I argue that the word âspeciesismâ has as its main function to designate a phenomenon analogous to racism, and thereby allow us to draw instructive parallels between this phenomenon and racism, parallels that we can then use to investigate and debate the morality of this phenomenon.
In the animal ethics literature, speciesism is defined in all sorts of manners: as a behaviour or a philosophical view, as necessarily anthropocentric or possibly centred on other species, as necessarily based on species or possibly not, as necessarily immoral or possibly ethically acceptable.
I define speciesism as unequal treatment based on species and argue that this definition fares better than extant accounts insofar as it satisfies these two conditions.
Up to a point, this variety is unobjectionable. We are at liberty to stipulate the sense in which we use words. But this is true only within limits. Some definitions are good and some bad, depending on whether or not they meet certain conditions.
A good definition of speciesism must therefore satisfy two conditions: it must match a good definition of racism, and it must make the concept speciesism useful to debate the way we treat animals.
New paper out in đâđ đœđđąđđđđ đđ đžđĄâđđđ ! The title is intentionally ambiguous, as I defend both a procedure for defining speciesism and a substantive definition of speciesism. link.springer.com/article/10.1...
