The full text of this article hosted at is unavailable due to technical difficulties. This article explains speciesism, an attitude that is common among both humans and nonhuman animals. Many anthropocentric positions have benign implications for environmental issues, and specifically for the lives of nonhuman animals. In his view, there can be no more substantive debate about the justification of speciesism than there can be about the legality of murder, for it stems from the definition of speciesism that speciesism is unjustified just as it stems from the definition of murder that murder is illegal. The teaching of environmental ethics in environmental science courses has been heavily influenced by recent philosophical debates and many educators have followed environmental ethicists in rejecting the ethics of utilitarianism.
It starts by defining speciesism as the unjustified disadvantageous. Forthcoming in journal of agricultural and environmental ethics is speciesism wrong by definition. Environmental ethics is the discipline in philosophy that studies the moral relationship of human beings to, and also the value and moral status of, the environment and its nonhuman contents. From a normative point of view, speciesism is a prescription that determines how to consider different individuals. Journal of agricultural and environmental ethics, 23, 243266.
Pdf in spite of the considerable literature nowadays existing on the. Oscar horta has argued that speciesism is wrong by definition. Oneill, onora, environmental values, anthropocentrism and. Oscar horta 2018 journal of agricultural and environmental ethics 31 3. Speciesism is the idea that being human is a good enough reason for human animals to have greater moral rights than nonhuman animals.
Speciesism is the idea that a species of animal has a prejudice or bias in favor of the interests of its own members and against the members of another species. Discrimination occurs when someone is given less moral consideration than others or treated worse for an unjustified reason. Human prejudice is a sustained attempt to consider what ethical work the concept of. It is believed that the human race have the responsibility. Pdf anthropocentrism is the position according to which the interests of human beings. Published in the journal of agricultural and environmental ethics, 23. Test your knowledge of speciesism and environmental ethics by completing this quiz and worksheet. Environmental ethics stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. Implicit in schmidtzs essay schmidtz, this issue, pp. By contrast, ecocentrism recognizes a naturecentered system of values, andextends the inherent worth to all living things regardless of their usefulness to humans mackinnon2007, p.
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