by their outlying position in the moral expansiveness scale. Both Reese and Singer told me they don’t see plants as sentient, although they said they’d change their views if convincing new evidence were to emerge. Singer went on to argue that reason, by its nature, doesn’t tolerate inconsistency and arbitrariness — so if we follow the path of rational thinking, it’ll lead us to push past inherited biases, whether they’re against other people or other species.
The first group experience pain and pleasure but don’t think about themselves in any meaningful way. Such organisms must have ‘interests’, because only organisms with ‘interests’ are able to value one experience more than another experience.

Sentient organisms

• But it’s one of several factors that can make a larger moral circle more likely.
• So, whereas a strong version of anthropocentrism might say that being human is necessary and sufficient for deserving moral consideration, a weaker version might say simply that human beings deserve a special kind of moral consideration or a greater amount of it than other beings.
• Members of the second, self-aware group, which includes human beings, are aware of their own existence and concerned about what will happen to them in the future.
• Eating animals, however, is well beyond the cheat level of most people who would consider themselves to be part of the animal rights movement.
• I truly expected compassion, and perhaps an offer to discuss the matter at a more fitting time.
• Los Angeles ABC 7 covered it on Thanksgiving Day for 12 years in a row, from 2008 through 2019 (including the period of silence between myself and Singer).

I love that example because Guide Dogs for the Blind breeds Labradors, many of whom don’t make the cut and end up needing regular homes, while thousands of dogs whose temperaments would be perfectly suited for the job are killed in shelters. Imagine Gloria Steinem, with a book titled Women’s Liberation Now coming out, focusing a New York Times piece on a cause she deemed “equally” important. Jainism, which was founded in the sixth century BC, has long emphasized the supreme value of ahimsa, or nonviolence to all living creatures. Many monks take this so seriously that they cover their mouths with fabric to avoid accidentally breathing in insects, and sweep the ground ahead as they walk to avoid stepping on them. Some activist movements have been more successful than others. So in trying to figure out how advocates can boost their chances of successfully expanding the circle, it makes sense to investigate what contributed to the success or failure of past movements.

Which animals deserve moral consideration?

As they were brought into the circle, those people won rights. My guess is that if all and only humans have the feature (e.g., human DNA), then it probably isn’t morally relevant. Alternatively, if it is morally relevant (e.g., intelligence), then it probably isn’t something that all and only humans have. It just means that even if humans are special, it doesn’t follow that they are the only things that deserve moral consideration.

Rights and permissions

The circle may have expanded to include more beings in more places over the centuries, but the expansion is by no means linear. For some, like the Jains and Quechua people, the inclusion of all animals and of nature in the circle has long been morally obvious. So when talking about expanding the moral circle, it’s worth taking care to avoid Eurocentrism, the concept of progress that views Western historical innovations as the only ones that count.
I will, if necessary, summon the other women I know he has gravely harmed over the years (again, to challenge his credibility, as is allowed by California law). And I will call on one previously unknown to me, who I learned about from our movement’s lead feminists during my quest for legal representation for an appeal. She compares her interaction with Peter Singer to “rape”, not because he forcibly held her down but because of the sway he held over her, which interfered with her power to refuse him. Let me make it clear that I am not accusing him of rape, and, to my understanding, nor is she. But I have no doubt that her testimony would be of grave interest to a truly disinterested judge and to a jury.

• Our having any disagreement about the way I arranged the event is pure fantasy, surely invented to avoid acknowledging that we were arguing about our sexual history, a fact made clear by our subsequent email exchange.
• This was reminiscent of his demeaning the work of the brilliant pioneering activist, when, due to unhealed bad feeling between them, he denied her a chapter that was rightfully hers and handed it to a young activist he was sexually pursuing.
• The next one might not virtually shrug when it is pointed out that Singer’s lawyer outright lied on court documents, for example, in relaying that I had invited Peter Singer, in 2019, to spend a few days with me in Los Angeles.
• Though Peter Singer eventually told me he had slept with about thirty women in our movement, my claim refers to just a few, whose lives, like mine, were profoundly damaged by their dealings with him.
• Sentient organisms are creatures that have subjective experiences.
• I base that belief on the case of director Paul Haggis, who I know all too well.

On the phone after the hearing, Singer’s lawyer told me his plan to appear, uninvited, at a hearing two hours later, which forced me to wait around at the courthouse when I should have been working on my complaint. Even if I were not representing myself, it would have been unusual not to grant an extension from a Friday to a Monday morning, especially when the Defense Counsel did not even show up to object. I send out DawnWatch media alerts, aimed at encouraging activists to encourage the media to give animal issues better coverage, so that people can make informed choices in line with their own values. We have a lot of success with those; the 2019 International Conference presentation I mentioned above shows how they work. But I may be best known for bathing and blow-drying turkeys on TV.

Future Perfect

Importantly, if one successfully appeals, the case goes back to the same judge. As we litigated, I had no idea that ours, Judge Donna Geck, appointed by Arnold Schwarzenegger, had faced a recall effort in 2022. She was accused by numerous plaintiffs of bias in favor of “well connected and well-funded” men against the women they battled in court. Without getting too heavily into trashing the judge, I will note my utter lack of surprise upon learning about the recall effort. If you visit my YouTube channel, you’ll find loads of media appearances, including a 40 minute larabet casino interview with New Zealand’s most popular radio host, Kim Hill, which I would love you to listen to.
Our having any disagreement about the way I arranged the event is pure fantasy, surely invented to avoid acknowledging that we were arguing about our sexual history, a fact made clear by our subsequent email exchange. Anybody tempted to agree with Singer that oysters, and other mollusks he eats (he once wrote me that he had ordered mussels rather than be “stuck” with bread and salad) should read Ed Yong’s extraordinary book, An Immense World, which I mentioned above. From that book I learned what I had already suspected, that humans can barely fathom the way other animals experience the world, with senses far more impressive than ours. Meanwhile, how wonderful to see the movie Guardians of the Galaxy III making sure a generation grows up with the message that animal testing is just plain wrong – not wrong sometimes, depending on how greatly humans think they might benefit from it. The presumed need to focus on environmentalism goes against research done by Faunalytics, which reveals that the majority of people, and the vast majority of women, are interested in protecting animals. It flies in the face of the entertainment industry rule, “Never kill the dog,” because people will change the channel if you do.
One criticism of sentientism is that it implies that some of our current practices (e.g., industrial animal agriculture and the use of animals in biomedical research) are deeply problematic. In 1975 there weren’t many good vegetarian or vegan cookbooks so it made sense to include recipes. Then, as that changed, I didn’t think people needed the recipes any more so I took them out. Both vegan recipes from our childhoods that we still make and then things we have started cooking since becoming mostly vegan.
I am embarrassed to admit that under such pressure, for animals’ sake, I acquiesced. Krista Hiddema‘s chapter on Esther the Wonder Pig is one of my favorites. It describes a brilliant campaign to get Esther’s millions of followers directly, financially, involved in her life when she was faced with a medical emergency. Peter Singer, in his lack of wisdom, weighed in with a column criticizing the effort because all that money could do far more good than helping just one animal. “There is a growing understanding that other species are not here for our use.