“The fact that no one has come up with a really convincing reason for giving greater moral weight to members of our own species, simply because they are members of our species, strongly suggests that there is no such reason. Like racism and sexism, speciesism is wrong.”

Source: The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and Contemporary Ethics (2017), p. 343

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 4, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The fact that no one has come up with a really convincing reason for giving greater moral weight to members of our own …" by Peter Singer?

Peter Singer54

Australian philosopher 1946

Related quotes

“We equate speciesism—the belief that one’s species is superior to all others—with racism and sexism.”

Wayne Pacelle (1965) American activist

"Sabotaging Animal Rights for Deer Hunt," 1986

“Speciesism—the word is not an attractive one, but I can think of no better term—is a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one's own species and against those of members of other species.”

Peter Singer book Animal Liberation

Source: Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for our Treatment of Animals (1975), Ch. 1: All Animals Are Equal

“To give preference to the life of a being simply because that being is a member of our species would put us in the same position as racists who give preference to those who are members of their race.”

Peter Singer book Practical Ethics

Peter Singer - The Genius of Darwin: The Uncut Interviews - Richard Dawkins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYYNY2oKVWU, 2009. <br class="br">Source: Practical Ethics <br class="br">Context: Speciesism is an attitude of prejudice towards beings because they're not members of our species, so just as racism means that you're prejudiced against beings who are not members of your race and sexism means you're prejudiced against people of the other sex. So we humans tend to be speciesist in we think that any being that is a member of the species homo sapien just automatically has a higher moral status and is more important than any being that is a member of any other species, irrespective of the actual characteristics of those beings.

“In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence..”

David Hume book An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Source: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

“The 1960s revolutions against racism, sexism and classism nearly missed out the animals. This worried me. Ethics and politics at the time simply overlooked the nonhumans entirely. Everyone seemed to be just preoccupied with reducing the prejudices against humans. Hadn’t they heard of Darwin? I hated racism, sexism and classism, too, but why stop there? As a hospital scientist I believed that hundreds of other species of animals suffer fear, pain and distress much as I did. Something had to be done about it. We needed to draw the parallel between the plight of the other species and our own. One day in 1970, lying in my bath at the old Sunningwell Manor, near Oxford, it suddenly came to me: SPECIESISM!”

Richard D. Ryder (1940) British psychologist

" Speciesism Again: The Original Leaflet http://www.veganzetta.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Speciesism-Again-the-original-leaflet-Richard-Ryder.pdf", in Critical Society, Issue 2, Spring 2010.

“The Bodo skull and the Kaprina and Shanidar Neandertal skeletons raise the possibility that two distinct, non-spaiens species of Homo had had rituals and cultural practices that we have assumed are only within the capacity of members of our own species.”

Jeffrey H. Schwartz (1948) American anthropologist

Source: What the Bones Tell Us (1997), Ch. 1

“The theory of evolution is based on the struggle for life and the survival of the fittest. Yet cooperation is common between members of the same species and even between members of different species.”

Robert Axelrod The evolution of cooperation

Axelrod, Robert, and William Donald Hamilton. "The evolution of cooperation." Science 211.4489 (1981): 1390

“But some of our moral behaviors, if not sentiments, almost certainly evolved. Evidence for that comes from finding parallels between the behavior of our own species and that of our relatives.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 171

“But science does correct itself and that's the reason why science is such a glorious thing for our species.”

Nigel Calder (1931–2014) British science writer

Interview for InConversation http://www.abc.net.au/rn/inconversation/stories/2007/1998485.htm (16 August 2007), by Robyn Williams, Australian Broadcasting Corporation <br class="br">Context: One of my complaints is that you've got far more scientists than ever before but the pace of discovery has not increased. Why? Because they're all busy just filling in the details of what they think is the standard story. And the youngsters, the people with different ideas have just as big a fight as ever and normally it takes decades for science to correct itself. But science does correct itself and that's the reason why science is such a glorious thing for our species.

“As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

Voices from the Sky : Previews of the Coming Space Age (1967)
1960s

“The fact that no one has come up with a really convincing reason for giving greater moral weight to members of our own species, simply because they are members of our species, strongly suggests that there is no such reason. Like racism and sexism, speciesism is wrong.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Peter Singer54

Related quotes

Related topics