Concept in Definition ABC

Speciesism is the discrimination ethics and moral that is carried out towards certain individuals based on their membership or not to specific species.

Although the use of this term is not generalized, it is always related to two great ideas.

First, with the so-called human speciesism, which implies that all species non-human is helpless when it comes to protecting her rights.

And secondly, speciesism can also refer to a more general idea according to which living beings have a different value depending on the species to which they belong.

Thus, following this last theory, a chimpanzee would receive more rights than a cat or a dog, due to its greater similarity to humans.

Speciesism is the object of wide debate in different areas. For example, in some religions it is argued that humans were created as superior beings with respect to other animals, so they can exercise their dominion over them.

Origin of speciesism

The term speciesism, together with argument

that its existence is mere prejudice, first appeared in a pamphlet published by British psychologist Richard D. Ryder in 1970. Ryder was part of an animal rights group, known as the Oxford Group, which was responsible for spreading his ideas through the distribution of pamphlets. Specifically, the one that originated the term speciesism was written as a protest against the use of animals in scientific experiments.

The arguments used by Ryder to coin the term were based on the idea that from the moment Darwin made his evolutionary theory known, there was a consensus widespread among the scientific community that there were no major differences between humans and other animals, biologically speaking, and that the segregation between species was solely the result of moral human.

Speciesism today

Ryder's ideas were the pillars upon which the entire movement of later animal protection, but even among those who argue that speciesism is unfair to the rest of animals, tend to incur internal discussions about what is the main line to follow in their claims.

The non-existence of a clear definition or the division of the movement into different segments, leads them to produce disputes over which species should be equated with humans and which simply need an extension of their Rights.

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Topics in Speciesism